by Scott Carson
Fleming had his back turned, but Aaron was sure that it was him. He was standing in the water. Almost on the water, it seemed, but a thin slat of moonlight ran directly in front of him, and because of this Aaron could see that he was actually standing on something just beneath the surface. The water rushed around his knees but the current seemed to have no effect on his balance. What in the hell was he standing on? The water out there was deep, and yet Fleming stood in the middle of it with the assured balance of a man on a sidewalk.
“That’s much more than an alarm,” he said clearly. “It’s a sacrifice.”
When Fleming said sacrifice, Aaron moved backward, a stabbing pain in his foot, but the pain was useful now because it cleared his head. He was not imagining this man in the water, but the man in the water was imagining someone else, and Aaron needed to get the hell away from him—fast.
He gave up on backing away and turned to face the Silverado. He had the keys in his hand, and he hit the unlock button and the headlights flashed, bright in the darkness, and he felt exposed and frightened and so he began to run, ignoring the pain, sure that Fleming would be coming for him now. When his hand fell on the door handle, he half expected to feel Fleming’s hand—or, worse, a hand that didn’t belong to any living man at all—fall on his own shoulder.
No one touched him, though, and then the driver’s door was open and he was heaving himself up into the seat and only when the door was slammed shut and locked did he chance a look out the window.
He was alone. Mick Fleming was out of sight, shielded once more by those young, thin birches that weaved like skeletal fingers in the night.
Aaron gunned the engine to life and spun tires pulling out of the lot. When he made it to the top of the drive where the road ran above the dam, he didn’t bother to stop, just pulled out and banged a right turn. This route would take longer, but it also would not take him past Mick Fleming’s car in the woods.
He was willing to endure the extra miles to avoid that.
The dashboard clock glowed green: 12:37.
Aaron would make it home within the hour as he’d promised his father.
He did not know if he would tell his father what he’d seen down here, though. After this afternoon, how could he?
The memory of Fleming’s words chased him along the dark winding road.
That’s much more than an alarm. It’s a sacrifice.
Aaron wrapped both hands tightly around the wheel, pressed the accelerator, and sped away from the Chill.
22
Steve stayed awake until Aaron returned. When his truck pulled into the drive and the front door opened, he almost got out of bed to check on his son, to thank him for honoring the one-hour deadline… and maybe smell his breath and check his pupils.
He couldn’t do that, though. Steve was anything but subtle when it came to studying his son for inebriation, and despite all of the day’s madness there had been a tenuous trust building between them. If not trust, at least an open dialogue. Steve didn’t want to risk that.
Instead, he left the bedroom door shut and thanked the Lord that his son had made it back home whole. Or mostly whole, at least. Aaron thumped into the house and up the stairs like Long John Silver entering the Admiral Benbow Inn. It sounded as if he’d given up on using the crutch already, but he was home.
Steve filed the missing crutch in well behind the hallucinated murder and the morning arrest and the alcohol and drug abuse, and then he slept, comforted by this simple knowledge: his son was home.
Once, that had not seemed like so much. Tonight it was more than enough.
Gratitude, like expectation, moved on a sliding scale.
* * *
He woke when the rain began again.
It was just after six and the sky was beginning to fill with light, although fresh clouds were building as if determined to thwart the effort. Steve lay in bed and tried to recall the last morning without rain.
Nine days ago? Ten?
He shut off his alarm before it sounded, then rose and dressed cautiously, determined not to make any noise to wake Aaron. The boy needed sleep. He’d surely not gotten any in jail, and the physical and mental battering he’d taken the previous day had to have been exhausting.
He’s also not a boy, Steve chastised himself. Aaron was twenty-three years old. A man by any legal measure, as he was about to discover in the Torrance County courthouse.
And yesterday he’d seemed like a man, too. First at the dam, telling the story of the killing and owning up to it. Then, after the shock of his hallucination wore off, he’d bounced back like a man, continuing to own his disaster, albeit on different terms, promising to enter Peaceful Passages.
That couldn’t have been easy.
And it wouldn’t be easy today when Steve drove him there.
Steve didn’t really know that much about the process. The paperwork said that there was a patient intake meeting, which probably meant some discussion with a therapist for Aaron and some discussion with a financial planner for Steve, but once that was done, did they check Aaron right in and keep him?
He slipped out of the bedroom and crossed to the kitchen, the old wood floors creaking beneath his weight. Upstairs, Aaron’s door was closed and all was quiet. Steve snuck a look out at the driveway and was pleased to see that his truck was still there, meaning Aaron hadn’t left again in the night. Then he was embarrassed for checking. No trust.
They would fix that, though. They were going to fix it. Something redemptive had happened at the Chill yesterday. They’d both believed the worst was ahead, but then Mick Fleming had wandered out of the woods, and as unsettling as that moment had been, Steve now believed that it was a good thing. Whatever had happened down there in the water and the rain had affected his son deeply. Perhaps that was a blessing.
He turned on the electric fireplace in the dining room, which threw faux firelight and real heat. Lily and Aaron hated the thing, always preferring the woodstove, but that required work, not a remote, and Steve’s mornings were generally rushed.
