“I keep thinking about how different things would be if I’d made other choices—better choices, back then,” Mr. Bennett said. “For Lucy, for Bea, for my family. For you.”
Nate’s thoughts used to travel that same line. If only he’d asked for a cherry pie instead of a peach pie. If only he’d struck out at the plate instead of hitting a triple. But the older he got, the more difficult it became to imagine the phantom futures that had been closed to him. That April day made Nate who he was.
Who would he be if not himself?
“I have to go,” Nate said.
“Of course, I know you’re a busy man. A big surgeon in the city. Good for you, Nate. We’re all very proud of you.”
The smile on the man’s face was desperately sincere. That’s what made it so shattering. “I’m so sorry. I really am. I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life.”
Nate nodded and felt his way through the side door. Outside, leaves and debris skimmed the surface of the street as if rushing toward something with incredible urgency. There was no sky or lake or town in this rain. He didn’t open his umbrella or close his coat. He let Medea whip him.
Nate followed Tom to the cruiser. When he got inside he was just short of hyperventilating. They sat there, watching their breath fog the windows and letting the wind rock them from side to side.
Focus, Nate told himself. He tried to collect his thoughts and feelings and reorder them in a way that resembled the man he was supposed to be.
“I want to talk to Adam Decker,” Nate said.
Tom turned to him. “You’re joking.”
“I found something back at the station,” Nate said. “Behind the locked door in your dad’s office.”
“His closet?”
“He has filing cabinets hidden in there. Photographs, notes, transcripts. All relating to Lucy’s disappearance. He has her journals, too. He’s had them the whole time. He knows about the Thunder Runs. I denied everything, obviously. But she could have written anything in there. Anything. Everything.”
Tom blinked at him as if he’d just awoken in a place where he didn’t remember falling asleep. “You’re saying my dad knows what we did back then?”
“Yes.” Chief Buck had violated both law and oath to conceal this from his son as much as anyone. But the chief had had fourteen years to get to the bottom of this. Now it was Nate’s turn.
“He’s known the whole time?”
“Right.”
“But—but,” Tom sputtered. In an instant, he melted into pure sopping panic. “The journals weren’t introduced into evidence. He never once asked me about—”
“He was protecting you. The statutes of limitations are up on most of what we did, but back then it could have ruined us.”
Tom’s hands dropped from the wheel to fall limp at his sides.
“That’s why I need to talk to Adam,” Nate said. “There was a note in his file that said something about his alibi not matching up with the rest of his story.”
“What else was there?” Tom’s voice was barely a whisper.
“I didn’t have much time to look. I don’t know if your dad followed up on the lead with Adam, but maybe he thought it’d be easier if everyone thought Lucy really had run away. If we talk to Adam, maybe we can figure out what he’s hiding.”
“You solve crimes now?” Tom had seemed close to hysteria, but was reeling himself in from the edge.
“I know, right? If only there was a taxpayer-funded organization meant to deal with things like this. We could even give them uniforms and badges to make it seem official.”
Tom took the car out of park and backed the cruiser from its parking space. “If you harass him, he might press charges for the sucker punch you landed on him this morning. He told my dad he wanted you to stay away from him.”
“It wasn’t a sucker punch,” Nate said, though that memory belonged to a part of himself that he didn’t have access to.
Tom didn’t respond, but he turned the car north onto the Strand.
The lake was swollen with rain, and the distant foothills were lost in veils of clouds. Nate watched the waters surge and recede against the shore. The mansions and their meticulously maintained grounds soon blocked his view. His body absorbed the bucking of the car as it churned through a stretch of inundated road while his mind pulled at strategies to get Adam to reveal whatever he was hiding. He hadn’t fully unpacked this problem when Tom pulled into the short driveway of a small, wood-shingled ranch house. They were several blocks inland, not far from Grams’s house on Bonaparte Street. It was a tidy home, but not much to look at. At a glance, Nate knew it wasn’t right. A married lawyer with two children didn’t live in a place like this.
“This isn’t Decker’s house.”
“No.”
“Whose is it?”
Tom activated the garage door and drove the cruiser inside. “Mine.” He exited the car. “Welcome.” He slammed the door shut.
Nate watched Tom disappear into the interior. He’d become unpredictable, his Tom. But Nate had no car, no phone, and no other options. He followed his friend inside.
The carcass of something that might have once been a couch lay along one wall of the narrow room. The carpeting was a noncommittal shade between brown and gray. Thrift store chairs and a low coffee table were dotted with books and bottles. A vacant dog bed sat in a corner.
If Nate had gone through a bachelor phase, his home might have looked similar. But at this stage in their lives, it pained him to remember that Tom had once wanted to be an architect.
“Looks comfortable.”
Tom didn’t bother replying. He’d already placed two mismatched glasses on the coffee table next to where he’d deposited his wallet and keys. His back was to Nate, but the squeak and pop of a liquor bottle explained itself. Nate wasn’t interested in a drink, but he had to play nice until he understood why Tom had brought him here while murderers were loose and grandmothers were critically injured. He shrugged off his raincoat and folded it across an arm of the battered couch.
