Breaking Glass (38 page)

“Give him the hat!” Trudy said, her speech slurred.

“Shit, asshole. It was my fucking dad’s. Give it back before I knock out your teeth.”

Patrick circled Doug, pretend jabbing at him like a boxer. “C’mon, big shot. Let’s see what you got.”

Doug swiped at him, reaching for and missing the hat. “Look, Morgan. I thought we talked this through. I was just kidding. I swear I wasn’t going to tell anyone.”

“Take it. Go ahead,” Patrick said, no longer laughing, his eyes the cold blue of a mountain lake.

“Tell anyone what?” I shivered. Somehow, all the fun had gone out of the night, along with my buzz. Doug’s gaze flashed to mine. There was desperation in his eyes. Fear.

Then, linebacker that he was, Doug sprang at Patrick in a tackle. But lithe and sleek Patrick leaped out of the way. Doug crash-landed in a belly flop. The ice, thick as concrete where we stood, supported his bulk. Laughing, Patrick flung the hat far into the center of the reservoir.

“Fuck! What’d you do that for?”

“Leave it, Dougie!” Trudy shrieked. “Let it go!”

Patrick stood up and shrugged. “No reason. I know we’re cool, asshole. We’ve been friends forever. Now get your hat. Let’s go home. I have a headache.”

“The ice could be thinner over there,” I said softly.

“Oh, for crying out loud.” Trudy stumbled to her feet. “I’ll get the damn hat.”

“No,” Patrick snarled. “Let Lewis get his own goddamned hat. I was going to give it to you, asshole. You didn’t have to tackle me for it.”

Doug chewed his bottom lip and stared at Patrick, as if he was considering breaking his jaw, and then Doug stalked across the ice. I’d always thought Patrick and Doug were the best of friends, but what passed between them in that moment looked a lot like pure hate.

It had been a viciously cold winter, so none of us thought the ice was actually thin. Just the week before, our dads had all gone ice fishing together.

Still, as I watched Doug walk further and further out onto the reservoir, to the place where his hat had landed, I felt uneasy. The brandy no longer had the power to warm me. I was cold to the bone.

“C’mon,” Patrick said. “I’ll take you home.”

“What about Doug?”

“Fuck him.”

I couldn’t help myself. The brandy had loosened my tongue. “What did Doug promise not to talk about?”

Patrick had me by the arm, almost pulling me along. “Shut the fuck up, Teresa!” he screamed, and smacked me across the cheek. The look in his eyes was colder than the ice below our feet.

That’s when I knew that, under the beautiful surface, Patrick Morgan had no heart.

That’s also when I heard the crack, as loud as rifle fire. Half of Doug’s body was submerged in the freezing water. He called out for us to help him, pawing vainly at the slippery sides of the hole he’d fallen in.

Trudy started to run to him, but she didn’t get far.

Patrick grabbed her by the feet and sent her sprawling onto her stomach, and then dragged her by her ankles toward the shore.

“Let me go!” She wailed and kicked, but Patrick wouldn’t let her go free.

I stood paralyzed as Doug screamed and pleaded for us to help him.

If only I’d run when I had the chance. I could have saved him.

I’ve relived that moment, again and again. Me, watching as Doug struggled to climb out of the hole. But the ice kept cracking under his weight, the hole getting wider and wider.

Trudy stood up again and skidded wildly across the ice toward Doug.

Patrick grabbed her by the arm, spun her around, and punched her in the face. Hard. She fell unconscious.

He turned to face me, a weird half-smile on his face. “You’re not going to try to help, are you Teresa? We both know the ice is too thin there. You’ll fall in with him.”

The smile didn’t match with the warning. It looked, I know this sounds weird—but Patrick Morgan’s smile looked triumphant.

Doug had stopped struggling, bobbing in the water at the center of the hole like a buoy. Moments later, he slipped quietly under the surface and didn’t come back up.

“If either of you ever say a word about tonight,” Patrick whispered, the triumphant smile still curling his lips “you’ll join him.”

I never did find out what secret Dougie Lewis was keeping for Patrick Morgan.

It died with him under the ice of the reservoir.

But the memory of that night has festered inside of me, ever since.

They didn’t find his body until after all the ice had melted two months later. He washed ashore down near the dam, three miles away.

