Wintertide: A Novel (22 page)

“Please don’t turn this into an
issue. Let’s just meet where he wants.”

I uselessly shook my head in my
empty bedroom. “I can’t believe how easily you let him pull your strings,
Seth.”

“Give me a break. You ended up at
the same place I did. You just had to torture yourself for a while first.”

I laid myself down on the bed
suddenly feeling very tired. “How am I supposed to explain taking the car at
two in the morning?”

“Tell your folks you couldn’t sleep
and felt like going for a drive. I’m sure you’ll figure something out that your
mother will believe. She thinks you walk on water.”

He was right. For some reason, she
did think that. But what would she think when Eddie suddenly materialized with
the news that I’d been with him that night?

When I hung up with Seth, I tried
to turn off my thoughts and fall asleep. Sleep would have been a welcome
escape, but sleep never came. Finally, around three in the morning, I picked up
my phone and sent Kristen a text.

Are you free for dinner tonight?
Can I take you out?

The thought of coming home from
work and sitting around the house until it was time to go get Seth was
unbearable. I also didn’t know how Kristen would feel once news got out that I
was Eddie’s alibi, and I hadn’t said a word all this time. I needed to see her
again before that happened.

I was showered and dressed before
the sun came up. Back in my room, my phone beeped with a message. It was
Kristen.
Are you up?

Yup

The phone vibrated in my hand. It
was Kristen calling. “Are you okay?” she asked. “I just heard about the fire.”

“I’m fine. We’re all fine.” Obviously,
the small town grapevine had been busy this morning.

“What happened?”

“The fire started in the kitchen.
Apparently, it was an electrical problem. My mom was the only one home, and she
had to go to the hospital to get checked out. But she’s okay. The kitchen is
toast though.”

“Very funny. Thank goodness you’re
all okay.”

“We’re fine,” I repeated.

“If you’re so fine, why were you
texting me at three in the morning?”

 I hesitated before answering, but
she didn’t wait for my response.

“Maybe you were a little shook up?”
she suggested.

“Yeah. Maybe I was. So, dinner
tonight?”

I heard her sigh through the phone,
acknowledging my subject change. “Sure. Sounds good. I’m working until seven.
You can pick me up there if that’s okay.”

“That’s perfect. I’ll see you
then.”

“Dan?” she said as I was about to
hang up.

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you weren’t toast.” I
could hear the smile in her voice.

“Thanks. Me, too.”

When I came down into the kitchen,
light had just started filtering in through the curtains. Dad was there with
two other guys. They were moving the charred stove out the back door. Based on
the way they were trying to keep quiet, I assumed Mom was still sleeping.

“Morning,” Dad said to me when he
came back in.

“Is Mom doing okay today?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Could you tell her I’m going to be
out late tonight after work? I’ve got plans.”

He nodded at me again before
turning back to the fire damaged wall, its guts spilling out onto the floor in
the form of wires and insulation.

Since I was early, I stopped at
Dunkin Donuts for coffee before heading over to the professor’s house. The
sunny day we’d had yesterday had been a short respite from the familiar cloud
ceiling that had returned today. I was hoping the hours ahead of me would pass
slowly.

The work day was predictable.
Professor Sheffield greeted me at the door. Then he left me alone to work,
coming back occasionally to make small talk and offer me food. My face was a calm
mask all day. What lay behind it was anything but calm.

I called home at lunch to check on
my mother. For a change, I was relieved by her persistent and completely
predictable questions about what I was doing tonight and why I wouldn’t be home
after work.

“Kristen?” she asked after I’d
informed her of my plans. “That girl you went out with in high school? I didn’t
know you were still seeing her.”

I explained that before the holiday
break I hadn’t seen her in a long time, and then I tried to extract myself from
the conversation as quickly as possible.

When I parked at the mall at the
end of the day, the weight of my thoughts and my lack of sleep last night both
began to drag me down. I rubbed my hands up and down my face vigorously trying
to wake up. I had a long night ahead of me, and I had to be thinking clearly
for all of it.

