“Wow,” Ryan says. “Why now, Jeremy? Why are you unloading this now?”
I rock myself back and forth a bit. And realize I’m telling him this not only because I want to play tit-for-tat, but because I want it to end. Talking about it is like my gait practice. A first step.
Ryan is still looking at me and nodding. “That’s a lot of baggage to carry around.”
“You’re telling me. It’s even heavier on one leg.”
Ryan shakes his head and looks down. “I feel terrible about what happened. I feel terrible that we don’t seem to be friends anymore. I miss—I miss our talks, bro. You know, the way we’d analyze the stupidest shit until four AM? So you drank. You’re still you, Jeremy. You’re still the same cool, weird kid I’ve always known.”
“Yeah. I guess am.” I stare at him. He’s relieved. He seems to think this is the reason I brought him here. I feel almost guilty probing him like this. I wish I could let it go. Go back to the way we used to be. The three of us. But all those years of doing his bidding, cleaning up the mess he made, fester under my skin like an infected splinter. “What about you, Ryan? You’re just a basic red-blooded American guy. What you see is what you get, right? No dark secrets? No skeletons in the closet?”
Ryan’s face crumples. It happens as if in slow motion and I almost regret the grief that flashes briefly across his features. “Is this about Susannah? Is that why you dragged us out here? Fuck, man. I told you already.”
“Just tell me the truth, Ryan. I just need to know for myself,” I say softly.
Ryan buries his face in his hands. He looks up and makes no attempt to hide the raw emotion that twists his features. “I have my own problems, Jeremy, hard as that may be for you to believe. I don’t know what happened to Susannah. If I’d killed her, I swear, I couldn’t live with myself.”
“You couldn’t?” I ask, “I hated myself for drinking, yet I’m still around. There’s all kinds of ways we make excuses for ourselves.”
Ryan shudders. He’s fighting tears, I realize.
“I-I have to go,” he mutters. “I can’t, Jeremy.”
“You can’t what?”
“I can’t live with myself anymore.”
He stands and bolts out of the playground like he’s been shot from a cannon.
“Hey! Don’t do anything stupid, Morgan!” I call. I certainly can’t run after him. “You can still talk to me!”
I watch his car peel out of the parking lot. I swing some more, then finally pick and lunge my way back to my car.
C H A P T E R
t w e n t y - f o u r
Now
Once home, I fall onto the bed, my limbs twitching with exhaustion. It felt good to have some physical exertion. Really good. I decide to take a nap and to do some more gait practice afterward. When I get that bionic leg, I’m going to break records for the time it takes me to be walking again.
My phone rings and I jump like a startled cat. Barely anyone calls me anymore.
It’s Marisa.
“Hi!” I try not to sound too eager. But I want to talk to someone. I want to talk to her.
“Do you have any plans for New Year’s Eve?” she asks hesitantly.
I opt for deadpan to hide the thrill that heats the back of my neck. “I was thinking of going ballroom dancing.”
She giggles. “I-uh. Well, my family is having this party. I kind of don’t want to be there, so I thought we could go to a movie, I mean, if you want, then you can come over for a bit and say hello.”
My stomach does a back-flip off the high dive. “You want to me to meet your family?”
“They know all about you. They won’t be weird or anything.”
“N-no.” I imagine myself in a spotlight, everyone staring. “But I promise, once I get my leg, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll—I’ll even go ballroom dancing if you want.”
Marisa snickers. “I would never ask that of anyone. But what about the movie?”
“Yeah , I—” My voice dies in my throat, the phone in my hand lost to a sudden wash of blackness. I hear nothing. Feel nothing. See nothing.
Not now. Please not now.
Shimmering with light, a figure stirs the absolute darkness. My body leaps to attention as if flipped on by a switch.
I feel her weight as she climbs onto the bed and straddles me, her hipbones sharp against my groin, the feel of silken hair hanging in my face. Soft lips rake my chest with kisses, then slide lower until my body is a wire pulled taut enough to snap.
There’s no escaping this.
