Salem Falls (30 page)

She came so close that he could smell the conditioner she’d used in the locker room, and the harsh pink soap from the showers. “How well do you really know this guy?” Jack asked softly.

“I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.” Catherine walked toward her date again. “But Coach,” she added, “thanks for wanting to do it for me.”

“For Christ’s sake!” Jack bellowed.

For the sixth time that day, the ball had sailed right past Catherine Marsh. His intersquad scrimmage was going to hell because his center couldn’t keep her mind on the game.

Jack blew his whistle and strode angrily to the middle of the field. “I’m sorry,” she said immediately.

“Sorry isn’t going to do you a hell of a lot of good when you get slammed in the head by a ball going twenty miles an hour! Or when we lose Districts because this team never gets itself together!” With every word she seemed to fold in on herself. “Catherine,” he sighed. “What’s the matter?”

“Coach,” another player called. “It’s five-thirty. Can we go shower?”

He looked at his watch. Technically, it was 5:20. But this entire afternoon had been a waste of a practice, because whatever fog Catherine had contracted seemed to be catching. “Go,” he barked. Catherine started to slink away, but he grabbed her upper arm. “Not you.”

She took one look at him and started to cry. “I need to get to Woodhaven.”

There was no public transit to Woodhaven, which was thirty miles away, and a cab ride’s cost would seem astronomical to a fifteen-year-old without an income. But as far as Jack knew, there was nothing in particular in Woodhaven that merited a visit. “What’s there that you can’t find in Loyal?”

“Planned Parenthood.”

The words fell between them like a wall. “Catherine, are you pregnant?”

She turned the color of the sunset. “I want to keep from getting that way.”

With a fundamentalist father, asking for birth control wasn’t going to go over very well. But there were other options that didn’t involve visiting a women’s clinic.

“He won’t wear them,” Catherine admitted softly, reading Jack’s mind. “He says they’re not a hundred percent and he doesn’t want to take that chance.”

Jack jammed his hands in his coat pockets, distinctly uncomfortable. Although he had taught teenagers long enough to know that sexual intercourse occurred shockingly young, there was something about Catherine doing it that made him feel a little sick. She had been his Atalanta, swift and unspoiled, running faster than anyone could catch her.

“Please, Coach,” she begged, just as embarrassed to be pleading as he was to be hearing her.

“Catherine,” he said, “we never had this conversation.” And he walked off, determined to believe that this was not-and never would be-his problem.

Catherine, a straight-A student, failed a test. And the next day’s pop quiz. “I want to talk to you,” Jack said to her as the other students filed out. “Wait for a minute.”

She remained at her desk. The exam, with its unprecedented scarlet letter, glared up at her. Jack slid into the seat beside hers. “You know this stuff cold,” he said quietly, and she shrugged. “I could give you a makeup test.”

She didn’t answer, and Jack felt temper swell like a wave inside him. “You’re too smart to throw your academic career away for some guy,” he argued.

Catherine turned slowly. “If I’m going to fuck up my life,” she said, “does it really matter which way I do it?”

Her eyes, which had always seemed to take in the whole world at once, were absolutely flat and expressionless. It was this that tugged the words from Jack he truly did not want to say. “Have you . . . has it . . .”

“No. We’re waiting, to be safe.”

Jack forced himself to look at her. “Are you sure? Because if you pick this moment, with this guy, you’re stuck with it for the rest of your life.”

Her brows drew together. “How do you know if you’re sure?”

God, how to answer that? His first time had been in the back of a limousine owned by the father of the rich girl he’d been seducing. Years afterward, he never could look their chauffeur in the eye.

“There’s one person,” Jack said, stumbling. “When you find him, you’ll know.”

Catherine nodded. “He’s the one.”

“Then I’ll drive you to Woodhaven.”

She had come out of the squat brown building holding a little compact full of birth control pills, which, when opened, looked like the toothed jaws of a gator. “I have to take them for a month before they start to work,” Catherine said, although by then Jack did not want to hear any more.

One month and four days after Jack had driven her to Woodhaven, Catherine showed up late to practice. She played hard that day, doggedly running up and down the field and firing the ball so hard at the practice goalie that twice, she knocked her down. She played, Jack realized, like she was punishing herself.

And that was how he knew it had happened.

Although he could not really articulate why, Jack didn’t speak to Catherine after that, unless it was to instruct her in a certain play. Catherine didn’t seek him out to ask questions on her technique. They won four games. And still Jack and Catherine moved quietly around each other, like two magnets of the same pole who are forced into close contact and cannot help but shy to the side.

It took all the courage in the world to knock on the door of his classroom.

“Come in.”

Catherine took a deep breath and wiped away the mascara underneath her eyes. Coach St. Bride stood in front of the chalkboard in the empty classroom. Posters dotted the walls: Charlemagne, Copernicus, Descartes. She walked up to one, mostly so that she wouldn’t have to look at Coach. “What made Alexander so great anyway?” she murmured.

“Take my class next year and you’ll find out.” He frowned and took off the wire-rimmed glasses he sometimes wore. “You okay?” he asked quietly.

She had always thought his voice was as lovely as wood smoke-a strange thing to compare it to, but in her childhood nothing had quite made her feel as much at home as walking through a brisk afternoon and seeing the curl of gray snailing out of the chimney. He started walking toward her, and oh, God, she was going to absolutely lose it. She had to tell him, she had to tell someone, and she thought that if she did, she would die of humiliation. It would be like . . . what was it, from biology . . . sublimation. Like being here one moment, and then poof, evaporating into thin air without a trace, so that no one would ever know you had even been there.

