by Jude Watson
Rachel has gone all out. Butternut squash soup. Turkey, stuffing, creamed onions. Mashed potatoes and sweet potato casserole. Carrots. String beans. And two kinds of pie.
It’s all good, but I can’t eat. Every bite sticks in my throat. I have to pretend to eat, pretend to join in the conversation, but I can’t stop thinking of what happened to Billy Applegate and Hank Hobbs.
And Rachel. Is she in danger, too?
In the middle of the pumpkin and the apple pies, the phone rings. Rachel gets up, a smile on her face. “That’s probably my parents. I left a message before.”
We hear her say hello in the kitchen.
Nate looks at me. “What’s up, kiddo?”
“What?”
“You’re not yourself.”
“I’m in a food coma.”
“You hardly touched your food.”
“It’s just weird, being here, I guess.”
He puts his fork down. “You must miss her on holidays.”
“I miss her every day.”
“But it’s worse on holidays, isn’t it? It’s like you’re running on empty.”
Yes, that’s exactly what it’s like.
“I always hated holidays myself,” he says.
Suddenly, we hear Rachel sob.
We push our chairs back and hurry into the kitchen.
“Honey, what it is it?”
Rachel looks up him, tears streaming down her face, her hand still on the phone in its cradle. But she’s smiling. “Our baby. Sonia. Our baby is ready for us. She’s ready to come home.”
Nate rushes to gather Rachel in his arms. “That’s great, honey. That’s great.”
Does he mean it? If he doesn’t, he’s a great actor.
But isn’t that the point? That he’s a great actor? A con man?
Rachel swipes at her tears. “We have to leave for Moscow within a few days, they said. There’s so much to do, I can’t think…”
“I’ll take care of everything,” Nate says. “Our passports are ready, you have baby clothes for Sonia, you even have diapers! Don’t worry, sweetie, we’re set. I’ll buy the tickets.”
Rachel holds out her hand to me. “Gracie. Gracie, I’m so sorry to cut your visit short. It’s just that, they said we’d have very little notice—”
“I understand,” I say. “It’s okay. I can take the bus back.”
“No,” Nate says. “I’ll drive you. I can do the trip in a day, then swing back here for the flight.”
But he won’t come back, I know. He’ll take me back, but he’ll keep going. He’ll have her money, probably all the money she was going to use to pay for Sonia, the money for the tickets, everything. He’ll clean out the business account. And he’ll keep driving, maybe to Canada. I know it.
He’ll leave her, just like he left all the others.
TWENTY-SIX
Rachel starts to call her family in Ohio to tell them the news. The kitchen is full of her voice, her laughter. Nate and I do the dishes. As he scrapes, I rinse and put things in the dishwasher, carefully choosing the right slots for the serving pieces, the pitchers, the gravy boat. He scrubs the pots while I wipe down the counters. He puts away the leftovers while I dry the crystal. We do all this half-listening to Rachel.
Yes, they just called me…
I don’t know, we haven’t looked up flights yet, but maybe Saturday…
Lots of paperwork and things, but we’ll maybe be back in two weeks…
I know, it will be cold, we have plenty of warm things for the baby…
You will? Oh, you doll, you, thank you…
Isn’t it strange, I think, that Nate has no one to call? He’s about to be a father, after all.
Every so often, he puts his hand on Rachel’s shoulder as he goes by. There is so much trust in the way she covers his hand with her own. He leans over and kisses the top of her head.
My hands shake, and I can’t see for a moment, as rage fills me up. These are things he did with mom. He touched her gently. He smiled at her. He listened to her plans. And all the time, he was waiting to leave us. Wanting to leave us.
Did he steal from mom, too? I don’t know. It’s not something she would have told me, I realize. She would rather me think of my dad as a flake than a crook.
After all the dishes are done and the leftovers put away, Nate sits at the kitchen table with Rachel to make plans. I go upstairs. On the way, I sneak back into Rachel’s office. I slip out the photograph of Nate at the Bastille Day party. I tuck it in my pocket. I need something to show Joe, proof that Nate had known Hank Hobbs.
