Wintertide: A Novel

by Debra Doxer

  I pictured my mother asleep while dark smoke filled the bedroom. “I should go see her,” I said. When I took a step back, I could feel my lunch coming up. I bent over and threw up in the snow, emptying my stomach completely before I was done. There was some murmuring around me as I stood and wiped a gloved hand across my mouth. The neighbors I had known while growing up had mostly moved away over time, and I didn’t recognize the people whose curiosity had brought them out tonight in the cold.

  “I could get someone to drive you to the hospital,” the fireman offered from behind me.

  I shook my head at him. “No, thanks. I’ll be fine.”

  Feeling as though everyone’s eyes were on me, I headed back to the car. There was only one hospital in the area, and it was close by.

  At first, I hadn’t been thinking that Eddie had done this. It never occurred to me that he would try to hurt anyone but me. But I knew that my mother replaced the batteries in those smoke detectors every fall when it was time to turn the clocks back just like her favorite news broadcast suggested people do each year at that time. She did it religiously. There was no way those smoke detectors stopped working on their own. If I’d had anything left in my stomach, I would have retched again at the thought of Eddie being in my house while my mother slept.

  Somehow I managed to locate the visitor parking lot at the hospital, and I found my way to the front desk. A woman there told me that my mother was still in the emergency area and directed me there. Once I reached the emergency room, another woman at another desk pointed to the closed double doors behind me. I pushed through the doors, and I immediately saw them. The emergency area was a circular room with beds partitioned behind beige pull curtains. My mother sat on one of those beds. She had on a hospital gown, and there was oxygen running into her nostrils through a tube. My father sat in a chair beside her.

  “Daniel,” she called, spotting me across the way. She reached her arms out when I approached, and I tried not to hit her oxygen line while we embraced. I still had on my bulky winter coat making the gesture doubly awkward.

  “You’re okay?” I asked, pulling back to get a better look.

  She waved an arm at me. “I’m fine. I want to get out of here and go home. Did you go by the house?”

  I nodded.

  “How did it look?”

  “It looked okay from the outside. I didn’t go in but the fireman I talked to said it never spread past the kitchen.”

  “You weren’t home?” I asked my father, already knowing the answer.

  “I was pulling in just as they were bringing your mother out.”

  Mom shook her head. “I just can’t believe it. I don’t understand why the smoke alarms didn’t go off.”

  “When was the last time we checked them?” Dad asked.

  Mom was still shaking her head. “Just last month. They were working fine.”

  A nurse came over then to examine my mother. I told them I would be in the waiting area. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I powered it on and sat down. Immediately, it began signaling that I had missed calls, missed texts, and voicemail messages. Scrolling through, I saw several messages from Seth among others from Mom and Dad and a few from friends at school. I deleted them all without listening to them. It was odd that Eddie never called me directly himself. It would have been easy enough for him to get my number. He probably got some perverse joy out of manipulating Seth into doing it for him.

  Running my hands through my hair, I stared down at the floor, the sour taste of vomit still strong in my mouth. Did Eddie really do this because he wanted me to back up his story? If I went to the police with the truth now and Eddie found out, what would he do? The police still couldn’t find him, and I didn’t know where he was staying. How long would he have to try to hurt my family again before he was found?

  They released my mother a few hours later. I followed Dad’s truck home. My mother was anxious to see her house and inspect the damage herself. My father had called the police from the hospital, and they told him that their crews were gone, and we could stay at the house. They also said that the damage had been contained to the kitchen, and it had likely been an electrical fire that started behind the stove. If they thought the fire was suspicious, they didn’t appear to be saying as much at this point.

  Knowing my mother, I would have thought that she would use this event to milk our worry and attention. But her reaction was just the opposite. She was brave and stoic, never once indicating that she didn’t feel well or that she’d had a very close call today. Even when we all walked into the house, smelled the heavy odor of smoke, and saw the black charred wall behind the now displaced oven, she only sighed and shook her head.

  It was my dad who did most of the talking, letting my mom know that he would fix everything in the kitchen, and that the insurance would cover the costs. He even joked that he would have to take her out to dinner every night until the kitchen was back in working order.

  When I went upstairs to check on the bedrooms, making sure there were no unwanted guests in the house, I froze when I spotted the mussed sheets on my parents’ bed and the indentation in the pillow where my mother’s head had been. If a neighbor hadn’t been so quick to see the smoke and make that call, the outcome could have been very different.

  I reached above the bed and pushed the test button on the smoke alarm. There was no beeping acknowledgement. Twisting it off the ceiling, I turned it over and opened the back. Surprisingly, there were batteries in it. I figured Eddie had simply removed them all. He would had to have found dead batteries and replaced all the working ones with those. Had he really done that?

  When I went back downstairs, I saw my mother pulling items out of the refrigerator. Despite our pleas that she rest, she insisted on making us sandwiches since we’d missed dinner. We sat silently in the living room and ate. After taking a few tasteless bites, I kissed my mother on the cheek and said goodnight. She gave me a distracted smile and continued chewing.

