The Storm King(73)

“It’s him,” Nate whispered to Tom. “James Bennett. He’s the one behind the attacks. The fire at the Union. Loki. Everything.”

He was pleased to see a slash of anger cross his friend’s features.

“Dad gave him a job at the station one summer while he was in high school. He still comes around every once in a while if we need another set of hands.”

Nate had been in the chief’s office for fewer than thirty minutes before discovering secrets about that long-ago graduation night. What might James have found over the course of an entire summer?

“Do you know him?”

“Not really. I think he works at one of the places on the Wharf now.”

By now James had reached the front of the church. He waited for his sister to take her seat.

A phalanx of black-clad men rolled Lucy’s casket down the aisle. Its sides were polished to incredible reflection. Looking at it was like gazing into one of the lake’s death-still inlets. The candlelight glossed its surface, making it strangely luminescent in the dark space. A single handprint marred its side.

Nate had long been a creature of focus. If he knew one thing, it was what he wanted. But the Lake had robbed him of this certainty. He had to see Grams through her injuries. He had to return to New York to be a good husband to his wife and a good father to his daughter. He had to make sure these vandals meant him, his family, and his friends no further harm. He had to uncover what these teens thought they knew. He had to find out who killed Lucy.

But there was no way he could do all of this at once.

As her casket passed, Nate’s reflection stared back from its stygian wood. He forced himself to be present for this. Every single piece of him. He was here, and so were her lovelorn bones, and nothing else mattered. They were separated by layers of lacquer, inches of seasoned oak, and too many mistakes to count.



The pallbearers arranged the casket in front of the altar. The cantor finished the hymn, and the congregation sat. The priest spoke. Readings were given. There was no eulogy, and for this Nate was grateful. Funerals like this aren’t for the dead; they’re for the living. The half-stifled sobs from around the church made that much clear. Stray cousins and distant acquaintances mourned this chip taken from their own illusions of immortality. Their grief was lavish, but every tear they shed was spent on themselves.

For Nate, no words spoken by these people about Lucy could have been sufficient. He also couldn’t see past the fact that Lucy’s murderer was statistically likely to be among these mourners. These teary-eyed friends, family, and neighbors.

Though Adam Decker wasn’t in the pews. At six-five he’d be impossible to miss. The file in the chief’s closet said that Adam’s alibi for that night hadn’t held up to scrutiny. If he’d been lying about that, he could be lying about anything.

He raped her then he killed her.

The cantor broke into the recessional hymn “Amazing Grace,” which everyone knew. Voices rose and swelled together in the flickering church.

Tears filled Nate’s eyes as he realized that the funeral was ending. It was over.

He tried not to blink, but this didn’t keep his eyes from running. Her lips on a cold night. Her hair tickling his bare chest. A descent into the freezing lake, and the burn in his lungs as he clawed farther and farther from the light.

The congregation filed out. There was a grip on his forearm. Tom. Nate looked at his friend through his swimming eyes and was so glad not to be here alone. He’d contemplated staging a confrontation with one of the vandals, but now a quick exit was necessary. People stared at him as he and Tom worked their way down the side aisle. Lucy’s burial would take place later in the week on account of Medea.



He put on his coat and wiped at his eyes as Tom pulled him toward the door. The winds burst through the entryway, dousing ranges of candles. Someone clutched his shoulder from behind.

“I didn’t know if you’d come,” Mr. Bennett said. His voice was splintered like weather-beaten wood.

Nate couldn’t speak or breathe. He could only stare.

“I heard about your grandmother. I’m so sorry. She’s a good woman. A tough woman. If anyone can see their way through it, then it’s her.”

Here was the personification of so much of Nate’s pain, and he couldn’t think of anything to say to him. He felt as if he was floating three feet above his own body.

“I was hoping you’d be here. I thought, if one good thing can come from all this”—he gestured to the cavern of the church—“then it’d be to see you again.”

Nate forced himself to inhale.

“I need to offer amends to those I’ve hurt. And no one’s been more hurt than you.”

“?‘Amends.’?”

“There’s nothing I can do to replace what I took from you. I know that. I don’t expect your forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. I just wanted to tell you to your face that I’m sorry. I’m so incredibly sorry for taking your mother and father and brother away from you.”

Nate felt Tom’s gaze drill into the back of his head. Nate understood that he was supposed to say something here. He knew that much, but anything more than that escaped him.

“I keep thinking about how different things would be if I’d made other choices—better choices, back then,” Mr. Bennett said. “For Lucy, for Bea, for my family. For you.”