The Ferryman (19 page)

“She seems really nice,” Janine added.

“No argument from me,” he replied.

The front left tire plowed through a deep puddle and he could hear the water pummeling the underside of the car.A spray of it shot out and showered the sidewalk. For only a second, the car began to hydroplane.

David hung on to the wheel but didn't touch either of the pedals. It passed immediately, the tires gripping the road again, but now, as he drove through Medford Square, he tapped the brakes and went even slower.Though other cars honked at him, he stayed well away from the curb and watched carefully for puddles.

“If you liked her, what's got you so spooked?” Janine asked.

He sighed. “It isn't just the resemblance. I mean, all right, it is pretty spooky how much she resembles Maggie. But it's more just that seeing her brought back a lot of old pain. A lot of guilt.”

“Guilt about what?”

The light ahead turned red. That crimson illumination seemed not truly obscured, but spread by the rain on the windshield, as though the light had begun to bleed out from its encasement. David slowed to a stop. After a moment he glanced at Janine, then quickly looked away.

“I was in a car accident my junior year. Broke my leg and fractured two ribs. Maggie didn't have her seat belt on. Her head hit the windshield.”

His knuckles hurt with the fierce grip he had on the wheel. “Her skull was cracked. Her neck was broken.”

“God, David,” Janine whispered. She slid her hand down his arm.

Again he glanced at her.The red glow from the stoplight gleamed on her pale flesh.

“I'm sorry. It must hurt to be reminded of that loss. But ... I know how hollow it sounds, but accidents happen.”

David stared at the rainswept street in front of him. “We were drunk. I was drunk, Janine. I should never have been behind the wheel of a car. It was an accident, sure. I know that. But I killed her.”

The silence between them then was electric. It lasted a trio of heartbeats, no more. Then the light turned green and David accelerated, still careful of the road. Again he could feel Janine's eyes on him, studying him. He turned up Winthrop Street, just a short way from her apartment building.

“You know you didn't really kill her,” Janine said, her voice shaky.

“But I'm responsible,” he said.A great sadness rippled through him, and yet it took some of his tension with it. He blew out a long breath. “I'm okay. I've lived with it a long time. Just ... seeing Jill ... it's just so bizarre. I swear if I showed you pictures ...”

Again, there was silence between them. A few minutes later he turned in to the driveway beside Janine's building and parked.

“Want to come in?” she asked.

He smiled weakly. “Not tonight. I don't think I'd be very good company. We'll talk in the morning, all right?”

Janine wanted to reach out to him. David sensed that from her. But after a moment's hesitation, she nodded. He was glad. What he needed at the moment was just time to recover from the shock, time to get Jill's face ... Maggie's face ... out of his mind. Though he loved Annette, he secretly hoped this relationship did not work out for her. The last thing he needed was that constant reminder of his guilt.

Umbrella in hand, he left the car running and walked Janine to her door. He saw that she was deeply troubled as well, her eyes haunted and sad.

“Hey,” he said softly, and lifted her chin so she would meet his gaze. “I'll be all right. Just need a little sleep, I think, and sunshine tomorrow. Hopefully we'll get it.”

Her smile was clearly an effort.

“Janine?” he prodded.

“I just ... I was thinking, wondering why in all the time we were together before, all the things we shared, you never told me that.”

A tiny ball of ice formed in his stomach, and yet his face felt warm and flushed. Guilt. It was a familiar feeling.

“It isn't really something I talk about to anyone.”

Hurt, confused, she looked up at him expectantly. “But we shared everything. Good and bad. You told me about some really painful things; I'm just surprised you never told me about Maggie. I don't even remember your mentioning her name. It's like, she was this girl you loved in high school and you erased her from your memory.”

Pained, he glanced away. “I wish I could.”

“Guess I didn't know everything about you after all.”

“I thought I knew everything about you, too,” David said quickly. “But I had no idea you'd just walk away from what we had if Spencer came back into your life.”

Eyes wide, Janine reached for his face, stricken by his words. She touched his cheek. “I've paid for that, I think. What can I do to make
you
forgive me?”

His heart broke a little bit. That happened a lot, particularly where Janine was concerned.

“I didn't mean that. I do forgive you. I did even then. All I'm trying to say is that I don't know if anybody ever really shows all of themselves, even to the person they love the most. Maybe if you're married for fifty years, but even then, maybe not. That doesn't mean I don't love you. It just means there are parts of me that are just for me. Little painful things that are hurtful to me, or could be to you, things I hide away even from myself. It sounds selfish to say it out loud, but you can't deny that you're the same way. We all are.

“And let's not forget that I
did
tell you. I just told you when it seemed to become something you should know.”

Water sluiced off the umbrella on all sides, raining down around them in a curtain. Janine smiled ever so slightly, which confused David even more.

“What?” he asked.

“You're right, of course. It just isn't something people talk about, you know? That internal landscape. But I'm actually stuck on something else you said, just a second ago.”

He frowned. “What did I say?”

“That you love me.”

“Which comes as a surprise to you?” he asked. The tension and the guilt and the cold knot in his stomach all began to dissipate in the warmth of his feelings for her. “I never stopped, you know?”

Janine slipped her arms around him and laid her head on his chest. With the rain coming down at an angle, David's shoes and pants were getting soaked, but he said nothing.

“A long time ago, you told me you'd always be there to catch me if I was falling,” she said, her voice tight with emotion. “Now I know you meant it. I just want you to know that the same is true for me. I want to be there to catch you if you're falling.”

He stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. “Sounds like a good deal to me.”

After a moment Janine hugged him even tighter, then let go. She got her keys out and opened the door, then stepped inside.

