Wintertide: A Novel (19 page)

  I looked to Seth, hoping for some
kind of denial. But he wouldn’t acknowledge me.

“I think she later accused him of rape,”
Eddie continued. “Isn’t that right? Seth, of course, denied the whole thing.
But the video I took with my phone that night says differently.”

I was too stunned to say anything. Based
on Seth’s reaction, there was no doubt this was true. He had told me this story
but he had obviously left out some critical details. Things had turned so
quickly, it took me a minute to process the shock and the complete betrayal
that I felt. These were my friends at one time. I didn’t know who these people
were now.

I turned to walk away when I felt
Eddie grab my arm. Instinctively, I yanked it from his grasp, stumbling back
once I’d gotten free. He started to move toward me again when I saw Seth’s hand
reach out to hold him back. “Let me talk to him,” I heard Seth say, but I
didn’t wait to hear more. I plunged back into the woods, not thinking of the
consequences of leaving the discussion, just needing to be away from them. Not
paying attention to the branches that scraped against me or that I was no
longer on the path, I headed in the direction of the road, my breath ringing loud
in my ears.

When I finally walked out of the
woods, I heard Seth come through behind me. “We have to talk about what we're
going to do, Dan,” he said, following me.

I whirled on him. “Did you both
rape her or was it just you?” I accused, my voice a barely controlled whisper
now that we were out on the street.

“Come on,” he said, obviously not
wanting to answer.

“Tell me the truth.”

“It wasn’t just me,” he answered
reluctantly, looking down the road now.

His inability to make eye contact
inflamed me more. “So, when Eddie offered you a turn after him, you took it.
Didn’t you?”

He crossed his arms over his chest
without answering.

“Didn’t you?” I demanded.

“Don’t look at me that way,” he
spat. “Like you’ve never done anything that you’ve regretted.”

“Don’t act like this is no big
deal.”

“It doesn’t have to be a big deal.”

I blinked at him, completely
astounded by his attitude. “Unbelievable,” I muttered. “And Eddie captured the
whole thing on his phone.”

“Dan….”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”
I yelled at him.

He stayed silent. I hadn’t really
expected an answer anyway. I backed away from him, looking toward the woods
behind him to see if Eddie had followed, too. There was no sign of him.
"I'm going home now. I have to be at work in a few hours."

“We need to talk about this. You
can’t expect me to put Eddie off forever."

“I really have no idea what you’re
capable of doing, Seth.” I turned to walk toward home.

He came up behind me. “We’re going
to have to tell the police what Eddie wants us to. We have to get our stories
ready and decide when we’re going to do this.”

I stopped and turned to him. “Get
in your car and go home. I’m not talking about this anymore tonight.”

He looked at me, and I could see he
was weighing his options. “You’re not going to be stupid about this. I know
you’re not. Fine. Go ahead and sleep on it. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

I moved quickly toward the house,
pulling my keys from my pocket. He was still standing there when I turned the
lock and went inside. Quietly, I closed the door and went up to my room. Without
looking outside, I pulled down the window shade and dropped onto my bed not
bothering to remove my coat, boots, scarf, or gloves.

I’m not sure how long I lay there
staring at the ceiling. Soon I began to sweat, and I absently stripped away
layers of clothing. My thoughts were all over the place. I knew I couldn’t
trust Eddie, and now I was sure that I couldn’t trust Seth either. All I’d done
was meet them for a drink. How had it spiraled into the mired mess of a situation
in which I now found myself? I should have just gone to the police right away.
What had I been thinking? Now, if I went to the police, apparently both Eddie
and Seth would claim that I’d killed that guy. It was all just too ridiculous.
I wanted to ignore the entire thing and pretend none of it existed.

But what if I really did do nothing?
A part of me just didn’t believe that Eddie would go so far as to willingly
walk into a police station and lay a bunch of lies at their feet. Maybe I
should just call his bluff and take no action whatsoever?

