Almost Home: A Novel

by Pam Jenoff

  “I’m afraid the kitchen isn’t open for lunch yet,” she replies, gesturing to the clock above the bar. “I can ask if there might be some breakfast left, though.”

  “That would be great.”

  I walk to one of the tables and sink down into a chair. Above the bar, a soap opera plays on the television. Remembering the key I found beneath the desk, I pull it out. It’s probably not even Jared’s. Some kid is going to go looking for it and not be able to unlock his bike.

  But the key is old, peeling at the bits of yellowed tape still stuck to it as though it hasn’t been removed from its hiding place in years. And not a bike key, either, I realize, reading the fine engraving on the back: Hudson’s PLC. Hudson’s was a bank on Saint Andrews Street that catered to the businesses and shops. I’d never been inside, preferring like most students the Barclays branch with its simple, no-fee checking accounts that suited our low balances. The key must be to a safe deposit box there. That doesn’t mean it was Jared’s, I remind myself sternly. Any one of a dozen students who had lived in that room could have taped it to the desk.

  But an image pops into my mind. I was walking back from the University Library one afternoon in May and as I came down Sidney Street past Sainsbury’s supermarket, I’d seen Jared coming out of Hudson’s Bank. It struck me as a little unusual, as I knew he had a Barclays student account like the rest of us. “Clearing up a wiring issue with my stipend,” he’d offered vaguely by way of explanation. At the time, I didn’t think to question it. But now, holding the key in my hand, I wonder if it was something more.

  I’ll go to the bank after I see Tony, I decide, tucking it back in my pocket as the barmaid returns with a lukewarm cup of coffee and a plate of reheated scrambled eggs, beans, and tomato. I inhale deeply, savoring the familiar scent. It is hard to believe I haven’t had English breakfast since I’ve been back. I take one big mouthful, then another.

  Ten minutes later, my breakfast finished, I carry my dishes back to the bar. “That was delicious, thanks,” I say, as the woman rings up the meal on the till.

  “Four pounds, twenty pence.” I pass her a twenty-pound note, looking up at the television screen once more. The soap opera has broken for a newsflash of some sort, reporters clustered around a tall, red-haired woman. Maureen, I realize, freezing. I cannot hear what she is saying but she is still wearing the same clothes as when I saw her at the hospital early this morning. Had the media somehow learned about Sarah’s attack?

  But that is not it, I realize quickly. Something is different about Mo from when I last saw her. Her eyes are red, her hair wild. No longer just tired, she is distraught. Lights from emergency vehicles flash in the background behind her. “Can you turn that up please?” I ask the barmaid.

  She picks up a remote control. “…investigating all possible causes,” Maureen is saying, her voice raspy.

  The camera cuts away to a male reporter standing a few feet from the throng. “The gas explosion at the Hammersmith flat occurred just before five…”

  That’s my house, I realize with a start, recognizing the row of flats behind the reporter. Or was. A smoking pile of rubble is all that remains where my flat had been, a gaping hole of splintered wood ripped from the adjacent unit. Behind it sits the river, now fully visible from the street.

  The barmaid clucks her tongue and says something about the dangers of gas cooking. But I do not answer. The screen cuts again, this time to earlier footage of something long and dark being loaded into an ambulance from the street. A body bag. My heart stops. Someone died in the explosion. The reporter’s voice weaves through the buzzing in my ears, “…diplomat killed.” The screen cuts to a photograph of a young woman in a navy suit, black hair pulled back low and tight. An official diplomatic photo of…me.

  They think I am dead, I realize. Then I understand Mo’s red eyes. I have to call her, tell her that it is a mistake. But that means someone else died in the explosion.

  “Your change,” the barmaid says, but I do not respond. Sophie, I think. I sent her to my apartment for the papers. Now I know why she never made it to the train station. She was killed at my flat, in an “accident” that was intended for me.

  chapter NINETEEN

  SOPHIE’S DEAD.

  The words reverberate in my brain. I see her walking up to my apartment, turning the doorknob. How far inside did she make it before the explosion? Had she sensed something was wrong and tried to leave? I lean against the bar and bury my head in my hands. This is my fault. I never should have asked her to go to my house for my own selfish purposes.

