Shadows On The River

Most of the time, I can follow my mother’s advice when she says, “Some things, Alicia, are best left buried.” But tonight, it all came back to me. I aimed the remote at the television screen and cranked up the volume.

There had been a death. His personal accountant or lawyer, someone named Paul Ashton. Somehow I knew in my soul that Larry Fremont had killed that man. And if I would admit it to myself, I knew my insomnia, this locking of all my doors and windows, this habitual looking over my shoulder, went back twenty-five years to when I watched Larry Fremont throw my best friend off a bridge. And then laugh about it.

He had killed once and had gotten away with it. He has killed since. He would kill again. And I was terrified of him.

Linda Hall

When people ask award-winning author Linda Hall when it was that she got the “bug” for writing, she answers that she was probably in fact born with a pencil in her hand. Linda has always loved reading and would read far into the night, way past when she was supposed to turn her lights out. She still enjoys reading and probably reads a novel a week.

She also loved to write, and drove her childhood friends crazy wanting to spend summer afternoons making up group stories. She’s carried that love into adulthood with twelve novels.

Linda has been married for thirty-five years to a wonderful and supportive husband who reads everything she writes and who is always her first editor. The Halls have two children and three grandchildren.

Growing up in New Jersey, her love of the ocean was nurtured during many trips to the shore. When she’s not writing, she and her husband enjoy sailing the St. John River system and the coast of Maine in their 28-foot sailboat, Gypsy Rover II.

Linda loves to hear from her readers and can be contacted at Linda@writerhall.com. She invites her readers to her Web site, which includes her blog and pictures of her sailboat: http://writerhall.com.

Shadows on the River

Linda Hall

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

—Matthew 18:21–22

Acknowledgments

A special thank-you to Pamela Benoit Scott for all the information on ASL sign language and deafness and for great insights into the deaf culture.

A second thank-you goes to Jan Donovan-Downs for all of the information on childhood deafness.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

PROLOGUE

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

Matthew 18:21–22

The girl checked the time on her pink wristwatch and looked back at the front door of the school. Tracy, her best friend, should have been here by now. The girl sat down on the stone embankment and swung her legs hard, hitting the backs of her calves against the rock in a steady rhythm. No. She was wrong. Tracy wasn’t her best friend. She used to be. Then Tracy got to be friends with the popular girls.

And then today happened.

“I have a secret to tell you,” Tracy had whispered to her after lunch.

So surprised, all she could manage was a quick “Okay.”

“I’ll get my mother to pick us up. We’ll go to my house and I’ll tell you. I’ll even show you my diary.”

“Okay.” The girl tried to keep the eagerness out of her voice.

“We can be friends again.” Tracy had smiled at her, that big, broad smile of hers and the girl dared hope that they could go back to being the kind of friends they were in elementary school, best friends, sharing secrets, knowing everything about each other.

“Don’t take the bus home. Just wait out front by the rock.”

“Okay.”

But Tracy hadn’t shown up. It was late by now. All of the school buses had long since pulled out and she was alone in the front of the deserted school. It was hot and clammy and she was beginning to feel sick to her stomach.

From her perch on the rocks she watched two teachers leave, figures in the distance who didn’t see her, the woman holding her skirt down against the warm breeze as she carried an armful of papers. She could hear them laugh from here. There were only two more days of school left before summer vacation and it looked as if the teachers were just as happy to be free as the students.

She looked back at the door. Maybe she should go inside and phone Tracy’s house. She checked her wallet for dimes. But what if during the time she was inside making the call, Tracy’s mother came?

So she waited.

A little while later she wondered if she should go into the school and see if anyone was still in the office. Maybe she should call her mother.

But her mother wasn’t expecting her and probably wasn’t even home. She’d phoned her mother at lunch to ask if she could go to Tracy’s and her mother had seemed pleased. Even though she had never told her mother her problems with Tracy, her mother knew.

“You go,” she had said on the phone. “Go and have a good time. I’ll use the time to run some errands.”

The girl spent the rest of the afternoon smiling. Tracy would soon be back in her life. And in a couple of weeks there would be church camp. With Tracy as her best friend again, it would be fun.

