TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Departure
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Note
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Return
Twenty-nine
The Release of Secrets Excerpt
Megan Maguire
The Lost Night
Text copyright © 2019 Megan Maguire
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Miranda & Maxwell Books 2019
Editor: Loreth Walker
Cover photograph: Aleshyn_Andrei/ Shutterstock.com
Cover design: Leslie Whelan Marketing
Interior fading tree: PanicAttack/ Shutterstock.com
[email protected]
THE LOST NIGHT
Megan Maguire
Departure
I hear the crack first. Then utter fear and desperation course through my mind. A fall through the ice in the dead of night is nearly unsurvivable. Most people go into instant shock. Me? I’m not so lucky.
I look up for Jake, but see only the moon shrinking to a white dot in my central vision. This is how it begins before everything turns dark, before a swallow of gelid water closes my throat, and the strong pull of the river’s current consumes me faster than my terror.
This is how it always begins.
“Dylan!” The rough stretch of ice overhead deadens Jake’s frantic voice. “Fight it, Dylan! Fight it!”
Disoriented, my arms and legs whip side to side like a child’s doll tossed about by a savage dog. When my lungs burn for air and my muscles constrict and shake, I know it’s time—no need to fight imminent death.
Besides, this is a better ending to the story. Better me than him.
Jake lives.
I die.
Lights out.
1
My heart continues to thrash even after the river kills me. It squeezes partway through my ribcage before I wake up clutching at my chest to push it back inside.
“Fuck.” I gasp for air. “Not again.”
Dreams of drowning happen too often. Sometimes I pound the ice to break free, other times I hide my face in my hands and laugh with delight that it’s finally over. Either way, I don’t know what it’s like to drown. I wasn’t the one in the water that night. But I imagine some of my dreams are similar to what my brother experienced. The ones where I panic and scream for help, not the dreams where I relax after hearing his voice and allow the water to defeat me.
When I can’t get back to sleep, I kick off the covers and drive to the river, checking to see if Jake’s somehow still alive. It’s my way of dealing with the trauma. I end up on the riverbank at least once a week, a beer in hand to ease the heartache, tears frozen on my cheeks. Some nights I can’t stop thinking about what he saw, what he felt, what he heard … he must’ve been terrified.
The river should’ve snatched me, not my kid brother, but there is no option for a do-over. And moving forward in a dead city like Northland seems impossible. My goal tonight is to stand on the river’s edge long enough to die of exposure. Or find a weak spot on the ice and make a wish for the water to take me. After a year of pain, tonight may be the night of my final sleep.
My friends are tired of me carrying on like a miserable prick anyway.
I take a final swig of beer and fling the empty bottle onto the ice. Headlights catch the landscape and ignite the breaking glass.
“Typical,” I whisper, pulling my winter hat down over my ears.
Sean—my best friend, roommate, and loyal sidekick—revs his car engine in the parking lot behind me. In a stony mood, I raise my middle finger at him to get lost.
His car door swings open, only for a sappy song that follows me everywhere to be heard playing on his stereo. “A Long December.” Music of my parents’ generation, not mine. I should remind him it’s February, and December feels like ages ago.
“You’re not a Gen-Xer, Sean,” I call out to him. “Turn it off!”
He curses on his way to the riverbank, his coat zipped up tight under his neck, boots cutting into the snow.
“You here to make sure I don’t do anything stupid, like tempt fate by jumping up and down on the ice a few times?” My voice is dry and sedate like I’m half-asleep.
He takes a beer from my six-pack and walks over to the bank, shifting his gaze between the ice and me. He raises the bottle toward the mouth of the river, about to speak, but then stuffs one hand in his coat pocket and drinks instead.
The winter chill gets to him, gets to most Northlanders. Regardless of growing up with biting temps seven months of the year, regardless of the lake-effect snow and lack of sunlight. Regardless. With the city located on the eastern shore of Lake Chert, and Canada bordering us to the north, we should be hardened by it by now. Still, it gets to us.
Sean hides the beer behind his back as a cop’s SUV passes by the parking lot. “That better be Eddie, otherwise—”
“Otherwise, nothing.” I smack the bottom of a fresh pack of cigarettes. Then peel away the cellophane. “Whoever it is, they’re not gonna see us this far down from the lot.”
“How about our tire tracks? My car? Your truck? They’ll see us, Dylan.” He pulls his shoulders close to his body, clenching his coat collar tight. It’s a self-protective shift that starts whenever he sees a cop. “How long you gonna keep torturing yourself by coming down here?” he asks.
I wait for the SUV to drive off before flicking my lighter. “Damn thing.” I shake it and try again. “You should smoke, Sean. It’ll take the edge off.”
“I’m not uptight. I’m freezing my nads.”
