Black Diamond Fall

by Joseph Olshan

  Moments passed and at last she said, “Just tell me if you love him.”

  “I did. I did love him.”

  “You do. You still love him!” she accused, and finally he looked at her full on and slowly nodded his head. “Then why aren’t you guys together?” she agonized.

  And Luc’s eyes had brimmed with tears. “We had a misunderstanding. I left. And now he doesn’t want me back.”

  * * *

  He is climbing the wooden steps of the white clapboard building. The campus security guard on duty is a portly woman with thinning hair dyed honey-blond and clumsily striated with platinum highlights. He remembers she got involved in an investigation a month or so ago when Portia, Elizabeth’s roommate, reported that somebody had broken into their room and stolen a bunch of “intimate garments.”

  “What can I do for you?” The guard speaks with an accent that is either German or Scandinavian.

  “I just heard something about the Robert Frost farm?” The woman remains silent. “That it was broken into?”

  She stares at him, suspicious. “And this concerns you, how?”

  “I . . . I’m. My grandmother was a close friend.”

  Now the woman’s flat expression relaxes into questioning awe. “Ah,” she says. “You a Flanders, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Provost called your mother. Maybe thirty minutes ago. Have you spoken to her?”

  “Not yet.” And then retrieves his phone from his pocket. A text from McKinnon saying the flashlight is primed, but nothing else, no other messages. “I heard stuff was broken? The place was set on fire?”

  The woman’s hard Teutonic features are set to discourage any further inquiry. “We are instructed not to give out any information right now. I would suggest that you get hold of your mother.”

  Knowing he’s reached an impasse, Luc says, “Okay, thanks,” and hurries out into the frigid night. He exhales heavily, his breath curling into the numbing air. The last thing he wants is to listen to his mother ranting on about how she always knew a break-in was going to happen, how she’d been warning the college for years and unsuccessfully lobbying them to install an alarm system. He realizes there is nothing he can do about the Robert Frost house for the moment, but at least he can find the ring.

  Outside the wind has picked up and he stops for a moment to blink grit out of his eyes. The icy pathways and the streets are strewn with abrading sand. It has been a particularly brutal and snowy winter, and the plowed drifts on either side of him rise up into five-foot-high bleachers. Deep winter is something Luc has always loved, even more than the glorious, temperate Vermont summers, but part of his preference is the result of his father forcing him to take on whatever physical labor jobs were offered to high school and college students in the summer: tarring weather-beaten roads with a crew of mostly older and scraggly men, donning iridescent orange vests and directing traffic under a relentless New England sun that tanned his skin so deeply. Winter meant freedom.

  He no longer needs to stop at home to borrow McKinnon’s flashlight. He pats Elizabeth’s LED to make sure it’s still safe in his pocket. As he hurries along, the wind is moderate now, the moon lodged above a hill to the west of campus, and he can see a swath of ivory trickling through the trees. The pond lies flat and silver under the moon, and he remembers Thoreau’s description of Walden Pond as an unbroken mirror—just like it is now, even in a varnished glaze. Arriving at the cleared hockey sward, he extracts the flashlight and trains it on the perimeters, thinking that from an angle, he might catch a metallic glint. The shaft of light contours the drifts, and at once he can see a puck lodged there like a small cornered animal. He takes this as a promising sign. Venturing farther out on the ice, he cadges the puck and stuffs it in his coat pocket, feeling a little more hopeful now that he’ll find Sam’s ring. Then chafes at himself for losing it, for wearing it around his neck, which was always precarious, not to mention chicken-shit. He just should have left it on his finger. Even in the pain of losing him, Sam had said nothing about taking the ring back, allowing Luc to imagine that Sam still wanted him to wear it.

  Luc’s phone vibrates in his pocket, and he awkwardly yanks it out to see a phone message from “Mom.” No way will he subject himself to her manic scramble for facts about the Frost farm. Right now he cannot be enlisted in her drama. And he certainly has no desire to explain where he is or why he can’t talk, just as he was never able to tell her about Sam. It’s one thing to say, “I’ve fallen in love with a man,” quite another to say, “He’s actually the same age as you are, Mom, and chances are, in the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire, you have people—friends—in common.” His mother, despite her own misgivings, would have insisted on meeting Sam, and even had Sam agreed, it’d be hard for any parent to accept their child loved someone old enough to be his own father. And such romantic age differences are never dignified unless perhaps an older man is courting a much younger woman whose companionship everybody assumes is paid for, her sex paid for, her love paid for.

  But Sam is different. He’s probably leaving for Utah just about now, hell bent to ski Black Diamond Fall with his buddy, Mike. Didn’t Sam once say, “I’m on a timetable, Luc, I’m not getting any younger.” Luc imagines Sam taking pictures and videos of the ascent, of the final gratifying run to the bottom of the canyon.