“To Lucy,” Nate said after he accepted his glass. Bourbon. He took a sip and watched Tom drain his.
As Tom refilled his tumbler, an explosion of thunder rattled the windows, and the lights went out. The noises of the house wound down in a shuddering final breath.
Tom gulped his second glass without pausing. He’d barely finished swallowing when he began to speak.
“I killed her.”
Nate frowned.
“You heard me.”
“Cut it out.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Look at me, Nate.” In the dark room, Tom’s face was nothing but shadow.
“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.” Nate didn’t know this game, but he knew he didn’t want to play. He placed his glass on the coffee table and stealthily grabbed Tom’s keys while he was at it. If the Internet was still accessible, he’d try Googling Adam’s address from Grams’s computer. If he found Adam, he might have an easier time getting what he needed from him without the burden of Tom’s chaperoning.
Nate was halfway to the garage when Tom surprised him with a body slam. They crashed into an end table, and a lamp tumbled to the carpet. Before Nate could regain his balance, Tom gripped him by the shoulders to shove him against the wall. A framed photo fell from a bookshelf and shattered across the floor.
“Look at me!” Tom screamed. Slicks of tears carved the hollows of his face. “I killed Lucy.”
TOM TORE THROUGH the forest like a razor through flesh. Fast, straight, leaving a wake of pain.
The pain was his own.
A howl reverberated in his ears, though the only sound he made was the crash of his feet against the gnarled ground.
In the distance, Nate called for him, and for once Tom wouldn’t answer. His friend’s voice faded with every step. He couldn’t bear to think about Nate, though it was impossible to think of anything else.
Had h
e really? Had he really?
Tom didn’t know where he was running to until he got there: the Night Ship. It was two miles from the glade, but then it was in front of him. An island citadel silhouetted against the moonlit clouds.
The others had always been drawn to its creaking halls. They found solace in its stories and took comfort in the endless sigh of the lake against its pilings. Tom had never understood this. Maybe tonight he would.
He ran down the warped pier and didn’t stop when he reached the promenade. The long hall was void of all light, but he didn’t slow. He felt as if there was nothing left to fear.
A finger of illumination pointed from the Night Ship down the promenade. Inside, Tom saw that one of the camp lanterns was lit.
“Johnny?” he called into shadows. “Owen?” He wanted to be by himself, but he didn’t want to be alone. He had to run or stop or sleep or think or obliterate himself.
Tom climbed onto the scratched expanse of the bar and knocked over candlepins of bottles with a clumsy landing on the other side. They rolled and clanked as Tom groped at them. He squinted at their labels, looking for anything the sight of which didn’t turn his stomach.
He found a fifth of triple sec, took a swig, and immediately ejected it through his mouth and nose. When he went to wipe his face, he remembered that he’d left his shirt back in the glade along with his shoes. He curled into himself on the ravaged floor. Against his ear, the wood trembled with the groans of the lake.
Footsteps tapped through the planks.
“Nate?” he asked. His voice was slurred with hope and fear. Using the knobs of drawers and cupboards as handholds, Tom hoisted himself into a position to see the dance floor.
A figure appeared just inside the doorway to the boardwalk. The kimono wrap draped over her shoulders made her shadow into that of a winged creature.
“Oh,” Lucy said when she saw him. Disappointed but also relieved.
Lucy’s face was streaked with makeup. Her tousled hair, wet and plastered against her neck. A mash of pulp that had once been a cluster of lilies hung above her ear. But she was still beautiful. She and Nate, they glowed with the same light.
“What are you doing here?” Tom asked. The words were petty and stupid, and he hated them and he hated himself for saying them.
Lucy lurched to the bar. The tumbler she held made a dull clank as she half-dropped it on the counter. She studied him for a moment before lighting a tiger’s smile. “What’d he do to you?”
“Who?”
“Please. Look at you.”
“Look at yourself.”
She made a sound like a laugh. “Fine. Look at us. Look what he did to us.”
Tom squinted at her. His eyes didn’t want anything in focus. “It’s your fault,” he said. “Messing around with Adam Decker.”
“Yeah, it’s my fault saying hello to an old friend starts a riot.”
“He’s not our friend.”
“You’re so”—she thought about it—“loyal.” It wasn’t a compliment.
“Don’t you remember what Adam did to you?”
“What a dumb question. But that’s the past, Tom. That life is over. All those insipid platitudes they vomited up at us today, but here’s one you could actually use: Our futures begin now. Do you get it?” She looked at him, and he hated everything about her face.
“What about you?” Tom asked. “When Nate looks into the future, you think he sees you?”
“I know he does.”
Her certainty enraged Tom not because it was delusional but because it wasn’t.
“Wouldn’t be so sure.” He wanted to shatter the smug look on her face. He wanted to be the one who did the hurting, just this once. “Not after tonight. He was angry, Lucy. Furious. I’ve never seen him so mad.”
“Poor Tom,” she said, sighing. “You think things are going to be the same in the city, but I promise you they won’t be. Dinner three nights a week—that’s what he told you, isn’t it? If you think that’s going to last to Thanksgiving, you’re dreaming.”
