River Road

by Carol Goodman

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I almost followed him. Without Scully’s counterweight my ice floe tipped. I began to slide into the water. Joe grabbed me around the waist and pulled me out. We fell to the riverbank, both soaked in icy river water.

  “Troy,” I said when I had breath. “Scully said Troy went in the river. We have to find him.”

  “We can’t help him now and if we don’t get someplace warm we’ll both freeze to death—damn—” He was patting his clothes, as if trying to pound feeling into his flesh. “I had my radio clipped to my belt but it’s gone. Come on, we’ve got to get moving. Up the hill . . . your house . . . my car . . .” His teeth were chattering so much I could barely understand him. When I tried to stand I couldn’t feel my legs.

  “Don’t think I can,” I said. “Go on . . . go get help.”

  He shook his head and pushed me ahead of him, into the woods. “Use the trees.” He grasped a branch and pulled himself forward, pushing me ahead of him. When I tried to grab a branch with my broken fingers the pain nearly made me pass out. Joe caught me and kept his arm around me the rest of the way. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck and smell the sharp tang of his sweat despite the frigid air. All I wanted to do was lie down in the soft, pillowy snow.

  “Not far now,” he rasped, his breath warming my frozen ear. “Just a little farther.”

  He was lying, of course. The hill had grown twice as steep and twice as long since the last time I’d climbed it. We had both died and been sentenced to the infernal punishment of eternally climbing this frozen hill. When we read Dante’s Inferno in the Great Books class, I taught my students that Dante gave his sinners a contrapasso punishment that fit their sin so that we could see their suffering as the fulfillment of their destiny. I knew what I was being punished for—my indifference to Leia that day that had led not just to her death but now to Troy’s—but what had Joe ever done to deserve an eternity of climbing up a frozen wasteland? Maybe Joe was here to make me feel worse for inflicting this punishment on him. I must have been a selfish sinner, then, because I was still glad to have him by my side. When we finally reached my house, after what seemed like an hour, I would have gladly welcomed the fires of hell with his company.

  He sat me down by the woodstove and coaxed a fire from the embers. He disappeared for a few minutes, long enough for me to wonder if he wasn’t a mirage I’d summoned to keep me going on the long trek up the hill. But then he was back with a pile of clothing. “You have to get out of these wet things,” he said, tugging at my soaked shirt.

  “I can do it,” I said, his obvious embarrassment rousing me out of my dreamy state.

  “Good. Keep yourself dry and warm. I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked, alarmed.

  “Down to my car to radio the station. I have to let them know about Scully and Troy.”

  “You said there was nothing we could do,” I said, hating the whine in my voice. A minute ago I’d thought he was a mirage; now I couldn’t bear the thought of him going.

  “For Scully, probably not, but we don’t know for a fact that Troy went into the river; we only have Scully’s word for that. If he didn’t he could be out in the storm, freezing or . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Or he could come back here to make sure I don’t tell anyone what he did to Leia.”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “I don’t like leaving you alone but I have to radio the station. I’ll be back in five minutes—ten minutes tops.” He looked toward the door. The lock was broken off where Scully had forced his way in. He got up and pulled the couch in front of the door, then angled it so he could get out.

  “Push this back when I go,” he said, “and hold this.” He gave me the iron fire poker. “If Troy does come, hold him off. I’ll be back soon.” He held me by the shoulders and looked into my eyes.

  “How will I know it’s you when you come back?”

  “I’ll knock three times.” He smiled. “Try not to fall asleep. If you don’t let me back in I may well freeze to death.” He squeezed my shoulders and bolted out of the door as if he was afraid of what he might do if he didn’t leave quickly enough. I stood at the door a moment watching him go, but he vanished so quickly into the snow I once again thought I’d imagined him. Like one of those pioneer ghost stories in which a dead loved one visits a snowbound cabin.

  I shook the thought off, closed the door, and pushed the couch in front of it. I wished I had some heavier piece of furniture, but I could barely move the couch with the pain in my ribs and hand. I had started shivering so I went back to the fire, stripped off my wet clothes, and put on the clothes Joe had brought for me—a strange combination of old, worn-out jeans, a silk shirt, and a Christmas sweater Dottie had knitted for me three years ago—

  Dottie. She would be devastated when she learned that Troy, whether he was dead or alive, had killed Leia.

  I was too agitated by the thought to rest. I dug in the closet for an old gym bag that Evan had left behind. It had SUNY Acheron sweatpants and a sweatshirt he hadn’t wanted to take with him. As far as I’m concerned the whole place can fall in the river and wash out to sea.

  I draped them in front of the fire, along with a towel that had also been in the bag, so they’d be warm for Joe when he got back. I should have made him change before he left. He could be freezing to death out there.

