Redemption Lake

by Susan Clayton-Goldner

  He stood very still, a foreboding expression on his face, like a doomed man about to be carted away to serve his time.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  It was one of those evenings when the moon came out early and looked as if its surface had been scarred with a black rash. Matt had spent too much time parked at the top of Campbell Avenue, trying to make sense of the things Travis had said after they’d scattered Crystal’s ashes.

  Headed home now, Matt turned on the radio, found a classical station. When Vivaldi’s Oboe Sonata trilled through the speakers, Matt turned the radio off. Even music couldn’t comfort him now. He drove in silence, unable to believe his twelve-year friendship with Travis had ended. He had to find a way to unravel all the complications, and make Travis understand. Matt had to forgive himself for having sex with Crystal. He had to purge the secrets and tell the truth. He glanced at his watch. Shit. It was after nine—too late to meet with Radhauser.

  The sky had darkened and the stars seemed to come out all at once, a wide path of them spreading over Matt’s head as he pulled into the driveway. He hit the remote on his visor and the garage door yawned open. The empty garage reminded Matt his father’s Lincoln had been impounded.

  He hurried through the dark house, flipping on the entry lights and looking for his dad, while at the same time hoping he wouldn’t be home. Maybe he’d let his dad know he’d saved his ass by finding a perfect hiding place for the scissors. But if someone had planted them, his father would be unaware—might not believe Matt if he told him what he’d found and what he’d done with them.

  Could he be wrong? Could his dad have killed Crystal and been so careless as to leave the scissors under the car seat? It was odd how Matt could more easily believe his dad capable of murder than leaving a pair of bloody scissors in his precious car.

  A light burned in the master bedroom. He thrust open the door. “Dad, are you in there?”

  When he didn’t answer, Matt entered. He checked the bathroom and his father’s study. Above the roll-topped desk, the moon shone through the stained-glass sails of Matt’s grandfather’s boat on Lake Michigan. Mom had made the window as an anniversary gift, the year after the old man died. It captured one of the few childhood memories Matt’s father had shared with them.

  Matt rushed through the rest of the house, calling out his father’s name. Maybe the police had found nothing and returned the Lincoln. Or maybe a colleague had picked his dad up and taken him out to dinner.

  He hurried back into the kitchen. Then he noticed the red light on the answering machine blinking as steady as a heartbeat. He pushed the button and listened.

  “Matt, it’s Dad. The police have arrested me for Crystal’s murder. They brought bloodhounds and found a pair of bloody scissors they believe to be the murder weapon on our property. My attorney is on his way. I’m sure this will all be cleared up soon. In the meantime, lock up the house. I want you to stay with your mother. I’ll call you when it’s over. Hopefully I’ll be home by Monday. I know you may not believe me anymore, but I’m really sorry, son. Maybe I deserve this humiliation. But you don’t.”

  Matt hit the replay button and listened a second time. There was humility and fear in his father’s voice. Matt felt as if someone had dropped a huge boulder on his shoulders, the weight of all the grief he’d caused. This belongs to you and you must carry it now.

  The old terrors rose. He couldn’t shut them out, and he raced around the house in a panic, not knowing what to do or where to turn. He checked all the doors and windows. Mom and Nate probably didn’t know what had happened. Matt couldn’t think straight. He should have told Radhauser everything. And now it was too late. They’d think he was lying to protect his father.

  If Matt hadn’t tampered with the scissors, it would be obvious to the police someone had planted them. Radhauser would never believe Loren Garrison stupid enough to leave a bloody pair of scissors under his seat. And even if his dad was guilty, it was still Matt’s fault. The only way his dad could have killed Crystal would be if he were enraged, out of his head, because he’d found his son in her bed.

  He needed to talk to someone. He thought about Nate, the things Jennifer had said about the way he could be trusted to keep a confidence.

  It was dark when Matt pulled into his mother’s driveway. The garage door was up. He parked behind her Honda Prelude—a wedding gift from Nate—and stared at the taillights for a moment, unable to take his gaze away from them. “Oh please, God, no,” he whispered.

