Shadows On The River. Linda Hall

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СКАЧАТЬ screams caused her to look up and when she did, Tracy was tumbling off the footbridge, arms flailing, trying to grab for handholds in the air. Screaming. Screaming.

      Larry looked down at her and laughed.

      The girl in the graveyard leaned her head into the warm black gravestone and vomited onto the grass. Above her in the sun a gull called.

      ONE

      25 years later…

      I turned over onto my side, pulled the quilt up around my ears and listened to the snowy wind rattle against the outside of my house. I snuggled down deeper into the warmth of my blanket. Still, sleep wouldn’t come. I threw off the blankets and glanced at the alarm clock. 2:52 a.m. I sighed deeply, loudly and sat up on the side of the bed where I’d slept alone for eight years since my daughter, Maddy, was born. It was going to be one of those nights.

      I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and stuffed my feet into my slippers and switched on my bedside lamp. Beside me the novel I was reading lay opened and facedown.

      It wasn’t just the blizzard that was keeping me awake. Rod should have called today. We should have heard something one way or the other by now. This was stupid, I thought, yawning and tying my terry cloth robe around me. What could I do right now, anyway? I couldn’t exactly phone him at three in the morning, could I? I walked out into the hall, as another wintry blast shook my little house. The storm was worsening, as predicted.

      I gathered my hair up off my neck and tried to still my thoughts. This was insane. I was just nervous, that’s all it was. This project that Rod and I had bid on was just that—another project. There would be more projects. At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself. Never mind that this was the biggest contract to come down the pike in a long time.

      I made my way across to Maddy’s room to check on her. We both needed the money this project would provide. If I was lucky, the money might just be enough to pay off all my credit cards. There were always unforeseen expenses with Maddy, with her special needs, plus there were all the normal things she wanted, like a new pair of ice skates. New ones, she kept insisting. Not secondhand ones. If we got the project, brand-new ones would be no problem.

      As the wind increased, rattling the panes, I also thought about Rod. He and his wife Jolene were expecting their first baby, a daughter, in just a few weeks. They, too, were relying on this money.

      And then there was Mark Bishop—newly hired, specifically for this project. What would he do if we lost it? In the two weeks he and I had worked together, we’d gotten to know each other pretty well—enough to know that we clicked. We spoke the same language—boats and boat design. We’d had many long discussions about sailing in rough weather, racing in light winds and whether Kevlar was better than nylon for small, light wind boats.

      But not about personal things. I knew very little about his private life. All I knew was that he wasn’t married and that he had moved to Nova Scotia from Florida, where he’d worked at a marina. For all I knew, he could have a girlfriend stashed away somewhere, or even a fiancée. But it went both ways. He didn’t know anything about me, either. I have a whole lot of secret places that no one can enter.

      So, whenever I start getting lost in his eyes, and start imagining how wonderful it would be to sail around the world with him, I have to call myself back. Even so, Jolene had decided early on that Mark and I were perfect for each other. Sometimes she could be worse than a mother, trying to fix me up with every and any available bachelor.

      Why was I driving myself crazy on a snowy night? Mark and I would be working together for a long time. The contract was “in the bag.” Those had been Rod’s exact words. Yet, why hadn’t we gotten any word? We should’ve heard a week ago.

      The smoke detector in the hall chirped briefly, which is what it does when the power surges. I glanced up at it. This was promising to be the biggest winter storm of the season.

      “Got your flashlights and candles?” Mark had said to me as we left work that afternoon. The early evening clouds had hovered gray, low and leaden above us.

      “I think I’m ready,” I said.

      “Hey, you want to grab a coffee somewhere?” he had asked. I was momentarily taken aback. In the two weeks we had known each other, he had never suggested that just he and I go out. It was always the three of us, Mark, Rod and me, sitting together at the coffee shop on the corner, talking about budgets, plans or how we would fulfill the contract in the time allotted. Was this a work thing or a date?

      “I have to get home to my daughter,” I said. “I want to get us settled before it snows.”

      He knew I had a daughter, but not anything about her or why it was I had to get home early. I didn’t date much. The few men I’d gone out with over the past eight years had run, not walked, away from me when they’d found out about my daughter.

      “Well, then,” he had said, nodding his head slightly toward me. If he’d been wearing a cap, he would have tipped it—it was that sort of gesture. “We’ll see each other on Monday. Stay warm this weekend.”

      A huge Nor’easter, which had been making its way up the Atlantic coast for days now, was finally reaching us here in Halifax. I had already done all the requisite things; stocked up on flashlight batteries and candles and made sure all my doors and windows were tightly closed. I had also filled the bathtub and containers with water, plus we had plenty of food. One never knew.

      Despite the wind tonight, despite the storm, my daughter Maddy was tucked into bed and sleeping soundly, her soft, stuffed yellow animal, Curly Duck, nestled in the crook of her neck. I watched her for a minute before I bent down and pushed a ringlet out of her face. So peaceful. How I longed for that sort of peace in my own life. I ran the back of my finger over the smoothness of her cheek. She flinched slightly, but didn’t waken. I pulled the blankets up around her chin and bent down to give her a whisper of a kiss on her forehead.

      I rose. For a few moments I leaned against the doorjamb and watched her sleep. She’s the only good thing that came out of a one-year marriage to a philandering bum.

      I crept downstairs, wiping the sleep more thoroughly out of my eyes. I sat down at my quasi-drafting table in my studio/office. It had started out as a dining room in another life, but now was firmly devoted to my boat designs. My eyes blurred when I looked down at the technical drawings for the boat I was designing. Absently, I rubbed an eyebrow with the end of my pencil.

      I looked up and out toward the back of my house. It was too dark to see, but I could feel the wind, fingering its way through the cracks around my windows, snow firmly in its grip.

      I checked my e-mail. Nothing yet from Rod. As if there would be. Hadn’t I checked it a dozen times before I went to bed at eleven?

      Rod and Jolene own Maritime Nautical. Boat builders hire him to design sail-to-keel ratios, rudder length and shape. Rod and I were classmates at Memorial University in Newfoundland and we both have degrees in marine engineering technology.

      His wife, Jolene, has been my best friend since high school. She has a degree in Business Administration and runs the business end of the company.

      When I went to Newfoundland to study marine design, she stayed in Prince Edward Island and went to university there. Halfway through my last year at Memorial, Jolene came up to visit me. As soon as she and Rod met, sparks flew, and they’ve been together ever since. They were married shortly after Maddy was born, and have СКАЧАТЬ