Wintertide: A Novel (18 page)

“He doesn’t want to risk being
seen, I guess,” he shrugged after taking a slow drink from his steaming cup. “Do
you want to suggest another place?”

I shook my head. “No, just leave
it. We need to talk to him as soon as possible. My dad told me the police know
he was at the Southside Tavern that night with some friends. I don’t think they
know who the friends were though.”

Seth’s brows shot up. “How do you
know this?”

“Apparently my dad knows some cops.
They told him.” Seth didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell him that I’d lied to my
father about being there that night.

After letting this news sink in for
a moment, Seth said, “Let’s not mention this to Eddie tonight.”

I gulped down more coffee. “I
hadn’t planned on it.” In fact, I planned on saying as little as possible. If
he wasn’t open to the idea of getting the heck out of town and if he couldn’t
be convinced, I didn’t know what plan B was. If Eddie threatened to make it look
as though I had done it and if I actually believed he would do that, I would
need Seth on my side to tell the police what had really happened, but I didn’t
know if I could count on that either. Eddie had to agree to leave. I had no
other good options.

The rest of the day dragged by at a
torturously slow pace. Seth said the meeting time was set for two in the
morning. There had to have been a better place and a more decent time to have
held this meeting, but I wasn’t about to alter Eddie’s plan and possibly risk a
flare up of his temper. We had to get this over with. It would be frigid out
there in the woods, but it would also be quiet and deserted.

Mom knew there was something wrong
when I came home. She was working in the kitchen when I walked in. I sat down
at the table, preoccupied with my thoughts, but not wanting to be alone. Her
presence was soothing and moreover it was normal. I needed that today, even if just
for a little while.

"Is something the matter,
Daniel?”

I looked up at her, startled by the
question. "No,” I replied automatically.

She was wiping her hands on a dishtowel.
"You’re awfully quiet. Is it Seth?”

“Seth?” I repeated.

“You don't have to tell me if you
don't want to. I mean he practically forced me to wake you up when you were
feeling so ill. Did he talk about his parents’ divorce with you?"

I felt like shaking my head to
gather my senses as I slowly realized that my mother was referring to the lie I
had told her the other day.

She came to the table. "His
father is getting remarried isn't he? To that young girlfriend."

I blinked at her, wondering at how
different our trains of thought were at this moment. "No,” I told her,
scrubbing a hand over my rough, unshaven cheek. “Seth's father isn't getting
remarried. At least I don't think so. He just wanted to talk. It wasn't about
anything specific."

Although I hoped I was wrong, it
appeared as though disappointment had crossed her face. A juicy piece of gossip
had slipped through her fingers. She looked past me into the living room. "Before
you go back to school, we'll get rid of that tree. It’s hard to believe another
year is almost over."

We ate dinner together, just Mom
and I. I didn’t know where my father was, and I didn’t ask. Mom’s mood seemed
melancholy, and she went to bed around ten. I stayed in my room. I read for a
while, and then I listened to some music. Although I didn’t think it was
necessary, I set the alarm on my phone to wake me at one-thirty. As the hours
passed and I still hadn’t heard my father’s truck pull into the driveway, my
anxiety only increased. I needed him to be home and sound asleep before I snuck
out.

I watched the clock all evening and
finally around one in the morning, I heard it. The  truck came lumbering up the
driveway and all the familiar sounds of him returning home that had once dully
rolled past me now held my full attention, the front door opening and closing,
the front closet opening and closing, footfalls on the stairs growing louder as
he ascended. Once I heard the bedroom door close, I turned and looked at the
clock. I had twenty minutes left. I sat up and grabbed my phone, turning off
the alarm I wouldn’t need. Out my window, I saw the beginning of the woods
where Eddie, Seth, and I had gathered so many times in the past. It used to be
a place to which I could escape from my reality. But I realized that back then my
reality was hardly difficult compared to others. Compared to Eddie’s. Now his
reality was threatening to swallow mine.