  He kneels and the pond is cold on his bones. He lies down and, cheek to the ice, begins sweeping the flashlight beam. Unexpected tears of longing trickle down—he had no idea they were coming—and his wet face momentarily bonds to the cold surface. He rears up and wipes away the frozen salty crud, then lies down again and propels himself around with his legs, his eyes scouring the light’s field of vision. He’s just about to give up when he notices a glimmer of something and fumbles with the flashlight until he finds it again—an object coruscating on a snowdrift at the far corner near where they’d put up their makeshift goal. The ring! It must have bounced and rolled across the ice. He gets up and starts moving toward it and then feels the warmth of someone’s bodily presence behind him.

  February 16; Salt Lake City, Utah; 31 degrees, wind and light mist

  Sam opens his eyes to find Jenkins sitting in one of the hard chairs, the detective staring dolefully at his notepad, but not writing anything.

  “You been here long?”

  The detective’s large brown eyes come to rest on him. “Maybe ten minutes.”

  Pointing to his leg, Sam says, “They have me on some good drugs for this. So I sleep a lot.” He sighs. “Which is probably a good thing.” The man merely nods. “So how long you in Salt Lake for?”

  Glancing at his watch, Jenkins says, “Until I fill in some chronology.” The detective’s curious, colorless eyelashes momentarily distract Sam.

  “Oh?”

  “If we can go back to February eleventh, can you tell me specifically what you did between five p.m. and the time you boarded your flight for Utah?”

  Sam casts his mind back. “I dropped my dog at the dog-sitter a little before five. Went home, sent some emails, finished packing, and left for Boston around seven.”

  “Did you make any phone calls?”

  Sam tries to remember. “Didn’t make any, but I did get one.”

  “From?”

  “Heather, the dog-sitter.”

  “What time would you say she called you?”

  “Just after I got home from dropping Panda off.”

  “Can you give me a time?”

  “Around five ten.”

  “How far do you live from the dog-sitter?”

  “Ten-minute drive.”

  “And the reason why she called you?”

  “She didn’t think I’d left enough dog food. She asked me for the brand name. It was almost like she sensed that she’d need to get more.”

  Jenkins nods. “Any other
calls?”

  “No. Not that I can remember.”

  “How long would you say it takes to drive up to Carleton from South Woodstock?”

  “An hour and ten,” Sam says without hesitation.

  “So you’ve driven it before?”

  “Quite a few times.”

  “Because?”

  “To meet Luc for dinner or coffee, or . . .” Sam sighs. “Hang out at a motel.”

  “How long would you estimate it would take to drive from Carleton to Logan Airport?”

  Sam shakes his head, now realizing where the detective is going. “Three at least. Maybe a little more?” Jenkins merely nods. “But from my house in South Woodstock, driving up to Carleton is in the wrong direction from Logan.”

  Jenkins agrees, peering at Sam unwaveringly. “But for the purpose of discussion: Let’s say you actually were in Carleton and left Carleton at six forty-five. Do you think that’d be enough time to get to Logan Park and Go by ten-oh-three?”

  “I guess. But why do you say ten-oh-three?” Sam asks.

  Hesitating a moment, leaning back in his chair and crossing his slim legs, Jenkins says, “We obtained a copy of the parking record. So I know you got there at ten-oh-three.”

  “Wow, you’re thorough.”

  Jenkins smiles. “As I was saying before, Luc Flanders was last seen around six p.m. Walking back toward the pond where he’d been playing hockey. So let’s say you left home at around five fifteen, and got to Carleton at six twenty-five. That theoretically could leave thirty-five minutes . . . for a meeting.”

  “I guess it could, but like I said, I didn’t go up there.”

  “When was the last time you did go there?”

  “Maybe early December.”

  “So a few weeks before he broke it off with you?”

  “Right.”

  “Was there any warning that he was going to break it off?”

  “None at all.”

  “The last time you spoke to him, was there anything particular he said to you that might have given an impression that he might be thinking about . . . going off somewhere?”

  “No.”

  “Presumably back in December he gave you his reasons for breaking it off?”

  “Said he was freaked out about the whole thing. And just needed time away. It’s what they all say.”

  “They?” Jenkins asks.

  “What the dumpers say to the dumpees.”

  Jenkins can’t help but laugh. And then Sam watches the detective’s eyes flitting back and forth in some calculation. “Could there have been somebody else?”

  “He got involved with that girl when he got back to school.”

  Jenkins shakes his head. “I don’t mean her. I mean another man.”

  Despite the dulling effects of the painkillers, Sam feels a sharp surge of nausea spiraling up through his gut. “Not that I know of. Not that he said.”

  “Did you ask him if there was another man?”

  “Yeah, we talked about it.”

  * * *

  “Don’t go dark on me,” Sam was saying with admirable restraint when he finally reached Luc in January after Christmas break. “I know we’re not together anymore. But can’t we still talk?”

  “Of course we can talk.”

  “When I didn’t hear back from you, I almost drove up there.”

  “You said you’d never do that.”

  “I was afraid something might have happened to you.”

  “Look, it’s not the best time,” Luc said. “My roommates . . . we’re in the middle of Ping-Pong.”

  “Beer pong?” Sam asked, and Luc actually cracked up.

  Then keeping his voice deliberately low, Luc said, “You know there are times I don’t answer the phone or send texts. That I just switch off.”