“Catherine?” he asked, just her name, and she turned away.

She found herself facing a map larger than any she’d ever seen. It covered nearly one entire wall of the classroom, an uneven patchwork quilt of countries and oceans. Lakes were the size of diamond chips, cities no bigger than a pinprick. You could step inside and lose yourself.

With a sob, she whirled and threw herself into Coach’s arms. He staggered back at the unexpected embrace, and when he realized she was crying, lightly patted her back. He did it awkwardly, not used to giving comfort to his students, and somehow that made it even sweeter.

“He broke up with me. He . . . he did it . . . and then . . . and then . . .” She couldn’t finish, and it didn’t matter, because Coach St. Bride understood.

His hand fell onto the crown of her head. “Oh, Catherine. I’m sorry.”

“No, I am. I am, because I was so stupid.” She wrapped her arms tighter around him. And she gradually noticed how the fine hairs on his nape were the color of Spanish gold; how his hands were large enough to hold her together. With great care, she opened her mouth and pressed it against his neck, so that he would think it was only her breath. But she could taste his skin, the salt and spice of it, and her eyes drifted shut. You were so, so right, she thought. When you find the one, you know.

May 2000

Salem Falls,

New Hampshire

D ifferent jails smell the same.

Stale. A little bit like piss and a little bit like biscuits rising. Sweat; swabbed disinfectant. And over all this, the heady scent of anxiety. Jack shuffled beside the correctional officer, his handcuffs swinging between his wrists. I am not here, he thought dizzily. I am lying on my back on a wide, green lawn, sleeping in the sun, and this is just a nightmare. Knowing that he was about to be locked up again when he was wrongfully accused was enough to make him tremble. Who would believe the man who pleaded his second case from the confines of a cell?

“Name,” barked the recording officer. He was overweight, stuffed into his little glass booth like a dumpling in a Pyrex dish. “St. Bride,” Jack said, his voice rusty. “Dr. Jack St. Bride.”

“Height?”

“Six-two.”

“Weight?”

“One-ninety,” Jack answered.

The officer did not glance up. “Eyes?”

“Blue.”

Jack watched his answers being scrawled across the booking card. Allergies. Medications. Regular physician. Distinguishing characteristics.

Person to call in the event of an emergency.

But, Jack thought, isn’t this one?

The guard led Jack to a room the size of a large closet. It was empty, except for a desk and a row of shelves stacked with prison-issue clothing. “Strip,” he said.

At that moment, it all came back: the feeling of being a number, not a name. The absolute lack of privacy. The mindlessness that came when every decision was made for you, from when you ate to when the lights were turned off to when you were allowed to see the sky. It had taken almost no time at all to strip him of his humanity at the Farm-and it had all started the moment Jack had put on the uniform of a convict.

“I’d rather not.”

The guard looked up at him. “What?”

“I’m here in custody. I’m not a prisoner. So I shouldn’t have to dress like one.”

The correctional officer rolled his eyes. “Just get changed.”

Jack looked at the stack of orange clothing. Faded and soft, from years of others wearing it. “I can’t,” he said politely. “Please don’t ask me to do this.”

“I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m telling you, quite clearly, to take off your goddamned clothes.”

Jack glanced down at his Hanes T-shirt, his striped boxers, and a pair of sweatpants he’d bought with Addie at Kmart. He had no great attachment to this wardrobe beyond the fact that he had been wearing it the moment before Charlie Saxton arrested him.

Jack set his jaw. “The only way you’re going to get those things on me is to do it yourself.”

For a second, the guard seemed to consider this. He was larger than Jack by half a head. But something in Jack’s eyes-some bright angry nugget of resolve-made him take a step back. “Shit,” he muttered, handcuffing Jack to the desk. “Why does this happen on my shift?”

He walked out, leaving Jack alone to wonder what avalanche he’d set in motion.

Roy’s eyes were so bloodshot that he was literally seeing red. He watched with astonishment as the orange juice poured crimson into his glass, then frowned at the label and squinted. It said Tropicana. He sniffed at the insides-and realized it was tomato juice, which he’d poured into the empty juice carton last week when the glass container of V8 didn’t fit in his fridge. Relieved, he took a sip, then cracked a raw egg inside and added a dollop of whiskey.

Best hangover remedy he’d ever found, and he should know.

Behind him the door opened. Roy tried to turn fast, and nearly heaved up his insides. Addie was on the rampage, not that he would have expected any less. “I know, I know,” Roy began. “It’s completely irresponsible of me to . . . Addie?” Now that she was closer, he could see tears on her face. “Honey? What’s the matter?”

“It’s Jack. Charlie Saxton arrested him.”

“What?”

“He said . . . oh, Daddy. Charlie said Jack raped Gillian Duncan last night.”

Roy sank onto a chair. “Gillian Duncan,” he murmured. “Holy mother of God.” There was something tickling the back of his mind, but he couldn’t seem to quite reach it. Then it came to him, and he looked up. “Addie, Jack was with me last night.”

Hope broke over her face. “He was?”

“You’re not gonna want to hear it, but we were at the Rooster. Drinking.” Roy grimaced. “Still, I guess it’s a sight better to be pegged a drunk than a rapist.”

“Jack was with you last night? All last night? And you can tell the police this?”

“He showed up about ten. I can vouch for him until about eleven-thirty, I guess.”

“What happened then?”

Roy ducked his head. “I, uh, passed out. Marlon-he’s the bartender-he let me sleep it off in the back room. I guess Jack left when the bar closed.”

“Which is when?”

“Midnight.”

Addie sat down beside him on the couch, thinking. “I didn’t see him until one-thirty in the morning. Where was he?”