Those last twenty minutes passed
both too slowly and too quickly. Just before two, out my window, I could see Seth’s
mother’s car down the road, parking off to the side. I pulled my jacket on over
my sweater and grabbed my hat and gloves. As quietly as I could manage, I
opened my bedroom door and moved across the creaking boards down the hallway
toward the stairs. Every noise I made seemed magnified and impossibly loud as I
listened for a stirring from my parents’ bedroom.

Once I was safely in the kitchen, I
took the flashlight from the drawer beside the refrigerator, where I knew my
mother kept it. When I pulled opened the front door and stepped outside, the
chill immediately pricked at the exposed skin on my face. Misty puffs of breath
trailed beside me as I followed along the side of the house. A circle of yellow
light from the flashlight led the way across the dried grass that was still
matted with a thin covering of snow. I could hear no other sounds beyond my own
breathing.

Seth was standing beside his
mother’s car, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, bouncing up and down on
the balls of his feet. When he noticed me, he seemed relieved. "Am I
late?" he asked. "I was afraid I was late."

"No, it's just two now."

Seth transferred his weight from
one foot to the other as he turned to look down the road. "I don’t see Eddie’s
car. Do you think we should wait for him?”

I pulled my phone from my pocket to
check the time. It was now one minute past. An uneasy feeling that Eddie might
not show up nudged at me. "He may have come in from the other side,” I
said. “I think we should just go in.” As I walked past Seth, I picked up the
smell of alcohol. I immediately stopped walking. “You’ve been drinking,” I
accused.

"Relax," he said stepping
back. "I just had a few beers."

I glared at him. “I would think you’d
want to be clear-headed for this.”

“I’m not drunk, okay? Calm down.”

I turned back to the woods, shaking
my head as I continued moving. Seth came up beside me, and we walked in
together. A half moon lit the sky, and now that my eyes had adjusted, the night
wasn’t quite so dark. We followed the path we were both familiar with but hadn't
traversed in years. It was tricky going, and Seth stayed close to me as we
shared the beam from my flashlight to avoid tripping over rocks and raised
roots. The small clearing was just up ahead. I came out first, sweeping the
area with the flashlight.

"Do you see him?" Seth
asked from behind me.

"No."

The clearing was small, only a few
yards in each direction. A canopy of dark, bony branches hovered above us,
cutting the moonlight. If this were summer, the clearing would be in complete
blackness, the thick leaves shutting out all light. But now, with the moon
overhead, the clearing looked like a stage set apart from the shadowed woods. The
ground was rigid and frozen beneath our feet. My toes were already becoming
numb. Seth began to pace. I turned off the flashlight, shoved it down into my
coat pocket, and stood with my arms crossed before me for warmth.

“Where the hell is he?” Seth
muttered just as a branch snapped to the right of us, beyond the clearing. Both
of our heads whipped around toward the source, our eyes riveted to the boundary
there. Our poised expectancy was met with only silence. I was about to say it
must have been an animal when out stepped Eddie. I first saw him from the corner
of my eye as a dark silhouette hovering at the perimeter. When I looked at him
fully, his face was hidden in shadows, but the silver buckles on his leather
jacket glinted at me in the dim light.

"Hey," Seth said first,
his voice disturbing the silence.

Eddie started moving toward us. “You
came,” he stated. He wore a baseball cap and the shadow made by the brim kept
half his face in darkness while the unhidden half revealed a unshaven cheek. He
didn’t look angry or confrontational, just exhausted.

He glanced at Seth before turning
to focus on me. “Did you have a merry Christmas?” he asked.

I took a few steps to close the
distance between us. “Where are you staying?” I asked, ignoring what I was sure
had been a rhetorical question. He had no gloves on, and his leather jacket
couldn’t have been providing him with much warmth. If he were as miserable as
he appeared, maybe it wouldn’t be too hard to convince him to leave.

“Why?” he finally answered. “Do you
actually care?”

I gave him a wry smile. “I guess I
must.”

He didn’t respond but he continued
to stare at me for another moment before he abruptly turned to Seth. “So are we
good?” he asked him. If he was inquiring as to whether or not I intended to lie
for him, it was odd that he asked this of Seth and not me.