Today, though, he supposed he was not rushed. He’d take his time talking to Aaron and figuring out the plan. Take a day off work, his first personal day since Lily’s funeral, and focus on his family.
He stared at the flickering orange light and then picked the remote back up and turned the electric fireplace off. He walked outside, where a light but steady rain was falling, and he gathered some pieces of split hickory and cherrywood from the pile beside the shed, then brought it inside and filled the woodstove. By the time he’d lit a fire with newspaper and cardboard and gotten the cherrywood to catch, filling the house with its rich scent and putting out a deeper warmth than anything electricity could replicate, he was pleased with the extra effort.
Maybe Aaron would notice. Maybe he’d appreciate it.
His door was still closed. That was fine, though. Let him sleep as long as he could. He’d earned the rest.
Earned it? You think he earned a damn thing yesterday? Remember the jail pickup in the morning? Remember the lunacy he spouted off in the afternoon?
Steve tried to push the negative thoughts from his mind. Today he would be patient. Today he would not shout and he would not sheriff.
It was his wife who’d turned the title into a verb. Don’t sheriff me, Steve. The memory made him smile.
He prepared his breakfast of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, another subject of Lily’s amusement. Do you think the voters would have second thoughts if they knew their sheriff ate a kid’s cereal each morning? Want to try an egg, or at least maybe some Wheaties?
Another memory, another smile. With the good memories and the warm fire, it had the feeling of a positive day. The first in a while.
Before adding milk to his cereal, he called his chief deputy, Sarah Burroughs. She was already at the office. No surprise. Sarah worked harder than anyone in the department. Steve had scarcely begun to explain his need for the day off when Aaron’s door opened.
“I’ll call you back,” Ste
ve said. “But don’t expect to see me today, all right? If you need anything, call.”
He’d just hung up when Aaron came into view. He was dressed in workout pants and a sleeveless shirt, and Steve saw the bruises and cuts lining his arms. He was pale and hollow-eyed, but he looked at the woodstove and smiled.
“I’m surprised you remember how to use it.”
Steve made a scoffing sound. “I’m not that reliant on the remote.”
“No?”
“No.”
“So the smoke backing up isn’t because you forgot the flue damper?”
Steve got out of his chair and hurried into the dining room and saw that tendrils of smoke were leaking out of the closed stove door.
“Son of a—”
“I got it, I got it.” Aaron turned the thumbscrew that opened the damper on the flue. On the other side of the little window in the stove door, there was nothing but a faint glow of embers. The lack of airflow had choked out Steve’s fire. You had to have all the forces balanced or that would happen. It required more attention than the remote.
“We’ll probably need to restart that,” Steve said, kneeling and opening the door with the lighter in hand.
As soon as he opened the door, the trapped smoke gusted out, and both of them coughed. Steve looked up at Aaron to apologize and saw his son smiling and suddenly he was smiling, too.
“Okay,” he said. “Maybe I’ve been using the electric one more than I should.”
As if on cue, the smoke detector in the kitchen began to shriek.
They both started laughing then.
“You get that,” Aaron called over the wailing alarm, “and I’ll handle this!”
Steve went into the kitchen, stretched up on his toes, and hit the reset button on the detector. The kitchen was filled with smoke now. Well, I wanted him to notice my effort, Steve thought, and then he got to laughing again as he crossed the room and pushed open the kitchen window to let the smoke bleed out. He tried to remember the last time he’d laughed with his son.
By the time he’d finished fanning the worst of the smoke out the window with a dish towel, Aaron had a fresh fire going in the stove, one that would last. He was stretched out in front of it, soaking in the warmth, his long, lanky frame unfurled across the floor. There was something about the posture that made Steve think of the way Aaron had looked at thirteen and fourteen, stretched out on the living room floor playing video games, seeming to add another inch of height with each passing week. On one of those nights he’d refused to move when Lily was vacuuming. She’d gone into the garage and gotten Steve’s Shop-Vac, put it on reverse, and blasted air into Aaron’s ears, chasing him out of the room like he was a puppy.
“What?” Aaron said now, looking back at Steve, catching his smile.
“I was thinking of the Shop-Vac.”
That was enough. Aaron’s lips twitched into a grin. “I still have hearing damage,” he said. This was the old interplay between him and Lily over the incident, and so Steve offered her old retort.
“Went right through your ears like there was nothing there to stop it.”
Silly old lines between mother and son, but the wrong line for this morning. Aaron managed to keep his smile but they both knew the moment had broken. No reference to his brains—or lack thereof—was funny right now.
Maybe it’s time to get to it, then. Tell him you took the day off and ask him if he wants to call the rehab clinic first or if we just drive down there together…
“Hey,” Aaron said, breaking the silence that had built, “do you have a number for that police officer, Mathers?”
“Huh?” Steve stared at him through the smoky air.
“I wanted to thank her. And apologize.” Aaron kept his eyes on the stove. “I figured an email or a text… I don’t need to talk to her, but I’d like to send her a note.”