  I filled the kettle with water and put it on the woodstove so there’d be something hot to drink when he returned—which should be soon now. How long had it been? Surely more than ten minutes. I should have checked the time—

  A thump at the door made me jump and drop the log I was adding to the fire. I waited for two more thumps, but none came. I picked up the poker and approached the door. The window beside the door was glazed with ice so I couldn’t see out of it. I pictured not Troy but Scully, risen from the frozen river, ice dripping from his empty eye socket. An ice Cyclops. But then I pictured Joe McAffrey coming back to my door and finding Scully there ready to knock him over the head—

  I pulled the couch back and, holding the poker up with one hand, flung open the door. For a second I thought I had opened my door to the ice Cyclops. A frozen body fell across my threshold. It was covered in snow and icicles hung from its hair. But it was Joe under there. I pulled him to the fire and helped him off with his sodden, frozen coat.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  His teeth were chattering too hard for him to answer me. I helped him off with his shirt and rubbed the warm towel over his chest and arms. His skin was so white I was afraid he was frozen all the way through. “Are you always this color?” I demanded.

  He barked—a sound I realized was a laugh only by looking at his face.

  “B-b-bog Irish,” he chattered. “G-give me that.” He snatched the sweatshirt and sweatpants out of my hands. “And g-give a f-fellow some privacy.”

  I ran upstairs, the heat in my face quickly evaporating as I moved away from the woodstove, to collect blankets and quilts from the bedroom. When I came downstairs Joe was crouched in front of the stove, Acheron sweatshirt stretched over his chest. He was broader than Evan, and taller. The sweatpants only came to the middle of his calves. I handed him a pair of heavy wool hiking socks and draped a blanket around his shoulders. I dumped the rest of the quilts in front of the stove and poured hot water and packets of hot cocoa into mugs. I held his mug for him to sip from until he was able to hold it himself. Then I sat down across from him, on top of the quilts, and watched him. The color was returning to his skin—a rosy pink in his cheeks and at the tips of his ears, a gold flush along his throat. The firelight made the fine hair on his arms glow red-gold and his hair, as it dried, revealed red sparks I hadn’t noticed before. He looked away from the fire and caught me staring at him.

  “I thought I told you not to open the door until you heard three knocks.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I heard a big thump and I thought one-eyed Scully ha
d risen from the river and was waiting on the doorstep for you.”

  “So you opened the door?”

  “I couldn’t let you die on my doorstep—which is what it looked like you were fixing to do. What happened? You were gone so long.”

  “It took me a while to dig into my car. I was able to reach the station but they’ve got their hands full—the roads are completely impassable and the state has suspended plowing until the snow lets up. I told them we were fine where we were. Then I was barely able to get up here and then, when I got to your door, a sheet of snow slid off your roof and nearly buried me.”

  “That was the thump I heard? You could have died out there on my doorstep!”

  “And you could have died if I had been Scully risen from the dead—or Troy, who might not be dead at all.”

  “I don’t believe Troy would kill me. I’ve been thinking about the story he told me in the boathouse.” I told Joe everything Troy had said.

  “Did he actually say he’d run over Leia?”

  “No, that’s just it. That’s what I said. Don’t you call that leading the witness?”

  “But he didn’t deny it.”

  “No,” I admitted. “But then he risked his own life to give me a chance to escape. Why would he do that if he’d killed Leia and then framed me for it? Why not just save himself and let Scully kill me?”

  “Maybe his plan was to take out Scully and then come after you and blame your death on Scully. He could come up with a story then that Scully had killed Leia.”

  “Seems pretty elaborate, and I just find it hard to believe of Troy.”

  “Do you always think the best of people?” Joe asked, shrugging the blanket off his shoulders. It had gotten quite warm in the nest of blankets we’d built in front of the stove.

  “No, not always. I spent six and a half years wishing Hannah Mulder dead. But when I saw her lying unconscious on the road it didn’t give me any joy at all.”

  “No,” he said, his smile slipping. “It rarely does—although I would have enjoyed seeing Scully put away for good.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “Does your line of work lead you to see the worst in people?”

  He looked away from me, into the fire, and I was afraid I’d insulted him. Like asking a soldier if he’d killed anyone. “I’m sorry,” I began, but he had started talking.

  “I see some bad stuff. The worst was seeing your little girl on that road. Maybe because I was still new to the job.” He turned to me. “Maybe because it didn’t make any sense at all. But then I tracked down Hannah Mulder and arrested her and she went away to jail and I thought, ‘I did that poor family some good.’ But then I heard your husband had left—”

  “You heard that?”

  He shrugged, his shoulders tight in the too small sweatshirt. “It’s a small town. Small enough that it wasn’t hard to keep an eye on you. Sorry. I hope that doesn’t sound like I was stalking you. Although I guess that’s what I was doing. I had to know if you were okay, if catching Hannah Mulder had made any difference.”

  “And what did you decide?” I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.

  “At first I didn’t think I’d done you any good. When I took your class—well, I could see you were only half there. But then, over the years, I’d hear about you from students at the college.”

  “Really?”

  “Small town; even smaller college,” he replied. “Okay, I may have helped things along sometimes by asking kids who their favorite teacher was. A lot of the time it was you. I started thinking that you must’ve made some peace with what happened—or at least turned your grief into something productive.”

  “You must have been pretty disappointed when you thought I’d run down Leia.”

