The Waiting

by Joe Hart

  “No, no, she wasn’t.”

  Evan related the events at Cecil’s house to her, as the boat drifted in a lazy line parallel to the nearby shore. When he’d finished, Selena sat quiet, not looking at him for a while.

  “And you think she was telling the truth?”

  “Definitely. Even if everything she said was made-up, she still believed it. Plus all the pieces seemed to connect.”

  Selena picked up her rod and twitched it up and down, and Evan once again admired her skill, which outdid his own.

  “Is there another interest you have in all this?” she asked, not looking at him.

  Yes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you seem somewhat fixated on the story. I’m wondering if it has any significance to you other than the article.”

  “No.”

  Liar.

  “I think it’s an incredible mystery that no one’s heard before.”

  You think it can do something impossible, you think it can turn—

  “And one that could secure a future for Shaun and I if someone would pick it up,” he said, fighting the voice into silence.

  “Okay, I was curious, that’s all.”

  She tipped back in her seat and propped her feet up on the pontoon’s rail, giving him a great view of her legs. She glanced at him, the dark sunglasses doing nothing to hide the meaning of the look. Evan turned his head away, hoping the blush on his cheeks would be hidden by the heat of the sun.

  The sound of a boat motor drew their attention to a nearby point of land, and a few seconds later a large craft appeared. As it neared, Evan heard the engine slow and saw the familiar form of Jacob at the wheel. The Irishman raised a hand in greeting and steered toward them.

  “Oh God, it’s him,” Selena said in a low voice.

  Evan looked at her, surprised. “You know Jacob?”

  “Unfortunately. He screwed my dad out of a land deal years ago. He was really rude and cruel about it too. I’m sorry, I can’t stand him.”

  With that, she turned away to fish off the opposite side of the pontoon. Evan was at a loss for words but had no time to ask any more questions, as Jacob idled his Lund sideways to them a dozen yards away.

  “Mornin’, boyos! I thought ’twas you over here. How’re we doin’ this mornin’?”

  “Great, how about yourself?” Evan said. The awkwardness of Selena’s words still hung over him.

  “Oh, not bad, not bad. Sorry bit of tragedy back in town, though.”

  “Oh yeah, what happened?”

  “Young gal by the name of Tram died at her own hand last night.”

  A strange humming filled Evan’s ears, as if his head had been thrust underwater. The pontoon lurched sickeningly beneath him, and his gorge rose like an elevator. Jacob said something else, and Evan had to struggle to keep his head up. He felt like lying down, even on the moving floor of the boat.

  “Are you all right, son?” Jacob said, throwing his boat in gear for a moment, to keep even with them.

  “Yeah,” Evan managed to say. Shaun squealed loudly, the sound cutting through the hum of Jacob’s motor and into Evan’s eardrum. “I’m sorry, I missed what you said before.”

  “Oh, I jest said the poor gal must’ve been disturbed fer a time.”

  “How?” Evan asked, the breath in his lungs hot, way too hot.

  Jacob shifted his eyes in Shaun and Selena’s direction. “I’m not sure it’s proper for present company.”

  “It’s fine,” Evan said, with more of an edge to his voice than he meant.

  Jacob looked doubtful but spoke above the rattle of the motor. “Word is she climbed out onta her parents’ roof and fell headfirst onta the drive. I suppose it could be an accident, but that’s not what people’re sayin’. Horrible business. I know her father quite well. Tragic, so young.”

  Evan nodded, his stomach almost boiling. It was all he could do to keep the vomit from racing up and out of his mouth.

  “Well, I jest wanted ta say hi. Sorry ta come bearin’ such awful news. You have a good day. Catch me a fish, Shauny!”

  After a final wave, Jacob gunned the engine and raced off across the lake, spangles of water flying up from his boat’s prow and catching the sun like dropped jewels. Evan set his rod down and propped his face in one hand. His arm shook, and he thought he still might lose the battle to keep his breakfast down. He needed to rest and forget yesterday, forget the glassy stare in Becky’s eyes and the sound that came from her mouth.

