As the attendants whisked Sam down the hall, Zack sneaked into view and kept stride with the gurney all the way to Room 107, waiting in the corridor while the nurses got her into bed. He came in wearing a grin and holding a small, crystal vase filled with hyacinths. “I rescued these while you were treated in the ER. Do you want me to put them on your nightstand?”
Sam nodded.
“If it’s all right, I’ll come back tomorrow and see how you’re doing.”
“I expect I’ll be cut loose by morning.”
“Can I give you a lift anywhere?”
“Tracey’s arranging for me to stay at your uncle’s place.”
Sam examined Zack’s face, a place where kindness dwelled, a kindness she had never seen before, except in Johnny Miller’s eyes, but Johnny Miller broke up with her after high school. Kindness didn’t last forever.
“Uncle Aaron’s place is a hoot. I’m sure he’ll be proud to give you the tour, too. Don’t fret over that ticket. Trooper Mitchell likes to go by the book, but Aaron’s reasonable. He’ll probably reduce it to a bald tire, what he normally does. Well, I’ll let the nurses get to their paperwork.” He winked at Tyra who winked back then left.
Sam’s cheeks heated over the fantasies flitting in her mind. For all she knew, Zack and Tyra might be a couple and Zack’s attentiveness no more than a courtesy.
Zack leaned in and whispered, “Tyra’s my cousin on my father’s side.”
“Am I some kind of family project?”
Zack smiled. “Could be.” He stood a head taller than Tyra. Then again, flat on one’s back, anyone would look like Paul Bunyan’s twin next to a female Tom Thumb. Zack squeezed Sam’s hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow, right after church. I’ll go to the early service and be here by ten.”
A male nurse came in and slapped a stack of papers on Sam’s nightstand. “Let’s get your particulars, and let you get some sleep.” He harpooned a series of medical questions, hardly taking a breath as he scribbled her answers in tiny boxes on the forms. A waste of time. What did Sam’s broken arm from twenty-five years ago have to do with hitting a moose today? She signed the paperwork, not legibly, but she could hold a pen. “Be grateful for small blessings,” Justine would say.
When seventeen-year-old Samantha entered Columbia University, she vowed to deliberate her decisions, her mentors Reason and Practicality. Every pragmatic bone in her body pressured her to call Abe to come bring her home. For years, she’d envied those people who could decide at five o’clock what movie they would see at six. Or people who walked down a street with no particular destination.
What harm would there be in staying a few days in a friendly, quaint town with a safe name like Haven? Besides, curiosity demanded she find out how a town justice got away with operating an unlicensed business, no matter what he called it.
She sniffed the hyacinths, switched the overhead light to dim then shifted to her left side, uncomfortable, but satisfied. For once in her life, Samantha Knowles would do the incalculable thing.
4
Zack put away his dishes from the dishwasher, stretched his back muscles, then made himself another cup of hot chocolate. Taking care of his apartment and working two jobs seemed a bit of a stretch for a man who lived with his parents until six months ago.
It’d been a long day, anything but boring, packed with challenges that set his mind awhirl. The moon had already begun its descent into a new day, but one item still remained on his to-do list. He booted his Word program and opened up his resume. The Bronx needed a few good men. Why not him?
He corralled his errant thoughts, heaving back and forth like a stuck car, reasons to leave Haven, and reasons to stay. He’d taught the same grade for ten years and still lived with his parents, more pathetic than a sitcom mama’s boy. No wonder Ellie called off their engagement.
If he made principal, then he’d have something to boast about—a school administrator’s license and a master’s degree good for little else. Unfortunately, Frank Simmons wasn’t about to retire any time soon, at least, not in the next five years according to the teacher’s pool. He was a good man, a faithful husband, loving father, and community supporter, but a lousy principal—only not lousy enough to be fired. Still, he didn’t make a difference where the kids were concerned; his energies expended more on keeping the status quo, a better politician than an educator.
