Runner (Sam Dryden Novel) by Patrick Lee
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM SHARP AND MARGE TOPOREK
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Here’s one of the best—and most humbling—things about being a writer: you see firsthand all the work other people do to bring your book to life, and you know it would have never made it without them. These people I can’t thank enough:
My agent, Janet Reid, for motivating me with the perfect combination of encouragement, swearing, and various threats of bodily harm—and for being the funnest person to hang out with at any writing conference. My editor, Keith Kahla, who saw this book through several revisions, and pushed it to be better every time. Hannah Braaten, and so many others who make the world turn at St. Martin’s Press and Minotaur: Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear, Andy Martin, Paul Hochman, Hector DeJean, Cassandra Galante, Amelie Littell, Bob Berkel, India Cooper—I’m sure I’m leaving a hundred names out. Thank you to Pouya Shahbazian at New Leaf Literary & Media, and Steve Younger at Myman, Greenspan, Fineman, Fox, Rosenberg & Light. Great thanks to Michael De Luca, Justin Lin, Elaine Chin, and Adam Cozad, as well as Lynn Harris and everyone at Warner Brothers.
PART ONE
RACHEL
If there is a witness to my little life,
To my tiny throes and struggles,
He sees a fool;
And it is not fine for gods to menace fools.
—STEPHEN CRANE
CHAPTER ONE
Just after three in the morning, Sam Dryden surrendered the night to insomnia and went running on the boardwalk. Cool humidity clung to him and filtered the lights of El Sedero to his left, the town sliding past like a tanker in the fog. To his right was the Pacific, black and silent as the edge of the world tonight. His footfalls on the old wood came back to him from every part of the darkness.
It was just as well not to sleep. Sleep brought dreams of happier times, worse than nightmares in their own way.
Mercury lights over the boardwalk shone down into the mist. They snaked away in a chain to the south, the farthest all but lost in the gloom where the boardwalk terminated at the channel. Dryden passed the occasional campfire on the beach and caught fragments of conversations amplified in the fog. Soft voices, laughter, huddled silhouettes haloed by firelight. Shutter glimpses of what life could be. Dryden felt like an intruder, seeing them. Like a ghost passing them in the dark.
These nighttime runs were a new thing, though he’d lived in El Sedero for years. He’d started taking them a few weeks before, at all hours of the night. They came on like fits—compulsions he wasn’t sure he could fight. He hadn’t tried to, so far. He found the exertion and the cold air refreshing, if not quite enjoyable. No doubt the exercise was good for him, too, though outwardly he didn’t seem to need it. He was lean for his six-foot frame and looked at least no older than his thirty-six years. Maybe the jogs were just his mind’s attempt to kick-start him from inertia.
Inertia. That was what a friend had called it, months ago. One of the few who still came around. Five years back, right after everything had happened, there had been lots of friends. They’d been supportive when they were supposed to be, and later they’d been insistent—they’d pushed him the way people did when they cared. Pushed him to start his life again. He’d said he appreciated it, said they were right—of course you had to move on after a while. He’d agreed and nodded, and watched the way their eyes got sad when they understood he was only saying those things to make them stop talking. He hadn’t tried to explain his side of it. Hadn’t told them that missing someone could feel like a watch you’d been assigned to stand. That it could feel like duty.
He passed the last of the fires. Here the beach beneath the walk became rocky and damp, the moisture catching the glow from each lamppost. The shore lay vacant for the next several hundred yards. A minute later, in the middle of the dead stretch, Dryden came to an intersection in the boardwalk; a second branch led away inland.