  Back in my room, I called Seth.

  The first ring had barely finished when he answered. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to call you for days.”

  “I think Eddie tried to burn down my house today with my mother inside.”

  Seth sputtered on the other end. “What?”

  “You know nothing about this?”

  “What are you talking about? Is your mother alright?”

  I wasn’t sure why I had called Seth. A part of me needed to ask him if he’d had any part in this. But even as I did, I knew that whatever his response was, skepticism would be mine. “She’s fine,” I responded tersely.

  “Did you just say that you think Eddie tried to burn your house down?”

  “After you gave Eddie the address of my job this morning, he came and threatened me. Then, this afternoon, there was a fire in the kitchen. My mother was upstairs asleep at the time. The smoke detectors whose batteries had been working fine a month ago, all failed.”

  I heard silence from his end before he finally whispered, “Jesus. So, you said your mom is okay. What about the house?”

  “The house will be fine, too. Thanks for your concern.”

  “Look, Dan. You don’t know that it was him. Why would he do that?”

  “You really can’t guess?”

  He sighed. “I just don’t think he would.”

  “How can you say that after everything he’s already done?” I whispered now as I heard my parents coming up the stairs.

  “Well, even if it was him, I’m sure he never meant to hurt your mother. He was probably just trying to scare you.”

  “Well that just makes it so much better. Thanks.”

  “Calm down. Okay?”

  I paced my room, ready to explode at him with a tirade of expletives, but I couldn’t. Not without my parents overhearing. Then I realized that I couldn’t leave my mother alone in the house again. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t go to work tomorrow, and I couldn’t go back to school next week. I had to
do something to make Eddie back off. I knew I had to agree to what he wanted. He was giving me no choice.

  “Give me Eddie’s number,” I heard myself saying into the phone. All along, I’d been just as happy not to have direct contact with Eddie. Now, I needed to talk to him myself.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Seth? Give me Eddie’s number.”

  “I have to check with him first,” he finally said. “I’m not sure he’d be okay with that.”

  “I don’t give a shit if he’s okay with it.”

  “I can’t, okay? He’s not using his own number anymore. I think he’s calling from his girlfriend’s phone, and I don’t think he’d want me to give that number out.”

  “He has a girlfriend? Is that who he’s staying with?”

  Seth sighed. “I don’t know. I never asked him. I could tell he didn’t want me to know. So, I just didn’t ask.”

  I fisted my hand in my hair. This was getting me nowhere. “Then tell Eddie I’ll do it,” I said.

  “Do what?” Seth asked hesitantly.

  “I’ll say what he wants me to.”

  “You will?”

  “Yeah, I will. But let him know that it’s contingent on him never going near my house or my family again.”

  “Sure, no problem,” he answered quickly.

  “I mean it, Seth. Tell him that.”

  “I heard you, okay? You’re doing the right thing. I just don’t know why the fuck you couldn’t have done it a week ago.”

  “Fuck you and call me back after you talk to him.”

  “Look, I didn’t mean…”

  “Call me back,” I repeated, cutting him off. Then I ended the call, sinking down onto my bed with the phone clutched in my hand. Was I really going to do this? Was I really going to let him force me into doing this? I sat there motionless, my thoughts a desperate mix of reluctance and panic. I don’t know how long I stayed that way before my phone startled me, buzzing in my hand.

  “Okay, we’re set,” Seth said. “He doesn’t know anything about the fire but he’s glad you changed your mind.”

  I laughed miserably. “And if he knows nothing about the fire then there was no need to agree not to hurt my family, right?”

  “He said he didn’t do it. What’s the difference? It’s a moot point now that you’ve agreed.”

  “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  I closed my eyes and touched my fingers to the bridge of my nose. “Nothing. There’s nothing you can say.”

  “We’re going to meet at the sea cliff tomorrow night to get our stories straight,” he told me.

  My eyes popped open. “Why there?”

  “That’s where we’re going to say we were that night but none of us have been there in years. It makes sense to go there to figure it out,” he told me calmly.

  “It doesn’t make any sense at all. Eddie’s flare for the dramatic is the only thing that makes sense about it. Why can’t we just figure this out on the phone? How complicated does this story have to be?”

  “We’re going to go after the Southside Tavern closes so no one sees us,” he continued disregarding my questions. “My mom is still working nights and she has the car. So pick me up around 2:30.”

  “Eddie didn’t care about anyone seeing him this afternoon,” I pointed out. “Look, if we have to meet, let’s just go to the woods by my house again.”

  “Please don’t turn this into an issue. Let’s just meet where he wants.”

  I uselessly shook my head in my empty bedroom. “I can’t believe how easily you let him pull your strings, Seth.”

  “Give me a break. You ended up at the same place I did. You just had to torture yourself for a while first.”

  I laid myself down on the bed suddenly feeling very tired. “How am I supposed to explain taking the car at two in the morning?”

  “Tell your folks you couldn’t sleep and felt like going for a drive. I’m sure you’ll figure something out that your mother will believe. She thinks you walk on water.”

