‘I’m fine, Varya.’ He leans against the counter and uses his free hand to rub the bridge of his nose. ‘Everything is going to be fine.’
He feels regretful as soon as they hang up. Varya is not the enemy. But there will be plenty of time to smooth things over. He walks to the counter and grabs his keys from a wicker basket.
‘Daniel,’ says Gertie. ‘What are you doing?’
His mother stands in the doorway. She wears the old pink bathrobe, her legs bare. The skin around her eyes is damp and strangely lavender.
‘I’m going for a drive,’ he says.
‘Where to?’
‘The office. There’re a few things I want to get done before Monday.’
‘It’s Shabbat. You shouldn’t work.’
‘Shabbat’s tomorrow.’
‘It starts tonight.’
‘Then I have six hours,’ Daniel says.
But he knows he won’t be back by then. He won’t be back before morning. Then, he’ll tell Gertie and Mira everything. He’ll tell them how he caught Bruna, how she confessed. He’ll tell Eddie, too. Perhaps Eddie will reopen the case.
‘Daniel.’ Gertie blocks his exit. ‘I’m worried about you.’
‘Don’t be.’
‘You’re drinking too much.’
‘I’m not.’
‘And you’re keeping something from me.’ She stares at him: curious, pained. ‘What are you keeping, my love?’
‘Nothing.’ God, she makes him feel like a child. If only she’d move out of the doorway. ‘You’re paranoid.’
‘I don’t think you should go. It’s not right, on Shabbat.’
‘Shabbat means nothing,’ says Daniel, viciously. ‘God doesn’t care. God doesn’t give a rat’s ass.’
Suddenly, the notion of God feels as enraging and useless as Varya’s phone call. God did not watch over Simon and Klara, and he certainly has not brought justice. But what did Daniel expect? When he married Mira, he chose to return to Judaism. He imagined – he chose – a God to believe in, and this was the problem. Of course, people choose things to believe in all the time: relationships, political ideology, lotto tickets. But God, Daniel sees now, is different. God should not be designed based on personal preference, like a custom pair of gloves. He should not be a product of human longing, which is powerful enough to pull a deity from thin air.
‘Daniel,’ says Gertie. If she doesn’t stop repeating his name, he’ll scream. ‘You don’t mean that.’
‘You don’t believe in God, either, Ma,’ he says. ‘You just want to.’
Gertie blinks, her lips pursed, though she keeps very still. Daniel puts a hand on her shoulder and leans down to kiss her cheek. She’s still standing in the kitchen when he leaves.
He walks behind the house to the shed. Inside are Mira’s gardening tools: the half-empty packets of seeds, the leather gloves and silver watering can. He moves the green hose from the bottom shelf in order to reach the shoe box behind it. Within the shoe box is a small handgun. When he joined the military, he received firearm training. It seemed reasonable to have a weapon. Besides an annual trip to the firing range in Saugerties, he hasn’t used it, but he renewed his permit in March. He loads the gun and carries it to the car inside his jacket. He may need to intimidate Bruna to make her talk.
It’s just after noon when he pulls onto the highway. By the time he realizes he forgot to clear his browser history, he’s already in Pennsylvania.
27.
He passes Scranton in early afternoon. When he hits Columbus, it’s nearly nine. His shoulders are tight and his head pounds, but he rattles with cheap coffee and expectation. The cities become more rural: Huber Heights, Vandalia, Tipp City. West Milton is denoted by a small green and beige sign. It takes less than five minutes to drive through the town. Flat houses with aluminum siding, then soft hills and farmland. There’s no trailer or trailer park to be seen, but Daniel is undeterred. If he wanted to hide, he’d go to the woods.
He checks the clock: ten thirty-two and there are no other cars on the road. The waterfall from the message board is at the corner of Routes 571 and 48, behind a furniture store. Daniel parks and walks to the overlook. He sees nothing except the staircase, which is as rickety as reported. The steps are slick with wet leaves, the railing scabbed with rust.
What if Bruna has left West Milton entirely? But it’s too soon to give up, he tells himself, walking back to the car. The forest extends unbroken to the next town over. If she has left, she might not have gone far.
He continues north, following the Stillwater River into Ludlow Falls, population 209. Beyond a field on Covington Avenue, he can see the bridge that carries Route 48 over another waterfall, the most impressive one yet. He parks at the edge of the grass, pulls on his wool coat, and tucks the gun in his pocket. Then he walks downhill, under the bridge.
The Ludlow Falls are almost two stories tall, roaring. An old stairway leads at least thirty feet into the gorge, to a pathway skirting the river and lit only by moonlight.
He descends slowly at first, then faster as he adjusts to the width and tempo of the steps.
The gorge is jagged, more difficult to navigate. His coat keeps catching on branches, and he trips twice over gnarled roots. Why did he think this was a good idea? The gorge is too narrow to accommodate a motor home, the entrance too steep. He keeps walking, hoping to find another staircase or a trail that leads to higher ground, but his anticipation soon turns to fatigue. At one point, he slips on a slick ledge of sheet rock and has to drop to all fours to avoid falling into the river.
His hands scrabble over moss and stone. The knees of his slacks are soaked through; his heartbeat has dropped to his stomach and settled there, wrongly. There’s still time for him to turn around. He could rent a motel room, clean up, and arrive home by morning, telling Mira he fell asleep at the office. She might be perturbed, but she would believe him. Above all, he is loyal.
Instead, he peels himself carefully off of the rock, rising to his knees and then to stand. He finds better traction farther from the water, where the underbrush is dry. As the gorge narrows, it begins to rise. He’s not sure how much time has passed when he notices that the falls have become distant. He must have walked around them, to the south side.
Daniel sees flatter land above. He stumbles more quickly, grabbing tree trunks and low branches to help pull himself out of the gorge. As he climbs, straining his eyes in the dark, he notices that part of the clearing is blocked by something angular. Rectangular.
A motor home is parked in a patch of flat land beneath dense trees. By the time he reaches the upper lip of the gorge, he’s out of breath, but he feels like he could do the climb twice over. The trailer is speckled with mud. Snow clumps on the roof. The windows are covered, and the word Regatta is written in slanting script across the side.