Real Bad Things(4)
Her legs ached, and the multiple bags of complimentary cookies and pretzels she’d consumed on the plane cemented in her gut. She pushed on. Gravel antagonized her feet through the thin soles of her shoes. She pushed on. Soon, the thrum of water through the dam intensified and joined the steady roll of her suitcase and the squeak of her wet sneakers. She pushed on against the darkness and the dread until she finally came to the long bend in the road and the riverfront park that demarcated Maud Proper and Maud Bottoms. Families used to gather there for picnics and reunions, probably still did despite the recent discovery.
Her breath labored at the sight of the bridge over the lock and dam, the expanse of it, the knowledge of what awaited her at the end. Even before everything that had happened, that bridge had signified reentry into a world she wanted to leave behind. Affirmations she’d normally mock ran through her head: The only way to it is through it. One foot in front of the other.
Head down, she charged forward, allowing happy memories to fill her mind—like field trips to the dam facility. The big engine room. Sunny afternoons in the grassy picnic areas and snacks at the bright red tables. Walks along the river’s edge with Jason, who obsessed over finding driftwood and arrowheads and other items in the mud. Hours spent on a threadbare towel in a swimsuit, trying to get a tan so she could look more like Jason, but all she did was burn. Fishing with her best friend, Angie Pham, who’d slipped the worm on Jane’s hook like a pro when the thought made Jane queasy.
Jane had come here with Georgia Lee too. They’d sat near the lock. Stars lit the sky, and the lights of the dam lit the bridge. They hadn’t yet touched. Georgia Lee told her to close her eyes. That’s close to what the ocean sounds like, she’d said. When Jane listened closely, it was almost like she’d managed to escape.
A breeze drifted by, and Jane could almost feel, see, smell the salty ocean water permeating the air. A wish for Boston or a dream of that long-ago day, she didn’t know. But that wasn’t salt water. The river smelled of what people couldn’t see: things that were dumped, things that got caught in its currents, things that decayed.
They’d gone there often. They’d gone back that fateful night. All four of them. They hadn’t known that would be the last night they’d spend there on the riverbank. But Jane had known that eventually the past would catch up to her. She had known that one day she’d have to return to Maud to face the consequences of her confession.
When she came to the end of the bridge, she paused and bent over to touch her toes to relieve her back, catch her breath, clear her mind of the memories that churned with the sound of the water rushing through the locks, the smell of the river, the darkness along the riverbank where she’d stood twenty-five years before and pushed a boat and a man to his end.
Two
GEORGIA LEE
Another dead night at the pharmacy. All the same songs filtered through the outdated music system, and it nearly drove Georgia Lee Lane mad. She had recommended an upgrade several times over the past several years. Had anyone listened to her, the store manager? No. They had not.
Billie leaned on the register and picked at her nails. Dr. Irwin had already pulled the shutter down and headed home for the day. Georgia Lee worked the floor in the event those nonexistent customers finally decided to show up. Nothing but a trickle since the superstore went in across the street after the Harper family sold their land. Gone were the horses and the haystacks, in were cars and congestion the one-lane highway could hardly handle, especially since they’d shut down low bridges due to the recent flood, the likes of which the town hadn’t seen in decades. One more complaint Maud’s citizens added to their ever-growing list of things to blame the city council for. Mostly her, the only member up for reelection that year. The only one they seemed to blame for anything. Even her three fellow council members—all from and representing Maud Proper, mind you—treated her like a leper, barely talked to her outside of meetings, as if they might catch the town’s resentment too.
With the election only two months away, Georgia Lee had to make calls and distribute flyers. She had to find hands and shake them. None of which were things Bollinger—her boss, her nemesis, the pure bane of her existence—had to do. He had the means to run commercials on the local news and radio channels. He bought billboards on I-40 and every out-of-the-way dirt road within their district. He gave away lollipops. Sponsored ads in the high school yearbook. Bought every candy bar, candle, magazine subscription, and silly whatnot from every schoolkid he could find. All this, for the first time since never. All this, because someone had told him he ought to run for city council. Against her. For what reason, she couldn’t fathom, other than he was a man of a certain age. Sports cars and busty new girlfriends weren’t enough to boost a man’s ego these days, she reckoned.
Let’s Talk About Maud had stirred up the trouble. People should know better than to take the word of a Facebook group run by a couple of auto body guys. Christlyn and Susannah had repeatedly warned her not to read the comments, but she couldn’t help herself. Fred “the Body” Baker wrote that the city councilors ought to be taken out behind the abandoned K-Parts factory and shot, execution-style.
Shot!
People liked his comment. Reacted with smiley-face emojis. K-Parts had promised them jobs. It had built the factory. And then it’d changed its mind after the building and land flooded, like everything else in Maud Bottoms. What was the city council supposed to do? They couldn’t force businesses to stay or shareholders to pick Maud instead of Mexico (mind you, it was Dayton, but nobody in Maud was interested in the facts). As if they could control the weather.