The room vibrates with whispers. I love you, Jeremy. Love you.
Who else can love you?
“No,” I whisper, live wires threading under my skin. Pleasure crackles along my nerve endings, but beneath it is the slightest hint of violence, like the calm before a lightning strike.
No one.
I would cry out, but my breath has been sucked away. I can’t help but wonder if she knows how I covered for Ryan. How I hurt her. And if this is her revenge.
Her faint shimmer fades to black and I’m shot from the sky and falling fast, the words lingering in my ears. No one else will love you like I do.
I know I’m not dead, because my heart slams madly against my ribs.
It’s an eternity until the terrorized scream explodes from my lungs. I don’t know how long I lie immobilized, unable to see before my vision clears and I can sit up again. I’m wired, as if ten thousand volts are ripping through my flesh. I gulp in air in shallow gasps.
I find my phone. There are ten missed calls from Marisa. It’s only been fifteen minutes.
My hand freezes on the call button.
A chill crawls up my spine.
She’s watching my every move.
C H A P T E R
t w e n t y - f i v e
Now
I need a drink more than I need my next breath. But I know there’s nothing to be had.
Another ten minutes go by before I can find my voice. Shakily, I dial Marisa. Maybe Marisa is just trying to be nice. Maybe Dad is even paying her to drag me out of the house. Despair turns my weak little bubble of happiness to lead.
“What happened? We got cut off and then I tried to call like seventeen times and you never answered.”
“My battery died. I couldn’t find my charger,” I say tersely, trying to modulate my voice to its normal tenor.
“Oh. Weird timing. Now about the movie—there’re a couple of good things playing in Manor Woods, and I thought maybe you’d be more comfortable there, anyway.”
“Yeah, about that. I, uh, I don’t think it’s such a great idea.”
“What? You just said you’d—Jeremy, what is it? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I know my voice rings flat and unconvincing, but it’s the best I can do with my heart smashing its way out of my chest. “I just overdid the gait exercises, so I’m a little tired and sore. And I’m just not up for a night out yet.”
“You sound different. You didn’t have another one of those spells, did you?”
“No. I—”
“You sure you don’t want me to come over?” There’s an edge to her voice and I realize that, for some reason, maybe Marisa actually wants to be with me. But no. I’m delusional. Why would she want to be around an amputee with an attitude problem?
“N-no. I—I’m going to rest awhile. I’ll, uh, call you later.”
But I’m not going to rest. I may never close my eyes again.
I need to think. To feel the cold clear air pushing in and out of my lungs, even if I’ll never feel the road under two feet again.
I make it down the driveway to the road with only a little slipping and sliding. The bitter cold air slices into my lungs. But it feels good. I press forward, my gait smooth despite the icy patches. I hurry on, awkwardly lunging and stepping, lunging and stepping. I glance over my shoulders, unable to shake the feeling that the woods have eyes. But, seduced by the sheer pleasure of moving forward, even at my o
ld man pace, I fall into a kind of a rhythm until I’ve almost lost track of how far I’ve gone.
I lurch along so lost in thought I don’t notice where I am until I recognize the guardrail and how the road bends at an almost ninety-degree angle. It’s the place where I was hit. The place Susannah disappeared. Through the network of tree trunks, I see the hungry waters of the reservoir.
A great heaviness tugs at me, as if the water has a magnetic pull. The air is elastic, a wall of resistance, and I’m so tired of pushing against it.
I can slip into the water and float free of this life.
It’s always been a fight to take the next step. The next breath.
With one leg, it’s even harder now.
Snow flutters down in powdery flakes. I gaze longingly at the rocks that slope to the reservoir’s edge, and begin to climb down.
Somehow, I reach the shoreline without falling. I stare deep into the murky water. I can see the smooth boulders that line the bottom. Beyond the dam, the rushing waters of the Gorge collect.
Like the tangle of roots that twist beneath the soil of Riverton, the water connects us, too. I’m gripped by a sudden aching desire to see my mother again. To curl up in her arms like the little boy who used to ask her to chase the monsters away.