When my bedroom began to brighten, I
lifted myself up off the mattress and pulled open the window shade. Outside,
everything was glaringly white. It was snowing and not just a few flakes here
and there. The ground was completely covered and the falling snow was so dense,
I couldn't see the road just a few yards away. Flakes landed on the cold glass
of my window, melting and streaming down in icy rivulets. I pulled on some sweats,
and I went downstairs. My head was fuzzy, and it was hard to think clearly. I
couldn’t remember when I’d last slept.

In the living room, I found Mom
reading the newspaper. She set it down on the cushion beside her and looked up
when I approached. "I hope you’re not planning on driving to work today. I
would be worried sick if I knew you were out in this weather."

I sat down and rubbed my hands over
my face. I could hardly afford to miss a day of work, and I certainly didn’t
want to sit home all day, but my mother’s Buick would never make it to the
professor’s house in this snow, and I wasn’t really in any condition to go
anyway.

“How are you feeling today?” Mom asked,
pushing my hair off my forehead. “You don’t look much better, Daniel.”

"I'm fine."

She gestured to the discarded
newspaper beside her. “The paper says that they’re still looking for the McKenna
boy. He must have run off. That speaks volumes about his guilt, don’t you
think? It says that the woman took her husband’s body home to Connecticut. The
funeral is this week.” She shook her head, and then she stood. "I'm going
to make you a good breakfast."

I sat there with my eyes closed,
resting them, until I heard her call me into the kitchen. Sitting myself down
at the table, I asked, "Did Dad go into work today?"

"Yes. I called him a few hours
ago to tell him to come home, but he wouldn't listen. You know your father. By
the way, Daniel, don't think I've forgotten about that hair cut you promised me.
This week all right? When the roads are clear."

"Sure."

I ate but I hardly tasted anything.
Then I called Professor Sheffield. He assured me that he hadn’t expected me to
make the drive today. Next, still in a daze, I showered, and when I walked back
into my room, my phone was vibrating on my dresser. I saw Seth’s name and I hesitated.
I still couldn’t wrap my mind around what he had done. How could the person
that I’d called my best friend for years rape someone? I let the call go to
voicemail. Immediately, it vibrated again.

I sighed and answered it, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Seth replied. Then he
cleared his throat. “Are you at work?”

“No. I decided not to go. Not in
this weather.”

“Can you believe this? Did they forecast
snow for today?”

I rubbed my hand across my forehead,
uselessly applying pressure to my headache. “Are we really going to talk about
the weather?”

 I heard static as he sighed into
the phone. “Look, Dan,” he began, “I’m really sorry.”

His apology washed over me with no
effect. My head throbbed beneath my fingers. “You could have prepared me,” I
said. “You knew where the conversation was going to go last night.”

“I was really hoping he would agree
to leave. I didn’t know about his dad’s house or about the garage.”

“I’m surprised he hasn’t kicked his
dad out of the house if it’s his now.”

“His dad isn’t doing too good. All
those years of drinking did a number on him. He hardly ever leaves the house. I
think the tables have turned and Eddie runs the show at home now.”

“He runs your show, too, doesn’t
he?”

I heard Seth sigh again. “I didn’t
know he was recording it.”

“You told me that he lost control
that night but it sounds like he knew exactly what he was doing. How the hell
could you have done that? Jesus, Seth.”

“We were all drinking. It was a
mistake. Okay? A mistake that I’m obviously really sorry for now.”

“He’s going to hold that over you
for the rest of your life. You know that, right? Even if you say what he wants
you to about the guy he killed, he’ll still have that video.”

“I know that. He promised to erase
it, but….”

“But you can’t trust him.”

Seth didn’t reply. I only heard his
breathing, a silent acknowledgement of what I’d said.

“So what’s your decision?” he
finally asked.

I hadn’t consciously made a
decision, but I knew what I was capable of and what I wasn’t. I had walked away
from this place and these people once before, and now I realized that I planned
to do it again. I was going to call Eddie’s bluff and do nothing. I was betting
that he wouldn’t voluntarily talk to the police and try to make them believe
that I had done it. If the police found him and he led them to me, I would tell
them the truth. In the meantime, I didn’t plan on doing anything other than
getting through the rest of this winter break and going back to school. But I
wasn’t dumb enough to throw down the gauntlet with Eddie. “I  don’t know yet,”
I told Seth in answer to his question.