  This was, unfortunately, all too true. The longing he felt for Luc so unbearable, it was difficult for Sam to breathe. And yet somehow he had the presence of mind to ask if there was somebody else.

  Luc waited a moment. “There is somebody else,” he admitted. “And maybe it has something to do with my being out of touch.”

  Sam gasped,”Another guy?” feeling a jolt of jealousy.

  “No, of course not another guy!” Luc exclaimed almost angrily. Then he softened. “A girl. She’s a year behind me.”

  Lightened considerably by relief that would turn out to be fickle and temporary, Sam said, “So I suppose you’re falling in love with her now?”

  Quite unexpectedly, Luc got choked up and couldn’t answer for a moment, but finally said, “I don’t know.”

  Just then background noise and Sam heard knocking and “Hey, Lucas, we need your opinion here.”

  “I really have to go,” Luc said. “They’re bugging me.”

  “Don’t you think they figured out where you went all those weekends?”

  He sighed. “They probably have.”

  “Can you just keep in touch?”

  “Didn’t I pick up the phone? Always better to call. You know how much I hate texting. Anyway, I’m writing an email to you. You’ll get it very soon. And then you can reply.”

  * * *

  “So he promised to email you,” Jenkins resumes.

  Sam feels the familiar desolation of rejection. “Yeah. But he never did.”

  “So you didn’t hear from him by email?” Jenkins repeats.

  “Nope. Just spoke to him that one time on the phone.”

  “In January?”

  “Right. In January.”

  And then Sam grows aware that his broken leg has begun throbbing again, the pain taking on a life of its own. He glances at the large red digits of the clock on the sickly green wall and realizes he won’t be able to get another oxycodone for another hour. “Shit, this fucker really hurts.”

  “Do you need a few minutes?”

  “No, what I need is painkillers.”

  At just that moment, an unfamiliar Latina nurse comes into the hospital room holding a clipboard, smiling broadly and warmly. With a glance at Jenkins, Sam says to her, “I think I’m due for something for the pain.”

  Looking surprised, the nurse peruses the chart and then replies confidently, “Says here not for another fifty-five minutes.”

  “Well, that’s wrong. There was some confusion with the nurse who was here before.”

  “She went home.”

  Now Sam knows he can press harder. “She gave me one an hour earlier than she thought. We were talking and she got distracted. I’m due for one now. And I’m in a lot of pain.”

  The nurse shrugs and says, “Okay, be right back,” and leaves the room.

  Sam glances sheepishly at Jenkins and says, “It’s not going to kill me.”

  “I know. But I need you to be as clear as possible. Painkillers blur things.”

  “Well, I can’t be coherent if I’m distracted by pain, can I?” Sam says.

  The nurse returns a moment later with a pill and a small cup full of water. Sam takes his medication and thanks her.

  Once they’re alone again, Jenkins says, “So we gathered that both you and Luc Flanders use America Online accounts?”

  “Yeah. It’s a dinosaur but it has good instant messaging. Luc prefers that to texting.”

  “Why did he?”

  Sam remembers early on in the relationship and the flurry of inebriated texts he used to get late at night like, Why is it the way it is with us? Why can’t I put my finger on it? Why can’t I understand it? Why do I think you can see into me? Why do I hate that? But why do I love it, too? Why do I hear you talking in my head? Why do I love being underneath you? Why do I think about driving down to see you, even if it’s only for the night?

  “Texting got us into trouble. We had several misunderstandings this way. With instant
messaging, clarification is more . . . instantaneous.”

  Jenkins says, “Presumably you know that America Online allows one person to see if the other person has read their email.”

  “I do know that.”

  Jenkins straightens in his chair.”I’m going to be honest with you. Our IT guys went into Luc’s email and found three emails he wrote to you in January. And because it’s America Online, they could see that his emails to you had been read. So either you read them or somebody with access to your account read them.”

  At first Sam gives no response; he’s fervently trying to understand what Jenkins could mean. But then begins to piece it all together. “But that can’t be. Like I said before, I received no communication from him after Christmas. Electronic or otherwise.”

  Jenkins insists patiently, “And I’m saying that his account with America Online indicates that you read these three emails.”

  “I know what you’re saying. And I’m saying then somebody must have my password.” Sam feels deeply chilled, and the antiseptic smell in the hospital room intensifies.

  “Can you think of who might have gotten hold of it?”

  Sam tries to think. “No. Luc is the only one I can think of.”

  “Did you give Luc your password?”

  “I don’t believe so, but I may have. Sorry, I just don’t recall.”

  Looking weary and leaning back in his chair to stretch, Jenkins asks, “Have you noticed at all that your email has been tampered with?”

  “No.”

  “Did you use that email address with . . . other people besides Luc?”

  “That’s the thing. I set up the account just to communicate with him. So, no.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “And did you happen to check this email account the day you left?”

  “I check it every day. Hoping to get something—anything—from him. Especially because the last time we spoke, he said he was writing to me.” A rush of anxiety causes Sam to begin shivering. He crosses his arms for warmth and stares at his interlocutor. “I check the emails so much that I would have noticed they’d been read. They still would have been in my in-box.”