River Road

by Carol Goodman

  “No presents before Christmas morning. If you start giving out presents they’ll only whine for the rest of them and Christmas Eve will be ruined.”

  Amanda insisted that wasn’t true, then contradicted her argument by starting to whine. Charlotte held her ground, glaring at me as if to say See what you’ve started, and Amanda ran off in a huff.

  “You can’t let them run all over you,” she said, doling out the advice as if I still needed parenting skills when clearly it had been my lack of them that had led to Emmy’s death. Who lets their four-year-old play in the yard without adult supervision? That I agreed with her didn’t make it any less pleasant to be reminded.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that I won’t be here to see her open it.”

  “I’ll make sure she writes a thank-you note. You haven’t gotten her anything too . . . elaborate, have you?”

  Last year there’d been a ruckus over a pair of velvet ballet slippers I’d given to her. “No, it’s a book. About fairies. I hope she’s still into them.”

  Charlotte rolled her eyes. “That’s all she wants to read about. I’ve been trying to interest her in historical fiction. At least she’d get something useful out of it.”

  “Well, this book was given an award by the American Library Association, so they must think it’s useful.” I hoped that the award and the pretty butterfly on the cover would keep Charlotte from realizing that the book—Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale, by Holly Black—was a deliciously dark tale, but knowing Charlotte, she probably read everything her children read to make sure it met her high standards.

  “As long as it doesn’t give her nightmares like that last book you gave her—and speaking of nightmares”—she lowered her voice and leaned over a tray of mini quiches—“Cooper and I discussed it and I have to tell you that we can no longer allow you to take Amanda anywhere unsupervised. Given . . . everything that’s happened. So while it was kind of you to get those tickets for Beauty and the Beast for her birthday—”

  “But I already promised her—”

  Charlotte held up her hand. “That’s our final decision. I’ll be happy to take her if you give me the tickets.”

  I stared at Charlotte. Her face was rigid and set. She had never liked my spending time with Amanda. I think she thought my interest in her was ghoulish and that I was one of those childless spinsters who kidnaps other people’s babies.

  “I’ll mail them to you,” I said and then, swiping a mini quiche, turned and left the kitchen and wandered into the family room where Doug and Cooper, Amy’s and Charlotte’s husbands, were lounging on the couch talking about the stock market and drinking single-malt scotches. I sat with them and helped myself to a glass.

  “I hear you’ve had a spot of bother,” Cooper said in the pompous accent he seemed to have acquired from attending Choate and Yale. “A DUI, Char said.”

  “Not at all. I hit a deer. . . .” I told the story for what felt like the hundredth time. It was beginning to ring false in my own ears, but Cooper seemed satisfied with it. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. They can’t tie the car to you if the cop didn’t catch you in it—chain of evidence and all that. A buddy of mine at Goldman got out of a DUI by dodging the idiot cops, ditching the car, and diving into his own EZ-Boy with a glass of Stoli before the cops were at the door. They couldn’t prove he didn’t do his drinking after he got home.” Cooper clinked his glass against mine.

  “These cops aren’t idiots,” I said, sipping from my glass. Cooper might be an ass but he had great taste in scotch. “I’ll get off because I didn’t do it.”

  I left the family room and wandered into the “entertainment room,” where the kids were all parked in front of a huge flat-screen TV watching Frozen. At least, Amanda and her two sisters were watching—Casey and Carter were playing games on their Game Boys and their three-year-old brother was building a tower of blocks. I squeezed onto the couch between Amanda and Tracy and watched the movie, which I’d heard my students talking about but hadn’t seen. I knew it was a version of “The Snow Queen” but I found it hard at first to connect the Hans Christian Andersen tale to this story of Princess Elsa, who accidentally hurts her sister, Anna, with her cryokinetic powers and runs off, leaving the kingdom snowbound. But the music was good and the animation was pretty. I sipped my drink with Amanda’s and Tracy’s warm bodies beside me, laughing at the antics of the reindeer and snowman and crying when Elsa accidentally freezes Anna’s heart.

