Bloodstream

‘There weren’t any around. Then Miss Cornwallis comes out and suddenly Taylor starts yelling that it’s my fault.’ He turned away from her, but not before she’d glimpsed the embarrassed swipe of his hand across his eyes. He tries so hard to be grown up, she thought with a twinge of pity, but he’s really still a child.

‘She took my skateboard, Mom,’ he said softly. ‘Can you get it back for me?’

‘I’ll call Miss Cornwallis tomorrow. But I want you to call Taylor and apologize.’

‘He turned on me! He’s the one who should apologize!’

‘Taylor’s not having an easy time of it, Noah. His parents just got divorced.’

He looked at her. ‘How do you know? Is he your patient?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you see him for?’

‘You know I can’t talk about that.’

‘Like you ever talk to me about anything,’ he muttered, and turned once again to stare out the window.

She knew better than to rise to the bait, so she said nothing, preferring silence to the argument that would surely erupt between them if she allowed him to provoke her.

When he spoke again, it was so quietly she almost didn’t hear him. ‘I want to go home, Mom.’

‘That’s where I’m taking you.’

‘No, I mean home. To Baltimore. I don’t want to stay here anymore. There’s nothing here but trees and a bunch of old guys driving around in their pickup trucks. We don’t belong here.’

‘This is our home now.’

‘Not mine.’

‘You haven’t tried very hard to like it here.’

‘Like I had a choice? Like you asked me if we should move?’

‘We’ll both learn to like it. I’m still adjusting, too.’

‘So why did we have to move?’

Gripping the steering wheel, she stared straight ahead. ‘You know why.’ They both knew what she was talking about. They’d left Baltimore because of him, because she’d taken a hard look at her son’s future and was frightened by what she saw. An enlarging circle of troubled friends. Repeated calls from the police. More courtrooms and lawyers and therapists. She had seen their future in Baltimore, and she’d grabbed her son and run like hell.

‘I’m not going to turn into some perfect preppie just because you drag me up to the woods,’ he said. ‘I can mess things up just as good right here. So we might as well go back.’

She pulled into their driveway and turned to face him. ‘Messing up is not going to get you back to Baltimore. Either you get your life together or you don’t. It’s your choice.’

‘When is anything my choice?’

‘You have lots of choices. And from now on, I want you to make the right ones.’

‘You mean the ones you want.’ He jumped out of the truck.

‘Noah. Noah!’

‘Just leave me alone!’ he yelled. He slammed the door shut and stalked off to the house.

She didn’t follow him. She just sat clutching the steering wheel, too tired and upset at that moment to deal with him. Abruptly she shifted into reverse and backed out of the driveway. They both needed time to cool down, to get their emotions under control. She turned onto Toddy Point Road and headed along the shore of Locust Lake. Driving as therapy.

How easy it had all seemed when Peter was alive, when one of his cross-eyed looks was all that was needed to make their son laugh. The days when they were still happy, still whole.

We haven’t been happy since you died, Peter. I miss you. I miss you every day, every hour. Every minute of my life.

The lights from lakeside cottages shimmered through her tears as she drove. She rounded the curve, drove past the Boulders, and suddenly the lights were no longer white but blue, and they seemed to be dancing among the trees.

It was a police cruiser, and it was parked on Rachel Sorkin’s property.

She pulled to a stop in the driveway. Three vehicles were in the front yard, two police cruisers and a white van. A Maine state trooper was talking to Rachel on the porch. Beneath the trees, flashlight beams zigzagged across the ground.

Claire spotted Lincoln Kelly emerging from the woods. It was his silhouette she recognized as he passed before one of the searchlights. Though not a tall man, Lincoln was straight and solid and he moved with a quiet assuredness that made him seem larger than he was. He stopped to speak to the state trooper, then he noticed Claire and crossed the yard to her truck.

She rolled down the window. ‘Have you found any more bones?’ she asked.

He leaned in, bringing with him the scent of the forest. Pine trees and earth and wood smoke. ‘Yep. The dogs led us over to the streambed,’ he said. ‘That bank eroded pretty badly this spring, after all those floods. That’s what uncovered the bones. But I’m afraid wild animals have already scattered most of them in the woods.’

‘Does the ME think it’s a homicide?’

‘It’s no longer an ME’s case. The bones are too old. There’s a forensic anthropologist in charge now, if you’d like to talk to her. Name’s Dr Overlock.’

He opened the truck door and Claire climbed out. Together they walked into the gloom of the woods. Dusk had rapidly thickened to night. The ground was uneven, layered with dead leaves, and she found herself stumbling in the underbrush. Lincoln reached out to steady her. He seemed to have no trouble navigating in the darkness, his heavy boots connecting solidly with the ground.

Lights were shining among the trees, and Claire heard voices and the sound of trickling water. She and Lincoln emerged from the woods, onto the stream bank. A section of the eroded bank had been cordoned off by police tape strung between stakes, and on a tarp lay the mud-encrusted bones that had already been unearthed. Claire recognized a tibia and what looked like fragments of a pelvis. Two men wearing waders and headlamps stood knee-deep in the stream, gingerly excavating the side of the bank.

Lucy Overlock was standing among the trees talking on a cell phone. She was like a tree herself, tall and strapping, dressed in a woodsman’s wardrobe of jeans and work boots. Her hair, almost entirely gray, was tied back in a tight, no-nonsense ponytail. She saw Lincoln, gave a harassed wave, and continued with her phone conversation.

‘…no artifacts yet, just the skeletal remains. But I assure you, this burial doesn’t fall under NAGPRA. The skull looks Caucasoid to me, not Indian. What do you mean, how can I tell? It’s obvious! The brain-case is too narrow, and the facial breadth just isn’t wide enough. No, of course it’s not absolute. But the site is on Locust Lake, and there’s never been a Penobscot settlement here. The tribe wouldn’t even fish in this lake, it’s such a taboo place.’ She looked up at the sky and shook her head. ‘Certainly, you can examine the bones for yourself. But we have to excavate this site now, before the animals do any more damage, or we’ll lose the whole thing.’ She hung up and looked at Lincoln in frustration. ‘Custody battle.’

‘Over bones?’

‘It’s that NAGPRA law. Indian graves protection. Every time we find remains, the tribes demand one hundred percent confirmation it’s not one of theirs. Ninety-five percent isn’t good enough for them.’ Her gaze turned to Claire, who’d stepped forward to introduce herself.

‘Lucy Overlock,’ said Lincoln. ‘And this is Claire Elliot. The doctor who found the thigh bone.’

The two women shook hands, the no-nonsense greeting of two medical professionals meeting over a grim business.

‘We’re lucky you’re the one who spotted the bone,’ said Lucy. ‘Anyone else might not have realized it was human.’

‘To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure,’ said Claire. ‘I’m glad I didn’t drag everyone out here for a cow bone.’

‘It’s definitely not a cow.’