Zack pondered his imponderables. If he didn’t make a move soon, he’d be doomed to spend the next half a decade in Frank’s shadow. Frank’s refusal to address discipline problems and his habit of ignoring staff problems left Zack with two options. Either fight his boss at every turn or slip into mediocrity. The students deserved better.
“Every negative has its positive,” Dad always said. Finding a positive in swampy disillusionment would take more than a serenity prayer. Lately, between Jonathan’s spiraling moodiness and Frank’s escalating arrogance, Zack’s roster of heavenly petitions grew exponentially.
Lord, isn’t it time to leave this mountain?
Life in a teeming city would be different than Haven, for sure. No matter. He’d show Ellie he wasn’t Mr. Dull—that Zack Bordeaux was more than a small town boy with a vision to match. He could be a school teacher by day, EMT by night, or possibly a New York City cop.
Not that he minded teaching, but he’d followed in his father’s footsteps without ever entertaining an alternate career. In fact, he enjoyed teaching when Frank allowed Zack to manage his classroom the way he preferred, with fewer lectures and more interactive experiences. Frank measured academic success by achievement scores, not the stretching of a youthful mind, fitting it for the future.
Zack grabbed a pen and started writing his pros and cons. On the other side of the paper, he listed alternative careers should he move to New York City. If he didn’t become a cop or teach in the slums or work as an EMT, he could write his own trauma series or a medical suspense novel like Coma. His hero could be an EMT who becomes a cold-case detective and figures out the identity of Jack the Ripper.
Get ready, New York, here comes Zack Bordeaux.
Visions of a red-headed tour guide danced across his mind, him and Sam holding hands as they tread Manhattan sidewalks, or strolled through Central Park.
Sam. Funny how the name fit her, an aura of witty attractiveness that etched a sensual sensibility—not model-pretty like Ellie. Ellie ripped out his heart and devoured it, like an ancient Medea, who killed her brother and scattered his parts on an island. “Love bites,” they say. Maybe he wouldn’t get so chewed up if he dated girls who were a little less model-perfect on the surface and had more inside the head.
Not as if Haven didn’t have its share of available women. Five had asked him out as their Sadie Hawkins date for the fireman’s fundraiser last month, though he’d turned them all down with the excuse he’d be out of town to run a marathon. He did go to Albany that Saturday, but sat the entire day by himself at the movie theater.
Zack reread his resume.
Bland—stick-your-finger-down-your-throat boring.
Not much he could do to soup things up without telling a tall tale. He’d never lived beyond the sanctuary of Haven, not even for school, a commuter right through his advanced degrees. Dullsville—that’s where he lived, and why Ellie left him.
“Face it, Zack, old boy. You’re doomed to live out your days in a place no one outside of Washington County has ever heard of.” He yawned with the realization that not even his EMT experiences were worth putting on paper. Calls that made the headlines came infrequently, mostly tourists who got lost in the woods, or an occasional accident, like Sam and her moose.
Stuff Haven might talk about for a few weeks and then abandon when the next storm front moved in. Most of the 911 calls factored a little old lady who hadn’t had a bowel movement in six days. Not exactly fodder for motion pictures. Unless Zack took the proverbial bull by the horns, he was doomed to stagnate, his epitaph a pitiful one paragraph obituary in the local paper.
Jonathan had accused Zack of being afraid to try again after Ellie. If that were true, why did Sam slice at Zack’s reticence? If she recuperated in Haven more than a few days, decided to make the town her home, she’d be the one reason he’d need to stay. She called out to him like the mythical sirens, wooing him into something dangerous, a perilous precipice, an earthquake certain to tumble his fears of withering away in Haven. Her eyes drew him like an ebb tide out to high water.
Zack closed his document. He’d send out the resume later. A few more days wouldn’t matter.
****
Jonathan Gladstone threw another log in the den fireplace, then put back the file containing his father’s will. The document confirmed his lot—neither a tenant nor a landlord. He closed the steel cabinet with a shove, “There has to be a loophole, somewhere.”
