The Black Hour (44 page)

The sight of the title made me want to light the barbecue grill. This time, I didn’t fear starting over; I welcomed it. I already had another book idea. Ideas came at me as fast as I could jot them down. I’d never live long enough to see them all through, even if I planned on a long life. And I did.

“If you’re going to burn it,” Joss said, “at least this time invite us to the cookout.”

She flicked a wave over her shoulder and passed through the doorway, bangles clacking together.

“Do not burn this, Amelia,” Doyle said. Maybe he’d always known me better than I knew myself. “Swear to me.”

“I’m not the promise-making type. As you remember.” I waited until he met my eyes. “I’m—sorry for that. I never meant to waste your time.”

“Well. Time with you was never wasted, Amelia. Just—don’t tell Nancy I said so or you’ll have to worry for your life again. And mine.”

“It’s a deal.”

“The new semester begins, then. Ready for it?” He glanced at Corrine’s empty desk. I missed her, despite everything. I’d been past her parents’ home up the shore, but the house was as good as shuttered. No one had heard from her, and none of us expected to.

“I’m ready.”

He looked like he might give me a brotherly pat but resisted. “Good, good. I’ll see you at the faculty meeting, then.”

“There’s a faculty meeting?”

“Mel, please tell me—”

“I’m kidding. I’ve got it together, Doyle. This time, I mean it.” And I did. On my desk sat the stacks of class plans I’d need to see through this first day. I wasn’t fooling myself, though. It was going to be hard. The students still stared. The
Rothbert Reader
photographers still hung out in the ivy near Dale Hall’s front door. But the two a.m. phone calls had stopped. It felt, at last, as though I’d come through the other side.

I saw Doyle to the door and stood there, watching his back retreat up the stairs. Across the hall, my personal silent witness smiled with pastel lips at the twists our lives had taken together.

Downstairs, I heard the commotion of footsteps. The first class session of the semester had just let out. In fifteen minutes, they’d all be in other seats in other rooms or headed into the next stage of their schedules, and the halls would quiet. It had been too quiet since Night Sail and over the winter break. I craved this, this lovely, lively noise all the time now. I wanted to be near them, surrounded by them.

I dropped the newspaper onto my desk, closed my door, and took the stairs, leaving the cane behind. I needed the practice. Twenty-five steps, plus the one before the landing, but if I took my time and gripped the rail, I could get there. I would get there.

By the time I’d reached the bottom stair, the middle worn by generations of Rothbert students, the halls were empty.

I turned, with patience, on the last step and started back. I would do one more round of stairs before I left for the day. But later.

Behind me came the soft throat-clearing of someone in the passing lane. I waved him on, but no one appeared.

I looked back. Nath, his hair hanging in his eyes, leaned crookedly over a dark wooden walking stick. “Good morning, Dr. Emmet.”

“There you are, Nath. How are you feeling?”

“Like I got shot in the gut.”

“Did they give you the orange pills? You should ask for the orange pills.”

“I’ve seen enough of those. I’m feeling OK. I guess.”

I knew what he meant. “Any news?”

“Win is seeing some specialist out in Colorado. Aspen ski therapy, he calls it.” A shadow passed across his face. “Actually, I wish he wouldn’t call it that. Did you hear that he’s transferring?”

What I wanted to know was if Corrine would be going with him—but that seemed unlikely. No matter what she’d thought about their relationship, the kid was just a kid. He had his entire, golden life ahead of him. “I meant, news about you? What do the doctors say?”

“Oh. Probably won’t be eating steak for a while. Steak that doesn’t go through a blender first. I’m in the club now.” He picked up his walking stick, shifting his weight to be able to show me the elegant carved handle, the tapered tip.

“
Nice
, Nath.”

“My dad brought it to me. He says it was my grandpa’s.”

“He wants you to come home?”

He tilted the stick this way and that in the light. “He wanted me to come home months ago. Now he wants me to stay. He sold off a bunch of stuff from my grandpa’s estate and put the money into an account to help me finish school.”

“Quite a guy. I can see what you inherited from him.”

“Probably not.”

“Thoughtfulness. If you weren’t such a thoughtful guy, you wouldn’t be in half the mess you’re in.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”

“You know what I mean. Nightmares. Doubts, at the very least. How many times have you considered changing your major?”

“Like, seven.” He let his hair hide his eyes, then brushed it out of the way. “I have the same nightmare every night. I wake up screaming. My roommate wants me to move out. Which is practically the nicest thing he’s ever said to me.”

“That you should move out?”

“That I might survive on my own without him.”

I felt a smile sneak onto my face. “So you saw the paper—”

“Yeah—again.”

“Going to be a little noisy for a while yet, Nath, but I swear, it will get better. It has to, someday.”

“Your boyfriend sure got a lot of ink out of it.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Well, we can’t say he didn’t do his part. And mine, at some points.” I hated to think what would have happened if Rory hadn’t stayed curious and concerned. He tried not to say he told me so. He’d had a smug, new photo taken for his new job at the
Tribune
. In his newly tailored tweed jacket. Insufferable, really, but in a way that I found I enjoyed. “What’s your nightmare like?”

Nath studied the floor of Dale Hall as though he’d never seen it before.

“Mine is that I didn’t get to you in time,” I said. “Over and over, I dream that you’re at the bottom of Lake Michigan. Every night.”

Nath squinted up at me. “I dream that I’m at the top of these stairs, holding a gun.”

I took a deep breath. “Maybe we could use some ski therapy. Or the regular kind.”

“Why, though? Why did Leo—you startled him, right? He was there for Win, but you just came up the stairs at the wrong moment. But he didn’t have to pull the trigger. He didn’t have to shoot you or himself. Or anyone. I mean—not like I don’t understand what goes through someone’s mind. I’ve had that day.”