  “Don’t worry, Aunt Nan,” Amanda said, squeezing my hand, “she can be saved by an act of true love.”

  I sniffed and squeezed her hand back. Then peeled myself off the couch and headed back into the family room for a refill.

  “—we don’t know she hit the girl,” Amy was saying. I stopped in the threshold, holding my breath so they wouldn’t hear me. They were all facing away from me so they hadn’t seen me.

  “Sure. She hit a ‘deer.’ ” Doug made air quotes with his fingers. “Have you seen how much she drinks?” Hypocrite! I thought. He drinks twice what I do.

  “Phil’s found a good lawyer,” my mother said.

  “And what’s that going to cost?” Cooper asked. “And who’s going to pay the legal fees? That second-rate state college she works at sure as hell doesn’t pay enough.”

  “I have enough to take care of it,” Phil said.

  “No you don’t, Phil,” Cooper said. “Not without eating into your retirement or the grandkids’ college funds.”

  “I will not sacrifice my children’s futures to her,” Charlotte said.

  “Char’s right,” Cooper said, swirling the ice in his glass. “If we’re not careful she’ll drag this family down.”

  I backed out before anyone could see me, into the TV room, where Kristoff and Anna were wandering on the screen through a blizzard unable to find each other. Even Casey and Carter had put down their Game Boys to watch. I slipped back into the front hall, where I made a call on my cell phone for a taxi, and waited in the powder room until I heard it pull up. My mother was standing in the foyer when I came out.

  “You’re going,” she said, wringing her hands. It wasn’t a question.

  “I think it’s best—before I drag down the family.”

  “Oh, Nancy, you always were too sensitive.”

  I started to laugh but then I saw how she was hugging her arms around her waist as if she were afraid she’d fly apart if she didn’t hold on to herself. Your mother works so hard to control you because she’s scared to death of losing you, my father once told me. I looked at her now and thought that the only cure for a fear that deep was to finally lose the thing you were so afraid of losing. I think she saw that too—that it would be a relief to let me go and not have to worry about me anymore.

  “You’re right,” I said, touching her arm. Her muscles felt like steel rods beneath the soft cashmere. “I just want to get home early and get some sleep. Anat’s calling me tomorrow. I won’t need Phil’s lawyer, Mom. Don’t worry.”

  “If you’re sure. . . .” I could see her relief that she wouldn’t have to argue with her stepchildren over the money. There was nothing my mother hated more than conflict.

  “I’m sure,” I said, leaning forward to kiss her cheek. I turned and left before she could see the tears filling my eyes and managed to get in the taxi before they fell.

  * * *

  I got a window seat on the train on the way back and spent the ride staring out at the river so no one would see the tears slipping under my dark glasses. Stupid, I told myself, of all the things to get to me, Cooper’s comment about my dragging down the family. It’s what I felt like, though, a rusty anchor plummeting down through water as lead-gray and cold as the river outside the train window. Ice was forming along the banks, moving down the river in great dirty-white chunks. I thought of that body found in the river and shuddered, imagining what it would feel like to fall into that icy water—

  “Professor Lewis?”

  I startled at
the sound of my name, afraid I’d been tracked down by the press or, worse, the police, but when I turned from the window I saw it was Aleesha Williams hovering in the aisle. I swiped at my face, embarrassed to be caught crying by a student—and then noticed I wasn’t the only one crying.

  “Aleesha, what is it? What’s happened?”

  “It’s my cousin Shawna.” She sank into the seat next to me. “She was found dead in the river.”

  “No! I just read about a body being found this morning.”

  “That was Shawna,” she said, blowing her nose, her heavy down coat making a sighing sound as it settled around her. “My uncle Theodore ID’d her this morning. I’m just coming back from my auntie’s house in Peekskill—imagine finding out a thing like that on Christmas Eve!”

  “Oh, Aleesha, I’m so sorry! Do they know what happened?”