  “My God,” Selena said. She faced him again, her rod tied up and propped against an empty seat. “That was the girl who did PCA work for you yesterday?”

  He could only nod.

  “You said she acted really strange when she left?”

  “Yeah,” he croaked.

  Raising his face from his palm, he gazed across the lake to where the island sat, a dark clump rising up out of the water like a tumor. He felt unhinged. Everything looked lurid and fake in the sunlight. He wanted to step out of the pontoon and tear a hole in it all, rip open the water, slash the sky so he could look beyond and see the dark, clicking gears that drove everything in a mockery of life.

  “The hospital said she was safe, that she didn’t feel well but was safe,” Evan said. “I let it go at that, didn’t give it another thought.”

  “Look, you can’t blame yourself for this. I’m sure there’s an explanation. People who do things like this usually contemplate it for a long time before carrying it through. I’m guessing you’ll find out that she was a deeply disturbed person.”

  Evan tried to recall anything that Becky had said or done before her episode that would fit the criteria of a demented mind.

  She went in the basement, that’s all it took.

  He wrapped up his fishing pole and made sure Shaun was secure in his seat.

  “I think we’d better go home.”

  Selena pressed her lips into a thin line and moved around Shaun, to where he sat. She knelt near his feet and placed her hands on his thighs.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Evan. You had no idea she was capable of something like this. I’m just glad Shaun is okay. Someone who’s that troubled couldn’t possibly be a good caretaker. I know you feel responsible in some way, but you’re not. Take it from a professional—I’ve dealt with multiple people who were suicidal, along with surviving family members and friends of those who killed themselves. Every survivor has the same guilt. They ask themselves, could I have done something different? Could I have prevented it? The answer is almost always no. If someone means to kill him- or herself, they find a way. Period.”

  Evan looked down at her, her hair tossing in the light breeze. Her pretty face was upturned to his.

  “I told her not to go down in the basement,” he whispered.

  Selena leaned back from him.

  “But she did. Something happened to her down there, I know it.”

  “It’s only a clock, Evan. I think you’ve become so embroiled in the research you’re putting merit in these wild claims. That woman you spoke to is probably senile, and if she isn’t, maybe her memory isn’t as good as she says. An inanimate object can’t make people kill themselves, it’s not possible.”

  Evan looked away from her and stared across the lake.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  Selena cupped a hand around his neck, guiding his face back to hers. When he looked at her again, her face was very close, the dark lenses of her sunglasses reflecting the blue sky. Then her lips were on his. He had no time to react or pull away, even if he’d wanted to, the sweet taste of her breath in his mouth as she leaned into the kiss. It was surreal but so right. He couldn’t do anything but succumb to the pleasure of another person so close, who wanted to touch him, to care for him.

  When she broke away, a small smile played at the corners of her mouth. Her lips were red, full, and wet, and for a moment he couldn’t take his eyes off them. An alien lust flooded him, something he hadn’t encountered in years
. He wanted her—it was undeniable. All of the restraint he’d held like a shield before him crumbled with that one kiss. If Shaun hadn’t been a few feet away, he would have been unable to stop himself from seizing her by the shoulders and pulling her to him again. He would’ve dragged her down to the floor of the pontoon and had her there in the middle of the lake. And he could tell she would have wanted him to.

  “Sorry, I had to do that,” she said, breaking him from the vivid fantasy.

  He stumbled on his words for a moment, his face flaming hot again. “Thank you,” was all he could say, which earned him another smile.

  “It’s such a beautiful day and Shaun’s having so much fun, could we stay out a little longer? This—”

  Selena paused, looked down and then back up at him.

  “This is the first time in all the anniversaries since my dad’s been gone that I’m enjoying myself.”