He sat on Father’s leather chair, its oily coating dank, like the memories soaring through his mind, of Angelica and Father’s walks along the lake while he painted in the cabin. He could see them together, though they were too far away to read their faces. He knew Father was quite fond of her, but he’d never suspected subterfuge—until now. Had she colluded with Father against her husband—taken Dawn’s Hope from him with no hope of getting it back? He’d thought of all people, Angelica understood him—that she saw his love for Dawn’s Hope in his landscapes. She’d taken everything from him, his son, her life, and his own inheritance. Yet, he still loved her beyond reason, beyond the grave. Once he joined her in eternity, he’d forgive her, whatever her motivation, if he only had the courage to walk into the lake like she did.
Nor did he blame Father for his part, doing what he thought best for Dawn’s Hope, though Jonathan hated him for a hundred other reasons. How could Father have known Jonathan’s passion when father and son never talked? Richard Gladstone was a cold fish, as slimy as a swamp in late August, a deeper enigma than a Rubik’s Cube—that puzzle was at least solvable.
There had to be an answer somewhere in Father’s old journals, some clue that would prove Angelica’s noble intent, her soul too pure to have imagined any evil, any deceit against the man she loved. Her death, and Elliott’s just a bizarre accident.
Jonathan left the den and stormed into his adjoining studio. He threw the empty fuchsia paint tube across the room. Without the right color oils, he couldn’t finish the portrait before Angelica’s birthday. He’d promised her he’d join her after he completed this last tribute to her, and no other color would do for her gown. Now he’d waste more precious days. Sadie’s art store would be closed tomorrow. He’d either have to wait, or drive into Albany, an option he refused to entertain. Sadie carried the exact color he needed. He’d have to wait.
5
Sam stepped from Zack’s truck into a world from yesteryear, cobblestone as far as she could see to the east and west, brick façade that covered old factories remodeled into shops, and bakeries, and boutiques window-dressed to lure the wealthy tourist.
Zack retrieved Sam’s bag of borrowed clothes and her still-soaked purse.
What would she do for money? She’d only put a twenty in her purse, intending to stop at an ATM when she arrived at Stowe. Her credit card and bank card had stuck together, and she’d damaged the stripping when she’d tried to pull them apart at the hospital. They needed to be replaced, anyway. Both cards had become so worn, the cashier at the grocery store had a hard time swiping them, and the numbers were worn to unreadable. One of a hundred things Sam’d put off to put Styles behind bars.
Zack pointed toward towering buildings resembling abandoned factories. “Haven had a few textiles in its heyday, but mostly the town catered to merchants and sailors who transported the goods from New York City up the Hudson, through the canals that emptied into Lake Champlain, then on up the St. Lawrence River to Montreal.”
Sam veered to the side, and Zack managed to catch her with his free hand. “Be careful, Sam. A sling will throw you off balance. Dennis warned you your head injury might make you dizzy for a few more days, yet.”
“I know what Dennis told me. No need to repeat it.”
She took Zack’s arm, grateful he was there to lean on, and giggled uncontrollably, a laugh that gurgled from an unknown tap, perhaps a free spirit that came with the Capri pants Tracey lent her. “Please tell Tracey I’m grateful for the temporary wardrobe. Looks like she thought of everything—even a temporary purse until mine dries out.” Sam never would have bought a sequined, over-the-shoulder bag, but dry flash was better than wet practicality.
“I’m thinking maybe Tracey’s tastes don’t run along the same line as yours?”
“Still, it was very thoughtful of her. If she hadn’t come to the rescue, I’d have had to parade around in hospital pajamas until I could retrieve my pilot case. Even if my clothes somehow survived, I only brought a couple of changes with me. I’d hoped to do some shopping in Vermont.”
“Haven has a few boutiques on Main Street, although they cater mostly to the latest and zaniest styles, so Tracey says.”