  “Ma’am, are you all right?” the barmaid asks.

  I look up at the woman’s half-concerned, half-fearful expression. “Just got dizzy for a moment.” I straighten. “Keep the change.” The woman’s eyes widen as her hand closes around the fifteen pounds. Breathe, I command myself as I walk from the pub. Think.

  Sophie’s dead. I remember my diplomatic photograph flashing across the television. Everyone thinks that it is me. I see Mo’s grief-stricken face, her red eyes. I should call and tell her that I am okay. I reach for my phone, then hesitate. The safest thing for me right now is for my attackers to keep thinking that I am dead. Mo can be trusted, of course, but I cannot call her now, when she is surrounded by all those reporters.

  My attackers. Someone blew up my flat, thinking I would be in it. And it was gas again—undoubtedly the same people who tried to kill Sarah. I imagine her lying in her hospital bed, hearing the news report of my death on television. I have to tell her that I am alive.

  I open my cell phone and scroll down the calls received, redialing the number for the nurses’ station and asking for Sarah’s room. As the call transfers, I hold my breath. What if someone is with her or listening in on the line? My thumb feels for the end-call button but before I can press it, there is a click and Sarah picks up the phone. “Hello,” she says, and I can tell from her hoarse, cracked voice that she has been watching the news.

  “Don’t say anything,” I instruct tersely.

  “B-but you’re…” I hear her struggling for breath, trying to process the fact that I am not dead.

  “I’m fine,” I say, realizing as the words come out of my mouth that it might be the overstatement of the year.

  “Thank goodness.” Relief floods the phone line. “When I saw—”

  I cut her off. “I can’t stay on the phone but I wanted you to know. You can’t tell anyone, though.”

  “Not even M—”

  “Not even her. I’ll tell her as soon as the crowd clears.”

  “Did you get to see the professor?”

  “No, he died just over a month ago.”

  “Oh, no! Do you think…?”

  “That it was related?” I pause, considering the idea. “I don’t know. It was a car accident in France, so it could just be a coincidence. But in any case, we can’t get the paper from him.”

  “We’ll just have to find it another way.”

  We, I think, my guilt at involving Sarah rising once more. “You just rest and concentrate on getting better. I have to keep moving.” Picturing Sarah alone in the hospital room, my uneasiness grows. Whoever succeeded in killing Vance and Sophie might come after Sarah again. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” she replies quickly, understanding. “I’m feeling much better and the guards are here all the time. Don’t worry about me. Just be careful.”

  “I will. I’ll see you soon.”

  I close the phone. I could call Sebastian to see if he is all right, if he knows any more about what happened than what they said on the news. Then I decide against it. Before all this, I could have counted on him not to tell Maureen where I am, but now, if he’s upset about Sophie…is he upset about Sophie? I pause, considering the question. She was our teammate and he was dating her, at least for a bit. In fact, she might have been safe with him this morning, if it wasn’t for me.

  Pushing down my guilt, I continue along King Street until its end at a roundabout a
nd cross to the edge of Midsummer Common, then stop again. Beyond the park sits the river, the boathouses splayed across its far bank. My stomach knots and for a minute I contemplate turning around, running for the station and catching the first train to London. But Nettie said that Tony might know something. No, I have taken it this far and I owe it to everyone—not just Jared, but Vance and Sophie and Sarah—to see this through, run down every lead no matter how thin. I force myself to continue forward across the expanse of parkland, past the joggers and dog walkers, toward the footbridge at the Fort Saint George.

  On the far side of the bridge, the boathouses lay in midday quiet, waiting for the students who have abandoned them to lectures and supervisions to come again. As the Lords boathouse comes into view, I stop. A lump forms in my throat and I look to the upstairs balcony, willing Jared to appear as he had the day we met.

  I cannot do this. Suddenly I want to flee. I have done all that anyone expected me to do. But even as I finish the thought, I know that I cannot turn back now. No one made me come here today. This was my choice, the subconscious bargain I made with myself the day I walked into the Director’s office and asked for London, sealed the moment I set foot on the plane. All roads led me here, and there is no going back, or around—only through. Steeling myself, I make my way to the boathouse.