As she sat and sat in the blistering sun, her shirt stuck to her back in the heat, she finally came to the only conclusion she could—Tracy had played a trick on her. Tracy was probably at home with the popular girls and they were all laughing at her. She could imagine them, even now, sitting cross-legged on the wooden slats of Tracy’s sundeck drinking lemonade and calling her a loser.

The girl jumped down from the embankment and felt a tear at the edge of an eye. Angrily she wiped it away. She looked down the empty street for a long time deciding whether to walk home. That meant about a mile along the hot road until the main part of town with its stores and the drugstore her father owned. She could stop there, she thought, and wait for him and get a ride home, but she’d have to hang around in the back until closing time. And that would be like forever.

No, what she would have to do would be to walk right through town, turn left for half a mile until she came to her street. She’d have to walk fast past Tracy’s house. She didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. She let out a sigh, shifted her book bag, and started walking, the black pavement hot through the bottom of her sneakers.

A quarter of a mile later she decided to take the shortcut. Maybe it would be cooler. She turned down the gravel road, which would become a dirt path winding past the church and through the graveyard beside it down to the river. Then it would be across the footbridge. A few steps later, she would be at the edge of her subdivision.

She wouldn’t worry about that bridge. She knew what people said—that it was unsafe. She’d climb across the logs they put in the way and then hurry across it without looking down. A few minutes later she would be at her own house. She and Tracy had taken this way lots of times.

But it wasn’t cooler on the path. If anything, it was hotter. She walked faster, a cloud of insects beside her. Perhaps when she got to the graveyard she could climb down the bank and get a drink of water from the river.

Her head felt hot, her legs heavy. She shifted her book bag. This wasn’t such a great idea, she thought as she swatted away the bugs. Up ahead on the horizon was the church steeple. Good. Now it wasn’t too far. A big drink of river water and she’d feel a whole lot better. Maybe her mother would even be at the church. Sometimes she went there for Bible studies and things. Or maybe somebody she knew would be there, Pastor Arnold, or the funny fat guy who mowed the lawns. Because the nearer she got to the footbridge, the more afraid she was feeling.

She began to run, and as she did she thought about Tracy. They hadn’t spoken to each other in months. The notes she’d left in Tracy’s locker were ignored and when she tried to phone her, Tracy was always not home. So why today? Did it have something to do with Larry Fremont? All of the popular girls were in love with him. Sure, he was sorta cute, but he was a lot older. Sixteen and Tracy was only thirteen, although Tracy was quick to point out that she would be turning fourteen in a month. Lots of fourteen-year-old girls go out with sixteen-year-old boys.

But there was something else she didn’t like about Larry. That his family was the richest family in town, that they practically owned the town, had nothing to do with it. His mother owned the town’s coal mine, which was where just about everyone’s father she knew worked. No, it wasn’t that. There was something about Larry that was just plain creepy. Maybe that’s when she and Tracy stopped being friends, when she told Tracy what she thought of Larry.

She ran faster. She was running against the hot wind now, anger propelling her forward. She made her plans. This was the end of her trying to be friends with Tracy. Once she got home, she would act like she hadn’t been waiting in front of the school for hours. She would pretend like nothing had happened.

If Tracy said something like, “Were you waiting a long time? We forgot all about you.” Her answer would be, “Well, that makes two of us, because I completely forgot about going to your house. I got a ride home with my mom like always.”

Angry tears coursed down her cheeks. How could she have been so stupid? How could she think Tracy really wanted to be her friend?

The path brought her behind the Fremont Mansion, and from that vantage point she could glimpse the blue ocean, frothy with whitecaps. A bit farther down this path and she would be at the church.

No cars were there. Maybe she could get in and cool off. She tried the doors. Locked.

Then she heard the voices, looked down toward the footbridge and saw them. Tracy and Larry. She put a hand to her mouth and slunk close to the side of the church. They hadn’t seen her. Good.

She didn’t quite know why, maybe it was something in their demeanor, but she decided to stay hidden. So this is why Tracy wasn’t there to pick her up. She was with Larry!

She stole quietly to the graveyard where she hid behind a huge black gravestone under a pine tree. From here she could watch them.

They appeared to be arguing. She could hear their voices, high and loud, but not the words. At one point Larry placed his palm firmly on Tracy’s chest as if to push her backward. She shouted something, flung his hand away and backed into the railing.

