John Hart - Down River

She smiled wanly. “I remember.”

“Tell me what’s going on, Sarah.”

She sighed and looked at the ceiling. “It’s about your mother,” she said. “It’s all about your mother.”

A pain detonated somewhere in my gut. “What about her?”

Sarah’s eyes were very bright in the gloom. Her hand fell away from the shot glass and flattened on the table. “She really was a beautiful woman,” Sarah said. “We were very different, so I couldn’t admire everything about her, but what she had, she had in spades. Like you, for instance. I’ve never seen a woman be a better mother or love a child more than she did you. In that way, she was born to be a mother. In other ways, not so much.”

“What do you mean?”

Sarah knocked back the rest of her beer and spoke over me. “She couldn’t get pregnant,” she said. “After you, she had seven miscarriages. The doctors couldn’t help. She came to me and I treated her.”

“Did I see you? You look very familiar.”

“Once, maybe. I usually came at night, when you were asleep. I remember you, though. You were a good kid.”

She raised her hand to the bartender, who delivered two shots as if she’d been waiting with them in hand. Sarah raised hers and inclined her head toward the other. I lifted it, tapped her glass, and swallowed liquor that burned all the way down. Sarah’s eyes had gone distant.

“But my mother…?”

“She wanted a baby so badly. She ached for it. But the miscarriages were wearing her down, physically and emotionally. By the time I got to her, she was already depressed. When she conceived, though, the spark came back.”

Sarah stopped speaking and studied me. I had no idea what she saw. “You sure you want to hear this?”

“Just tell me.”

“This one went to the second trimester before she lost it. But she did lose it, and lost a lot of blood in the process. She never got over it, never got her strength back. Depression ate her down to nothing. You know the rest.”

“And my father didn’t want me to know this?”

“Some business is between a man and his wife and nobody else. He came out today because he didn’t want me telling you. He wanted to make sure I remembered my promise.”

“Yet, you did tell me.”

Heat flashed in her eyes. “Fuck him for not trusting me.”

I thought about what she’d said. “It still doesn’t make sense. Why would he care that much?”

“I’ve told you all I’m going to tell.”

My hand came down on the table, hard. I didn’t even know I’d moved it. Her eyes grew still, and I saw that her friends were on their feet. “Careful,” she said softly.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I repeated.

She leaned closer, laid her hands upon my own, and lowered her voice. “Her complications stemmed from a difficult delivery,” she said. “Problems when you were born. Do you see it now?”

Some invisible hand twisted a wrench in my heart. “She killed herself because of me?”

She hesitated and squeezed with her fingers. “That’s exactly what your father did not want you thinking.”

“That’s why he wanted me to stay away from you.”

She leaned away from me, brushed her hands along the table’s edge. Whatever sympathy I’d seen in her disappeared. “We’re done now.”

“Sarah…”

She lifted a finger and her biker friends crossed the room and stood behind me. I felt them there, a wall. Sarah’s face was unforgiving.

“You should leave now.”

The day exploded on me as I walked outside. Sunlight drilled into the back of my skull and the booze churned in my empty stomach. I replayed her words and the look on her face. The cold, hard pity.

I made it to the car before I heard footsteps.

I spun, hands up. It was that kind of place. One of the bikers from Sarah’s table stood five feet away. He was six two, in leather chaps and wraparound shades. The white in his beard looked more like yellow in the sun. Nicotine streaks at the corners of his mouth. I put his age at sixty. A hard, brutal sixty. The handgun wedged in his pants was chrome-plated.

He stretched out a hand, a folded scrap of paper between two fingers. “She wants you to give this to the guy in jail.”

“Dolf Shepherd?”

“Whatever.”

I took the paper, a folded napkin. Handwriting stretched loosely over three lines, blue ink that leeched into soft paper. Good people love you and good people will remember what you stand for. I’ll make sure.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

He leaned forward. “None of your fucking business.”

I looked past him to the door. He saw me thinking and dropped a hand to the pistol in his belt. Muscles twisted under his leather skin.

“That’s not necessary,” I said.

Yellow whiskers moved at the corners of his mouth. “You upset Sarah. Don’t bother her again.”

I stared him down, and his hand stayed on the gun.

“You can consider that a warning.”

I crossed the Salisbury line late in the afternoon. My head hurt and I felt emptied out. I needed something good, so I called Robin, who answered on the second ring. “Are you finished for the day?” I asked.

“Wrapping up a few things. Where are you?”

“In the car.”

“Are you okay? You sound bad.”

“I think I’m going crazy. Meet me for a drink.”

“Usual place?”

“I’ll be at the bar,” I said.

We’d not been to our usual place in five years. It was almost empty. “We don’t open for ten more minutes,” the hostess told me.

“How about I just sit at the bar?” She hesitated, so I said thanks and headed for the bar. The bartender had no problem starting a few minutes early. She had tall hair, a long nose, and poured with a heavy hand. I put away two bourbons before Robin finally showed. The bar was still empty and she kissed me like she meant it.

“No word on Dolf,” she said, then asked, “What’s wrong?”

Too much had happened. Too much information. I couldn’t try to spin it. “Everything,” I said. “Nothing I want to talk about.”

She sat and ordered one of what I was having. Her eyes were troubled and I could tell that her day had been no picnic either. “Am I causing you problems?” I asked.

She shrugged, but too quickly. “Not many cops share a history with two murder suspects. It complicates things. I’d forgotten how it felt to be on the outside. People are treating me differently. Other cops.”

“I’m sorry, Robin.”

“Don’t worry about it.” She held up her glass. “Cheers.”

We finished our drinks, had dinner, and went back to her place. We climbed into bed and pressed close. I was done, cashed out for the day, and so was she. I tried not to think of Dolf, alone, or of the things that Sarah had said. For the most part, I succeeded. My last thought before sleep came was that Jamie had never returned my call. After that, the dreams found me pretty damn quick. They came in staccato waves. Visions. Memories. I saw blood on the wall and a white deer that moved with the sound of crashing stone. Sarah Yates, faceup and smiling on a night as bright as day. My mother under the dock, her eyes on fire. A leather man with a silver pistol.

I woke reaching for the gun tucked under the biker’s belt, came halfway out of bed with a scream balled in the back of my throat. Robin reached for me in her sleep, pressed a smooth hot breast against my ribs. I took shallow breaths and forced myself to lie still. Sweat slicked my skin and hard, black air pushed against the windows.

She killed herself because of me…

It was still dark when Robin kissed my cheek. “Coffee’s on,” she said. “I’m out of here.”