A thought drops into my head. The jewelry box in my dream. I’m missing something. Are the clues to my mother’s death concealed inside it? Did she really never mean to leave me?
Tears pool on my lashes and slip down my cheeks. The water, dark and welcoming, calls me to be with my mother again.
Darkness catches me and descends like a shroud, blotting out the desolate terrain. I sink onto the rocks, consumed by it.
All you have to do, says the wind through the trees, is slip into the water. We can be together.
I’m sprawled on the rocks beside the reservoir. Alone, the scent of vanilla lingering in the bitter air.
It would be easy enough to fill my pockets with stones like Virginia Woolf and sink to the bottom. The thought of the black water filling my lungs, choking off my air until my lungs explode, sends me into a panic. I can’t do it.
I’m even too freaking afraid to kill myself.
Instead, I gaze across the gray water. Tiny Pirate Island sits, a monument, a blip on the horizon, a hiccup of happiness in our pathetic history. I think of my Pirate Queen, the tree with three trunks, the Buffalo nickel—and what will never be.
I begin to haul myself back up the rock pile leading to the road, but slip, my palms grazing the sharp rocks. I cry out as a crutch slips from my grasp and clatters down the hill into the reservoir.
Heaving myself over more rocks, I climb until I make it to the road, relieved it was just my crutch and not me that met its end.
By now it’s getting dark. Snow falls steadily, blanketing the world in a lacy white haze. Cold penetrates my layers of clothes and finds its way into my bones.
With one crutch I can only move in awkward hops. The way back home is uphill. My crutch isn’t getting much traction. I debate calling Marisa to rescue me, but decide against it. I don’t want to explain what I’m doing out here. And I just can’t face her.
I jerk at the sound of a car rolling to a stop behind me. A door slams. Patrick Morgan strides toward me, chuckling softly. “Most people have the sense not to come out on a night like this.”
“It was daylight when I left,” I say through clacking teeth. “I just wanted to get some air.”
Patrick Morgan laughs thunderously. “You can take the boy off of the road, but you can’t take the road out of the boy, huh? It won’t be long, Jeremy, before you’ll be running for real.”
I nod, shivering too hard to respond.
Patrick Morgan helps me into the passenger seat, then turns the thermostat up to toast. As the warmth heats my bones, I steal a glance at the craggy lines of the elder Morgan’s strong features. Thick silver hair stops short of the stunning blue eyes, like a patch of crystal-clear sky breaking through storm clouds. I’m sure that in his day Patrick Morgan was just as extraordinary as his son, though these days Ryan is a pale shadow of his former glory, as tightly wound as an over-tuned guitar string. But the elder Morgan is almost Zenlike in his steady calm.
Patrick Morgan drives in silence, the black BMW hugging the snow-sheathed roads. It seems to be taking us a good bit longer than it should to reach my street.
His deep voice shakes me out of my daze. “I wonder what your father would say if he knew the risks you’ve been taking. The poor man has been through so much.”
“Risks?”
“I would consider hiking in a snowstorm on one leg to be a potential risk.”
“You have a point, there.”
“And trudging through an unplowed playground to sit on a swing. Not the smartest move.”
“Ryan told you we met?”
I glance out the window. Patrick Morgan is driving very slowly, and I realize we’ve passed the turn off for my street.
“Ryan was extremely upset when he came home this afternoon. What did you say to him?”
“I—” Suddenly the car is too hot. I tug at the zipper of my jacket. “I told him about—some of the things I’ve been going through.”
“Of course. It must be very hard for you,” he says mildly, “but is that all?” I can’t shrug off the feeling that I am on the witness stand and Patrick Morgan is cross-examining me.
“He said he was upset that we haven’t been that close. I told him it’s not his fault about the accident. It isn’t.”
The car rolls to a stop on a deserted, dark portion of Route 112. “That was very charitable of you, Jeremy. But I’m certain you brought up a few of the other things that have been on your mind. Like what you blurted out at our annual Christmas party, for instance. It wasn’t very polite.”