  “They’re saying she OD’d and fell in the river down by that old abandoned factory where the crackheads hang out, but the thing is, Shawna was clean since she come out of jail. Why’s she going to go shoot up in some nasty old factory down by the river?”

  I shook my head, not sure how I was supposed to answer when I’d just been imagining sinking into the river myself. “Christmas can be a bad time,” I said. “Maybe she wasn’t able to handle coming back from prison.”

  “I guess.” Aleesha wiped her eyes. “If I’d’ve known . . . I should of spent more time with her, but I’ve been busy with finals—”

  “Don’t do that to yourself,” I said, taking Aleesha’s hand in both of mine. “You’re working hard to make a life for yourself and your little girl. I’m sure Shawna wouldn’t begrudge you that.”

  “Yeah, but when I think that I was writing papers and taking tests while Shawna was shooting up somewhere . . . and the hell of it is I was writing about her. Maybe I jinxed her. Have you ever felt like that, Professor Lewis? That your writing made something bad happen?”

  I saw myself writing at my desk, Emmy playing outside the window—

  “Nothing you did hurt your cousin,” I told Aleesha firmly. “The dealer who sold her the drugs is the one who hurt her and I bet the police are looking for him right now.”

  Aleesha managed a small smile at that. “For a black girl from the projects when they’ve got a white college girl’s killer to find? I don’t think so, Prof. The only one the police are looking for right now is the sorry asshole who killed Leia Dawson.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was full-on dark when the Loop bus let me off on River Road. The only light came from Leia’s shrine. There were over a dozen candles there now, and the wall was crowded with stuffed animals, flowers, and pictures of Leia. My mind flashed to Shawna Williams. Would anyone build a shrine for her at that abandoned factory on the river amidst the broken needles and empty beer cans?

  I looked carefully for anything out of place, like the barrette or the Four Roses bottle, but there was nothing now and nothing more to come now that Hannah was in the hospital.

  I trudged up the hill feeling like I’d been gone for a week. With no porch light on, no car outside, and the snow still unplowed, the house looked like it had been abandoned. It might have been one of the deserted outbuildings on the Blackwell estate, like the old boathouse that students partied in and told stories about. A haunted house. That’s what my house had become, only Emmy wasn’t the ghost—I was.

  * * *

  Oolong was waiting at the door and made a break for it. I scooped her up and tossed her inside, explaining that she was far too old to go out anymore. Didn’t she know it was freezing outside? I kept up a steady stream of admonishments as I fed her, trying to dispel the silence that sat over the house like a caul. I microwaved a frozen dinner, looked through my cabinets telling myself I wasn’t looking for something to drink, and made a cup of tea instead.

  “I am not an alcoholic,” I told Oolong, who gave me a skeptical look and went to sleep on the couch.

  I sat down at my desk and searched the Web for references to Leia. I found a student site with a discussion even more vicious than the one on “Overheard at Acheron.” After reading a dozen nasty comments I went upstairs to Emmy’s room and fell asleep watching the painted stars winking in the sandpapery glow. I awoke to a blade of light slicing through the room and the sound of a car engine. My first thought was that the police had come to arrest me; my second that it was a vigilante group come to lynch me. The engine turned off and I heard the heavy metal chunk of a door opening. I listened for voices but heard only a single set of footsteps heading for my door.

  I got up, scanning the room for something I could use as a weapon. A Fisher-Price dollhouse? A Minnie Mouse night-light? I remembered that Evan had kept a baseball bat under our bed and I wished it was still there—wished he was still here. Why had I stayed here all alone in a remote farmhouse where I could be killed in my bed—

  The front door clicked open. I was sure I’d locked it—hadn’t I?—but it was a flimsy lock. Evan was always saying we should replace it.