Now

The neatly written account is signed by Teresa Winston and Trudy Durban, dated March, 1979. Below the signatures are two fingerprints, apparently stamped in their blood. Articles about the accident clutter another double-page spread. At the bottom, scrawled hastily in red marker in the same sloppy printing are the words:

PATRICK MORGAN IS A MURDERER.
PATRICK MORGAN IS A RAPIST
.

“What the hell do we do with this?” Marisa asks, breaking the silence.

I stare at the open book in my hands, at the only words written by my mother that I have ever read. “Nothing. It doesn’t change anything.”

“Jeremy. Do you think, maybe, Susannah saw this and acted on it? Tried to threaten Patrick Morgan? Covering up one murder would certainly be a motive for another.”

I’m still blank, numb, staring at my mother’s girlish handwriting. My voice, when I finally find it, comes out strained and hollow. “I’m not sure. And if she did, there’s no evidence she did anything about it. And Patrick wouldn’t care. He was beyond that. There’s nothing I can really do with this information. Let’s just get the fuck out of here.”

I return Trudy’s book to its hiding place under the floorboards.

Outside, rain slashes down in blinding sheets, the melted snow rushing down the road in torrents. Spears of lightning slice through the bare trees. Thunder shakes the ground. There’s no way we’re going to make it home on foot in this mess. Water will short out my high-tech leg.

Reluctantly, I phone Dad and ask him to come get us. I tell him we’d had to find shelter under Susannah’s porch when the clouds broke open. I say nothing about the keys I stole or what I’d found under the floorboards. Someday, I will. But not now.

In the car, Dad eyes me skeptically, but seems too exhausted to interrogate me further. Once we get home, I slip the keys back in the envelope under the pile of papers where I found them.

I lie on my bed, puzzled, my mind skimming through the information at hand. Nothing adds up. Nothing in Trudy’s book really gets me any closer to solving the mystery behind Susannah’s disappearance and death. There’s no mention of the secret Patrick Morgan and Dougie Lewis shared that got one of them killed. It’s all just a guessing game. Maybe she really doesn’t want me to know, after all.
But why?
Why come back from the dead only to confuse the only person who gives a shit?

Patrick Morgan was a murderer, no doubt, and possibly even worse, something that doesn’t surprise me in the least. And it’s just as likely my mother drove herself into the Gorge because of guilt over what she’d witnessed and kept secret all those years. As far as my mother’s death, it doesn’t look like I’ll ever know the whole truth.

But there’s nothing to link any of this to Susannah. No evidence that she found her mother’s book and tried to use it. She’d certainly found out about Ryan and Spake, and threatened to expose them. Which still makes Ryan the prime suspect, since he was there at the scene. But that still doesn’t sit right with me. How would he have had time to dispose of her body?

The reservoir will eventually give up its dead. When winter ends, we’ll know.

The answer drifts between the shadows, eluding me. Susannah’s ghost has quieted and retreated. I wonder if this is a sign that I’m close to a breakthrough.

How many historians have been confronted with bits of information that baffled them? Did they solve age-old historic mysteries in their sleep, or in bursts of intuition?

All I can hope for is another dream to guide me to the truth.

I do dream. About the night Susannah took Ryan and me on the candlelit boat ride to Pirate Island to seal our pact.

I wake up crying.

For my lost illusions. My lost leg.

And for my mother, whose own guilt may have destroyed her.

But mostly for the Susannah I lost. The one that never really was.

Because, finally, I know.

I know where she is.

It’s the middle of the night, but I drive to the place on Reservoir Road where Susannah disappeared. The temperature has dropped again and it’s snowing lightly, a thin powder of white dusting the asphalt. Striding smoothly across the road, Veronica and my natural leg working together in a passable stroll, I pause at the guardrail that marks the craggy decline to the water’s edge. A sliver of moon peeks through the cloud cover to light a path. I climb over the rail and proceed to pick my way gingerly down the jagged rocks.

I’m much steadier, now, I assure myself.

Veronica protests and whirs as she tries to adjust for the uneven terrain. Still, I make good progress and reach the edge. I stare into the fathomless deep, thin sheets of ice coating parts of its dark surface, and think of those who met their end in the cold waters of Riverton. Mom. Douglas Lewis.