“You don’t know?” he asked
incredulously.

“I need more time to think about
it.”

“You’re stalling, Dan.”

“I’m hanging up now.” I heard him
saying my name as I ended the call. Then I turned off my phone, and I lay down on
my bed. My eyes felt heavy, and I thought that I might actually be able to fall
asleep. Eddie and Seth could do all the scrambling they wanted. I was done. I
felt myself relax as my exhaustion overtook me. Eddie had never really been my
friend. Although, I couldn’t have imagined he was capable of all I’d seen him do
in the past few days. The sense of mourning I’d felt over the loss of my
friendship with Seth had completely disappeared. I now realized that I was
lucky to have escaped the both of them unscathed the first time. I could only hope
to be so lucky the second.

I did sleep, nearly all day. When I
woke, it was almost four in the afternoon. I glanced out the window and saw that
the snow had stopped. My headache wasn’t gone, but I felt more clear-headed. After
quickly brushing my teeth, I went downstairs. As I descended, I could hear both
my mother and father talking in the kitchen. I paused on the stairway and tried
to hear what they were saying, but their voices had stopped.

“Daniel?” my mother called.

I came around the corner and saw
them seated at the table with two cups of coffee. “You slept the day away,” Mom
said with a smile.

When I realized that if my dad was
here, then his vehicle must be here also, I got an idea. “Can I borrow the truck?”
I asked.

Dad raised his eyebrows at me.
“Where do you need to go?”

“I just want to get out of the
house for a while,” I shrugged.

He exchanged a look with my mother
before reaching into his pocket and pulling out his keys.

“The roads are slippery, Daniel.
I’m not sure driving is a good idea,” Mom predictably commented.

“They’re plowed and sanded,” Dad
told her.

I turned with the keys in my hand and
headed for the door. “Will you be back for dinner?” Mom asked.

“I don’t think so,” I called over
my shoulder. I’d left my heavy coat and gloves upstairs in my room, but I was
so anxious to get out of the house that I just grabbed a sweatshirt and my Red
Sox cap from the front hall closet.

Outside was a frozen, white-washed
world. It felt like a different place than it had been last night. The air was
still cold, but moist and clean now. It was unusually quiet. The heavy blanket
of snow muffled the familiar sounds of the day. The asphalt road had disappeared,
now only defined by a coating of brown sand and the weaving depressions made by
passing tires.

I climbed up into my Dad’s four by
four pickup truck and was immediately assaulted by the stale smell of cigarette
smoke. I opened the windows, cranked the heat and backed out of the driveway.
The truck easily ate up the snow-packed roads while the sharp sting of cold air
coming through the open window eased the remainder of my headache. Soon, I
found myself at the mall.

I sat in the truck a while longer
just watching people rushing across the slippery parking lot. The mall was
quiet. The Christmas rush was over and the weather had likely kept people away
today. I watched the faces that hurried past me, drawn in tight from the cold,
covered in scarves and hats, and I wondered what their biggest worries were. My
old worries of never getting out of South Seaport seemed insignificant in the
face of my current issues.

Finally, I climbed out of the truck
and walked briskly toward the entrance. I didn’t know if Kristen was working
today or if she was even still employed here. I only knew that she’d been on my
mind since I ran into her and I wanted to see her. Throughout high school, she
had been a breath of fresh air for me. She was an escape that I needed today
more than ever.

 I wandered past the makeup
counters and into the accessories department, stopping when I spotted her
standing behind the same display case she’d been at the other day. She was
talking to another girl. She had on a brown sweater and her long, shiny hair
was pulled back into a ponytail. The end of it swayed slightly as she spoke,
grazing her slim shoulders. I walked over casually with my hands in my pockets.
The girl standing with Kristen noticed me first. It appeared that she worked
there, too.

"Can I help you?" she
asked brightly.