The Storm King(48)
“I didn’t abandon them. Our lives went different ways. It happens to everyone. I tried to stay in touch.”
“What, an email twice a year? And Bea must be so grateful to see her only kin in this world every other Christmas.”
Nate saw Grams more often than that, but he knew this was a game he’d lose just by playing. Time for a new strategy. He could push the chief on the increasingly inexplicable runaway note, or edge the conversation toward the Lake’s current crime wave, but leaving the man to stew felt like the best option.
Time and pressure. That’s how gems are made.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it, Chief,” Nate said. “Sounds like you’ve got a murderer to catch.”
“The people in town think I’m looking at him right now.”
“Oh, I know.” Nate started to put on his coat. “The Lake loves its stories. The Night Ship Girls. Just June and Morton Strong and the Century Room. The Boy Who Fell.” He spat the words like they were acid on his tongue. “Everything here becomes a story. It makes it seem like life makes sense, but it doesn’t. It never has.”
“You’re a cynic.”
“Cancer doesn’t care if you’re a saint or a serial killer. The kids I treat don’t get it because they smoked for fifty years or never wore sunscreen. They’re innocents. There’s no purpose or meaning or justice. There isn’t an iota of sense to their suffering. There’s no more reason to it than a car going off a cliff because a kid wanted a peach pie instead of cherry. Because he played baseball instead of running track. Because he hit a triple instead of striking out.”
They stared at each other, and for a moment it seemed like the chief had run out of things to say.
Nate started for the door.
“I didn’t bring you here just to talk about Lucy,” the chief said. He pulled a photo out of a manila folder and slid it along the table.
The photo was of a kid. It looked like a yearbook picture. What did the chief expect him to do with this? How could Nate know anything about her?
Yet he did. Seeing her with a shy smile in full color and direct light had thrown him off, but now he recognized the curve of her lips and the delicate arch of her nose.
“She was there,” Nate said. “Last night. With some tall kid. The guy who hit me over the head. They were going to deface Grams’s house or something. You have to bring her in. You’ve got to question her.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Why? This is the same group of kids who greased Johnny’s stairs. The same ones who killed Tom’s dog and blew up the Union with Grams inside it!”
“Because she’s dead, Nate.” The chief turned the photo so he could look at it himself. “Her body washed up on the shore this morning.”
BANNERS CELEBRATING THE end of the year were hung all around the high school. The jubilation in the halls was unrestrained. Other seniors were clustered in front of Nate’s locker, and they grinned as they let him through. Michelle Duchannes kissed him on the cheek, and Parker Lang thumped him on the arm.
Nate himself felt nearly delirious with joy. Exams were over. High school was over. After so long, after so much, his real life was finally about to begin.
Johnny leaned against the locker to Nate’s right. He was the only one in sight not visibly beaming.
“How did physics go?” Nate asked as he flicked through his locker’s combination.
“Sixty-three.”
“Sixty-three!” Nate slammed the locker shut as soon as he opened it. Johnny had needed at least an eighty-five to bring his average up enough to pass. “We studied so hard.”
“Kritzler had it out for me from the beginning.”
“Did you talk to him? Is there homework you can make up or an extra project or—”
“He’s not budging. I tried everything.”
“I’m so sorry, man. But one course in summer school won’t be that bad. I bet it’ll only be a few hours a week.”
“My dad, Nate. Christ, my dad.” Johnny hit his head against the bank of lockers.
“They’ll still let you walk, right?”
“Yeah. They’ll just hand me a blank envelope.”
“Maybe he doesn’t need to know.”
“But Tufts will know! And he had to pull every string there was to get me in there.”
“There’s always another string.” Nate opened his locker again. All that remained were a few books from AP biology that he hadn’t gotten around to returning and the photos that decorated the inside of his door. Lucy had made a big blue and white Columbia pennant and hung it just above his locker. “If he got you in, he can keep you in. It’s going to suck telling him, but I can be there with you if you want.”
“What happened?” Tom approached them, holding hands with Emma Aoki. Owen loomed behind them like a walking refrigerator.
Nate let Johnny update the others while he carefully peeled the photos from his door. Nate and Lucy as homecoming king and queen. He, Tom, Johnny, and Owen fishing off the Vanhoutens’ deck. They were good memories, but the best ones he had from the last year weren’t the kind you recorded for posterity.
Emma tutted and patted Johnny on the shoulder. “Me and Laurie are going to get bagels then help Jim set up for tonight,” she told Tom. “Want to come?”