  Outside the door to the boathouse, I stop again. In the corner sits a small gold plaque. It is set low to the ground, easily missed if one is not looking for it. I kneel, running my fingers over the engraving. “In memory of Jared Short,” it reads. That’s all. No mention of who he was or how he died, even when he was here.

  Straightening, I open the wood door and am assaulted by the familiar smell of dampness and sweat. Inside, I struggle to adjust my eyes to the dim light. To the left sit the darkened bays where long boats sleep on racks like giant birds nesting. The whirring sound of an ergometer, a lone rower training, filters down the stairs from the locker rooms above. Straight ahead I can hear the sound of big band music playing on a tinny radio. I knock on the half-open door. “Come in!” a gruff voice bellows.

  I push the door open and step through. Tony’s workshop is exactly as I remembered it: floors and tables piled high with open jars and wood scraps, unidentifiable metal pieces and tools, the air a heady mix of cigarette smoke and turpentine (perhaps not the best combination). At the far end of the room sits a small man with white hair, hunched over a metal rigger, a stub of a cigarette dangling from his mouth. “What do you want?” he asks, not looking up.

  “Hello, Tony,” I begin hesitantly. He has seen almost thirty years of rowers come and go. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m—”

  “I know who you are,” he interrupts. “You’re the American who coxed the first May boat in ninety-eight. The Aylings shell.” Inwardly I smile. Tony might not remember names, but he knows every crew and piece of equipment that has passed through his boathouse. “Busted up a boat the year before.” I cringe at this. I was hoping he would have forgotten the Great Crash of ’97, as it came to be known. At the start of the May Bumps in my first year, the rudder fell off the bottom of the boat, unbeknownst to me. As we raced around Ditton corner, I wasn’t able to navigate the sharp turn and we ran, at full speed, into the bank. Four of the rowers wound up on land, the boy at bow rowing against a tree. “What do you want?” he repeats, still working the rigger.

  I pause. The years, it seems, have not softened his demeanor. “I’m Jordan Weiss. I’m back for a visit and Nettie suggested that I speak to you,” I add quickly.

  He looks up. “’Bout what?” he asks, his voice relaxing at the mention of the bedder.

  “Jared Short. Do you remember him?” He does not answer, but takes a long drag from his cigarette, then grinds it out in an overflowing ashtray on the workbench beside him. “He sat in the five seat in my first May boat,” I persist.

  Tony nods. “He moved back from the seven seat to five after you two started going out.” I am surprised; I didn’t think Tony would have noticed that Jared and I were dating. “Drowned,” he adds. His face sags and I can tell that he regards the loss of one of “his” boys to the river as a personal failure.

  “Right. I was wondering if you remember anything that last semester. The last few weeks before Jared died.” I do not bother to make excuses as I did with Nettie. Tony either knows something or he doesn’t.

  “Nothing I can recall. It was a busy time, you know, during the Bumps. Lots of races, lots of wrecks. Jared was a good boy, not bothering me every day like some.” Tony’s forehead wrinkles. “I do remember…one night that June, I heard him yelling at someone up on the balcony.”

  Inwardly I shrugged. Jared yelled at everyone. “That could have been me.”

  “Nah. He never got angry at you, not like this. It was he and another fella arguing something fierce.”

  “About what?”

  “Can’t rightly say. But it was nighttime and I remember thinking it was strange they were here, because it was too dark to row and too close to a race for them to be on the erg machines. And they wasn’t fighting about rowing, I’m sure, or I woulda stuck my nose in and given them what-for. No, it was about something else, something I couldn’t understand. The other boy wanted something from your boyfriend, or wanted him to do something, and he wouldn’t. They got pretty heated. I told ’em to pipe down and they went away real quick after that.”

  “Do you remember who he was talking to?”

  He shakes his head. “It was so long ago. Have you been to the site? Where he’s buried, I mean?”

  Caught off guard, I hesitate. “Never. I mean not since—”

  “It’s a beautiful spot. I stop by every so often, to clear the brush and such. Haven’t been there for a month, since I twisted my knee. But you should go, pay respects. Might help you put it all to rest.”