The cold temperature tonight isn’t bothering me like it is him. It’s easier to shake than the image of Jake out on the ice, easier to shake than the sound of ice cracking under his boots. I hear it now, gnawing at my eardrums. It’s the same nuisance an older man suffering from tinnitus endures.
“Finally.” I get a flame and inhale a drag, then wave the cigarette at him. “You don’t always have to save me.”
“Yeah, I do.” He roughs out a half-circle in the crisp snow with his boot. “Checked Heather’s first, just in case. Knew you’d be one place or the other.”
Her name latches onto my tongue like a blood-sucking leech drawing its dinner, making it impossible to string words together. A once favorite name is now a nightmare.
I release a long trail of smoke toward the night sky with the hope that the image of Heather fades away with it. If it’s not Jake in my head, it’s her. If not her, it’s Jake.
One night.
Two dead.
I walk closer to the river. The ice is chunky, unlike the black ice that was here the night Jake died.
“Don’t go out there,” Sean warns.
Black ice is a rare occurrence in Northland, dangerous because it’s thin. Lake Chert is where it usually forms, but only when the prevailing westerlies sleep and the whitecaps settle. The glassy appearance summons kids to skate, even if the dark color warns of the depth of the water.
“Dylan, I’m serious. Step back.”
River ice is different, opaque. Surface currents form jagged ice peaks, hauntingly reminiscent of broken gravestones. You can’t tell where a person is when they’re swept underneath.
“I’m not leaving you here alone.” He takes out his cell. “I’ll call Riley to meet us at the bar. She can bring a friend.”
“Nah, I’m good. You go.”
“Did you hear me?” He looks up. “I said I’m not leaving you here alone. Pull yourself together and let’s head to the bar.”
“No.”
“Dylan, yes,” he insists. “I’ll buy tonight.”
A smugness falls over him. He jokes about picking up the tab at Marzley’s Bar. Family-owned since the ’60s, now run by my dad, Sean and I will never have to pay for a drink.
I tap my cigarette and watch the ashes die out in the snow. “My dreams have kept me awake for a year. Wretched things. I need to get some sleep.”
He shakes his head. “You’ve been asleep for a year. It’s time to wake up.” He picks up the six-pack and power walks to his car. “You want Riley to bring a friend, or not?” he calls back.
“Nope.”
“Suit yourself.” He reaches for the door handle, stopping short to stalk me. I hold up my smoke to let him know I’ll follow once I’m finished, and as predictable as Sean is, he leans against the car and waits.
“Go.” I wave him on.
“Dylan, get away from the river.”
“I’m fine, go on without me.”
I feel like I’ve fallen into a bottomless lake, forever sinking, smothered by the pressure of the water. I see shapes and shadows, but no distinct faces other than Heather and Jake’s. Reality is gone. Forever.
My brother was eighteen when he died, just a kid. My parents tell people his death was a tragic accident. That we were being typical boys out on the ice and got into trouble. “An accident,” they say. They emphasize that it wasn’t my fault, and I did everything I could to save Jake.
I wish that were true.
Jake shouldn’t have died. He shouldn’t have been at the party, and I shouldn’t have taken him to the river afterward.
One second he was with me on the ice, helping clean up the mess, apologizing for the trouble he’d caused, a second later he was gone. Two seconds is all I needed to turn and grab his hand. Two seconds wasted lighting a cigarette.
Two seconds.
One puff.
Gone.
What I told my parents about that night was a lie. They’d be devastated if they found out the real reason Jake was out on the ice. It was all my fault.
My fault.
I flick my cigarette onto the wicked river before marching to my truck, head down, hands balled in my pockets.
Jake’s not my only burden.
Heather is still a mystery, her death a crushing blow that left me staggered. A junior in college, my first long-term girlfriend, my first love.
She died the same night as Jake, but she wasn’t with us at the river. She didn’t know he fell through. She wasn’t part of any of it. All that remains of her is a suicide note her parents won’t let me read. She left it on the kitchen counter before she hanged herself from the old maple tree in front of her parents’ luxury Roosevelt Park home. Next to her dad’s shiny new Lexus, straight above her mom’s Valentine’s Day laser projector that cast red and white sparkling hearts onto her lifeless body. Not a note for her weedy, spineless father, or a note for her spiteful, snobbish mother. It was meant for me.
“About time.” Sean blows into his cupped hands. “You numb yet?” he asks.
“Just a little.”
He rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”
I glance at him while unlocking my truck. He thinks I need to wake up, that I’ve been asleep for a year. What he doesn’t understand, what no one understands, is that my waking life is a living hell, darker than my dreams of drowning.
