The Storm King Read online

  “Dr. McHale?” A young woman with a bun of taut blond hair offered Nate her hand. “Mr. Vanhouten is in the Colonnade.”

  Nate followed her through the lobby to the Empire’s restaurant. On their way, he noticed caution tape cordoning off the Greenhouse, a glass enclosure popular for weddings that segued into the hotel’s gardens. Beyond its entrance, workers tightened tarps over the ceiling and arranged plastic drop cloths around the parquet floor.

  “What happened in there?” Nate asked his escort.

  “Storm damage.”

  “And the hurricane hasn’t even hit yet,” Nate said.

  A polite smile was the only response he got.

  Unlike the lobby, the Colonnade was just as Nate remembered it: a two-tiered room with most of the tables arranged in a wide space at the bottom of a short flight of stairs. Booths lined the walls of the upper level. The glow of sconces and muted chandeliers brushed the cavernous place with ghostly light.

  He spotted Tom first, hunched over a table. He’d changed out of his uniform and into a blue oxford shirt. There was a crease between his eyebrows, and he shook his head emphatically at something. His face smoothed and then cracked into a smile when he noticed Nate.

  “Buddy!” Johnny worked his way out of the booth and rose to embrace Nate. He gripped Nate’s upper arms for a moment as he looked him over. “You look fantastic, man. It’s kind of irritating, actually.”

  “You, too.” Nate patted him on the shoulder.

  Johnny had grown his hair longer to compensate for its thinning. He’d gained weight, too: The profile of his chest and belly had united into a single, avian curve. He wore a gray suit, oddly ill-fitted for someone so rich. The cutaway collar of his shirt was askew like the broken wings of a dead insect. He seemed to have a tough time getting himself back into the booth.

  “Crazy how long it’s been, huh?” Nate settled in next to Tom. “The hotel looks amazing.”

  Johnny waved over a waiter. A tumbler festooned with lime peels and crystallized ginger appeared. “Dark and Stormy,” Johnny said with a crooked grin. “Seemed appropriate. And let’s get a head start on the next round,” he told the server.

  Johnny’s own glass was nothing but ice, but he raised it anyway. “Welcome home to our—” He glanced at Tom. “Does ‘prodigal son’ apply? ‘Wayward brother’?”

  “How about, ‘to old friends’?” Tom said. Nate had obviously interrupted a tense conversation between the two of them. Behind his smile, Tom looked brittle.

  “Works for me.”

  “And absent ones,” Nate added.

  The three of them clinked glasses.

  A chime just like this had sounded innumerable times in myriad places through uncounted centuries. These drinks that friends share. Their toast done, Nate should have sensed the beginning of a companionable evening. Instead, he felt most keenly the things that separated them.

  A thousand pieces of himself had been constructed around the scaffolding of this pair, but how well had these connections weathered the years? Perhaps not as well as Nate hoped. He tried to remember the last time they were all together, and if he’d marked it as a moment that mattered.

  “How long are you in town?” Johnny asked.

  “Sunday, unless Medea has other plans.”

  “Short visit, but you must be a busy guy.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “Yeah, Tom rescuing cats in trees. On a good day, I’m a glorified wedding planner.”

  “Cats are more the fire department’s wheelhouse, actually,” Tom said. He turned to Nate. “I didn’t ask about your job before. You’re still in your fellowship, right?”

  “Yeah, couple years to go. It’s a long slog.” He hadn’t yet taken more than a sip of his drink, but Nate beamed at the waiter as he arrived with a new round.

  “Not just a doctor, but a surgeon. Not just a surgeon but a pediatric surgeon. Not just a pediatric surgeon, but a pediatric oncologic surgeon.” Johnny shook his head and took a gulp from his tumbler. “Way to make the rest of us look like bums, man. Let me guess, you also operate exclusively on orphans and refugees.”

  “Nah, got to save some of the really selfless stuff for my retirement.” Nate held up his cocktail. “This is delicious. And seriously, look at this place. This town. You guys.” He widened his smile until it embraced all of them. “We’ve done okay, haven’t we? It’s so good to be here with you both.”