  Thoughts of Becky’s suicide tried to hem in his mind again with clouds of angst, but he pushed past them, taking in the way Shaun laughed and stared at the birds flitting by and the pleading look on Selena’s face.

  “Sure, let’s troll for a bit, see if we can catch lunch,” he said, and started the motor.

  18

  That evening, Evan was dozing when the phone rang.

  He had kicked back in a chair beside the sofa on which Shaun had fallen asleep for his afternoon nap. They’d caught enough fish for lunch, and after returning to the island, he fried a batch of fillets, along with sliced potatoes and mushrooms. Shaun ate an amazing two helpings, and was only outdone by Selena, who managed three. They spent the afternoon lazing in the shade, the sun traveling in a slow arc almost directly overhead. The pines whispered gentle secrets to one another, and a sense of peace settled over him. It was a welcome contrast to the earlier horror of the morning. Whenever he began to hear Becky’s sickening moan, he remembered Selena’s comforting words. Becky must have been disturbed before she came to the house; there were no other possibilities. He held on to the thought until Selena departed in the old canoe, a sense of sadness washing over him as he watched her paddle out of sight.

  He hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the chair, and only realized it when his cell woke him, its buzzing dance bringing it dangerously close to the edge of the kitchen table. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes and shaking the feeling that his head had been filled with lead while he slept, Evan picked up the phone, not bothering to see who the caller was.

  “Hello?”

  “Evan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, Evan, this is Justin Baker over at Dachlund.”

  For several seconds he stood in place, wavering with the unsteadiness of waking. It took Justin asking him if he was there to sink home whom he was speaking with.

  “Yeah, Justin, hey, how are you?”

  “Good, good. Say, I guess I’m a little confused here. Refresh me on which article you’re talking about.”

  “The one Jason sent over to you, about the clock, the grandfather clock.”

  “It’s not ringing any bells, no pun intended.”

  Evan laughed. “It’s the one about the clockmaker and his wife, how their deaths were mysterious and this clock is one of the few remaining relics from their life.”

  “You know, I’m not seeing it here, Evan. I haven’t gotten anything from Jason since the last time you did that opinion piece on special education, which was excellent, by the way, really well received.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it,” Evan said, frowning as he sat at the table. “So you’re sure nothing about a clock came through?”

  “Nope, but it sounds interesting. Why don’t you zip me an overview of your idea, what kind of spread you had in mind, that type of thing, and I’ll let you know if it’s something we’d want to print.”

  He was silent for a time, processing what Justin said. “That sounds great, I’ll do that.”

  “You still have my email?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Good. Well, looking forward to it, Evan. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “Yeah, absolutely,” Evan said, and ended the call.

  He stared at the blank screen of his phone for over a minute before turning it back on again. Hitting Jason’s number, he went through all of the scenarios that would explain the email he’d gotten the day before that didn’t involve his best friend lying to him. He came up with nothing.

  “You have an uncanny way of calling when I’m taking a shit,” Jason said.

  “Why did you lie to me?” Evan said, anger suddenly rushing through him and venting in his voice.

  “What?”

  “You heard me, Jase, why did you send me that email saying Justin wasn’t interested in the article when you never even sent it to him? I just got off the phone with him, so don’t try to bullshit me.”

  The quiet on the other end of the line broke with Jason’s sigh, a deep, deflating sound that could’ve been something breathing out for the last time.

  “I’m sorry, man. Let me say that right off the bat, I didn’t mean to mislead you.”

  “You sure have a funny way of being honest then.”

  “I know, I know. Listen, hear me out. This is hard enough for me to talk about, let alone jump right into, and it wouldn’t have boded well for what I wanted to do for you and Shaun.”

  “You’re making zero sense, Jase.”

  “Okay, fuck. You had to go and want to write about that fucking clock, didn’t you?”

  A familiar shiver ran through him. “What about the clock?”