  I reached for my phone but it wasn’t on the night table. It must be downstairs in my bag. I’d stopped paying for a landline years ago. I opened the night table drawer quietly and celebrated silently when I found a heavy Maglite inside. Evan had put one in every room because we lost power so often. The batteries were long dead but the metal casing was reassuringly heavy in my hands. I crept out onto the landing and saw that someone had turned a light on in the living room—not standard operating procedure for a thief or vigilante, I thought. There was no point creeping down the rickety old stairs, so I walked down firmly, holding the Maglite over my head, shouting, “Who’s there?” When I reached the bottom I saw the silhouette of a man sitting in my desk chair and looking at my computer screen, which I’d left on at a student Tumblr site that had taken up the discussion closed on “Overheard at Acheron.”

  “These students should be expelled for spreading this tripe on the Web—it’s libel.”

  “Ross?” I asked, lowering my arm. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

  He held up a key in his right hand. “You gave me a key—remember?”

  “Over six years ago!” I said, moving closer. The sudden relief I’d felt when I recognized him was dissipating. Even from across the room I could smell liquor. It was coming from an open bottle of Glenlivet. His usually impeccably coiffed hair stood up in unruly tufts. His beautiful cashmere coat bunched up around his stooped shoulders like a damp pelt.

  “You never asked for it back,” he said with a sly smile that sent a chill from my bare feet up to the nape of my neck.

  “Are you returning it now?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level. “You could have come by in the . . . oh, I don’t know . . . daytime?”

  “And give the scandalmongers more fuel for their bonfire?” He picked up the empty bottle of Four Roses I’d left on the kitchen counter and shook it at me. “Do we really pay you so little this is the best you can afford even on Christmas Eve?”

  I sank down onto the arm of the couch, feeling drained after the rush of adrenaline. “I found that on Leia’s shrine,” I said. “I think Hannah left it. I see you’ve brought your own. Do you really think driving drunk is such a good idea after what happened to Leia—and Hannah? If you were pulled over—”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” he said. “By tomorrow this site will be plastered with my picture, not yours. That’s why I came by—to give you the good news. The police have a new suspect.” He threw open his arms and bowed his head. “Yours truly.”

  “For Leia’s death?” I asked, appalled but also, to my shame, with a queasy twinge of relief. “But you were at home, cleaning up after the party.”

  “Yes, I was at home—not actually cleaning, though, Dottie saw to that—but apparently my car had ideas of its own. Your friend Sergeant McAffrey has informed me that a little bit of Leia’s red leather jacket found its way into the radiator grille of the Peugeot.”

  My mind flashed on an image of Leia st
anding outside the barn in her red leather jacket, looking brave and jaunty in the cold, and then, horribly, I saw that jacket shredded and bloody, scraps twisted in metal. “There must be some mistake,” I said. “You couldn’t have run Leia over.”

  “Because you did?” He suddenly sounded dead sober. A warning shot of adrenaline pulsed through my blood. I remembered how that night over Hannah’s inert body he’d tried to coax me into admitting that I’d run over Leia. Was that why he’d been coming here that night—and why he was here tonight? With a bottle of expensive scotch to ply me with? So I would take the blame for something he did?

  “No, because I believe that you were home. Dottie will say you were there—”

  “She left before the time Leia was run over.”

  “Was there anyone else with you after Dottie left?” I asked. “I know that the students love to listen to you—”

  “You make it sound like I’m the Pied Piper, some lecherous old fart preying on vulnerable young girls.”

  “I didn’t mean that at all,” I protested.

  “No? Isn’t it what you said to me when you broke off with me? That I’d taken advantage of you as much as if you were a student?”

  What I’d said, I now painfully recalled, was that a department head who slept with a newly hired teacher was as bad as a professor sleeping with a student. “I didn’t know what I was saying. Of course it’s not the same thing . . . I was hurt. . . .” I suddenly remembered why I’d been hurt. Cressida had taken me out to lunch and explained to me that Ross Ballantine was infamous for seducing graduate students at his last job at Cornell. Why did I think someone of his stature had ended up at a state school? If people learned of the affair—as she had by seeing us coming out of a B&B in Hudson—I wouldn’t be taken seriously either and I’d never get tenure. “Ross,” I said now, “you weren’t . . . you and Leia . . .”