The Storm King(119)

Perhaps June wanted him safe, but the universe was an uncertain place. What kind of ripples would saving him cause this time, she might wonder. Would a third chance bring more blue string than red? Impossible to know. Dangerous to guess.

This time he’d have to save himself.

His lungs screamed and his breath grew shallow. Above him cannon flashes burst and sparked in volleys between thunderheads.

Nate realized that he was drowning.

He was drowning.

He understood that they weren’t going to make it. He’d killed his best friend and his first love’s little brother.

“I’m sorry, Meg.” Another mouthful of lake forced its way into him. “Livvy.” His voice was torn by the roar of the storm and crushed by the relentless slaps of the waves. “I’m sorry, Tommy.”

Lightning strobed the shore. A last glimpse of a world lost to him. The air crashed like a giant pounding against the door of the sky.

“Do you hear it, Nate?”

Tommy.

Nate didn’t know how powerfully he’d been anchored until he was freed. His burdens, his regrets, loosed like weights through the colorless waters.

His friend’s hand tightened on his wrist.

“Do you hear the thunder?”





THE TALE CHANGES with the teller.

One day, twins named for the two prettiest months of the year were born to a woman who could not bring herself to kill them.

One day, a man drove his family along a road that switchbacked into the clouds then plunged them under the waves.

One day, a clapboard farmhouse in the foothills burned in a barrage of hail.

The Lake loves its stories. They are told and shared and treasured.

But they aren’t the truth.

Details are embellished, characters dropped or added or made composite.

The rendering of emotion and action through words is an uncertain alchemy.

You see, you change a story just by telling it.

And sooner or later the bottle runs dry, the boat returns to its slip, or the fire burns to coals. Every story ends.

But life? Life has loose ends.

—



THE NIGHT SHIP was gone.

Weeks after Medea, they were still clearing its debris from the shores. Parts of the promenade’s iron ribs still arced from its charred base, but it would all be gone soon. Some of the Lake’s hurricane recovery funds had been earmarked for its demolition. Nate watched crews chip away at its carcass. The sound of their saws glided across the waters to the Wharf like the calls of birds.

“You should show Livvy the beach,” Grams said.

“Good idea. We can skip stones.” Nate had taken all of them to the stony beach the day before. He’d had to carry Grams there, but she weighed only of bones and sweaters. It was difficult to reach the nook along the shore, but it had saved his life twice.

Fall was thick among them now. The leaves and their color were falling away, preparing for the drop into winter. The sky was blue and held nothing more sinister than cumulus clouds. Sailboats sliced across the silver water for the lake’s northern bulge. But Nate and his grandmother had eyes only for what remained of the Night Ship.

“I wonder if they’ll forget,” Grams said. Her mind was like a damaged record. Sometimes it caught on repeat. Sometimes it played verses and tracks out of sequence. But if you knew the score well enough, you could follow the tune.

“They won’t.” He believed this.

Nate heard Livvy’s staccato run before he saw her. She barely slowed before barreling right up to Grams’s wheelchair.

“Johnny says the Night Ship ghosts could be anywhere now!” Her face was red from the wind, and her eyes were bright with delight.

“What should we do?” Grams asked.

“Run! We run!” She sprinted down the boardwalk, startling a flock of gulls into flight.

“Having them for coffee’s more my speed, dear,” Grams said.

Sometimes she was like her old self.

Johnny hobbled toward them on his crutches.



“You have a real way with her,” Nate told him. “Should the therapist send bills to the Empire or directly to your home address?”

“Tell her a story, I thought.” Johnny was out of breath. He was terrible with the crutches. “Kids like stories, right? The ice cream was where I went wrong. Where does she put it all?”

They watched Livvy terrorize the birds, sending them fleeing from railings to benches and back again.

Beyond her, Tom and Meg leaned against the boardwalk’s railing, watching the demolition to the north. Tom wasn’t in his uniform. He’d never wear a uniform again.

The Night Ship’s destruction was a cataclysm, but a fairly self-contained one. When that world ended, it took many of its sins with it. But there were still consequences.

Owen was gone. Both Pete Corso and Nate had heard him confess to the murders of Maura Jeffers, Mr. Liffey, Mr. Vanhouten, and Lucy. The man’s imprisonment and torture of his own mother proved him capable of such crimes. The story had its monster, and the monster was dead.

In one small way, the Storm King had been right about the equations of pain. Nate’s Thunder Runs and the recent spree of vandalism these had inspired had mostly canceled each other out. The vandals who’d been stalked by Owen as the Night Ship burned firmly believed that Nate and Tom had saved their lives. They were even. Mostly.