  “It has nothing to do with the clock. It’s my grandparents, they—”

  “What happened?” Evan asked, the blistering anger becoming more of a flicker.

  “They died over a decade ago, and that’s what I wasn’t completely honest with you about. I wanted to help you two, I wanted to get you back on your feet again, man. If I’d told you, you might not have wanted to bring Shaun there.”

  Evan’s mouth was dry, the saliva gone, replaced with sand. “What happened to them?”

  “That’s just it, I don’t know. No one knows for sure. I told you they died within a matter of months of one another, when they actually died on the same day.”

  A building apprehension overcame him, a missing piece of something about to drop into place, and he didn’t want to hear it. He pulled the phone away from his ear and almost ended the call, but instead pressed it back to his head.

  “They don’t know if it was foul play or not,” Jason continued. “They never found my grandma, it was like she got erased from the face of the earth. A fisherman found my grandpa in the lake. He’d drowned, but the police didn’t know whether or not he’d had any help doing it. They brought up all kinds of theories: my grandpa killed my grandma and then drowned himself, my grandma killed my grandpa and then left the country. It was all horseshit. Neither one could’ve done that to the other. They were married for over forty years, you don’t do that to someone you love.”

  Oh, you’d be surprised what people do to the ones they love, Jase, you wouldn’t even believe it.

  Evan shook his head, his stomach rearranging itself into his chest as he remembered the outline of the floating man. “What do you think happened?”

  “I have no fucking idea. Maybe somebody boated in and killed them. But there wasn’t anything missing from the house, no sign of forced entry, nothing. My grandparents had lived in Mill River for almost all their lives, people loved them. No one local would want to hurt them.”

  The strange looks from some of the people when he’d mentioned where they were staying started to make sense—the Fin, that place of secrets, the cursed island. He could almost hear them whispering amongst one another, their voices growing more and more quiet as the years passed but never forgetting.

  “Why the hell didn’t anyone say anything about it to me in town?” Evan asked. “And why didn’t Jacob tell me, since he was such a good friend of your dad’s.”

  Jason laughed with no humo
r. “Jacob wasn’t only a good friend of my dad’s, he was best friends with my grandfather after Dad passed away. I actually thought he might say something to you, but he’s like everyone else up there, close lipped about anything that might mar the image of the perfect tourist town. They prefer to talk behind backs. You should’ve seen the looks we’d get when we stayed there.”

  Evan placed his forehead in his free hand. “Holy shit, Jase, you should’ve told me.”

  “I know, I know, but I thought you’d refuse to bring Shaun there, even though it happened years and years ago. I thought you’d turn down my help.”

  “I don’t need your fucking help!” Evan said. “You think I need my hand held? I’ve suffered more than you’ll ever know in your perfect little world, brother. You should focus more on your fucking expense account and less on us.”

  Silence fell over the line, not only Jason’s end but Evan’s also. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Jason spoke first.

  “Yeah, well, I just wanted to help.”

  It was Evan’s turn to sigh. “I know, man, I’m sorry. We appreciate all you’ve done for us. It’s—”

  Evan almost told him about everything that had happened, the things he’d seen, or not seen, Becky. But a dam lodged in his throat, blocking it like something physical.

  A hair.

  “It’s been a challenge, and I think you’re right about slowing down to adjust. We need this, I need this. I’m sorry.”

  “Me too. When you started talking about the clock in the basement, I knew you’d be asking questions around town and what happened with my grandparents would come up for sure. That’s why I tried to throw you off.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this when it happened? I knew you were upset and everything, but I had no idea something like this was going on.”

  “We were in the middle of college, man. We were young, and I was scared and ashamed. My dad was already gone, and my mom wasn’t the most supportive. I’m just lucky I had Lisa and Lily to focus on. I didn’t know what to think back then, and I still don’t now. I tried to glaze over it, tried to go on vacations up there with the family after a while, but it wasn’t right anymore. I couldn’t feel good there.”