“What hand did that—boy put over your mouth.”
“Tom,” said the deputy. The sheriff.
She did not look away from her father’s eyes. “He was holding my right arm with his… his left, so it must’ve been his right hand over my mouth.”
“His right hand,” he said.
Moran standing there looking hard at her father, and her father finally relaxing his grip.
He took a breath and sat back. “Go on, Sheriff,” he said.
Moran shifted his weight. He adjusted his black, gadgety belt. “So you were underwater, Audrey, but then you got out.”
The water so powerful and so deep and yellow in the lights. She saw hair, golden hair, sweeping in the current, or was it grasses from the floor of the river? The current pulled at her, wanted her too, but the car would not let her go.
“How did you do it, Audrey? How did you get out of the water?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The car was stuck on the ice and I was stuck on the car. I guess I must have climbed up. I must have gotten the door open far enough to get my arm out and I must’ve used the door to climb up on top of the car—on top of the underside of the car—and I must’ve climbed from the car to the ice. But I don’t remember that. All I remember is lying on the ice, on my stomach, and looking at the lights through the ice, the headlights, the way they were shining on the underside of the ice just as steady and clear as anything. Like I was underwater looking up at them from below. Like everything was upside down. The sky, the water. Everything.”
13
HOLLY BURKE IS dead, her mind kept repeating. Gordon’s daughter is dead. Rachel saw his face again… his shut-down eyes. Still breathing!
She wanted to see her boys. Craved the weight of them in her arms as she had when they were babies. The smell of them. Her breasts aching for them once again.
Momma guess what, Marky said when she returned to the Plumbing & Supply that afternoon. He was at the glass door, spritzing away smears and fingerprints.
What, sweetie, she said, fitting her hand to the back of his neck.
He shrugged off the hand and said, The sheriff was here Momma the sheriff and the deputies and they were all asking questions and all wanting to find Danny.
Jeff Goss sat behind the counter, unsmiling, listening.
Did the men talk to you, Marky? she said. Did they ask you questions?
Yes Momma they asked me where is Danny and I told them he didn’t take me with him he went up to Uncle Rudy’s cabin him and Wyatt but he never woke me up he never told me anything he just went.
She turned to Jeff Goss and he said, his eyes on Marky, or perhaps on the half-cleaned glass beyond him, They’re going around talking to people. Anyone who might’ve seen her last night.
He scooped up some pink receipts and studied the topmost one. They talked to Big Man, Jeff said, but I don’t think they understood much.
Did you? she thought to ask. But didn’t. Jeff had been around Marky long enough, had heard enough of Danny’s translations, that he’d acquired, without much caring one way or another, she believed, a passing comprehension of Marky’s meaning in any number of routine situations. But did he understand what Marky told the sheriff and his men? And understanding it, did he then translate? Uncle Rudy’s cabin, he’s saying, Jeff might’ve said. Do I know where it is? Sure I do, Sheriff…
Jeff raised the receipt to study the one beneath it. Rachel standing there. Thinking. Trying to think. She’d come into the store intending to ask Jeff about last night—Danny had gone back out to give him a jump. But now she didn’t want to look at him again. She couldn’t seem to breathe.
Holly Burke is dead. All night in the river.
Marky, she said, get your jacket, please. We have to go now.
Gotta clean the glass Momma.
Tomorrow, Marky. Today’s a short day.
At home she was barely in the door, had barely glanced at the answering machine—no blinking red light, no call from her son—before she saw the car outside, in the street: the sheriff’s white cruiser, parked as if it had been there all day, when she knew it hadn’t been there just seconds ago. Tom Sutter and one of his deputies coming up the walk in their tan jackets, their stiff hats.
In the living room the TV went mute. They’re here Momma.
I know, sweetie. He could not see the drive or the walk from where he sat, but he’d heard the car doors shutting and it was not the sound of Danny’s truck, or he’d seen some reaction in her at the window, or felt it—she’d stopped concerning herself with how he knew the things he knew a long time ago; it was just who he was. If you were sad, if you were missing your husband, for instance, he would find you and put his arms around you. If you stayed up waiting for his brother to come home, and Marky yawned and went to bed, then you knew you could go to bed too.
Marky getting up from the couch now and coming to stand beside her. Her little man, so big now! Too big to send to his room, but she didn’t want the sheriff staring at him, asking him questions, upsetting him, and she said, Sweetie, go on up to your room, OK? Just for a little while. And he stood looking into her eyes like he understood perfectly—all her fear and all her love for him, and for Danny too—before he said, OK Momma I’ll go upstairs, and she put her hand on his face, and he turned and went up the stairs.
The sheriff introduced himself and his deputy, then told her they’d like to speak to her son, they’d like to speak to Danny, watching her face as she explained that she didn’t know where he was, hadn’t seen him since last night, and the sheriff making sure she was aware of the unfortunate news regarding… while the other man, Deputy Something, brushed past her with his eyes, ransacking with his eyes all he saw beyond her in the house, working his wad of chewing gum. They were trying to learn as much as they could about the night before, Sheriff Sutter was explaining. They understood that her son Danny had been at the bar, at Smithy’s, where Holly Burke was last seen alive.
Rachel wasn’t sure if this was a question, but she said she couldn’t say about that, she didn’t know where he’d been.
The deputy stopped chewing, watching her with his buggy eyes, and resumed chewing again.
After a moment—after Sutter asked—she let them in.
14
SHE’D SHUT HER eyes for just a few seconds, she thought, but when she opened them again the room had changed: the bright, hard sunlight gone from behind the blinds, doctor gone, the smell of cigarette smoke stronger.
“How long was I asleep?”
Her father handed her the water cup. “Not long. An hour.”
She sucked at the straw and swallowed the cold water. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I am. We made you talk too much.”
“It’s the drugs. Can you tell them to stop giving me the drugs?”
“It’s for the pain, sweetheart. For your arm.”
“I don’t care about that. Please, Dad.”
“I’ll ask the doctor.”
She turned to look at Moran then, who’d been standing back and staring at the floor, or his boots. Her father looked too, but when she said “Sheriff” both men turned to her.
“Can I ask you something, Sheriff?” she said, and Moran stood straighter.
“Of course, Audrey,” he said.
“Where is Caroline now?”
He glanced at her father, and her father said, “She knows. She’s asking about the body,” and Moran turned back to her.
“She’s gone back home, Audrey. Her folks flew up to get her yesterday and they took her back with them. Mr. Price, her father, drove up here to see you but you were still… sleeping. He and Caroline’s mother wanted to get her back home and put her to rest.”