  “Wow,” Johnny said. “So did the total cornball slushiness start when you became a dad, or is it just a side effect of the sleep deprivation?”

  Nate’s grin remained undimmed. Johnny rolled his eyes, though he did it with a smile. “All right, fine. Show me the munchkin already, I know it’s killing you. Entire phone full of pics right there in your pocket and everything.”

  Christmas, Halloween, birthdays, beach vacations, bath time, gelato disasters—it was amazing how many photos a father acquires. Nate didn’t foist them on his friends for long. It was good to show them the family he’d built so they could share in its success. But there was a line between pride and boasting he was careful not to cross. He needed things from these two, but not their envy.

  “Oh, and I love the new lobby.” Nate said, putting away his phone. “You’ve got terrific taste.”

  “I’ll pass the compliment on to my ex, if I ever see her again. But she did have great taste, didn’t she, Tom? The concierge she left me for had the most beautiful eyes. Who needs a Caribbean vacation when you can take a dip in eyes like his?”

  “Business has been good, too,” Tom said, ignoring Johnny. “Better than ever.”

  “Looks that way,” Nate said. “You’d never know this was the off-season.”

  Johnny had already drained his new drink, but he stretched his neck searching for a last drop. The ice clattered against his teeth. These cocktails clearly hadn’t been his first.

  “When we were at the Wharf we saw Emma battening down the hatches at the tea shop,” Tom said. “Nate was thinking we could all meet up before he heads home. Put the band back together and all that.”

  “I hear there’s going to be a funeral,” Johnny said. “Great time for a reunion.” He went again for the bottom of his empty glass.

  Tom exhaled at a volume just a decibel below a sigh.

  “Yeah, I’m sure we’ll see a lot of people there,” Nate said. “But it’d be nice to spend time with them afterward. Not just people from our group, but everyone—Lindsay, the Sarahs—everybody from the old days. It’s been too long since I’ve seen them, and I’d love to reconnect.” He grinned as if nothing would please him more than to have every memory of this place and its people carved on marble and framed in gold.

  Johnny peered at him from the hollows of his eyes.

  “Selfless. Sappy. And now what’s this? Nostalgic? What’re you going to throw at me next, Nate?”

  Nate didn’t let his irritation show. Instead, he set doctor’s eyes on Johnny. Bloodshot and slightly yellow sclera. Periorbital dark circles. A ring of sweat around his collar. Johnny had his mother’s dark skin, but his was ashen. Nate’s old friend wasn’t in good health. The extra weight wasn’t helping him, and neither was the alcohol. Nate wondered if Johnny drank the same way Mr. Vanhouten had.

  “Johnny’s in a mood,” Tom told Nate.

  “All these windows with a hurricane on the way?” Nate gestured to the wall of glass that opened the Colonnade to the gardens. “I don’t blame him.” He remained the personification of affability, but Nate didn’t intend to drop the idea of a reunion with their classmates. A gathering like this would be the easiest way to talk one-on-one with all their old acquaintances.

  “You’re more or less right, is the funny thing,” Johnny said. “Four weddings to go this month and the Greenhouse looks postapocalyptic. Maybe that’s the nuptial theme we should be pitching. Bride’s side is on the left and here’s your gas mask. Fifty-fifty chance of being skewered by a support beam.”

  “I saw it was clos
ed. What happened?”

  “Storm damage,” Johnny said. “That’s what we’re calling it, isn’t it, Tommy?”

  The waiter arrived with another drink for Johnny. Nate pried a wedge of crystallized ginger from his stirrer.

  “A tree?” Nate asked. He only asked because Johnny seemed intent on talking about it. They’d have to get it out of the way before moving on.

  “A big one,” Tom said. “Might have been two hundred years old. Took out half the glass, but the steelwork is what’s taking so long to fix.”

  “Must have been quite a storm,” Nate said.

  “Sure,” Johnny said. “But, to be honest, I kinda hold the chainsaw responsible.”

  Tom shook his head. “Come on.”