“I appreciate that, but I don’t think you need to. She was—”
“I’d like to,” Aaron said, and then, with a trace of churlishness: “It’s not about you.” He seemed to regret the last statement, because he looked back and added quickly, “It’s something she should hear from me, that’s all. You know?”
Be proud, Steve told himself. This is the kind of ownership you want him to take, the kind of maturity you’ve been waiting to see.
But for some reason he still didn’t like the idea. Worse, for some reason he didn’t trust Aaron’s words. He thought he’d seen a glimmer of the old evasiveness.
He couldn’t think of a good reason to disagree, though, so he simply nodded and said, “They’re all first initial, last name over there, and then the agency. DEP.NYC.gov.”
“NYC?”
Steve nodded absently. “It’s our lake, but it’s their water. She’s technically with the city.”
“Okay. First initial would be what?”
“G. Her name is Gillian.”
“Gillian Mathers.”
“Yeah.”
“She from around here?”
There it was again, the forced-casual voice and lack of eye contact that was usually offered alongside some bullshit story about what he and Tyler Riggins had been up to the night before. But why would he be lying?
“No. Well…”
Aaron looked up. “Well?”
“When she was a kid. Her mother died, and then her grandmother, and her father finally came up and took her back to the city. I don’t think she ever came back to Torrance until she was assigned here.”
“The family has roots here, though?”
“Yeah. A long time.”
“Really?”
Aaron sounded surprised, and Steve thought he understood it. Gillian had her father’s skin, not her mother’s. There weren’t many black families in Torrance County who had a long history in the town. Weren’t many in the Catskills, period. Between Albany and the city were a lot of white faces.
“Her mother’s side,” he said, and then, awkwardly, “The eyes are her mom’s.” He felt self-conscious, observing anything about another cop in the way he was now, but there was something about Gillian’s blue eyes that reminded him of the way she’d stared at him when she was just a little girl waiting for answers about her grandmother. Answers he’d never been able to give. For a lot of years Steve had wondered why Molly Mathers decided to cut and run. Did she hate the girl’s father for leaving, or hate the girl’s mother for dying? Had she simply had enough of raising children and wanted out?
“Dad?”
“Sorry.” Steve blinked himself back into the moment. “What’d you say?”
“I asked if her family had been here as long as ours?”
“Maybe longer.” Steve was unnerved by Aaron’s intensity. “What’s it matter?”
Aaron’s eyes went back to the stove. “Doesn’t. I just thought the name was familiar, that’s all.”
“Oh. Well, my grandfather—your great-grandfather—he had some run-ins with them, I think.” This memory drifted back to Steve like it was riding the smoke—vivid yet elusive, impossible to grab.
“Run-ins?”
“I think back with the dam construction,” Steve said slowly. In truth, he did not remember the story. It was one his grandfather had never liked to talk about. “Maybe they lived out there. I honestly don’t remember.”
Aaron was watching him intently again, and Steve felt as if their roles had reversed and now he was the one who was being scrutinized for a lie.
“Let’s have some breakfast,” Steve said. “I might not be able to handle the fire, but I can still make cereal.”
23
Mick was home before sunrise, but he waited in his car before entering the house. Come inside too early and Lori would have questions, such as why he’d said he was staying the night only to return at dawn. He had an answer for that one, at least, though he didn’t relish the idea of sharing it.
For others, though?
No answers. Not even close.
This time the memories weren’t all lost t
o fog. He remembered the bluestone wall that had emerged out of the moonlight, remembered each careful footstep out across it, remembered the boy with the pail and the man named Anders Wallace. He remembered starting down the road.
The rest was gone.
Well, not entirely. Because this time it seemed he’d taken notes.
He turned the dome light on, flipped open the leather cover of his notepad, and stared at the neat rows of notations in his unmistakable handwriting. They led off with an equation. It wasn’t one he’d calculated by hand since college. He recognized it, though, understood all of the components: force, pressure, area, acceleration of gravity. All of the forces that were always at work on a dam, with one interesting addition: an uplift pressure calculation.
All of the work was waiting to be done, all of the numbers needing to be filled in except for one: 20.17. He studied that for a moment. The number represented the height of water in the equation, but it didn’t make sense, because there was much more than twenty feet of water behind the dam. Twenty meters? Still wrong. And why was there any consideration of uplift pressure? It was the only element that didn’t seem to belong until he glanced beneath the equation and saw the measurements.
Intake Chambers 1, 2, and 3.
16 feet, 7 inches—6.40 miles
15 feet, 4 inches—7.31 miles
14 feet—6.94 miles
Then, neatly lettered below that:
Three hundred million gallons daily with a frictional loss of 3 feet per mile, and of sufficient size to deliver the full 500,000,000 gallons daily with an additional loss of about 15 per cent. The estimated time of completion is four and one-quarter years at a cost of $26,000,000.
Mick read it three times, as if eventually the words would make sense. They never would, though. He understood the ideas: they all referred to water delivery from a reservoir. However, it certainly did not describe what he’d been asked to observe at the Chilewaukee and, moreover, it didn’t describe anything that could be coming from the Chilewaukee, which had never been tapped.