“I’m dreaming?” Tom shouted. “Once he’s in the city, he won’t be able to spit without hitting a girl better looking than you. They’ll be smarter and nicer, too. And you can bet their dads aren’t in prison for murdering his entire family.”
“He doesn’t even see other girls.”
He laughed at her, and it rang of pure scorn. He didn’t know he’d carried such a sound inside of him. “The thing is that girls here are afraid of you, Luce. They’d never try anything with Nate. But in the city? Down there you’ll be back to being nobody. Mountain trash. Those girls flush shit better than you every day.”
The words were savage enough that even Lucy seemed taken aback.
“Did you see the way he looked at you when he was finished with Adam? The way he screamed for you?” From the way her face tightened, Tom thought she had. “You were running away from him, weren’t you? That’s why you didn’t answer. I don’t blame you. I’d run, too.” Tom remembered that he did run, but he slapped the memory down before it could surface. “He’s probably still looking for you. Just imagine what he’ll do when he finds you. That’s the future you’re so excited about.”
Lucy’s lips turned white, and she whirled away from him. She stalked back through the doors to the boardwalk.
Tom followed her—and this, forever, was one of the mistakes that most haunted him. He should have declared victory and gone home. Instead, he joined her to look out over the black waters. To get in another jab? To forestall being alone for a few minutes more? He never settled on a reason that was good enough.
The coarse wood of the boardwalk was wet under his feet. The cloudburst had drawn the worst of the humidity from the air, but Tom still savored the feel of the wind against his skin. Lucy leaned against the railing, surveying the abyss of the lake. Tom joined her.
He wondered what she’d say next and how he’d answer. The Creature of Catastrophic Futures was a distant memory, and through the prism of this desperate bravery, anything seemed possible.
A shoal of clouds pulled aside to reveal the low moon.
“If we’re lucky, he won’t remember any of this tomorrow,” Lucy said.
Her tone surprised him. Lucy was vicious and relentless, and Tom had expected her to try to reassert her superiority. But she sounded flattened. Defeated.
“Maybe you’re right,” she continued. “Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten within thirty feet of Adam.”
“Obviously.” Tom wanted to rub Lucy’s face in her mistake. He wanted her to feel as raw as he did, even if it was only for a night. But there was something unguarded about her that dulled the thrill of denting her confidence.
“A little innocent flirting.” She shook her head. “And it was totally innocent. Because is it crazy for me to remind Nate that he’s not the only thing in my life? That I’m an actual human person who exists even when he’s not in the same room as me?” She rubbed her face, wrecking what remained of her makeup. “Do you know how exhausting it is to be perfect for him all the time? Don’t you get tired?”
Lucy Bennett at her best was cruel and formidable, but the girl next to him wasn’t either of those things. The Storm King saw pain as a zero-sum game, but Tom didn’t think making Lucy feel worse about herself would make him feel any better. Vindictiveness for the sake of malice wasn’t a thing he was built for. Maybe he and Lucy had more in common than he thought.
It was such a strange night.
In its sleep, the town along the shore was as dark as the forests that blanketed the mountains. The Lake was different in the night, just as it was different in a storm. New possibilities seemed to arise like the stars beyond the scrim of clouds. The future was ahead of them. In this unvisited place, maybe he and Lucy didn’t have to be enemies.
“At least he’s getting it out of his system,” Tom said. “He can’t get away with being so wild in the city.”
“Try telling him what he can’t do.”
“Y
ou already did. No Thunder Runs. No Night Ship. No more revenge.”
“He doesn’t need it anymore. You should thank me. Everyone knows you hated the whole thing.”
Drops pattered around them, but they were both already soaked. Light rain broke against glinting waves like sheets of static.
“He can be a lot,” Tom said tentatively.
“Too much. He’s too much all the time.” Lucy drew something across the splintered railing with the pad of her index finger. It could have been a heart. It might have been a question mark.
She shivered and pulled her kimono wrap tight around her shoulders. Her arms were still bare. She moved closer to Tom, and it was shocking to feel her skin against his.
He couldn’t remember the last time the two of them had been alone together. Her profile was softer in the moonlight. What appeared unassailable in the sober hours now looked fragile. She’d never let him close enough to see the craquelure of her true self.
Was this what Nate loved about her? Tom wondered. Was there something in the way she was flawed that made him feel whole? Did he think he was holding her together? Did they keep each other from shattering?
“You were angry in there,” she said. “I’ve never seen you like that. Wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”
“People are full of surprises.”
“Nate would say that.”
“I’m sorry, though—about what I said. I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t apologize.” She turned around, leaning against the railing to face him. “You’ll ruin it. We’re all changing. We’re growing up. That’s a good thing.”
“Maybe I don’t want to change so much. I like things the way they are.”
“You should be able to call someone on being a bitch when she’s acting like one. You don’t have to be Mister Nice Guy all the time. People love Nate because he does what he wants. He’s himself, and no one else and nothing can stop him. Wouldn’t it be nice to stop worrying about what people think and do what you want? Just once?”
The Storm King: A Novel Page 23
