18. Jonny
Chapter eighteen
Jonny
The fog on Flint Street is thick enough that the streetlamps look like distant yellow orbs, disembodied and floating. For a second it isn’t fog at all, and I’m back on Denning Court with the garbage in my hand, looking up to see my neighbors packing their cars. I shiver despite my jacket.
The campus is quiet this early in the morning on a Tuesday.
Fog sits low over the grounds and softens everything into an Impressionist painting.
Shapes come and go: a student with a backpack, a man locking up his bike, two friends engaged in a heated conversation that it looks like it’s best to make a wide berth of.
I cut across toward the west side, where the university land runs down to the water, and even this early there are joggers on the loop trail and a woman with a stroller. A man is stretching against a bench.
The unpaved trail that runs to the back of the park has been packed hard by generations of students. I can see the boathouse ahead of me, a dim shape in the mist, the lake behind it breathing tendrils of fog off its surface.
Alice is waiting at the top of the boardwalk with a man in a waxed jacket and a big yellow Lab, and I am more relieved to see three of them than I want to admit.
Alice smiles at me. She’s wearing a sensible coat that I instantly envy. “Jonny. This is Tom. Tom, Jonny.”
“Morning,” Tom says. He has a paper bag in one hand and the leash in the other. The dog puts her nose in my palm without being asked.
“That’s Maggie. She does that to everybody.” Alice hands me a paper cup. “Tom, would you give us a few minutes?”
“I’ll do the top loop and catch you on the second lap? Maggie seems to have the zoomies anyway. Come on, Maggie! Who’s a good girl?” he calls. The dog wags her tail enthusiastically as she pulls against the leash to investigate the root structure of a tree.
Alice and I stare after him, smiling at the dog. I turn to her as the fog swallows them. “So,” I say. I don’t know how to start the rest of the question.
“Let’s go back there. It’s a little more secluded, don’t you think?
” Alice suggests, gesturing behind her back at the boathouse.
There is a narrow walkway on either side of the structure that leads to a little veranda overhanging the water.
They’ve put in a bench since I was here last, which is nice, because I used to have to sit on the edge of the overhang with my legs dangling over the water. Alice sits on the bench. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
“You look cold,” she says. She takes off her scarf, which is a nice cream one, and offers it to me. I go to refuse, but she doesn’t take it back.
I put it on and shiver. “I used to be able to come out here in shorts in the middle of January,” I complain. “Now, I’m freezing all the time.”
“Tropical climes. It must be a shock to be back here.”
In so many ways. I lean against the railing. “It is. Do you think they still have boats in here?” I don’t know why I’m starting with that, of all things. It’s like the big things are too big to talk about now.
She looks over at the boathouse in surprise.
The back deck area is hinged so that it can raise up like a bridge in the middle to let the boats out, but the door encloses the boats has been closed for so long it looks like it’s rusted in place.
“I don’t know, honestly. Funny how you look at something for so long and don’t ask questions about it.
And then somebody from outside your little word pops in and asks a question that should have been obvious to everybody. ”
“Like, who’s my father, and why didn’t he come forward during the fires.”
She looks down at the rough wooden planks.
After a brief pause, she pats the space on the bench next to her.
“I don’t want to say the name, because I want to be sure.
If I’m wrong and the connection was innocent, then I’ve put a man in your head who has no business being there.
” She cuts her hand against her coffee, and then looks up at me.
“But I don’t think I am wrong. It isn’t only the features.
Yours are softer than his. It’s the way you tilt your head when somebody’s talking.
Those dimples. When I saw you at the meeting it took me straight back thirty years and I couldn’t think about anything else all evening. ”
I don’t say anything. The fog moves across the water. I sit next to her and clasp my hands in front of her.
“He had a reputation,” she says. “A ladies’ man, they’d have called it then. I don’t tell you that to be cruel about him or about her. I tell you because it means there was a pattern, and your mother may have got caught up in it.”
“Until a few days ago I thought I was IVF,” I say. “That’s what she told me. That’s what I’ve believed my whole life.”
“That’s possible. Again, I don’t want to make more assumptions than need be. It’s been a long time.” She turns to me on the bench. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Yes. After the fire I kept thinking that if I could find him, maybe I could tell him about what happened.” I smile. “Did he move away a long time ago? Do you think you could still track him down?”
She looks surprised. “Oh. Oh, honey, if I’m right, he’s still here.”
I stare at her. “Then he knew about me. And Mom. And Elliott.”
She studies my face. “I’m sorry. I can’t make that better.”
For a few seconds, I stare at the water. The betrayal is so acute I can’t speak. I swallow. “What can you tell me that isn’t his name?”
“He’s prominent in this town. He’s connected to the university.” She looks at me steadily. “Which is exactly why you can’t go and knock on his door with nothing in your hands. A man like that has lawyers before he has breakfast. Did your mother ever talk about something called Albatross Press?”
I shake my head. “She wasn’t a writer. What is it?”
“Was it. I think it’s gone now. It was a small publishing house.
I remember he had to file a conflict of interest form about it for the University.
It’s pretty routine, but for some reason it stuck in my head.
” She winces. “That’s another reason I can’t talk about it.