  Nate was about to ask another question, but an older man approached the booth. Tom’s father, Greystone Lake’s chief of police.

  “Officers will stay through the night and make rounds on the half hour,” Chief Buck told Johnny.

  “Chief! It’s so good to see you.” Nate rose to offer his hand.

  The chief and Nate’s dad had been inseparable in their youths. That friendship had continued up until that long-ago April drive in the headlands. Their wives had been good friends, and their sons as close as they had themselves been as children. Nate imagined they must have found a pleasing symmetry in this. He thought that for them to watch their sons play while their pretty wives laughed as the day closed on their good lives in their nice town must have been the very distillation of happiness.

  “Nate.” The man accepted Nate’s hand but didn’t return his smile.

  “How are you? It’s been ages. I’d love to catch up.”

  “How about tomorrow, before the funeral. Say nine o’clock at the station? I’ll make sure they’re expecting you.” The man’s face was as immobile as the mountains. He dropped Nate’s hand and walked away from the booth.

  The chief’s coldness left Nate stunned. Every recollection he had of him was that of a fond uncle. When he sank back into the booth, Tom and Johnny were both staring at their cocktails.

  “He told me to go to the police station.” As if they hadn’t heard for themselves.

  “The body,” Tom said. Her body. “There are questions.”

  Nate knew that this would happen. It was inevitable. Questions must be answered, statements given. For fourteen years, this town had satisfied itself with the fiction that its most beautiful daughter had run away. Another hapless urchin from a deficient home destined for the gutter. Nate had known better, and now the rest of the Lake had finally caught up. The discovery in the headlands had changed everything.

  Nate turned to Tom.

  “I told you. I’m being kept away from it,” Tom said. “For obvious reasons.”

  “You have to know something.”

  “I don’t. Truly.”

  Was this how they had this conversation? Nate wondered. He’d expected it to take longer to work their way toward this. He’d planned to reestablish rapport first, but maybe that had been foolish. Perhaps that etiquette belonged to a more civilized time in a gentler place. After all, this was the Lake. He’d returned here to talk about only one thing, and that thing was murder.

  The silence around their table stretched until it seemed sure to snap.

  “That night,” Nate leaned forward. “I know it was a long time ago. But—”

  “You want to talk about graduation, Nate?” Johnny asked. His voice had the volume of a whisper but the intonation of a shout. “Here? Now? You think half the restaurant isn’t watching us? Trying to read every word on our lips? I know you’ve been away for a long time, but give me a break.”

  Nate scanned the room. A few patrons at nearby tables glanced away from him. The bartenders along the wall dropped their heads to the glasses they polished.

  “Besides, we have more to worry about than ancient history.”

  “Nate doesn’t want to hear any more about the stupid Greenhouse,” Tom said.

  “You know that’s just the tip of it, Tommy. How about the sewage backup at Emma’s apartment?” Johnny asked. “You want to hear about that, Nate?”

  “Tom told me.” He didn’t know where Johnny was going with this.

  “How about the burst pipe in Adam Decker’s law practice? No? What about Owen’s wrecked car? And the Union’s window?”

  “Grams said that was storm damage.” The shadow of a thought began to coalesce at the edge of Nate’s mind. The shape it took wasn’t one he liked.

  “It happened during a thunderstorm, but we know that doesn’t really mean anything, don’t we? Not even nor’easters chuck bricks through windows. No more than they use chainsaws to fell trees or axes to chop through drywall to get at pipes.”

  “Johnny.” Tom leaned across the table, getting right into Johnny’s face. “Enough.”

  But now Nate had to know. Even if he didn’t want to.

  “Okay. You’re saying the damage wasn’t caused by a storm.”

  “Sound familiar?”

  Storms not as the cause of damage, but an occasion for it. This was a phantom pulled directly from their own tumultuous youths.

  “A window in my old bedroom at Grams’s house was broken, too,” Nate said. “A baseball.”

  Johnny’s face glistened. “A baseball. Fantastic. And what, you thought that was a coincidence?”