  “I was,” he admitted. “I looked around here”—he glanced around the living room, which looked marginally better than it had the morning after Leia died but still reeked of the solitary life I’d been leading—“and I thought this woman’s life was broken by what happened to her daughter and nothing I did made any difference. That’s what a crime like that does—it breaks people—it breaks places. Look at what Leia’s death has done to everyone who knew her. The whole town turned on you—someone killed your cat, for God’s sake—then Hannah gets run over, then Ballantine gets asphyxiated, and Troy ends up out there in the river—all these lives ruined as if Leia’s death was a stone dropped in a pool, and the ripples from it spread out to drown us all.”

  “But that didn’t happen the first time,” I said, staring at the fire.

  “What?”

  “When Emmy died. You found who did it. No one was falsely accused. The ripples stopped. It was just me and Evan and Hannah who got caught up in it and we deserved to be—at least Hannah and I did. Poor Evan—”

  “He left.”

  I pictured Evan standing in the kitchen, weeping over a Scuffy the Tugboat mug. I remembered I’d taken a step toward him—and then stopped, as if there were an invisible wall of ice between us.

  “I didn’t ask him to stay,” I said, looking away from Joe. “I didn’t want him to stay. I wanted to be alone with my misery. I wanted . . .” I wanted to drive to the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge and throw myself into the Hudson. And when I couldn’t go through with that I wanted to drink by myself every night until I felt numb. I looked around the room as if I’d never seen it before. As if I’d been asleep for years and had just woken up. My skin was tingling from the warmth of the fire, thawing from my dip into the icy river. The two fingers Scully had stepped on were swollen and throbbing, my fingertips still ached from digging my nails into the ice. I had wanted to stay alive. “I built myself a tomb here. But I’m still alive. I’m not even sure why—”

  He reached out and wiped a tear from my face. His skin felt hot, warm from the fire, or as if the blood was still surging to bring life back to his frozen skin. It hurt. When the blood rushed back into frozen fingers and toes, it stung. His touch stung now, but I was afraid that if he moved his hand away I wouldn’t be able to stand the cold again.

  He didn’t move his hand away. Instead he cradled my face, his thumb drawing a line from my temple to my mouth. My lips parted and I felt him shiver as my breath touched his skin. The few inches between us suddenly vanished and his mouth moved toward mine. His lips brushed against mine so lightly I thought I must have imagined it. He pulled back and looked at me, his firelit eyes holding a question. I answered it by returning his light butterfly kiss with a swift’s lunge. He met me midair, matching my sudden urgency. The heat of the kiss spread waves of warmth through my body and his as we circled our arms around each other. His hands were in my hair, under my shirt and sweater, touching skin that had been frozen an hour ago and now lit at his touch. It lit up the pain in my ribs and fingers too but I didn’t care. I could feel my blood racing to meet his. We fell down into the tangle of blankets and quilts and added our tangled clothing to the pile. Outside the wind roared and threw snow against the walls and roof. Inside the firelight moved over our bodies like ripples in water, as if we were moving together on a current, the pull and tug between us the resistance between the lunar tide and the pull of the open ocean. Keeping us in motion. But when he entered me all the motion stopped for a moment and I felt like we’d both come to the still, quiet spot at the center of all the circles.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  When I woke up in the morning I was alone in the nest of quilts in front of the woodstove. He’s left, I told myself, the sting worse than the stab of pain from my broken rib when I sat up. He’s embarrassed that he gave in to the moment—the narrow escape from death, the excitement of the chase, the enforced closeness of a snowbound farmhouse. . . . The memory of how we’d come together in the firelight sent a current of desire through me even sharper than pain and sadness. It was the first time I’d felt alive since Emmy died. Would I go back to feeling dead if he was gone?

  A sound from the kitchen drew my attention. Joe, in his own jeans and flannel shirt, ca
me in carrying two mugs of coffee. He knelt down beside me and placed both mugs on the edge of the woodstove and looked at me. I’d thought last night that his eyes had that glow from the firelight but I saw it was something he carried around inside of him—now that I finally noticed it.

  “Last night . . .” I began.

  “Are you going to tell me that it was all a mistake because we were caught up in the moment? That you’re grateful I saved your life and all but what’s an educated college professor want with a hick policeman?”

  “Wow, you’re even more paranoid than I am if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “And what were you thinking?”

  “That you must regret getting into bed with a worn-out, older—”

  “You’re only two years older than me.”

  “—older, most likely out-of-a-job, drunk.”

  “Ouch! You are hard on yourself. We’re gonna have to work on that.” Then he kissed me, his unshaven cheek rough against my face, and all the desire from last night leapt up in my blood. We took our time, last night’s urgency tempered by daylight and the aches in both our bodies. When we were finished the coffee was cool and the fire in the stove had burned down to embers. We lay side by side, his hands lingering on my bruised ribs and fingers, mine tracing the bruise from the ice block Scully had rammed into his face. We both looked like we’d been through the wars, but I suspected the wounds we carried inside were going to give us more trouble.

  “I wish we could just stay here,” I said. “Snowbound.”

  “You’re afraid once we leave and deal with the outside world, this”—he touched my face and made me look at him—“will vanish. But this is real. Just as real as all those people out there. And I, for one, want to give it a chance.”