Turn my own dad in? You betcha.
Here is what I think happened twenty years ago.
Billy Applegate broke into Hank Hobbs’s house and stole the incriminating memo. But somehow Nate got hold of it—stole it from Billy and gave it back to Hank Hobbs—for a price. That’s how he got the money for the down payment. Maybe he never expected to go through with the house, but he did.
Billy suspected Nate and confronted him at the house. Nate killed him.
And then, years later, Nate bumps into Hank Hobbs somewhere, probably in Seattle. Hobbs remembers him as the guy he’d bribed all those years ago. Maybe something happened, maybe something clicked, maybe Hank Hobbs suddenly realized that Nate had killed Billy. So Nate killed Hank Hobbs. Nate pushed him off the boat and watched him drown.
It all makes sense, but I feel like I’m missing something.
I toss and turn for a long time, but I finally fall asleep. I fall into a dream so deep, I can’t wake up.
I dream that I’m breathing dirt. There’s mud in my mouth and nose, and I can’t get it out.
I’m being sucked down through the bed. Things are sliding against my skin, dragging against me. I feel oozy mud between my fingers, between my toes, in my mouth. I am drowning in a swamp.
Spiky branches are above me, and I try to grab them. Ferns crumble in my fingers.
It seems to take an enormous effort to wake myself up. I spring up from the bed and run to the bathroom. I switch on the light and splash my face with cold water. Over and over until I can breathe again.
When I come up, pushing my wet hair behind my ears, I suddenly know, with a blazing certainty, why Nate was on Beewick. It wasn’t just to kill Hank Hobbs.
The wetlands reclamation project.
The land is being drained. On Saturday.
And the body of Billy Applegate will surface.
Did he hope the killing of Hank Hobbs would delay it? Stop that last-minute million-dollar grant? He was wrong.
Did he hope to find out more, to find out exactly when the draining would happen? Did Shay tell him? Is that why he’s planning to leave Rachel, before the body is found and a murder investigation is reopened?
I need to get back. I need to find out. I need to know where Billy Applegate lies.
The next day, I wait in my room until he leaves on an errand. I pull on my jacket and make sure the photograph is still in my pocket. I can’t let them know I’m leaving, because I’m afraid he’ll track me down.
She’s sitting at the kitchen table, a teapot next to her elbow and a mug of tea in one hand, while she writes a list with the other.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” she says. “There’s so much to remember, I’m making lists like crazy. Can I get you breakfast? Lunch?”
“I thought I’d go for a run.”
“A run? But it’s raining.”
“It’s always raining.”
She laughs. “True. Seize the day, I guess—I’ll stick with hot tea. I’ll have some breakfast for you when you get back.”
I can’t tell her. I can’t tip him off. But I can’t leave her like this, either.
“You’ve been really nice to me,” I say. “I just wanted to tell you—I’m really glad about Sonia. She couldn’t have a better mother.”
Her eyes fill with tears. “That means a lot.”
I go to the door and open it. “Just…be careful.”
I shut the
door on her puzzled frown. And then I start to run.
I catch the bus to Seattle. I have to wait another hour to catch the next bus, the one that will take me to the ferry. It’s late. By the time I board, it’s past two o’clock.
The bus lets me off at the ferry. I am so glad when my feet hit the deck. I stand at the railing, my back to the line of cars driving aboard. I face the island in the distance.
The ferry ride is so short that most people don’t get out of their cars. Just the pedestrians, like me, and the bicyclists, and a few people wanting to stretch their legs before we dock.
I am lucky. I see Nate racing up the stairs before he sees me. I see him searching the deck, his head swiveling. I feel his urgency and his anger.
I duck down the left stairway, down to the deck where the cars are. I keep my head low. He’ll have to get back into his car in three minutes, when the ferry docks. I am so glad it’s only a twelve-minute trip.