  After the wedding reception, his mother had called Danni, looking for him. When he wasn’t there, she’d assume he’d be with Travis. With all the hoopla surrounding the wedding, she wouldn’t remember Jennifer’s spring dance. His mother’s next logical move would be to drive to Catalina. It was her new Prelude, with its long rectangular taillights, he’d seen leave at 10:30.

  Radhauser had arrested the wrong parent.

  Matt’s hands gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. His disbelief was so total he didn’t know what to say or do. How could he choose? Dozens of thoughts wove through his mind, but he couldn’t untangle them. He was a grown-up—a man who’d soon be leaving for college. His father, whom Matt had judged without mercy, was sitting in jail accused of a murder he hadn’t committed. Matt couldn’t let him spend the rest of his life in prison. But what would happen to his little sister without their mother?

  He didn’t know how long he sat there, unable to move. It felt like an hour, but it was probably only a minute. This was a big decision and he wasn’t sure he was man enough to make it. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t a man. Matthew Garrison was a stupid kid, not ready for anything, only afraid.

  A wire snapped. He needed to get away, to go as far as his Mustang and the MasterCard would take him.

  Without packing anything, he started driving. He was halfway to Phoenix before he realized where he was headed. Then it all made sense. Of course—where else would he go? He felt a giddy happiness. It would all be over soon.

  It was after midnight when he hit Flagstaff. He stopped for the night in a rest area off Interstate 40. Matt parked under a clump of huge conifers, pushed his seat back, and drifted off to sleep, the air smelling of pine and rain—the San Francisco Peaks black against the moonlit sky.

  At ten on Sunday morning, Matt filled his Mustang with gas. He drove through a McDonald’s window and bought two egg McMuffins and a cup of hot coffee. Just outside Flagstaff, he picked up Highway 89. Less than an hour later, he crossed the Navajo Indian Reservation on his way to Page, Arizona.

  He’d been twelve the last time he’d been here, and either hadn’t noticed or had forgotten the stark beauty of the reservation colors—brown, mauve, and turquoise hills. Pink-bottomed clouds left shadows on the cliffs, darkening their surfaces like spirits moving. He thought about Justin dying in this beautiful part of the country and wondered if his spirit was among the Indian ones whose presence Matt felt as he drove.

  Hogans dotted the hillsides—their doorways pointed eastward into the rising sun. There were small square houses and lean-tos covered with pine branches. Along the roadside, crude stands where Navajos sold their jewelry and rugs.

  Matt stopped his Mustang while a herd of sheep crossed the road—red paint marking their coats. A little boy, barefoot and brown, ran after them, trying to nudge them back inside the wire fence from which they’d recently escaped.

  At last, he spotted the sign. Welcome to Wahweap Boat Rentals.

  He parked the car and hurried into the office. A Navajo man wearing blue denim coveralls worked behind the counter.

  “I’d like to rent a speedboat,” Matt said.

  “How many days?”

  “Just for today.”

  “Skis?”

  “No, sir.”

  The man looked at his watch. “Special off-season rate. You bring back by nine, cost forty-five dollars. Gas tank full. You refill before returning boat.”

  Matt gave him his license and
his credit card. “Can you give me directions to Mountain Goat Cove?”

  The man got out a map and marked it.

  The summer season hadn’t yet begun and the lake was relatively empty on a Sunday afternoon. Matt drove the boat at full throttle for about an hour when he began to recognize some landmarks, like Padre Bay and Gregory’s Butte. A few houseboats scattered along the shoreline. An occasional larger speedboat passed Matt and he rocked gently in its wake. He found the spot easily, cut the motor, and drifted silently into the half-moon shaped cove.

  There were no other boats inside Mountain Goat Cove. He smiled. About thirty feet from shore, he dropped anchor, took off his shoes and socks, rolled up his pant legs and jumped into cold water that came up to his shoulders—so much for rolling up his pants. His family had rented the houseboat in July and the water had been shallower and much warmer then.

  “Hello,” he yelled as he walked toward the shore. His voice seemed to flow away and then return to him from somewhere above, bouncing off the cliffs. Hello. Hello. It was the same echo he’d heard last time, but nestled inside it rang another voice not quite Matt’s own—feathery and alive, like a whisper, or someone nearby breathing.

