back tears. Half a lifetime of’ not knowing YOU, he thought.
Half a lifetime wasted, until now.
He kissed her softly on the head, hut she didn’t awaken.
He got dressed while gazing out the window, at a world transformed by the night’s storm. A fluffy mantle of snow had buried his car, turning it into an indistinct mound of white. The snow-covered branches of trees drooped under their heavy cloaks, and where once there’d been the front lawn, now there seemed to be a bright field of diamonds, glittering in the sunlight.
A pickup truck came up the road and turned onto Claire’s property. It had a winter plow mounted in front, and Lincoln assumed at first that this was someone Claire had hired to clear her driveway. Then the driver stepped out, and Lincoln saw the Tranquility police department uniform. It was Floyd Spear.
Floyd waded over to the mound that was Lincoln’s vehicle and brushed away the snow from the license plate. Then he looked up, questioningly, at the house. Now the whole town will know where I spent the night.
Lincoln went downstairs and opened the front door just as Floyd raised his gloved hand to knock. “Morning,” said Lincoln.
“Uh… morning.”
“You looking for me?”
“Yeah, I-I drove over to your house, but you weren’t home.”
“My pager’s been on.”
“I know. But I-well, I didn’t want to break the news over the phone.”
“What news?”
Floyd looked down at his own boots, crusted with snow. “It’s bad news, Lincoln.
I’m real sorry. It’s about Doreen.”
Lincoln said nothing. And strangely enough, he felt nothing, as if the cold air he was breathing in had somehow numbed his heart, and his brain as well. Floyd’s voice seemed to be speaking to him from across a great distance, the words fading in and out of hearing.
“…found her body over on Slocum Road. Don’t know how she got all the way out there. We think it must’ve happened early last night, ‘round the same time as that trouble over at the school. But it’s up to the ME to determine.”
Lincoln could barely force words from his throat. “How… how did it happen?”
Floyd hesitated, his gaze rising, then dropping again to his boots. “It looks like a hit-and-run to me. The state police are heading out to the scene.”
By Floyd’s prolonged silence, Lincoln understood there was still more that hadn’t been said. When Floyd looked up at last, his next words came out with painful reluctance. “Last night, around nine, the dispatcher got a call about a drunken driver, weaving all over Slocum Road. Same vicinity where we found Doreen. That call came in while we were all over at the high school, so no one managed to follow up on it-”
“Did the witness get a license number?”
Floyd nodded. And added miserably: “The vehicle was registered to Dr. Elliot.”
Lincoln felt the blood drain from his face. Claire’s car?
“According to the registration, it’s a brown Chevy pickup.”
“But she wasn’t driving the pickup! I saw her last night at the school. She was driving that old Subaru sedan.”
“All I’m saying, Lincoln, is that the witness gave Dr. Effiot’s license number.
So maybe-maybe I should take a look at the pickup?”
Lincoln stepped outside in his shirtsleeves, but scarcely felt the cold as he waded across to the barn. He reached elbow deep into the snow, found the handle, and raised the door.
Inside, both of Claire’s vehicles were parked side by side, the pickup on the right. The first thing Lincoln noticed was the snowmelt puddled beneath both vehicles. Both of them had been driven sometime in the last day or two, recently enough so that the puddles had not yet evaporated.
His numbness was quickly giving way to a nauseating sense of dread. He circled around to the front of the pickup truck. At his first glimpse of the blood smeared across the fender, the world seemed to drop away from under his feet, to collapse beneath him.
Without a word, he turned and walked out of the barn.
Halting in calf-deep snow, he looked up at the house where Claire and her son now slept. He could think of no way to avoid the ordeal to come, no way to spare her from the pain he himself would now have to inflict. He had no choice in the matter. Surely she would understand. Perhaps some day she would even forgive him.
But today-today she would hate him.
“You know you’re gonna have to step away from this,” said Floyd, softly. “Hell, you’re gonna have to stay miles away. Doreen was your wife. And you just spent the night with His voice faded. “It’s a state police case, Lincoln. They’ll be wanting to talk to you. To both of you.”
Lincoln took a deep breath and welcomed the punishing sharpness of cold air in his lungs. Welcomed the physical pain. “Then you get them on the radio,” he said. And he started, reluctantly, toward the house. “I have to talk to Noah.”
She didn’t understand how this could have happened. She had awakened to a parallel universe where people she knew, people she loved, were behaving in ways she did not recognize. There was Noah slouched in the kitchen chair, his whole body so electric with rage the air around him seemed to hum. There was Lincoln, grim and distant as he asked another question, and another. Neither one of them looked at her; clearly they both preferred she be out of the room, but they hadn’t asked her to leave. She would not leave in any event; she saw the direction Lincoln’s questions were taking, and she understood the dangerous nature of this drama now being played out in her kitchen.
“I need you to be honest with me, son,” said Lincoln. “I’m not trying to play tricks on you. I’m not trying to trap you. I just have to know where you drove the truck last night, and what happened.”
“Who says I drove it anywhere?”
“The pickup has obviously been out of the barn. There’s snowmelt under it.”
“My mom-”
“Your mom was driving the Subaru last night, Noah. She confirms it.” Noah’s gaze shot to Claire, and she saw the accusation in his eyes. You’re on his side.
“Who gives a shit if I did take it out for a drive?” said Noah. “I brought it back in one piece, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did.”
“So I drove without a license. Send me to the electric chair.”
“Where did you drive the truck, Noah?”
“Around.”
“Where?”
“Just around, okay?”
“Why are you asking him these questions?” said Claire. “What are trying to get him to say?”
Lincoln didn’t answer; his attention remained fixed on her son. That’s how far he’s pulled away from me, she thought. That’s how little I know this man.
Welcome to the morning after, the hard light of regret.
“This isn’t about a simple joyride, is it?” said Claire.
At last Lincoln looked at her. “There was a hit-and-run accident last night.
Your pickup truck may have been involved.”
“How do you know that?”
“A witness saw your truck driving erratically and called it in. It was on the same road where the body was found”
She sat back in her chair, as though someone had shoved her. A body. Someone has been killed.
“Where did you take the pickup last night, Noah?” Lincoln asked.
Suddenly Noah looked terrified. “The lake,” he said, almost too softly to be heard.
“Where else?”
“Just the lake. Toddy Point Road. I parked for a while, on the boat ramp. Then it started to snow too hard, and