  Nate didn’t think that, even if for a moment he’d pretended to. The rum churned in his stomach. He’d considered many contingencies for this difficult return home, but he hadn’t prepared for this. He didn’t know what it meant. It seemed impossible, this reprise of their adolescence. A prank in astonishingly poor taste, but he could tell his friends were serious.

  “What’s going on?” he asked them. “Talk to me, guys. What do I need to know?”

  Johnny’s mouth was pursed and tension was coiled across his forehead. Tom’s jaw was clenched, but his eyes were vulnerable, haunted.

  These were the faces of men with secrets. Nate knew because some early mornings, before he remembered who he was supposed to be, he saw the same signs in his own reflection. He’d journeyed here to the cursed territories of his childhood to settle the debts of those years. He’d come here to balance the equations of pain. But the past was a place Nate could only peer at from a distance. Because it frightened him, what he’d find. There were monsters there he couldn’t face.

  “Please.”

  He searched his friends’ faces, and for a terrible moment he wasn’t sure if he knew the people he found there.

  It hadn’t always been like this.

  NATE WATCHED FROM the shadows as the streets ran with clowns, witches, and pop stars.

  On his left was Tom, his hockey mask dripping with gore. To his right, Johnny, in the blood-spattered scrubs of an escaped mental patient. But costumes were for kids, and Nate’s childhood had ended back in April with a precipitous drop and a fatal stop. This Halloween, Nate trod the Lake disguised as nothing more than the boy he used to be.

  “Do you hear the thunder?” Tom whispered.

  “God, relax already,” Johnny said. “They’re almost gone.”

  A costumed pair trudged away from them. One seemed to be a very large boy in an outfit that looked like a pile of liquor boxes. He was dogged by a petite woman dressed in a tight jumpsuit and cat ears—the boy’s mother, Nate assumed. The distance was too great for Nate to hear the details of the woman’s tirade, but she was furious about something. She had to get on her tiptoes to hit the boy on the back of his head, and the sound of impact was dull in the clear, wet night.

  Nate returned his gaze to the small brick house across the street, where there was still no sign of movement. Alone among its neighbors, this home had no pumpkin or cemetery, no cobweb-netted bushes or backlit ghouls. With every light burning and each curtain agape, the house was open to the world. Exposed.

  The burly boy and his mother faded around a corner, though Nate still heard the woman’s complaint over the murmuring of the tr
ees.

  “I don’t see anybody else,” Johnny said.

  As the rain had thickened, the crowds of trick-or-treaters had thinned. The street was finally empty.

  “All right,” Nate said. “You know what to do.” They had toothpaste, shaving cream, and eggs. “Go,” he told them, and they went.

  Johnny scampered across the lawn. From the movement of his arms, Nate could tell that he was already emptying a tube of toothpaste into his palm. Tom’s motions with the shaving cream were less committed. He squirted a jet of it at the base of the Bennetts’ driveway, then glanced to where Nate still stood in the bushes. Nate neither uttered a syllable nor moved his face a millimeter, but Tom got the message. He began emptying the can in methodical zigzags down the length of the drive.

  Nate picked up three cartons of eggs and then stared again at the scene in front of him.

  They’d hidden in the bushes for a long time, because something about the house bothered him. He didn’t like the way it was both well lit and empty. He’d done his homework and knew that Mrs. Bennett and her younger children were out of town. That just left Lucy. Maybe she’d gone out with her new crowd. Maybe she’d left the lights ablaze to dissuade the very vandalism under way.

  Johnny slopped tartar control gel across the window closest to the door.

  Would she be sad when she saw her defaced home?

  Would she be angry or disappointed or afraid?

  Nate was soaked, but his fury kept him warm.

  He launched the first egg from the street. It exploded against her bedroom window.

  “Nice one,” he saw Johnny mouth across the distance between them.

  Nate had planned to peg each of the second-floor windows with eggs, then shatter the rest against the roof. He wanted the house to be sullied. He wanted its every surface and feature desecrated. Instead, he found himself launching volley after volley at Lucy’s window. He still had one good arm, and his aim was dead-eyed.