After downing a coffee from the
food court, feeling the caffeine giving me a jumpstart, I went to meet Kristen.
I found her at the entrance of the store waiting for me.

“Hey,” she smiled when she spotted
me.

“Hey,” I replied, bending and
pulling her into a hug. At first, she was stiff in my arms, obviously startled
by the embrace. But then her arms came up around my back and she relaxed into
me.

“How was your day?” I asked,
pulling back to look at her, but keeping an arm around her shoulders.

“Good,” she shrugged, turning to
look up at me. “How was yours?”

“Okay, I guess. My evening is
looking up though.” I glanced down at her and saw the blush coloring her
cheeks. She had always been this way, even after we’d being going out for
months. Every compliment and innuendo caused her face to fill with heat.

I drove us to a diner we used to
frequent just off the main road in town. “I haven’t been here since you left,”
she told me quietly when I pulled into the parking lot.

I took her hand and led her inside.
We were seated at a booth by the window. It was quiet in the diner with only a
few other patrons sitting throughout the rectangular shaped room. The old-fashioned
diner was one of those places that had lines out the door during the summer
tourist season but struggled to fill their seats the rest of the year. I was
glad for the quiet though. I glanced outside the window and noticed how the
hazy, yellow streetlights caused the snow beneath them to glow.

After tonight, I didn’t know what
would happen. If Eddie wanted to go to the police right away, things could
change very quickly for me. Even if it all blew over after a few days, like
Seth was convinced it would, I would always be linked to Eddie. We would always
share this dark secret. Somehow, I knew that he would find a way to use it
against me one day.

Across from me, Kristen was talking
about the fire. I pulled my focus back to her. “So, the paper said that a
neighbor called about seeing smoke before the fire could spread too far.”

“It was in the paper?” I asked.

She nodded. “Your poor mom. She was
so lucky. What’s she going to do without her kitchen though?”

“My dad promised to take her out to
dinner every night,” I replied, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

“Hmm,” Kristen murmured, tapping a
finger against her cheek, “are you sure your mom didn’t have something to do
with this?”

I grinned at her just as the
waitress came to take our orders. I got the cheeseburger we both always ordered
here, but Kristen surprised me by asking for a salad instead. “I’m dieting,”
she explained.

“It’s working,” I replied, leering
at her.

“Stop it,” she chided, kicking me
lightly.

I reached for her hand resting on
the table. “I mean it. You look beautiful.”

She tightened her grip on my hand,
her eyes intent on mine as though she were trying to determine my sincerity.
She had every right to be suspicious. I’d completely ignored her for nearly a
year and a half. What she didn’t know was that she was like a lifeline to me
tonight and depending on what happened,  I could lose her just as quickly as
I’d found her again.

The waitress interrupted us,
returning with our sodas. Kristen reclaimed her hand and kept them both busy
unwrapping her straw and then sipping her drink. “Remember how I told you that
I’d applied to other schools for next year?” she asked, her attention shifting
from her glass to me again.

“Yeah.”

“Well, one of them is yours.” She
watched me now, waiting for my reaction.

I could tell by her expression that
she was afraid I wouldn’t like that. Maybe a year ago, I wouldn’t have. As her
news sunk in, I realized that I did like the thought of having Kristen at
school with me. I liked it a lot. “That’s great,” I told her.

She raised her eyebrows in
response.

“Really. That would be great if it
worked out. Do you think you’d like living in the city?”

“I think so,” she said, seeming
uncertain. “I mean, it makes me a little nervous, I guess. But it could kind of
be an adventure.”

She’d obviously had this in the
works since before I turned up for Christmas break. “Why that school?” I asked,
not wanting to put her on the spot, but also hoping she’d done it for herself
and not just because of me.

“They have a really good elementary
education program.”

“You want to be a teacher?” I
asked, realizing that I hadn’t known that. I hadn’t known what she wanted to do
with her life.

She nodded.

