Wintertide: A Novel (24 page)

“I heard. Dad seems to be making
progress,” I commented, looking back toward the kitchen where the once charred
wall was now pristine and plastered white.

“So are you and Kristen back
together?” she asked me, glancing down at her paper in an obvious attempt not
to seem too interested.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged.
“Maybe.”

She was about to say something else
when I told her that I had to get to work.

“What about breakfast?” she asked,
standing up and following me toward the front hall closet.

“I’ll get something on the way.” I
opened the closet door and then remembered that I’d left my coat upstairs last
night. The thought of putting that coat back on, a coat that was likely covered
in dirt and unwelcome reminders, caused a wave of nausea to roll through me.
Instead, I grabbed a sweatshirt and my Red Sox cap and headed out the door
before my mother could warn me that I hadn’t dressed warmly enough.

The rest of my winter break from
school continued uneventfully. I went to work each day and came home at night.
I listened to the news for any information about the discovery of Eddie’s body.
So far, there was none. Kristen invited me to a New Year’s Eve party that her
friend from school was giving. I went with her and put on a good show of having
fun, laughing with her and her friends, many of whom I knew from high school,
and kissing her at midnight. To my relief, Seth wasn’t there. He and I seemed
to have made an implicit pact to not contact each other. As he’d said, it was
over. For my part, he was the last person I ever wanted to see again. It
occurred to me, after the look he’d given me in the car that night, that he had
come to the same conclusion about me.

Finally, my break was over, and my
mother drove me to the bus station, sending me off with tears and a hug. Back
at school, I resumed my life. I continued to read the papers and listen to the
news, but there was no mention of a body being found. I heard that the police
still wanted to question Eddie about the killing. The Cape Cod Tribune, which I
read every day on the Internet, occasionally ran a follow-up story stating that
the case remained unsolved, and they still couldn’t locate the only person of
interest, Eddie McKenna.

Eventually, the story faded as did
the speculation. But the images in my head are with me always. After nearly a
year, I still couldn’t sleep soundly at night. Kristen and I were sharing an
apartment in Kenmore Square by then, and I simply told her that I was an
insomniac, never revealing that I was reluctant to sleep too deeply because of
the dreams I often had.

Kristen never completely understood
my stubborn refusal to go home to South Seaport for more than a few hours at a
time for holidays and family birthdays. If she wanted to stay overnight at her
parents’ house, she did it without me. I even convinced her to elope after we
graduated rather than plan a wedding that I knew she would want to have in
South Seaport. Her parents never forgave her and my mother was beside herself
when we told her the news.

Taking Kristen’s comments to heart,
I changed my major to journalism. After graduation, we moved to Manhattan when
I got a news writing job at a radio station in the city, and Kristen found a
position teaching at a private school there. I soon left  radio and began
working for a network news magazine program. Eventually, I struck out on my own,
my work on missing persons and murder stories at the magazine show paving the
way for my interest in true crime stories.

We have two children now, a boy and
a girl. I often bring my mother down on the train to stay with us. She adores
her grandchildren. Eventually, I’ll move her down to live with us. I rarely see
my father.

During her last trip down, my
mother told me that Seth Cooper had gotten married. She had seen his mother at
the grocery store. She told her that Seth had gone through a few rough years
after the divorce, but that he was living in Chicago now and working for an
investment firm. I nodded absently at her news, and then I picked up my two
year old daughter and held her tight while Kristen showed my mother the
renovations we’d done in the kitchen since her last visit.

Questions from that time still
remain with me. To my knowledge, the lawyer Eddie claimed to have hired never
came forward to say they had spoken, and I wondered if Eddie really had talked
to a lawyer or if his story was a ploy to extract money from us. If Seth’s
assertion that Eddie had been staying with a girlfriend was true, I wondered
how much he’d told this girlfriend. Had it been her car that was left at the
sea cliff? Had he hidden the fireplace poker that had been his murder weapon with
her? Had he given her mine and Seth’s names? There was never any news about a
girlfriend that had been harboring Eddie, and if she did know anything close to
the truth, it was unlikely she would ever come forward.

No one from the Southside Tavern ever
pinpointed Seth and me as the friends Eddie had been with that night. For a
small town like South Seaport, that always seemed far too fortunate to me. I
began to wonder if my father had asked a favor of the police friends he
mentioned when we spoke about it. When I later thought of the way he had
questioned me about being with Eddie that night, I realized that it was possible
he knew something more than he was saying at the time.

Mostly, I think the police never
looked past Eddie for the killer. It just so happened that he was actually
guilty. He was an easy scapegoat, especially once he had disappeared. His
disappearance allowed the police to indefinitely table the entire event before
tourist season began again. I’m sure they never worked very hard to find Eddie.
Even his father hadn’t raised a fuss when his son never returned home again.  

A person disappeared from the face
of the earth, and not only did no one seem to care, they hardly seemed to
notice. Sometimes, I wonder if I’m the only one who still thinks about Eddie McKenna.

                 THE END

Here is the
playlist Daniel was listening to while he waited for his meeting in the nearby
woods with Seth and Eddie.

“Absolute Zero”
by Stone Sour

“Just Like You”
by Three Days Grace

“Panic Switch”
by Silversun Pickups

“(Wish I Could
Fly Like) Superman” by The Kinks

“Speak” by
Godsmack

“The Missing
Frame” by AFI

“Go With The
Flow” by Queens Of The Stone Age

“Only” by Nine
Inch Nails

“Headstrong”
by Trapt

“Black Metallic”
by Catherine Wheel

“Prayer” by
Disturbed

“I Will Not
Bow” by Breaking Benjamin

“Swamp Thing”
by The Chameleons

“Unspoken” by
Red Line Chemistry

“Breakdown” by
Tantric

“Pain Lies On
The Riverside” by Live

“Hollow” by
Alice In Chains

Thank you for reading
WINTERTIDE.