  He was right. For some reason, she did think that. But what would she think when Eddie suddenly materialized with the news that I’d been with him that night?

  When I hung up with Seth, I tried to turn off my thoughts and fall asleep. Sleep would have been a welcome escape, but sleep never came. Finally, around three in the morning, I picked up my phone and sent Kristen a text.

  Are you free for dinner tonight? Can I take you out?

  The thought of coming home from work and sitting around the house until it was time to go get Seth was unbearable. I also didn’t know how Kristen would feel once news got out that I was Eddie’s alibi, and I hadn’t said a word all this time. I needed to see her again before that happened.

  nineteen

  I was showered and dressed before the sun came up. Back in my room, my phone beeped with a message. It was Kristen. Are you up?

  Yup

  The phone vibrated in my hand. It was Kristen calling. “Are you okay?” she asked. “I just heard about the fire.”

  “I’m fine. We’re all fine.” Obviously, the small town grapevine had been busy this morning.

  “What happened?”

  “The fire started in the kitchen. Apparently, it was an electrical problem. My mom was the only one home, and she had to go to the hospital to get checked out. But she’s okay. The kitchen is toast though.”

  “Very funny. Thank goodness you’re all okay.”

  “We’re fine,” I repeated.

  “If you’re so fine, why were you texting me at three in the morning?”

  I hesitated before answering, but she didn’t wait for my response.

  “Maybe you were a little shook up?” she suggested.

  “Yeah. Maybe I was. So, dinner tonight?”

  I heard her sigh through the phone, acknowledging my subject change. “Sure. Sounds good. I’m working until seven. You can pick me up there if that’s okay.”

  “That’s perfect. I’ll see you then.”

  “Dan?” she said as I was about to hang up.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m glad you weren’t toast.” I could hear the smile in her voice.

  “Thanks. Me, too.”

  When I came down into the kitchen, light had just started filtering in through the curtains. Dad was there with two other guys. They were moving the charred stove out the back door. Based on the way they were trying to keep quiet, I assumed Mom was still sleeping.

  “Morning,” Dad said to me when he came back in.

  “Is Mom doing okay today?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Could you tell her I’m going to be out late tonight after work? I’ve got plans.”

  He nodded at me again before turning back to the fire damaged wall, its guts spilling out onto the floor in the form of wires and insulation.

  Since I was early, I stopped at Dunkin Donuts for coffee before heading over to the professor’s house. The sunny day we’d had yesterday had been a short respite from the familiar cloud ceiling that had returned today. I was hoping the hours ahead of me would pass slowly.

  The work day was predictable. Professor Sheffield greeted me at the door. Then he left me alone to work, coming back occasionally to make small talk and offer me food. My face was a calm mask all day. What lay behind it was anything but calm.

  I called home at lunch to check on my mother. For a change, I was relieved by her persistent and completely predictable questions about what I was doing tonight and why I wouldn’t be home after work.

  “Kristen?” she asked after I’d informed her of my plans. “That girl you went out with in high school? I didn’t know you were still seeing her.”

  I explained that before the holiday break I hadn’t seen her in a long time, and then I tried to extract myself from the conversation as quickly as possible.

  When I parked at the mall at the end of the day, the weight of my thoughts and my lack of sl
eep last night both began to drag me down. I rubbed my hands up and down my face vigorously trying to wake up. I had a long night ahead of me, and I had to be thinking clearly for all of it.

  After downing a coffee from the food court, feeling the caffeine giving me a jumpstart, I went to meet Kristen. I found her at the entrance of the store waiting for me.

  “Hey,” she smiled when she spotted me.

  “Hey,” I replied, bending and pulling her into a hug. At first, she was stiff in my arms, obviously startled by the embrace. But then her arms came up around my back and she relaxed into me.

  “How was your day?” I asked, pulling back to look at her, but keeping an arm around her shoulders.

  “Good,” she shrugged, turning to look up at me. “How was yours?”

  “Okay, I guess. My evening is looking up though.” I glanced down at her and saw the blush coloring her cheeks. She had always been this way, even after we’d being going out for months. Every compliment and innuendo caused her face to fill with heat.

  I drove us to a diner we used to frequent just off the main road in town. “I haven’t been here since you left,” she told me quietly when I pulled into the parking lot.

  I took her hand and led her inside. We were seated at a booth by the window. It was quiet in the diner with only a few other patrons sitting throughout the rectangular shaped room. The old-fashioned diner was one of those places that had lines out the door during the summer tourist season but struggled to fill their seats the rest of the year. I was glad for the quiet though. I glanced outside the window and noticed how the hazy, yellow streetlights caused the snow beneath them to glow.

  After tonight, I didn’t know what would happen. If Eddie wanted to go to the police right away, things could change very quickly for me. Even if it all blew over after a few days, like Seth was convinced it would, I would always be linked to Eddie. We would always share this dark secret. Somehow, I knew that he would find a way to use it against me one day.

  Across from me, Kristen was talking about the fire. I pulled my focus back to her. “So, the paper said that a neighbor called about seeing smoke before the fire could spread too far.”