  I look at him uncertainly. Tony does not know, of course, why I am here, that a simple visit to Jared’s grave will not bring me peace. “I would, but it will take at least an hour to walk there and another to come back. I need to get back to London before then.”

  “And you never were much for bikes,” he recalls. “You want to borrow my scull?”

  I hesitate. Part of me wants to run from the boathouse. I have come far enough. But Tony is right: I should go. I need to go. “Please.”

  “All right,” he says. “But don’t break my bloody boat!”

  I cannot help but smile. It is an old joke, his admonishment to each of the coxes as they set off down the river. “I won’t, I promise.”

  Ten minutes later I am seated in the narrow, single shell, two oars resting neatly in my lap. “You remember how to do it?” he asks, wincing as he crouches down on the bank beside me. I nod. It was Tony who taught me to scull over a few quiet Sunday afternoons in the Michaelmas Term of my first year. You couldn’t be a good coxswain, he said, without knowing how to row yourself.

  “I’ll have it back in an hour.”

  “Door will be unlocked if I’m not here.”

  “Thanks, Tony.” I start to push off.

  “Wait a minute!” He slaps his forehead, then grabs the edge of the shell so roughly it threatens to tip. Water splashes over the side, soaking the front of my pants, as he pulls me back into the bank. “I just remembered who Jared was arguing with that night. It was the blond boy. Loud one.”

  My stomach jumps. “Chris Bannister?”

  “That’s ’im. He was captain that year, I think. Don’t know how I could have forgotten. The two of them were always together. But it was the only time I ever saw them fight.” He shakes his head. “I’m such a daft old man.”

  “Not at all. But you don’t happen to remember what they were arguing about now, do you?”

  “I wish I could.” He releases the boat, staring off into the distance.

  “Thanks,” I say again, pushing off gently from the bank once more. I look over my shoulder to make sure nothing is coming, then lean forward in my seat, arms extended toward my ank
les. I bend my knees, sliding my bottom toward my feet, moving slowly so as not to upset the boat. I can feel Tony watching me from the bank, appraising my technique, how much I remember. As the oars enter the water, I push back, straightening my legs and drawing my arms into my lap, sending the boat backward with a short wobbly motion. As I begin the cycle again, my movements grow more confident, fluid. When I turn back, Tony has disappeared.

  Looking over my shoulder once more, I guide the scull past the boathouses. This is not the river I knew; as a cox, I faced forward, steering us through the obstacles ahead. But now I see the scene behind unfold as the boys had, the town fading into the horizon, the houseboats that line this stretch of the river appearing then disappearing again in the mist.

  As I paddle beneath Chesterton Footbridge, I can feel the river unfolding ahead. Grassy reeds line the bank, fens stretching endlessly into the gray horizon. Settling into the rhythm of my stroke, I let my thoughts return to what Tony said: Jared and Chris were fighting shortly before Jared’s death. It wasn’t unusual for them to disagree about running the boat club, but Tony said it wasn’t about rowing. And it was strange for Chris to be the one yelling—he idolized Jared. Usually Jared’s temper got the better of him, even after we started dating and I had, as the boys said “mellowed him out.”

  As I pass under the railway bridge into the Long Reach, I gaze over my shoulder once more. The river is quiet at midday, broken only by the occasional fisherman along the bank. A vision pops into my mind of a spring evening. Jared and I had gotten Chinese takeout and carried it down the towpath, dropping to the ground by the water’s edge and watching the sunset behind grazing cows as we ate, neither speaking. Things were so simple, peaceful. How did it turn into all of this?

  I steer the shell around the gentle curve at Ditton Corner. The river grows narrower here, the banks thick with trees on either side. A few seconds later, I turn onto Plough Reach. Ahead, on the left bank, a lone willow leans heavily toward the water, marking Jared’s grave. I take a final stroke, then brush the oars gently against the water’s surface, letting the boat run until it slows, guiding myself into the bank. I climb out carefully, pulling my weight forward with my arms as I’d been taught and crossing the oars against the bank so the boat will not drift away.