“I could see that,” I said. And I
could. She was one of the most gentle and caring people I knew. “You’d be a
great teacher.”

“You really think so?”

“Absolutely.”

“Thanks, Danny,” she said, smiling
shyly at me.

Our meals came, and as we ate I
told her more about school, and she told me what she’d been doing this past
year. I knew I still had hours left before my meeting later, but I continued to
covertly glance at my watch and maintain a morbid countdown.

I convinced Kristen to linger at
the diner with me long after our food had been eaten and the plates had been cleared
away. Finally, it was after midnight when she told me that she had to be up
early for work. I paid the bill and drove her back to her car in the mall
parking lot. Since the mall had closed hours ago, we were the only ones there.

Standing by the door to her car, I
looked down at her expectant, upturned face and I kissed her. I lost myself in
that kiss, and I didn’t want to let her go. When the kiss finally ended,
Kristen stepped away from me looking stunned.  I smiled at her, taking her keys
from her hand, unlocking her car and opening the door for her. I watched as she
silently slid inside and drove away.

I had just short of an hour and a
half before I had to pick up Seth. There was no question of going home before
the meeting. Hopefully, my parents were sound asleep by now and wouldn’t notice
what time I got in tonight. Without any destination in mind, I left the mall
and drove aimlessly through town. The roads were nearly deserted, and it almost
felt as though I were alone in the world. The company of the radio would have
been nice but my father had never bothered to replace the one that was stolen.

When I saw the familiar McDonald’s
arches up ahead, I was glad to have a viable destination. It was open
twenty-four hours, and I suddenly wanted to get off the eerie dark road and be
inside somewhere bright and populated, even if the only people there were the
employees. I got yet another cup of coffee, I’d lost count of how many I’d had
today, and sat down inside the restaurant. To my surprise, I wasn’t the only
one there. A ruckus group of teenagers occupied one of the corner tables, laughing
loudly and constantly getting up for soda refills. I mostly nursed my coffee
and allowed the noise around me to overwhelm the noise within me. I sat there
letting the coffee cool in the cup until it was finally time to go.

Even though this was my second
night in a row without sleep, the combination of caffeine and nerves kept the
fatigue away, and I felt fully alert as I pulled up to Seth’s house and watched
him walk toward the car.

“Hey man,” he breathed at me as he
sat down heavily and pulled the car door closed. The fresh night air that blew
in with him couldn’t mask the odor that clung to him.

“Are you a full blown alcoholic
now?” I asked, first feeling outraged at him and then feeling angry at myself
for being surprised.

“Don’t start. You’re not my
mother,” he replied as he leaned his head back against the seat and closed his
eyes.

“Are you even up to doing this?”

“I don’t have much choice, do I?”

I stared at him, debating the wisdom
of telling him to stay home while I went to meet Eddie.

“Just drive, Dan,” he said, opening
his eyes and turning to me.

Shaking my head, I put the car in
reverse and I did as he said.

Much like the rest of South
Seaport’s businesses at two-thirty in the morning, the Southside Tavern, whose
red neon sign was now dark, was quiet and empty. I didn’t park in the lot.
Instead, I drove a few yards past it and took a right onto a section of road
that dead-ended at a chain link fence. This was where we parked when we went to
the sea cliff. The silver Honda that Eddie had been driving yesterday was
already there. I pulled in behind it, my headlights shining into the Honda and
revealing that he was not in it.

“You ready to do this?” Seth said
inanely beside me.

I glared at him and got out of the
car. The sharp wind coming off the ocean immediately assaulted me. My winter
hat and heavy wool coat were no match for the frozen air tonight.

“We’re going to turn into blocks of
ice in about two minutes,” Seth called to me as he walked toward the fence. His
hands were buried in the pockets of his parka, and he’d sunk his head down into
the collar of his coat.

I watched him as he walked along
the fence pushing at it with his shoulder until he’d found the place where it
had been cut years ago. He grinned at me, proud of himself, as he pulled the
piece of fencing back and slipped through.