If the clothes Tracey put in Sam’s pity bag were any indicator, a boutique too zany for Tracey must sell futuristic fashion, glittering baubles and lethally pointed shoes, way beyond the comfort zone of a hardly-ever-wears-plaid prosecutor. “I’d settle for anything, other than sequined tops and short-shorts.”
“You’d look good in short shorts, Sam. You’ve got nice legs.”
She should be insulted—the practical Sam would have been, but this free spirit she put on with Tracey’s clothes soaked up the male appreciation. “Thanks for the compliment.”
“If you want, I can take you to Albany to do some shopping, only about an hour from here. There’re a couple of big malls there. Glen Falls has a mall, and it’s closer. And Lake George has a lot of outlet stores.”
She didn’t need a closet full, only a few changes until she got back to Manhattan. She gazed the length of Main Street, a picture out of an impressionist painting. She imagined women in bustled day gowns and mustached gents in tailored suits strolling over the bridge or rowing down the canal that ran under it.
Zack pointed to three buildings resembling row houses. “Aaron and Sadie own these. They should be home since they go to a Saturday night service, and Aaron does his fishing in the early morning.”
The Lighthouse Lounge was located in the middle between Sadie’s Gift Shoppe and Arte Supply and Main Street Boarding House. Zack pointed to the farthest. “Aaron and Sadie live on the first floor. The upstairs is connected through all three of the buildings. The rooms are actually above Sadie’s store. She plans to open up more rooms in the near future. Go on in while I get your bag from the back of the truck. No need to knock. The doors are always open. Just walk in.”
“Which door?”
“Take the middle, but every hall and stairwell eventually leads to the Lighthouse.”
Someone had replaced the handle with an intricately carved silver soup ladle. She pulled it open and it rattled shut behind her as she entered a long hallway. When she came to the archway, the squeak of the door behind her as Zack came in startled her. She teetered and would have fallen if Zack hadn’t caught her. “Guess you were right about the sling.”
“Sorry, Sam, I didn’t mean to startle you.” He cupped his hands around his lips, forming the oldest of megaphones. “Hello! We’re here.”
A man wearing a khaki shir
t and pants approached them. A light beam ricocheted off tackle hanging from his broad-brimmed hat. “Welcome. I assume this is our lovely Miss Knowles?”
Sam shook the offered right hand. “You presume correctly, at least, the Miss Knowles part.”
Zack handed Sam the bag of clothes then motioned to follow Aaron’s lead. “Now, Aaron, you’d better be nice to our Miss Knowles. Remember the moose.”
“I’m a lot tougher.” Aaron winked—his flirtations unlike any judge Sam had ever known. “Sorry about your car, Miss Knowles.”
“Sam.”
“Sam it is. The troopers said your car’s at Josiah’s Towing and Salvage.”
“Yes, that’s what they told me, as well.”
“Josiah McIntosh is the best mechanic in these parts. Well, the only mechanic within ten miles, but I wouldn’t trust my vehicle to anyone else. That’s for sure. Anyway, I called Josiah to let him know you’d be staying here. I’m afraid he says there’s no help for your Lucille—”
Her heart sank. Poor Lucille. “How did—”
“My daughter told me. She thought Lucille was a great name for a car.”
Haven’s grapevine was faster than Facebook.
“He put a loaner aside for you until you figure out what to do about a vehicle.”
“I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying.”
“You still might need wheels. Don’t have cabs, trains, or buses in Haven, and it’s a long walk back to New York City. Josiah knows every car in Haven, who drives what, when and where. If he says a car is dependable, you can go to the bank on it, literally.”
Aaron droned on about the last car he bought from Josiah and how well it ran and never needed any work done, and that if a mechanic sold a car that good then he had to be pretty trustworthy as far as pre-owned cars were concerned.
Sam strained to pay attention. After all, Aaron would be hearing her case, assuming she had a plea to stand on. A fat yawn escaped in spite of her best efforts to stay focused. She clutched Tracey’s clothes to her chest.
The Other Side of Darkness Page 4