“I'll talk to you in the morning?”

“Absolutely,” he promised.

He waited until she closed the door before he turned to go back to the car. The image of Annette's new girlfriend still lingered in his mind, but it, and the guilt it had raised like a phantom in him, was ushered aside by his feelings for Janine and the memory of their lovemaking the night before, and all that morning.

The drive home took him past the Mystic River, whose waters had climbed higher on its banks in the storm. There were fewer cars on the road than before. It was late now, almost midnight, and the storm would have kept less motivated people home. He'd had only a couple of drinks over the course of the evening, but he wore his seat belt cinched tight across his chest and kept both hands on the wheel. The lessons he had learned fifteen years earlier had been reinforced tonight.

David was still careful as he followed the road that wound along beside the river. Streetlights cast a diffused glow at intervals along the street, but their light accomplished very little. The radio was on low, a soft-rock station to soothe him. Ahead was a curve in the river, and the road followed it. A yellow sign warned of the sharp turn, and he touched the brakes to slow down, careful not to brake too much in case the road was slick.

The headlights washed across the soft shoulder, the grass of the riverbank, and the water itself.

At the edge of the river stood the ghost of Ralph Weiss. As the lights passed over him, passed through him, the dead teacher lifted his right hand and pointed an accusatory finger at David, mouth open in an angry shout that was either silent or drowned by the storm.

“Jesus,” David whispered.

A chill ran through him; his heart sped, his grip loosening on the wheel as he stared at the apparition. He steered the car to follow the road, but glanced to the right as he passed the spot where the ghost had been.

But the apparition was gone.

“Holy shit,” he said aloud.
That was not my imagination.

With a sudden flash of brilliance, headlights popped on behind him. They had not been there a moment earlier. A car roared up on his left on the curving road, the storm flashing lightning in the sky. The driver did not pass, however. It was almost as though he wanted to race.

“What the fuck?” David snapped, still reeling from what he'd seen.

He glanced over at the car beside him on the rain-slick road. Just as he peered through the dark, they passed beneath a streetlight and he was afforded a very clear view of the driver's features.

It was Steve Themeli.

Steve Themeli, who had been one of his students, a drug user he had tried but failed to reach. Steve Themeli, who had been murdered in a fight over drugs. Steve Themeli, who was dead.

Then they were in darkness again, rain pelting the car's roof, suddenly loud enough to drown the music. David, eyes wide with terror and confusion, heard the rev of the engine of the car beside him just before it careened sideways. Metal screamed as the cars collided, and he grabbed the steering wheel, slammed on the brakes.

His tires began to hydroplane, the car to spin out of control.

The steering wheel felt useless in his hands as he worked the gas and the brake and the wheel to try to get the car back under his control. It slid onto the shoulder, tires tearing up the muddy grass.

Then it flipped.

The windshield splintered into spiderweb fractures when the car landed on its roof. David shouted his fear loud enough that his throat felt instantly raw. He watched through the shattered glass as the car slid on its roof toward the river's edge.

And stopped.

His chest rose and fell quickly, his eyes were wide, and he waited as though certain it was not over.

Yet it was. The car rocked slightly, but stopped there, half a dozen feet from the riverbank. Upside down, held in place by the seat belt he had cinched so tightly, David quickly checked to make sure he was all right. He had banged his head on the driver's-side window, and there was a lump rising there. Otherwise, to his astonishment, he was unscathed.

He began to weep.

T
he house on Briarwood Lane had been in David's family since the early 1900s. It had been built in 1887 by a local doctor by the name of Early, and above the door was a sign placed there by the historical society that announced it as THE DR. JOS. EARLY HOUSE. David had never liked the sign, but his parents had told him there was a tax break involved or some such. He never paid it much attention after that.

The old Victorian was a quarter of a mile from the Mystic River. Less than half a mile from the location of the accident. Its façade was both classic and quirky, with a restored turret to the left of a pair of high-gabled windows that looked down from the third floor.Though it was surrounded by less than half an acre—which for a city like Medford was substantial—the house was enormous and sprawling, much like those on either side of it and across the street. It was a creature of its times.

There were parlors on either side of the first floor, both with fireplaces, built-in cabinets, and ornate woodwork. The central staircase was grand. In the rear were a small formal living room, a vast dining room with tall windows that let in a great deal of sunlight, a small kitchen with outdated appliances and a back staircase for the doctor's help, and a small pantry and mudroom that opened onto the backyard.

The second floor featured three large bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a library that had been part of the house's original design. On the third floor were two more bedrooms and what had always been called “the turret room,” a small space with steps leading up to a spot eight feet in diameter, just enough room for a desk and chair, and a couple of lamps to read by.

Though he did not visit the turret room often, it was David's favorite room in the house. He would go there to read, or just to look out the windows on the street below. If a melancholy mood took him, the turret room was almost certainly his destination. When it snowed, he liked to sit up there in silence and watch the flakes fall. Even as a small boy, it had been a place he and his sister, Amy, had felt happy and safe. Their private sanctuary.

After Janine had left him, there had been many nights David had fallen asleep up in that room, lost in whatever book he had escaped into at the time.

When he woke up Sunday morning, just after nine o'clock, he pulled on a pair of sweatpants, draped the bedspread over his shoulders, and went up to the turret room. He had not heated the third floor in years, but the heat rose from below, warming it enough that though the morning was chilly, the spread was sufficient to keep his teeth from chattering.

The chair at the desk was a high-backed leather thing with rivets. His father had used it in the late seventies and then abandoned it to the house, and David had been in love with it ever since. The smell and feel of the leather, even the way it seemed to absorb and retain the temperature in the house, it all reminded him of the most innocent of times.