I don’t see him again. I stay hidden. The ferry begins its docking maneuvers. Car engines start up. The slow exodus begins, people patiently lining up and driving off.
I see his Volvo bump off the ferry and zoom away.
I don’t have much time.
TWENTY-SEVEN
It’s almost dusk when I reach the swamp. I check the shadows and realize I don’t have much daylight left. Just enough time to go in, see what I can pick up, and leave. If I can pinpoint the area where I think Billy Applegate’s body lies, I’ll have more leverage with Joe. It’s a big area, and I want to be sure. I know the final drainage will take place early tomorrow, and I need more than hunches to get Joe out here.
The first place Nate will go will be Shay’s. She’ll probably freak, and he’ll have to stay while she calls Rachel, calls Joe, calls everybody she can think of. I hate to put her through another disappearance of mine, but I can be home within the hour, or even sooner, if I’m lucky. I’ve made sure my cell phone is off, so I won’t have to feel guilty about ignoring the calls for a while. I’m not ready to talk to anyone yet.
I know the wetlands area well, thanks to Shay. She actually enjoys hiking around in this stuff. The reclamation project has used narrow wood decking to build a trail through the swampy area to make it easier for the scientists to gather information over the past years. I know the way, since Shay has brought me out here many times. I used to think Shay’s work was boring when I first got here. Well, I still think it’s boring, but I sure have learned a lot about wetlands.
I hadn’t counted on how the trees would block the remaining light in the sky. I wish I’d thought to bring a flashlight. I decide I’ll only go another couple of hundred yards and then try to get a sense of what I’m looking for. I remember my vision—I remember the way the branches hung, and the ferns that lay like a blanket nearby.
The only trouble is, I don’t know if the vision was of the present or the past. If it was the past, then things have changed since then—trees have died, have grown, ferns have given way to bushes and scrub.
But the landscape is looking familiar now, and I can feel the back of my neck prickle, and it isn’t from the falling mist. I’m close. I know it.
There was once a pond here. The water has been draining for weeks. I put one foot out and sink, but not too deeply. I know if I walk through these trees, I will find a dry area to stand on. I know there will be ferns and dead leaves. I know because I saw it.
The ground sucks at my shoes, and I have to drag my feet out while I walk, a creepy sensation. Something is pulling me onward, and I could no more resist it than I could a cold drink on a hot day. It will bring me relief, somehow. I will know. I will know everything that happened. I will know my father. I will know what is broken and can never be fixed, and I will know how to go on.
The land is firm, just as I’d seen. It used to be underwater. The light is fading, but I can see something shine ahead. A glint.
I go closer. Mud-smeared, filthy, but still intact. The edge of a shower curtain.
And unmistakably, a human hand.
I want to run, but I can’t, the mud is too thick. But the panic inside me is rising, and I can’t seem to make headway. The trail is just yards away, but it might as well be a mile.
I fumble for my cell phone in the pocket of my jacket. I stab out Joe’s number.
I hear the tones chime.
And I understand at last what I’ve been hearing in my head.
Dah doh din daa do…
It wasn’t a tune. It was the electronic tones of numbers on a keypad.
I disconnect the call before it rings. Slowly, I punch out numbers, trying to match the tones. It takes me a while, but I get it at last. 7 1 4 8 6.
It’s not a phone number. What is it? I play the tones once, twice. I close my eyes and feel the keypad, concentrating as I listen.
I see fingers stabbing a keypad.
I see Jefferson Ferris pushing the alarm code at his house.
Seven. One. Four. Eight. Six.
And behind my closed eyes, those numbers form a date. July 14, 1986.
July fourteenth. Bastille Day.
We met at a Bastille Day party.
The photograph of Nate at the party.
What am I missing? What is there that I can’t see?
“These days we have to remember so many codes and passwords, it’s a wonder our heads don’t explode. My secret system is to code everything on my dog’s birthday.”
“You remember your dog’s birthday?”
“No. That’s the problem.”