  “Justin,” he said, and a moment later the name came back. Justin. Justin. Justin.

  In the weeks and months after Justin died, Matt had pretended his cousin was still alive. He talked to him in his mind—carried on conversations about baseball, school, and Sandra Beasley, the girl who’d sat behind Matt in sixth grade. He’d tried to make his counselor understand that Justin had been everywhere. Matt couldn’t even close his eyes because Justin was inside them, too.

  Now, as he got closer to shore, Matt shivered. He climbed to the same ledge from which he’d pushed Justin six years ago. The sun had warmed the rocks and Matt lay on his back, pulling the late afternoon warmth around him like a blanket. A few moments later, he fell asleep.

  Matt had often dreamed of Justin dead beneath the surface of the lake, his foot caught between two boulders, eyes open but unseeing, his hair floating above his scalp like black seaweed. But today, for the first time, he saw Justin struggling to release his foot, saw the frantic look in his dark eyes, the scraped skin on his ankle, the way the blood curled out, thin as smoke in the water.

  When Matt awakened, the sky was dark and the moon had risen over the lake, trailing behind it a luminous path of silver. For a moment, he didn’t remember where he was—enveloped by a profound stillness that threw whatever else was in motion into exaggerated clarity. He heard the slap of the waves as they hit the side of the boat he’d rented. Though he could see no other boats, there was the sound of a motor in the distance. Laughter from a moored houseboat. An animal scurrying on the rocks.

  He felt gripped by sadness for the absence of Justin, Crystal, and now Travis from his life, his fear for his parents, and the pain of leaving Danni. The feeling began to expand into an icy loneliness that was attached to this place. Grief suffocated all other emotions. He lay back down, pressed his hands to his temples.

  He studied the Big Dipper—a string of stars that some long ago astrologer had connected. Like everything else, it was all so random. What if the ancient Greeks had failed to name it and some modern astrologer called it a backhoe instead?

  He thought over the old ground again. What if he and Justin had stayed with their family on the houseboat instead of taking the dinghy into Mountain Goat Cove? What if Matt hadn’t needed to show off his courage? What if he had taken Justin’s hand and led him down the pathway from the ledge, instead of pushing him to his death?

  What if his dad hadn’t had an affair? If his parents were together, there would have been no chance Matt would have slept with Crystal and betrayed his best friend. And his mother would never have found him there. If he could cry he would, but he couldn’t anymore and the “what ifs” kept coming.

  He sat up and looked over the ledge. Beneath him, the water was black and the brighter stars’ reflections appeared to sink deeper into the lake, while the more distant stars and the moon, about three-quarters full, seemed to float on the still surface of the water. It gave the illusion of a world turned upside down—as if the sky and the earth had changed places. The gentle movement of the waters made the reflections quiver and dance like diamonds.

  Matt dropped his head onto his knees and stayed that way for a long time. How could he make a choice between his parents? He would like to say he prayed for guidance, but he didn’t. He was so filled with grief for Crystal, for his devastated mother and his father, a proud and honored philosopher now in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. There was no room for prayer inside him.

  If he hadn’t made a scene at his mother’s wedding, if he hadn’t gotten drunk and slept with Crystal, she’d still be alive. His redemption seemed unimaginable. His mind felt blank and he tried to keep it that way.

  Dazed and tottering, he clambered to his feet and stood, poised on the lip of the cliff, darkness surrounding him. He felt no fear. “You were right, Nana. Grief is the price we pay for love.” Without a moment of hesitation, Matt stepped over the edge and dropped into the quivering water below.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  His mother always told him everything had a nature and truth had the nature of rising. When Matt resurfaced, lake water dripping from his hair, the night had grown woundingly cold with a breeze whistling down the cliffs. A transcendence took place inside him, so light he could not imagine what to call it. He was alive and uninjured and something had changed. The boy he was when he left his mother’s house was not the boy he was now. He didn’t feel like a boy at all anymore. Rumi said, There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.