“I-I—,” I stammer, completely at a loss in the face of Patrick Morgan’s penetrating gaze.
“Ryan tells me you spoke about Susannah Durban’s disappearance.” He pauses while I squirm. “Jeremy, we all know how fond of that girl you were, and maybe your devotion made you a bit blind to her many flaws. Susannah was very troubled, as Ryan can attest.”
I hang my head, wondering how much of this so-called behavior I’d missed while I was busy laying flowers at the altar of my lovesick obsession. Was I truly that blind?
“It’s understandable that so much loss would be hard on a boy,” Patrick Morgan continues.
I nod, my voice trapped in my throat.
“But you’ve deeply upset my son with your line of questioning, Jeremy. Your very odd and provocative accusations.” His eyes blaze. I shrink lower in the seat, my heart thudding.
“That’s how it started with your mother.” His words ring in my ear like the crack of a judge’s gavel. “First the paranoia. The visions. The complex intrigues. The conviction that people were out to get her. Then came the drinking. Then…”
I’m hunched in the seat, jumpy with the pointless urge to run. Doubts flutter inside my stomach like moths in a jar. Am I really just crazy like her, after all? I did almost jump in the reservoir.
“In Riverton, we all pitch in to help each other. Mrs. Morgan tried everything she could to help your mother. It was heartbreaking to watch her best friend unravel. But in the end, no one could save her from herself.” Patrick Morgan’s deep voice drips with the mournful tones of an undertaker.
“But you, Jeremy. You can still be helped. I’ve spoken to your father about appropriate facilities once you’re fitted with a leg. Very progressive places that will help you cope, deal with your addictions, and help you learn to manage your illness.”
I have no response. He’s tied a noose around me with his words. And he very well may be right. I might be full-out insane. A danger to society. A danger to myself.
After all, I’m the guy who’s been fucking a ghost. And then, the memory of the locket bubbles into my addled brain. Trudy knows.
“What about Trudy Durban? Did she try to help?”
For a moment, Patrick Morgan’s face contorts into a twisted mask of rage and I’m afraid he’s going to reach over and snap my neck. But his flexible features smooth and his voice oozes out, calm and reasonable.
“Trudy Durban is a reckless woman who cloaks herself in religious trappings. She never could face the fact that her daughter was out of control. That others had to step in and try to save the poor girl. She couldn’t have helped your mother even if she’d wanted to.”
He stares at me, his face lit eerily by the glow of the dashboard lights. “Remember to mind your manners, Jeremy. I’m going to speak to your father to ensure that you visit Dr. Kopeck regularly and get the meds you need to control your illness before it consumes you.”
He drives me home, physically carries me into the house, settles me onto my bed and says with an odd smirk, “and Jeremy, I think we should keep our little talk to ourselves. You can keep a secret, too, can’t you?”
C H A P T E R
t w e n t y - s i x
Now
The light on the answering machine is blinking. Five messages from my dad.
He’d been trying frantically to reach me for hours. He got called out of town on urgent business for the remainder of the week. He’ll be back sometime during the day on New Year’s Eve. He will have Marisa stop by to bring food, check in on me, and bring me to my appointments.
So I’ve got the house to myself. I can tear the house apart and hope to find the liquor I know my dad couldn’t bear to throw out and drink myself to death instead of the more watery alternative. Or I can figure out what really happened to Susannah. And my mother.
The answers, I’m convinced, are in the attic. If I can connect the dots, understand the clues, it will come to me. This can’t be that different than the way historians piece together facts. If they can do it with artifacts and lost civilizations, I can find the root of my own mysteries.
With one crutch gone, I sit on the bed and contemplate the damn wheelchair, vowing to figure out an alternate mobility device. After a flash of inspiration, I fashion an ad hoc crutch from a mop handle. The attic climb is easier with the strength I’ve built in my arms, and the good news is that I can clomp around to my heart’s content without worrying about Dad hearing me.
Breaking Glass Page 19