“I barely felt it, Sheriff.”
“I don’t know how long you were underwater, but you were on that ice a long time. The EMTs had to chip you free with ice scrapers.”
“They did not.”
“Honest to God.” He smiled at her smile, but it didn’t last. “If that old man hadn’t driven by and seen the lights, the headlights, under the ice—”
“What old man?”
“The old man who called in the accident.”
“Who is he?”
“I wish I knew. He declined to give his name. Said he was just driving by and was too old to go down there and help. Felt real bad he couldn’t help, Ed says. But didn’t give his name and didn’t stick around.”
She looked off and said quietly, “Poor old feller. Didn’t they get his number from the call?”
“He called from a pay phone.”
“At the gas station?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Now who’s getting all sheriffy?”
She held his eyes. Outlasted him.
“The old feller is a dead end, Deputy,” he said. “Called and vanished. But thank God he called.”
They were silent. Then he looked at her and said, “What is it, sweetheart?”
She shook her head. She wouldn’t cry again. If you tell him you wish you’d never asked Caroline Price to loan you bus fare you are just telling him that the only reason Caroline Price is dead is because you were coming home to see him, because he’s so sick. Because he is dying. All of which he already knows.
She gripped his hand tighter. “I just wish I’d never left, Daddy. That’s all. I wish I’d never gone back down there after Christmas.”
“Sweetheart, I never could’ve let you do that. I needed you to be in school. You should be there now.”
“But we don’t have time, Daddy. There’s not enough time.” Now came the tears. She couldn’t stop them.
“Sweetheart. We’ve had lots of time. Your whole life. And they have been the best damn years of my life. Hell, I wouldn’t trade another hundred years of living if it cost me one day of knowing you. Do you believe that?”
“No. You’re exaggerating.”
“The hell I am.”
He watched her. Then he smiled, and patted her hand again. “Can I get you anything? Aren’t you hungry?”
“No, thank you.”
She looked at the cast, looking closely at the purple surface of the plaster, the edges of the individual strips where they’d been layered and shaped by another person’s hands before they dried into this hard shell. She wiggled fingers that did not look like her fingers so much as the pink legs of a creature that lived inside the shell. She said, watching the wiggling legs, “I thought of something when I was under the water, Daddy. Something I hadn’t thought of in a long time. Someone, I mean.” She didn’t look up. She could feel him waiting. Could feel his tightening heart between the dying lungs. “She was blond, wasn’t she,” she said. And now she looked at him.
“Yes,” he said.
“Long blond hair.”
“Yes.”
“I remembered that when I was in the water.”
“You were just a little girl then. You shouldn’t have known about such things.” He turned his head to cough. “I never should’ve had you in the car with me.”
“That didn’t make any difference, Daddy. We all knew. We’d stand around on the playground and say her name: Holly Burke.”
She saw the effect of this name in his eyes, darkening the blue like a cloud over water. He’d not found the girl’s killer—or had not found the evidence the law required. Had never given her that, given her family that, and now he never would.
“She seemed so old to us then,” Audrey said, “so grown-up and mysterious. But she doesn’t seem old now. She seems young. Even younger than she was.” The beautiful hair, that long fine girl’s hair, lit up and swaying in the current, in the lights.
He squeezed her good forearm. “I wish you wouldn’t think about that.” He patted her—kept patting until she looked at him and he stopped.
“There’s something I didn’t tell the deputy—the sheriff,” she said, and the moment she said it she felt him grow tenser yet. She felt his heart begin to slide.
“That’s all right,” he said. “It takes time, sometimes, to remember things. The brain just kind of…” His mind was running to the worst, she knew: What hadn’t she told him about those two boys, what they’d done to her?
She shook her head. “It’s nothing like that, Daddy. I just didn’t want to tell the sheriff something I wasn’t sure about. And I’m not sure I didn’t just imagine this.”
He waited. Watching her run her fingers up and down the purple cast.
“What is it, sweetheart? Tell me, and I’ll tell the sheriff if I think he ought to know. I’ll tell him you’re not sure—how’s that?”
She nodded. Then she told him about the scratches on the one boy’s face, the one who grabbed her. The scratches were fresh, but she knew they didn’t come from her own fingers; they ran small and neat across his face, ear to nose, like the scratches from a cat.
“Did Caroline do it?” her father said, and she said, “No. I did it. I must have done it with the backscratcher.”
He looked at her. “The backscratcher?”
“The backscratcher,” she said. “From Phoenix, Arizona. The lady at the gas station will show you. Can I have that, please?”
He handed her the cup and she sucked at the straw and handed the cup back.
“I must’ve hit him with it,” she said. “But then he took it away from me and I stopped. I stopped fighting, Daddy.”
He squeezed her hand hard. “Sweetheart, don’t—”
“Caroline fought, Daddy. She fought them so good. She fought them so beautifully.”
15
THERE WASN’T MUCH she could tell them, as there wasn’t much she knew, and just a few minutes after they left she had trouble remembering what they’d said, what they’d asked, trouble believing they were ever there at all.
She tried to call Danny again. Kept trying until, in the space between dialings, the phone rang and she answered, —Danny? But it was Rudy, her brother, telling her that everything was all right, Dan was all right, they’d found him up at the cabin, and there was no trouble and he was in custody.
In custody? Rachel said.
Not arrested, her brother said quickly. Not charged.
But in custody, Rachel said.
There’s a gray area, he told her, and he went on reassuring her, but Rachel’s mind was reeling. She was at the kitchen window, as she’d been the night before. Two yellow eyes looking in, the twin smiley-faces. Water, she remembered. The dog had rolled in something. She saw her son’s face, the look on his face when he saw her in the window.
There was nothing out there now. No truck. No son.
In custody.
It was dark when tires crunched in the drive, and she quickly turned off the TV. A car door slammed, tires crunched the gravel again, and in walked Danny. Rachel was up from the sofa but everything about him said Stop, don’t touch me. Marky lifted him in a bear hug until Danny said, Put me down, idiot.
Danny, Rachel said.
As if he hadn’t heard her, as if she weren’t there, he headed for the stairs.
Hey Danny where’s Wyatt? Marky said.
I had to leave him up there, with Jer.
Marky put his hands to his head, but he said nothing. He stood like that watching his brother.
Danny, Rachel said, talk to me—and he stopped on the stairs. Then turned back to her.
Why are you even here, Ma?
She stared at him.
Why aren’t you on your date?
Danny, she said again, but then faltered. His eyes so hard, so cold. What had she done?
They stood that way for a while, he on the steps above and she below, before he turned again and continued up the stairs. Marky watching him go, turning back to Rachel, and finally going up the stairs too.
She moved woodenly from room to room then, locking the doors, drawing the curtains. It crossed her mind to pull the phone line from the wall, and at that second the phone rang. Rudy again. There was nothing for her to worry about, he told her, he’d been talking to the lawyer… telling her other things she hardly heard, something about physical evidence, the phrase erratic, troubled girl, and Rachel mechanically took down the number of the lawyer.
There was a silence, and then she said, Do you think he knows?
Who? said Rudy.
Gordon Burke. Do you think he knows, about Danny?
You haven’t talked to him?
Yes, earlier. Briefly. He wasn’t—He… She didn’t finish.
He’s a good man, Rach, Rudy said. And he’s been good to those boys. But what he’s going through right now… Hell, I don’t even want to imagine.