  He sucked in breaths, closed his eyes for a moment against the feelings overpowering him, the unexpected joy. He had given up all hope of redemption, and yet there it was—sparkling on the star-strewn lake, the same lake that had taken Justin had spared Matt. And Matt listened to the voice that didn’t use words. He knew he must tell the truth, free his father, even if it meant his mother would go to jail.

  He was drenched and shivering, but more hopeful than he’d been in years. He’d seen Justin. It didn’t matter that no one would believe him. Justin, still twelve years old with his shock of dark hair and his bright eyes had met Matt’s gaze, levelly and fiercely, and told him to go back. And in that moment, as his feet grazed the same rocks that had held tight to Justin, Matt saw himself in perfect focus—saw that he was forgiven.

  He swam over to the speedboat and hoisted himself into it.

  By the time he got back to the marina an hour later, his fingers and toes were numb from the cold. He felt as if icicles were dangling from his hair. He slipped into his shoes and socks, the only dry clothing he still had, tied up the boat, filled it with gas and hurried inside, just before closing.

  At the marina store, he retrieved his credit card, paid for the boat rental and gas, then charged new clothes. A pair of khaki pants, pleated in the front like Dockers, a red shirt, a yellow jacket with Lake Powell embroidered over the breast pocket. He changed in the fitting room, his hands tingling and red. He dropped his still-damp clothes, black and smelling of lake water, into the trashcan on his way out.

  * * *

  Nine hours later, after stopping for a nap just outside of Lake Montezuma, Matt took the steps to his mom’s back porch two at a time. Through the window, he saw his stepfather sitting at the kitchen table, a stack of standardized aptitude tests in front of him. He seemed lost in thought.

  Matt rapped on the back door.

  A smile blew wide across Nate’s face as he leapt up from the table and answered. “You’re up early.”

  Matt paused, tried to regulate his shaky breathing. “It’s really important. Are Mom and Sedona still sleeping?”

  Nate nodded.

  Matt’s stomach tightened with the faint beginnings of fear. He had to get the words out before he lost his nerve. “My father’s been arrested for Crystal’s murder. And I have to
tell someone the whole truth,” he said, his breath coming way too fast.

  Nate grabbed Matt’s arm and pulled him into the kitchen. It smelled like last night’s spaghetti sauce and freshly-brewed coffee.

  Without letting go, Nate led him through to the living room. “You need to sit down,” he said as he gently lowered Matt onto one of the loveseats. “Deep breaths. Let them out slowly.”

  Nate left the room for a moment, then returned with a glass of water and handed it to Matt. “Drink,” Nate said and sat on the facing loveseat.

  Matt drank.

  “I read the article in tonight’s paper,” Nate said. “But it made no mention of having your father or anyone else in custody.”

  Matt set the glass on the coffee table. “The police found a pair of bloody scissors I’d hidden in a Saguaro behind our house.” He explained how he’d found them beneath the driver’s seat in the Lincoln and had wanted to protect his father.

  “Oh, Matt. That’s not good.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Matt said.

  “I know how much you love your father, but how can you be so sure?”

  Matt told his stepfather about the taillights he’d seen leaving Crystal’s house, the way they matched his mother’s Prelude.

  Nate smiled sadly. “Oh, Matt. Your mother was looking for you. She told me she couldn’t go to Aruba with so much turmoil between you. I drove her out to Catalina around 10:30. When she saw your car in the carport, she figured you were spending the night with Travis. She must have forgotten about his dance. Once she knew you were okay, we drove back to the Hacienda del Sol.”

  Matt’s tears rose. His mother had already known he’d been at Crystal’s house. No wonder she’d questioned him about the bloody shirt.

  “Someone is trying to frame my dad.” He gawked at his hands, still wrapped around the water glass, while the facts ricocheted through him one more time. “It’s my fault they arrested him. If I’d just told…” Matt’s throat tightened. After all the nice things Nate had said about him when he’d offered tuition money for Iowa, Matt wasn’t sure he had the courage to tell him about his drunken sex with Crystal. “Jennifer said the students at Marana really trust you and that you keep their confidences like a priest.”