The Storm King(102)

“Stop it.”

“But can’t you see she likes it? Got to go all the way to the Walmart in Bright Mill to stock up on this garbage. Too many people around here know me, and they’d never believe I eat it myself. My body is a temple, isn’t it, Mom?”



“So healthy, yes, perfect body, a perfect son, so lucky,” Mrs. Liffey choked out, her eyes streaming.

“I’ll tell you everything I know about the kids,” Nate said.

“Maybe just a couple more.”

“When the chief brought me to the station he started off by asking me about Lucy, then about Maura. He showed me Maura’s picture. That’s how I knew she was the one I tackled on Grams’s lawn.”

“What about James Bennett? How do you know he’s their leader?” Owen withdrew the snack cake he was holding from Mrs. Liffey’s mouth, but his other hand still pinched her nose.

“I talked to him in the Night Ship. He and his friends wanted a piece of me.”

“They made the Night Ship their place, too?” Owen asked. He looked over his shoulder as if he could see the old pier through the basement’s wall. “Haven’t been there in ages.”

“Lucy’s journals were like an instruction manual for them. They changed up some things, but not that.” The Night Ship was at the center of all their stories: Nate, Tom, Lucy, Owen, James. Even Just June. From a certain vantage, the Night Ship was the origin of every ripple—every red string that lashed across Just June’s cellar wall. Would Nate carry so many regrets if the pier had never been built? Would he still be alive in the first place?

Despite the horror of his circumstances, Nate drifted while he considered this. He’d once stood on the Night Ship’s dock bare-chested and entwined with a girl he loved. That dawn he’d looked upon the endless country of the future and found a golden design around which everything was connected. Around which nothing was ever lost.

Remembering this made his eyes swim. Through their liquid lens he saw Owen’s face blank with concentration.

“Does the chief know that the girl, Maura, was one of the vandals?”

“He knows the only reason I could ID her in the first place was because I caught her and this guy”—Nate nodded toward Pete—“in the act. I told you, they’re going to put it all together. There’s no point in making it worse.”



Owen smiled, and Nate wished he hadn’t seen it. The man’s smile was an abyss.

“Thanks, Nate. I know you like your secrets, but that sounded like the truth.” He pulled away from his mother, and Nate got the feeling that he’d just made a fatal mistake. If he’d told Owen everything that he wanted to know, then Nate had just rendered himself useless. The huge man flexed his neck, then walked toward a nook of the basement that Nate couldn’t see. As he receded, the thick welts of his scars ticked across his back like fleeting seconds.

“Owen, hold on. Where are you going?” But Owen’s attention already appeared to be elsewhere. Nate backtracked through their conversation, trying to figure out what he’d missed. What had he told Owen that he shouldn’t have?

Whatever was left of Mrs. Liffey shook and stared at Nate through glass eyes.

“So lucky, so lucky, so lucky—”

Owen was back a few moments later to thud two large red jugs in front of Nate.

“Memories, huh?” he said. He patted one of the gasoline containers. They looked like ten-gallon jugs: if filled, an absurd amount of weight for anyone not built like a minotaur. He toweled the cream and crumbs from his chest. “Let me ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“Did you ever wonder if you were the one who killed Lucy?”

“Of course not.” But this was a lie. This was the secret Nate had long feared waited for him within the eye of the maelstrom that thundered inside him. Of the many dangers in stepping back into the forest of his past, none loomed larger than this. It was the cornerstone around which everything about him would rise or fall.

“But why? Before that note was found, you know that’s what everyone was saying. They’re saying it again now.”



“I didn’t think I killed her because I didn’t.” He didn’t kill Lucy. Nate let himself feel this. He wasn’t a murderer. No matter what, this was something he could hold on to.

“But could you have? That night Lucy let Adam Decker flirt with her, she was afraid enough of what you’d do that she ran out of the glade. Everyone saw it. And you were so messed up after all that partying. Don’t tell me you remember every single thing that happened after you knocked Adam’s teeth in.”

“Everyone was messed up.”

“But you’re not like everyone else, are you? The Storm King thought rules were for other people. He thought he was better than everyone else. He thought he could get away with murder.

“Fourteen years later this guy comes back to town,” Owen continued. “The day after he does, another girl washes up on the shore. Coincidence? Especially when he even admits to assaulting her earlier the night before? Then his grandmother’s pub explodes with her in it. Whoever this guy thinks he is, whoever he’s been pretending to be, goes out the window. He might say he’s a doctor or a dad, but he’s a monster.”