2
Marzley’s Bar is dark and hushed like a theater, the best place for my massive headache to settle. My dad keeps the lights down low so customers can’t see the grimy floor I often forget to mop when it’s my night to close. And although the darkness doesn’t keep boots from sticking to the tacky residue, the dimness does seem to soften flawed faces—a common trait of Northlanders due to all the assaults and violence in the city. Everyone has a mark. Everyone has a story. Like the scar above my left eyebrow—a pipe fight over a stolen dirt bike when I was a kid. And the mark on Sean’s chin from a steel-tipped umbrella—a one-sided attack after he tried to pick up a woman’s wallet that fell out of her pocket. She thought he was filching it. He thought he was helping her out. Go figure.
“A pitcher and two mugs,” Sean calls out to our bartender, Tim. He holds up two fingers, then remembers Riley’s coming and adds a third. “I almost forgot about her,” he says.
He removes his trapper hat, patting his short hair into place, a reminder of last weekend’s shenanigans when we went on an afternoon drinking binge and decided to get matching cuts. An idea that sounds good only when drunk.
We both have black hair, but he wears the cut better. The short sides disappear into his carob-colored skin and emphasize his boyish face. My straight hair looks sinister by comparison. Set against my pale skin, prominent brow, and square face, I appear slightly vampirish after I shower and slick it back. It’s best to wear it in a messy fringe over my forehead to hide my widow’s peak.
“Not too crowded yet,” Sean says.
I nod and look around. Our bar is small, in a corner building that used to be a neighborhood grocery back when Mom & Pop stores ruled, back when the steel plant was open, and people in this city made a decent living. My granddad opened the bar with money he’d saved from working as a foreman at the plant, a significant investment for an uneducated Polish guy, something to be proud of. I’m next in line to take over the business, co-owner for now, working under my dad and doing whatever he asks. Like tending bar, placing orders, training staff, even cleaning up urine in the bathrooms. Lowly jobs I’d never complain about. Not when the liquor is free and working nights has mostly kept me out of trouble.
Sean taps the table to get my attention, nodding toward a college-aged girl walking through the front door. She hurries past us and claims a stool at the bar, glancing back to check out the room before ordering a drink.
“Drop-dead gorgeous.” Sean’s amped-up voice is level for once. “Go talk to her.”
“She just walked in. How eager do you want me to look?”
“Pitcher’s up.” Tim raps the bar.
Sean stands, sharing a mischievous wink. “I’ll invite her over.”
“Don’t, Sean. I’m warning you. Don’t say a word to her.”
“Sorry, I can’t hear you.” He puts his hands over his ears and heads for the bar.
My rock this year, Sean insists I keep my eyes open for a new girl, claiming that sleeping around is the cure for the blues.
I’ve tried it, and he’s wrong.
Since I got back in the game, women have done nothing but cause me to resent them for putting out so easily. Finding someone even remotely exciting and respectable seems unlikely, especially after Heather.
She was a good girl. Good in the sense that it was a week before our lips met, another before I was allowed to touch her small breasts, and a month before my hand had permission to unzip her jeans. She made me wait forever and a day to feel her body in rhythm with mine. But it was better that way. When we finally fucked, we were in
love. Makes me wonder if good girls are anomalies, women at the bar and the ones Sean hooks me up with are all misses and no hits. Shallow and dull.
“I know what you’re thinking.” Sean sets the pitcher and mugs on the table. “Mulling over the past shouldn’t stop you from talking to that girl.” He tips a mug toward the bar before he pours himself a drink. “I didn’t say a word to her. She’s all yours.”
I look up and see the girl’s face reflected in the mirror behind the bar. Alabaster skin as ghost white as my own, accentuated by chestnut brown hair with copper highlights, hangs straight and long down her back. Her lips are slightly open in a sensual way, the top one thin, the bottom one full and pouty.
“All right.” I check my watch. “Three minutes have passed, long enough not to seem too desperate.” I take off my hat and finger-comb my hair forward. Sean reaches across the table to muss it up. “Knock it off.” I slap his hand away.
He smiles. “You did want a girl tonight.”
“Not one of Riley’s friends. They show up here and want to go straight to bed.”
“Tough problem to have, Dylan.” He takes a swig of beer and leans back in his chair. “Star quarterback in high school, devoted to working out every afternoon, no beer gut, got your own house … soon-to-be owner of this place.” He gives me the once-over. “Tall, dark, muscular.”
“Handsome,” I add, rubbing my scar. “Kind of.”
“Yeah, we’ll pass on that one.” He puts his hands behind his head and tilts the chair back. “Women in here couldn’t care less you’re using them. At twenty-two, you better live it up before it becomes permanently limp.”
I pick a piece of lint off my black flannel shirt. “At twenty-two, I’m too old to be screwing gullible women to ease my pain.”
“Whatever, man. That sounds like advice your mom would give you.”
“That’s because she raised me right.”
The front legs of his chair hit the floor. He moves closer to the table. “Is that so? Was your mom the one who taught you the proper way to dispose of a body?”
The Lost Night Page 1
