Читать книгу Don't You Cry: A gripping suspense full of secrets - Mary Kubica, Mary Kubica - Страница 14

Alex

I wait for hours for the girl to return—trying hard to stare through the window coverings of Dr. Giles’s cottage office—but she doesn’t show. I consider sneaking into that space between Ingrid and Dr. Giles’s home, standing on tiptoes to try and see in. I contemplate a return visit to Ingrid’s home—feigning I forgot something, that I needed something—to try and catch a glimpse from her kitchen window. I imagine that Pearl is in there, in Dr. Giles’s cottage, doing what people do in a shrink’s office: sitting on a sofa, spilling her guts to a man who gets his kicks listening to other people’s problems. But then the time goes by—thirty minutes, an hour, two hours—until I tell myself it’s been too long for her to be in there, chatting it up with Dr. Giles. No psychiatry appointment lasts two hours. Or do they? I’m not one to know.

In time, I give up. She’s not in there, I tell myself. But of course I’m not sure. I can only guess.

In the middle of the afternoon, I go home. I retrace the steps I made this morning, down the streets of town, past the small stores that are closing up shop for the night, flipping Open signs to Closed, locking the doors. I’m tired; my feet hurt. My head swims with the image of that girl at the window, here one minute, gone the next.

The streets are paved with setts, rectangular granite blocks like cobblestones. The two restaurants remain open, but the boutique stores—the cutesy one with baby stuff in the front window and the one that carries nothing other than novelty items and a poor selection of cheesy, overpriced greeting cards—will soon close. The streets are sleepy, the gray sky contemplating rain. To the side of the road, there’s a big, black crow feasting on a rabbit carcass: roadkill. Everyone gets a little desperate this time of year. A squirrel scampers across a telephone wire, praying the crow doesn’t see. Down the street a group of preteen boys in shorts and T-shirts walk home, as if unaffected by the cold. The sound of their laughter cuts through the autumn air. One of them puffs on the end of a smoke; he can’t be older than twelve or thirteen.

I pull my hood up over my head. I tuck my hands into the pockets of my pants and walk quickly, head down, through town, past the carousel, and to the beach.

The town is lonesome and I am feeling blue.

I think of my pals Nick and Adam and Percy, off at college, having the time of their lives. Meanwhile, I’m thinking of some girl I don’t even know, may never see again, likely a head case, too.

The lake pounds the shore, no different than it did this morning. It’s only in daylight that I can see the choppy waves out at sea, the steady flow of whitecaps that charge the sand, livid and swift like knights on horseback—a charging cavalry. The sand is a washed-out brown. The lake has a smell to it, not an unpleasant one, but one that just smells soggy and wet and cold. The sand sticks to my black gym shoes as I make my way past the tall beach grass, the dense bursts that emerge through the sand. The grass is brown and brittle now. No longer green. Soon it will be gone, torn from its roots by the cold and the wind and the snow. My eyes rove the sand for crinoid stems—the tiny disks I find in the gravel and in the sand—just as they always do. It’s a fixation for me, a weakness, a habit. Crinoid stems, Indian beads, sea lilies. It’s all the same to me, the fossils of prehistoric creatures that once inhabited Lake Michigan. I gather a crinoid stem from the sand and admire it in the palm of my hand. Much more beautiful than shale or basalt rock to me; much more meaningful than granite or slag, though, really, they’re nothing much to look at. People string jewelry with these, but me, I collect them in a Ziploc bag. For now, I slide it into the pocket of my pants, holding tight, careful not to let go.

There’s a couple out on the pier, a man and a woman, not far out, but far enough to get the gist of it without being knocked into the water by the wind. They hold each other by the hand—steadying one another in the stubborn gale—as they take in the sweeping lake views and the apocalyptic sky, and then they turn and go, trooping to a car parked in the adjoining lot, stomping the sand off their shoes as they do.

But I don’t go. I stay, taking it all in for myself.

It’s only after they’ve left and I’ve watched the black car spin out of the lot and out of town that I see her sitting all alone on the playground’s belt swing, her feet dragging through the sand below. Her hands clutch the chain, though she doesn’t pump her legs, allowing the wind to move the swing for her. It’s a measured swing to say the least, deliberate and lazy, as one does when they’re thinking about something else and not at all about the swing.

Pearl.

Her coat is on; her hat is on. Her hands are ungloved and look to me to be cold. Her scarf is wrapped around her neck, though the wind grabs it by either end and pulls, so that the scarf floats this way and that on the current of the wayward wind. It’s begun to rain—just a slight drizzle—something she seems repellent to, as if she’s waterproof. She doesn’t seem to mind the rain, which pelts me in the eyeballs and soaks my insides. I can’t stand the rain. I could scurry home; I should scurry home. I should run. But I don’t. Instead, I move to a covered spot, a picnic area with wooden tables and, more importantly, a roof. I sit on the timber tabletop, a solid fifty feet from where Pearl sits.

She doesn’t see me.

But I see her.