“How many of those days have you had since—” I gestured at his walking stick.

He looked away. A few, then.

“Well, you have to put yourself in Leo’s shoes.” I remembered the boy’s panicked face over mine in the hall that night.
Oh no, oh no.
His last words of regret, and then that deep, quiet moment when he must have contemplated what he could live with and what he couldn’t. I had finally been able to tell his mother something that might help her sleep, and between him and Win and now Nath, I knew that Rothbert wasn’t just a proving ground for the elite’s offspring. It was also a place that attracted good people, smart people, and lots of them. People who thought Rothbert was a chance for a new life.

I finally understood the kid behind that shaking gun rising from the dark. “You know what I think about Leo that night? I think he was stretched so far beyond reason—” A pair of students, giggling at competing cell phones, came down the stairs and passed us. Nath watched after them with the impatience of a curmudgeon. He’d have to be careful, or he’d grow into that cane.

“So far beyond reason, that none of his options made sense. I think that we all have chances to be different versions of ourselves,” I said. “Phillip won’t say how he got Leo to the hallway, but here’s what I think: Another Leo Lehane might not have been there. Another Leo Lehane might not have pulled the trigger. Do you understand what I mean?”

If the events of the prior semester had given me one thing, it was that I had finally let go of the other Amelia Emmets. They’d gone their way, and I’d gone mine. I hadn’t won every point, but I was who I was. I thought Nath might know about that. He was too young to see that crooked paths often still led where you wanted to go. But he’d also left some of himself behind—in the lake, and along the way. We were all slightly different versions of ourselves now.

“That’s what I think,” I said. “But we’ll never know for sure.”

He looked at me in silence, then nodded.

I turned back to the stairs. Only twenty-three more to go and one after the landing. “The kind of therapy I’ve been doing is a combination of work, work, teaching—which is work, of course—a few less pain pills than the week before, and a beer or two with a friend at the Mill.” And sleep. And Rory McDaniel therapy, but Nath didn’t need to hear about that. “I can advise you on your own regimen, if you like. Come on up, and take your time.”

He was still silent behind me. I glanced back. He slumped against his walking stick, weary and pale.

“What?” I said.

“Dr. Emmet, I’m not ashamed to tell you that I need to take the elevator.”

“Well, then,” I said. “You’re already ahead of me.”

He smiled. Good man.

Since this is my first novel, I have many people to thank for making this book—and this writing life—possible.

First thanks go to Sharon Bowers of Miller Bowers Griffin Literary Management and to Dan Mayer, Jill Maxick, Nicole Sommer-Lecht, Meghan Quinn, Julia DeGraf, Brian McMahon, and all the good people at Seventh Street Books/Prometheus Books for making all this possible and being so fun to work with, besides.

Thanks to my mystery writing family, the Mystery Writers of America Midwest Chapter, especially Clare O’Donohue. Thanks also to writers-slash-moral-support artists Lynne Raimondo, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Julie Hyzy, Catriona McPherson, Terry Shames, Susan Froetschel, Jincy Willett, Jamie Freveletti, Lee Reilly, Ellen Blum Barrish, and Holly Montague.

I owe more than thanks to the librarians who put books in my hands back in Boone County, Indiana, and to the writing teachers who have cheered me on through the years, especially Scott Blackwood, Lisa Stolley, Boman Desai, Lawrence Howe, Ann Brigham, Peggy Shinner, and Janet Wondra at Roosevelt University; Michael Price, Mark Massé, and Margaret Kingery at Ball State University (and, of course, Chip Jaggers, who taught me not writing but everything else); Denise Beck, Janet Dingman, and Margaret Keene at Western Boone (and Beverly Parker, who never forgot me, and Jan Coake, of course); Greg Fallis, at Gotham Writers Workshop; and Terence Faherty at Midwest Writers Workshop, for telling me I was a mystery writer in the first place.

Thanks to
Big Muddy
for the first yes and to those who published me afterward, especially
Good Housekeeping
, Laura Matthews, and Jodi Picoult; and
TimeOut Chicago
, Jonathan Messinger, and Michael Harvey for my first crime story publication. Thanks for additional encouragement from Midwest Writers Workshop, Jama Kehoe Bigger and the late Earl Conn; the R. Karl Largent family and my fellow gravedigger Matthew Clemens; Chris Roerden and the Helen McCloy Scholarship committee; Gotham Writers’ Workshop; Friends of American Writers; Amy Davis, Pat Cronin, and the Writers WorkSpace; Jill Pollack and StoryStudio Chicago.

Special thanks to my partner in crime, Kim Rader, and to Kristi Brenock-Leduc and Meghan Eagan for e-mails with exclamation marks.

Also Tricia David, Emily Lobdell, and Lauren MacIntyre for not needing me during crucial lunch-hour writing time; Denise, Beth, JoAnna, Rebecca, Kate, Meredith, Laurie, Viv, Tricia-O, Sharada, and Erin for encouraging me to leap; Kelly, Michi, Danny, Kelli, Gil, Lauren, Kim, Adam, Becky, Sam, and the entire Roosevelt MFA community past and present; the Lovells for all the cozy murder titles if I ever write one; and all the supportive friends always there, especially Tiffany (yes, Jeff, you, too), Mandee, Melissa, Kirsten, Scoots, and the Schnitzlers.

Tremendous thanks to my first readers, Christopher Coake, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Yvonne Strumecki, and James Burford, who gave time, feedback, advice, and therapy.

The biggest appreciation goes to my family, of course, especially Paula and Danny Dodson; Mel and Janie Rader; Jill, Scott, Jesse, and Addison Bryan; and all of the Days. Also Annie Ellen Rader, who always liked to hear my version of events.

And to Greg, last but most.