The Black Hour (40 page)

But it was. Corrine, dressed for a country picnic, her hair bright against the darkening sky. I bashed my way through a group of students, knocking shins with my cane.

I wouldn’t have caught her at all, but she paused to watch a large boat out on the lake. I had the terrible idea that she would run when she saw me. I grabbed her arm.

“What—Mel!” She threw her arms around me as I gasped for air. My fingers raked at her pink skin until she dropped her grip. “What’s wrong? Are you OK?”

“What’s it all been—” I choked. “What’s it all been about?”

“What’s going on? Are you going out to Doyle’s boat?”

“Why—how could you leave me?”

“Melly, I don’t know what you’re saying. Should we sit down?”

I looked around. No seats. She meant the ground. I’d moved past pain into the realm of dead weight, but this, from Corrine, still stung. She couldn’t acknowledge what was in front of her. She didn’t like to mention the cane or the way I moved now. The way I was now. Maybe I’d been in denial, too, in the beginning. But this wasn’t something I could wish away.

Except I wasn’t sure that I would wish anything back to the way it had been. I felt light, sharp. As though I had burned away all that was unnecessary, as though the attack had torn everything insubstantial from me. I was stronger than I’d ever been.

I raised the cane over my head like a pickax and struck at the path with it. Corrine’s eyes slid away. She would rather look to see who was watching than to stay with me, to understand. Why hadn’t I noticed the distance she’d put between us? Even nearby, even at the next desk.

“Not a good idea, Cor,” I said. I’d finally conquered my breath, just as I’d conquered so much more. I could almost walk away, leave this all here. Almost. “I’ve remembered some things.”

She watched the lake over my shoulder. “That’s good, right?”

“That day, Cor. For instance, the young man you had in your office.” I had her attention, and my last niggling doubt dashed at the sight of her neck splotching pink. “You left me to die.”

“That’s not—we called 911—”

No denial, then. They’d been in our office the whole time, then left me and Leo to die. “I can’t believe this.”

“—we did, Amelia, don’t look at me like that. We called and got your ambulance and—”

“Let’s get out of here, Cor.”

She paled. “What?”

“That’s what he said. Have you never heard of first aid? I could have died. Maybe Leo could have made it. We needed your help.”

“Leo was
dead
, Mel. We thought you were, too.”

“So why the rush? I’m your best friend and you flew out—”

But then I knew why. We, she said. We. “What Corrine did with her summer vacation.”

“What?”

“He’s—isn’t he at least fifteen years younger than you?”

She gave another glance out to the water. “I didn’t hear you worrying about fifteen years when you were with Doyle.”

“That’s—”

“It’s no different. No different than you and Doyle and your smug, gooey romance. God, the devotion he gave you, and you couldn’t appreciate it. I could have killed for—there’s no difference. Except now that I have someone, if I brought him out in public, people would stare. You can date
your boss
—twenty years older, actually—and no one says a word. They all keep your secrets. But if I so much as took Win to a department mixer, I know how it would go. I know what you’d all say.”

What would we all say? That she could do better than date a twenty-year-old? She hadn’t dated anyone in the time I’d known her. No one-night stands, no friends with benefits, like Joe, no one like Doyle. Men seemed to have written her off. Which I understood. We all had. Corrine was a soft, sincere woman—sexless in her baggy clothes, ageless in her schoolgirl ponytail. Invisible. But I could see her clearly now.

“Did your boyfriend mention that he knew Leo Lehane?” I said.

Her eyes shuttered closed. “We couldn’t get mixed up in it. His dad—”

“A better question—how did I get mixed up in it?”

“You don’t understand. His family—”

“I’m beginning to wonder who was meant to take that bullet, aren’t you?”

Her eyes popped open. She shook her head at me as though I were a child who’d just stuck my fingers in a spinning fan. “Me, you think.”

“The kid tried to kill a female professor outside our office, Cor. I didn’t know him, but your boyfriend did. What did you think, that if you ran away, none of it would stick? That it wouldn’t eventually—”

“It’s a year,” she said. “Today.”

“No—”

But it was. The date crept up like another attack. “Happy anniversary to me, I guess.” I wondered what the student paper would do to mark the milestone. “Did it ever occur to you that your boyfriend might know something about this?”

“You don’t know him. First of all, we’re in love—”

I groaned.

“—and second, he’s one of the Rothberts.
The
Rothberts. He’s not going to come here and start some crazy scheme—”

Rory’s story that could write itself was writing itself. “That’s exactly who would come in and drop shenanigans,” I said. “Because he can get away with it.”

“That’s not who he is—if you could only get to know him. And his family—”

“You’ve met them?” I remembered her standing at the edge of a group, hedging in at the periphery and hoping that someone would include her. And the young man wearing the expensive suit. Of course. “No, no, you wouldn’t exactly be allowed at the family reunion, would you?”

“They’re upstanding people, Mel. His father is in Congress, and his mother does charity work. The grandmother—one of the Rothbert
granddaughters
—I met her at the faculty reception and she was so proper and sweet, really delighted to hear about the renovations at Dale Hall—it was named for her—and that her portrait is still on the wall.”

The pretty co-ed I’d been sharing my secrets with. Spies watching me all year. “Still. You mean
again
, after the blood—”

“Stop it!” Corrine’s hands flew into the air to push my words away. “I don’t want to hear it—over and over, you won’t leave it alone. I saw it, OK? I saw that kid and his face—”

She covered her eyes. The things she’d seen. I could imagine the nightmares, what visions had come to her as she sat by my hospital bed. All the doubts she’d had to swallow. If she’d given into them, what would she have had to believe about herself?