Even this is confidential information. Especially if I connect it to a name.
If your mother never mentioned it, then there’s probably nothing to it and no connection to make. ”
“I’ve never heard of it. Sorry”
“Alice.”
“Mmm?”
“That video you wanted to show. I know Henry was against it.” I have to stop and start again. “Could I see it sometime? It’s been ten years. I’m starting to forget the sound of their voices.”
She looks at me with genuine sympathy.
“Of course you can,” she says. “I’ll send it to you the minute I’m home. It’s a big file, though.”
Her phone rings in her jacket pocket. She looks at the screen and sighs.
“I have to take this.” She’s already getting up. “It’s work, and it’s a personnel matter, and I’m not allowed to have it in front of you.”
“Everything alright?”
“The Psych department just decided to hire a man who needs visa sponsorship. It’s been a nightmare.” She waves a hand toward the trail. “Two minutes. Go and rescue Tom from that dog.” She winks at me.
“Take your time.” I stand. “And thank you. I don’t know what I’m going to do with any of it, but I’m glad I know.” I step onto the side walkway.
“I won’t forget the video,” she says, standing up and leaning on the railing. And then, into the phone, in a completely different voice: “Alice Cadwalader.”
I go back around the boathouse toward the main trail. The planks creak under my feet, and the railing is furry with splinters. Tom is coming down the trail with Maggie and his paper bag. Maggie shows no signs of flagging. Tom, on the other hand, looks like he’s in need of a nice long nap.
“She’s on a call,” I tell him. “She said two minutes, so—”
A scream cuts through the fog and stops suddenly. Then a thud, flat and heavy. The boards carry it up through my shoes. There is a soft splash.
I’m running before I’ve decided to be, back along the planks and around the corner of the boathouse.
Alice is lying on her side, facing me, and her eyes are open.
I go down beside her too fast. My feet slide out from under me and my hands come down flat on boards that are a hundred years old and split to hell. My palms land in her blood, and something drives up into both of them. I don’t care. I don’t even stop.
“Alice!”
She’s breathing, but it’s shallow and wrong, dragged through something too narrow.
The back of her head is matted. There’s a spray of red across the bench where she was sitting and more of it spreading underneath her, black in the grey light.
I pull off the scarf she lent me. I don’t know what to do.
Do I support her head? Her eyes focus on me and she makes a sound that sounds like en. She repeats it twice.
I feel the boards tremble beneath me as Tom and Maggie come up behind me. Tom stops dead. “Oh Jesus. Oh God. Alice—”
And then I register that, even though he’s stopped moving, someone else is still running, but away from us, on the other side of the house. I look up into the fog, straining for the muffled sound of someone running into the trees.
“Please! Your phone. Call 9-1-1,” I tell Tom. “Please.” My hands are coated with her blood and I can’t reach into my own pocket for mine. “Make them tell me what to do. Tell them she’s still breathing.” Then, down close to her: “Alice? Can you hear me?”
He gets it out of his coat with hands that are shaking so badly he nearly drops it. Maggie strains at the leash and whines and tries to get to her.
I put my hand on Alice’s shoulder. “Stay with me. They’re coming.”
Her chest rises. There’s a long gap. It rises again.
“They said that they’re coming,” Tom says. He stares at her, dumbfounded. “I told them to come to this entrance.”
Her breath comes like it’s through a sieve. Then it stops.
“She’s not breathing,” I say. “Tom! Tell them she’s not breathing.”
He tells them, and his voice goes on the last word of it. “They say that they’re almost there. They want someone to meet them at the trailhead. I have to secure Maggie,” he says.
I look at Alice’s body. I don’t know CPR, and even if I did it wouldn’t stop the bleeding. I’m working out the drive time from the hospital at this hour of the morning.
Tom hasn’t moved. He’s on the same plank he stopped on, phone against his ear, staring at her. Maggie is turning circles at the end of the leash and pulling him half off his feet, and he doesn’t seem to notice that either. He couldn’t find the trailhead right now if I drew him a map.
“They’re going to miss the turn,” I say.
He looks up at me.
“The access road comes in behind the trees and there’s no sign on it. In this fog they’ll drive straight past. I’m going to go and get them. Tell them I’m coming to guide them.”
He nods, still staring at Alice. His knuckles are white on Maggie’s collar.
Maggie backs away from me. I run up the boards and onto the trail.
The fog is worse under the trees. I can see about twenty feet in any direction, and somewhere inside that twenty feet, or just outside it, is the man who did that to her.
I’m most of the way to the road when something comes at me out of the fog—fast, and big, and coming straight down the trail.
I feel it connect to my shoulder like a linebacker taking me out.
I sprawl onto the hard ground and make a sound like an injured bear as we go down together in the leaf litter.
He’s on top of me. I get one arm free and claw at whatever I can reach, because if somebody finds me out here I want this asshole’s skin under my fingernails.
One hand curls around dirt on the ground.
If I can throw it in his eyes, I can blind him.
That’ll give me enough time to survive. I can’t shout but that doesn’t mean I can’t go down fighting.
“Stop! Jonny! Stop!” the man says, pinning me neatly to the ground. He’s shouting at me. Lance Broussard is lying on top of me, and I’m scared to death.