She wanted to call out, to warn Tracy that the railing wasn’t safe. There were already parts of it that were broken, slats and boards that had fallen onto the rocks far below, but there she was, leaning against the railing with her whole weight. Larry put his hand on Tracy, only this time he was choking her.

The girl was about to call out. She didn’t. For years afterward she would wonder if she could have somehow changed the outcome of everything in her future—her parents having to leave the church, her dad losing his business, her mother being ostracized—if she had only called out. Instead, she knelt in the hot buggy grass and put her head between her knees for a few moments and watched an ant crawl on her shoe while the voices on the bridge grew louder, angrier, more frantic.

She looked up again.

Larry was holding Tracy’s shirt collar with both hands and glaring down at her. They were very close. Tracy was screaming, flailing. “Let me go! Let me go!” But he wouldn’t.

The girl in the graveyard was about to rush forward and say, “Stop!” but at that moment, Larry let go of her. Tracy began to laugh as she backed seductively against the railing and put one foot up onto the cracked slat.

Larry was moving toward her now and when he got to her, he put his hand on her face.

At that moment something bit the girl’s ankle. She looked down at it and scratched.

Tracy’s 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 been trying, almost from the beginning, to have a baby.

About ten years ago Rod, Sterling Roarke and I, all engineering classmates, decided we’d go into business for ourselves. I ended up marrying Sterling. Within a year I was pregnant and Sterling was running around. It was only after we divorced that I learned the extent of his affairs. He also ran the business into the ground by not getting proposals ready on time, promising things and not following through and lying to me and to Rod. Nine years ago, Rod, Jolene and I decided to let him go and strike out on our own. I was eight months pregnant at the time.

We moved the business to Halifax, despite my misgivings about living here. After Maddy was born, I knew I couldn’t work full-time. I’ve been taking the odd contract here and there, working from home. And then, of course, there is my own little sailboat that I’ve been fine-tuning and tweaking forever. I rested my forehead in one hand as I studied my sketchbook.

The project I was so worried about on this stormy night was a biggie. It would mean going back to full-time work. This was my chance, and I was ready, really ready. Maddy was doing well these days—remarkably so. When Rod called me two weeks ago, I figured fate or God was handing me a gift. Maybe things were looking up for me, finally.

The contract was to design from the keel up, a twenty-foot day sailer/racer for one of the foremost boat builders in Maine. It had to be fast. It had to win races. I looked down at my preliminary sketches. If I shaved a bit off the front end of the keel…And then the worries nagged again. Could I do this? What if I fail? What if they hate my designs? Even though I’d tested it on a million computer programs, there was no guarantee. The best computer program cannot totally duplicate what a real body of water does.

And then there was Maddy to think about. What if Maddy needed help in school and I wasn’t there? I was feeling a vague unease and I wasn’t quite sure why. I glanced at the time readout on my computer. Three-ten. I really should go back upstairs and try to get some sleep.

I’ve had insomnia for as long as I can remember. It goes back at least to when Maddy was born and I realized that I would be raising her on my own. It intensified ten months later when I learned the extent of her disabilities. Maddy is profoundly deaf.

A blast of storm hit the side of my house. From the dining room there was a door to a large wooden sundeck, and the wind came at it with such a ferocity that it seemed personal. I hugged my arms around me while the drapes quivered. I could feel the storm from here.

I turned up the thermostat. Then I walked around the first floor of my small house, touching things as I passed them; my glass model boat, the newest sailing mystery from the library, a pair of Maddy’s gloves, her stuffed teddy bear, the framed picture of my parents. I don’t know why I was doing this pacing. Nerves, perhaps?

Then I sat down in front of my drawing, picked up the remote and aimed it at the little television I keep perched on a wobbly end table. Maybe there would be news about the storm. Or maybe the sound of it would keep me company on this uneasy, lonely night.

On the all-news channel, a weather announcer stood in front of a map of the east coast and indicated with a sweep of her hand, the track of the storm. It would gain in intensity throughout the night, she said, and peter out by late morning or early afternoon. Scrolling along the bottom of the TV screen in red were the words, “Severe weather watch for all of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and parts of New Brunswick. Stay tuned to local broadcasts for more information.”