At the bottom, there was a smooth concrete ledge around the rotor that held Lucia’s backpack and a small rolled blanket. Bridget picked it up and called Lucia! one more time to make sure. She gingerly pulled the zipper open, pawed through contents, all black fabric. She felt a sweatshirt. A few pairs of underwear. She felt dirty pawing through Lucia’s most private possessions; her skin crawled. She hoisted the backpack onto her back and climbed the ladder on shaky legs.
Back on solid ground, in better light, she could see the contents more clearly. Underneath everything, a spiral-bound notebook, a cracked paperback: Modern and Ancient Philosophy. She fanned through the paperback. Words so tiny you could barely read them, the warm smell of sweat on aging paper. She put it aside and flipped through the journal. More of the same. Pencil sketches, ramblings about Jung and Nietzsche, letters and poetry. Something fluttered out, beautiful and thin, like a butterfly. Bridget bent down, picked it up. A tarot card.
A crumbling brick steeple, the top aflame. A jagged branch holding a keen one-eyed raven. The falling jester, the twining king. The tower.
She’d only ever drawn it once. Years ago, before she’d met Holden, when Aunt Nadine’s husband had run their pickup into a swamp, drowning himself and their pastor, both of them drunker than Cooter Brown off Father Noone’s moonshine. Unlike many other cards, it only had one meaning: impending disaster.
Bridget’s hands shook as she tucked the card into her purse, her mind flashing on the bird’s one sharp eye.
With the backpack in one hand, Bridget found her way back outside, the sun fiery above the horizon, twilight looming.
“Lucccccciiiiiiaaaaaaaa!” she yelled again, her voice cracking at the end, her head thick, her pulse beating behind her eyes.
To everyone else, the draw of the mill was the building itself—dark corners and endless industrial hideouts. The floor littered with broken beer bottles, the delicious danger of the pulper, like it could suck you down and just start pulping again, all by itself. Teenage horror stories, fueled by hooch and weed. Plus, it’s the place that ruined many of their lives. Before, they had family dinners, blue-collar fathers with short commutes, storefronts without soaped and broken windows. After—well, it was all different after. There was something satisfying about ruining small parts of the place that ruined you.
The dam, though, was too fast, too much. All that water striking the poured concrete wall with enough force to spray upward. In the summer, the discharge feels electric, a zinging through your face and limbs until you’re chilled. The fence along the clearing up top had long since fallen away and, maybe five years ago, a boy drowned. A middle-schooler, hanging out with his older brother, went over the edge, his head breaking on the rocks at the bottom. Bridget didn’t know the boys or the family, and they moved away shortly after. The kids still talked about it, said you could hear him scream if you stood out by the water long enough.
Everyone said you can still smell the sulfur, feel the burn of chemicals as it mists your skin. Tripp shrugged it off as pure imagination. Sulfur dissipates, he said. No one can actually smell it. The mill has been out of operation for ten years. Nate had agreed: hydrogen sulfide is harmless at low levels. At high levels, when it can kill you, you can’t even smell it anymore.
Bridget swore she could smell it, as thick and noxious as rotten eggs. She followed the smell, the rhythmic pounding of the water in the background; she could feel it in her feet and up her legs. A warning, like a bellow.
The back of the mill had grown over, a single trampled path where people walked, the dirt packed down, the weeds and thistles slapping at her ankles, her calves. The backpack bumped against her back with each step. She paused before the clearing, yelled out “Lucccciiiaaaaa!” her voice straining above the whoosh of the water, the birds and the flies and the mosquitoes silenced, and all she could hear was the water, filling her ears and her head and her lungs, that chemical water in her lungs until she couldn’t breathe.
The brush cleared right before the bank. The dirt was speckled with black, dusty birds. For a moment, Bridget panicked, eyes swung upward to the sky, looking for the swarm to fall again, and then realized no one had come back here to clean them up.
Where were the buzzards, the crows, the vultures?
Bridget wondered if they avoided the noxious mist like everyone else. She could feel it now, a soft rain on her forearms and her forehead. Just a haze.
In the sun, ten feet straight ahead, right at the bank, a glint of metal caught her eye. Something reflecting the sun at exactly the right angle. Bridget dropped the backpack, dust billowing, and picked up the shining thing, turning it over in her fingertips. A metal heart ring. Half a heart, the etching worn down and soft, like it’d been rubbed with a fingertip. Small enough for a child.
She’d seen it before.
Bridget looked back toward the mill, the parking lot hidden beyond it, then up to the sky.
A lone vulture circled, out over the water. She thought about how you never seemed to see only one, like maybe the rest knew to stay away.
She tucked the ring into her palm, the point of the heart digging into her skin, and crept to the edge of the bank. She looked up at the bird before she looked down to the bottom of the falls, her heart pulsing in her throat, the whoosh in her ears that matched the whoosh of the water.
Bridget saw the white of her hair first—splayed out like an angel, at least twenty, maybe thirty feet below. She floated face-up, arms stretched to the sides, like she’d simply jumped backward and landed that way, the way you fall onto a freshly made bed. Her mouth was open, almost like she was laughing, her skin gray as the rocks. The water lapped at her forehead in a kiss.
She’d been there awhile.
Bridget called to her again, Lucia! But it was quieter, halfhearted, and inaudible over the thrumming drone of the water. It didn’t matter anymore. She was never going to answer.
CHAPTER 37
Nate, Thursday, May 14, 2015
When Harper and Mackey came back, they banged on Tripp’s front door while Tripp was at work, yelling because they didn’t care that Tripp had nosy neighbors.
“Come on, Winters, know you’re there. Open up, buddy. Time to chat.”
When Nate opened the front door, he saw Harper first, leaning a bit to the side, against the door frame, and in the back, Mackey, listlessly picking at his teeth.
“Oh, the dynamic duo. What do you have for me today?” Nate opened the door wide, letting them pass, and Harper raised his eyebrows.
“Just some questions, Winters.” They stood in the hall. Mackey folded his arms across his chest. “We think you should come with us this time. Down to the station.”
“Am I under arrest? Should I call a lawyer?” Nate asked.
“Do you have a lawyer?” Mackey asked, his voice reedy and nasal.
Nate didn’t answer him; he just slid on his sneakers. The frustration bubbled up into his throat. He had nothing to hide, nothing to fear. He was tired of worrying about everyone, hiding out in the woods, Tripp’s living room. The sooner he got this over with, the better.
“No. I don’t. Am I under arrest?” Nate persisted.
Mackey and Harper exchanged glances. “Not at this time, Mr. Winters.”