The problem with that: The worst thing that had happened to her had actually happened to me. She didn’t see it. She wouldn’t see it. I felt as though we hung in a delicate balance, that our friendship might tip in any direction if the barest feather dropped.

“Are you sure,” I said, “he didn’t try to have you killed?”

She dropped her hand and showed me her raging eyes, then turned on her heel and started down the shore. “There’s no truth unless it’s your truth, is there, Amelia?” she called over her shoulder. “You have to bulldoze through it, no matter who it hurts.”

I watched her go, putting real distance between us.

No matter who it hurts? It hurt me. That she didn’t understand told me everything about the friendship we’d had.

She’d left me when I’d needed her most. Now I stood and watched her do it again.

I found a bench along the shore and collapsed on one end, ignoring the couple snuggled at the other. My age or so. They might have wanted to be alone.

I caught the man staring at my cane.

If I could give Corrine her fair share of this, I would. The shooting hadn’t just happened to me. It had consumed me. How could I make her understand the many lives that had been cut short? Leo’s, but also mine as I knew it. A host of other Amelia Emmets, gone.

The couple on the bench stood and hurried away. They’d caught the stench of the rotting meat I’d turned out to be.

“Now is that you, or is that the you that isn’t you?” McDaniel scooted into the place the couple had left. “You all look alike.”

“I can’t believe you’re still following me.”

“You leave an interesting trail,” he said. “But, alas. I’m here for the paper. For mediocre photos and ambivalent quotes. What do you think Night Sail adds to the personality of our fair city? What do you think the lack of safety measures means for Night Sail’s future?”

“Rothbert’s First Lady’s lap dog can’t get a better assignment than that?”

“Aha,” he said.

“What?”

“Lap dog. Ouch.” He gazed over the lake. “So that’s what you think of me.”

He couldn’t be serious. “Listen—this is your fault. I went to the hotline to get Nath some help. That place turned out to be, well, maybe a cult. But I ran into a kid there I recognized, a student. And my officemate is, oh, God. They’re in love.”

“Yuck.”

The image of Nath, sleepy eyes and swollen lips. I felt sick. “They were in our office the night of the shooting. That kid knew Leo Lehane.”

His mouth opened and closed like a fish. “You’re sure? That’s—wow. That’s it, then. The connection. Leo meant to shoot her, not you.”

I had to admit: I enjoyed watching the fish-face turn to admiration. “Jealousy, maybe?” I said. “Maybe Leo had a crush.”

“I wonder—”

“Maybe she had a thing with Leo and tossed him for this kid.” It could be anything. “Who knows what the relationship was between Leo and Win.”

“Win,” he said.

“The student, the—yuck.”

“Win Harlan,” he said.

“I don’t know. Oh, he’s—”

“The Rothbert crown prince.” He gave me a sad smile. “Sometimes it’s not good news when the stories write themselves.” He stood and walked several feet toward the cliff’s edge and studied the scene. “He knew Leo through the hotline.”

“That was my guess.” My left leg was dead numb. To shift it, I had to lift my thigh with my hands. I realized I’d done this in front of an audience. When I looked up, there was no trace of disgust.

“And Nath knows him, too,” he said. “He was cagey about that name earlier.”

Nath. My stomach lurched. I’d begun to lose track of Nath the student. He’d become something else: Nath the black hole, Nath the shameful incident.

“Let’s call this a weather delay,” I said. “Don’t you have some contacts on the university police? We should offer him this chance at glory.” I managed to stand. I’d have to take it slow back home or find a cab. Or Joss. If only Joss would happen by now. But she was on Doyle’s boat or soon would be. I checked the time. This one I couldn’t win. I’d have to give Mrs. Doyle a chance to grow fond of me another time. “I’m ready to go to bed for about three days.”

I realized what I’d said and cringed, waiting for McDaniel to make an invitation out of it. Waiting to see if I minded what he said.

“Miles to go before we sleep, Amelia. Do you know where Nath is?”

On a bus to the Indiana cornfields? I felt bad about that, about almost everything. “Do you?”

“I saw your man Nathaniel get on a boat not a half hour ago.”

I looked past him to the lake. Not as many boats as prior years, but still plenty. Good for him. One last hurrah before he packed. “OK?”

“Win’s boat, Amelia. That boat.”

He pointed to the north, past the lighthouse, past all the other sails. A single vessel, stark white against the dark sky, sails down. Drifting and alone.

We hurried along the coast trail dodging coolers and dogs. The worst of the storm still gathered, but the people on shore had gotten the message. They peeled up their picnics, carted lawn chairs on their backs toward the parking lot. I stumbled and corrected, fighting my own dead weight while McDaniel tried not to seem impatient.

“Whose boat is this?” he said.

“My boss. And his wife.”

He knew Doyle from the faculty reception, would have known who he was with the barest scratch of research. The question he wanted to ask hung in the air.

“His very new wife,” I said. “And the faculty, the people I work with. There.”

I spotted them, the boat’s Rothbert-red hull an easy target. Doyle at the helm, Nancy and Joss. Woo, looking seasick. We called and waved until Joss caught sight of me and pointed us toward the tie-up so that Doyle could execute a turnabout to come for us. I grabbed McDaniel by the elbow and directed him, and out on the rocks, let him return the favor. The crowd for passage out to the boats was thin and hesitant. The boys in the shuttle boats talked to one another as they waited for anyone to take them up on a voyage. “We’re next,” I said. “That boat there?”