Seth’s eyes immediately darted to
mine before he answered. “Actually,” he began, looking down at the ground now,
“we were thinking you might just want to go away for a while. Until this all
blows over. Maybe there's someplace you've always wanted to go?" Seth
glanced up at Eddie now, his expression hopeful.

There was no reaction from Eddie at
first. Then he narrowed his eyes at Seth and asked, “You mean like Disneyland?”

Seth’s expression sobered. “We’re
serious, Eddie.”

Eddie stepped away from us, running
his hands through his hair.

Seth continued. “Maybe you could go
to Vegas or California. Somewhere warm.”

Abruptly, Eddie dropped his arms to
his side and he turned to me. “So, this means you won’t back my story up with
the police? Did Seth tell you what I would do if you said no?” Eddie asked me.

I could feel my heart rate speeding
up. Keeping my eyes steady on him, I replied. “He told me.”

Eddie shook his head with
disbelief. “You always were an asshole, Danny. You always thought you were
better than everyone else around here. But I don’t remember you ever having a
problem with lying before. You’d lie to protect yourself. But you won’t lie to
help me?”

It looked like there was genuine
hurt in his dark eyes. “It’s too big a lie, Eddie. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

He barked out a laugh. “You’re
sorry. I don’t get it. If you’re so sorry why aren’t you going to the police
and telling them everything? It’s because you’re not sorry enough to put your
own future at stake, just mine. Right? You’re such a fucking hypocrite. You
always were.”

Seth moved toward Eddie. “Please
just consider taking off for a while.”

Eddie turned on Seth. “No. Fuck you
both. I’m not leaving.”

“Why not?” I asked. “You could
start somewhere fresh where no one knows you. Where no one has any assumptions
about you.”

Eddie’s jaw clenched as he stalked
toward me. “You don’t know anything about me. Why would you assume I’d be so
willing to just walk away from my life? Did you know that I’ve been paying the
mortgage on my dad’s house for the past two years? He’d be homeless if I wasn’t
taking care of the bills. The house is mine now. He signed it over to me. Did
you know that my boss offered to make me his partner at the garage? No, you
just assumed that I was a loser with nothing. Right?”

He was right. But I shook my head
anyway, proving that some lies did come easier than others. “You killed someone,
Eddie,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “If starting over somewhere else
is the biggest price you have to pay for that, you’re getting off easy.”

I heard Seth blow out a heavy
breath, waiting, as I was, for Eddie’s explosive reaction to my comment. But I
had to convince him that leaving was the best option. All our futures were at
stake.

Instead of exploding, Eddie
silently paced, saying nothing. Seth and I made eye contact, both of us hoping
he was thinking it over.

“No,” Eddie finally said, shaking
his head. He pointed a finger at me. “I’m going to talk to the police and tell
them I was with the both of you at the sea cliff after we left the bar and
you’re going to say the same thing. If you don’t, I’m going to tell them that I
saw you kill that guy and Seth is going to say it, too. You got it?”

My eyes darted to Seth’s just as
his eyes darted away. “Please, Eddie,” Seth said.

“Please what?” he shot back. “I
think you need to explain things a little more clearly to Dan.”

I watched the both of them with a
sinking feeling washing over me. “Seth is not going to say that,” I countered,
but with wavering conviction. Seth was looking pleadingly at Eddie and not
looking at me at all.

“Yes, he will,” Eddie replied
confidently. “I have some video of Seth that he wouldn’t want anyone else to
see. If he doesn’t say what I tell him to, I’m going to put that video online
so that everyone, including his father and the officials at his school, can
watch every minute of it.”

Seth scrubbed his gloved hands over
his face. “Jesus,” he muttered miserably.

“What’s he talking about?” I asked
even though I didn’t really want to know the answer. I could feel the power
shifting toward Eddie.

Seth turned to me, not bothering to
hide his anguish. “I’m sorry, Dan.”

They were both looking at me now.
The frozen ground seemed to move beneath me. “What video is he talking about?”
I asked.

Seth pulled his gaze from mine and
turned it up at the night sky, his expression pained.

“It’s a video of Seth having sex
with this girl from his school, and she doesn’t exactly look like she’s enjoying
it.”