People pick codes that mean something to them. Wedding anniversaries. Their children’s birth dates. Jeff Ferris’s code was the same date that Hank Hobbs met Betsy Dunwoody. But why?
And then I remember something. When Hobbs’s house was broken into twenty years ago, the alarm didn’t go off. He’d told the police that he thought he’d set it. What if he had? What if the thief knew the code?
What if Hobbs used the date he had met his fiancée for his code? What if someone knew that?
Someone like Nate? He’d been at the dance.
He’d been at the dance with Jeff Ferris.
Dad sold Hobbs his first house on Beewick. A big sale for us, back then.
If Jeff Ferris knew Hank Hobbs’s alarm code, he could have been the one to steal the file and pass it along to Billy. But why?
So many whys, and it all happened so long ago. I’m confused now. Confused by things I’ve seen, confused by what people say and what they don’t say. Confused by facts that jumble together in my head. Confused by all my visions. Everything seemed to point in one direction, but now it feels as though they point in so many directions, sending me spinning like a top, bouncing from one thought to another.
Nate and Jeff at the Bastille Day dance.
I was never a great swimmer…
Jeff Ferris is a great guy. He coaches at the high school. He knows Mason and Dylan, who are both on the swim team…
I can’t untangle this. All I can do is go straight to Joe and dump it on him.
I turn my back on the shower curtain, but suddenly, I see it again.
The shower curtain rips off the rod. It falls to the bathroom floor. He drags the body onto it. The carpet is soaked with blood. He rolls the shower curtain around the body. It is hard to do because his hands are shaking so badly. He rolls the body into the curtain. Beads of sweat roll down his nose and drop, drop, drop onto the curtain. He secures the curtain with twine. It is no longer Billy he sees. He just sees…a body. Soon he will forget this. He will move on. After he lays Billy to rest. Not Billy. The body. The body.
Hobbs treads water. Blood trickles into the water. He’s getting tired. The boat circles him, chugging. Circling. Circling. Waiting…
I feel the fear of Hank Hobbs as the cold water locks him into a paralysis that is pure terror.
He doesn’t have the strength to scream, or the breath. The scream is inside his head. It is inside my head, and it is so loud that at first I don’t hear the so
und of someone tramping through the marsh and dragging something behind him.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I look down as I drop the phone. It seems to fall in slow motion as I bend to catch it. It disappears into the murky water.
I sink into the muck as I drop to my knees to search. My hands are in the muddy water and I’m crying now, crying hard, as Jeff Ferris appears, dragging a sled. Something a kid would use on a snowy day, flat on the bottom, curled in front. A coil of rope is slung around his shoulder. He’s carrying a shovel.
He looks surprised and dismayed to see me. “Is that you, Gracie? What are you doing here?”
“I’m here…looking,” I say, stammering, “with Shay and Joe.”
His eyes shift. “Where are they? I didn’t see a car.”
“No? Oh, they’re around,” I say. “Shay wanted to do a few things before tomorrow… You know, the last draining will take place…”
I can feel something shift. He narrows his eyes, and he smiles. “You’re lying.” He takes a step closer to me. “Why are you lying, Gracie?”
“I’m not,” I say, taking a step back. I can’t help it.
“You look afraid. If one were paranoid, one might think that you suspected me of something.”
I search for something to say, but there is nothing to say. He knows I suspect him. He knows Shay and Joe aren’t here.
“It’s really a drag, having a psychic girl around,” Jeff says, hitching the rope higher on his arm. “You gave me some sleepless nights, especially after I caught you at my house.”
“I don’t know what you mean—”
“Yeah, you do.”
“It was you,” I say. “You’re the one who broke into Shay’s house.”
“I didn’t break in. The door was open. Get your facts straight.” Jeff’s face turns nasty for a minute. “I wasn’t going to hurt you. I just wanted to scare you off, that’s all. And make you think it was Mason.”
“The shoes…”
“I got them from Mason’s locker—he always leaves it open. Beewick is such a friendly place. That’s one of the reasons I like it.”