Page 102 of Coram House

Finally, I get close enough to see Bill looming over a dark shape, both blurred by snow. I hear weeping. See a hand smeared in blood. Parker. Alive. I’m not too late.

“Bill,” I shout. “The police are on their way. Don’t do this.”

The looming figure straightens. Slowly, he turns around, giving me a clear look at the man down on the ice.

The world tilts on its axis. Because the man bleeding on the ice, his eyes wide and terrified—that man is Bill Campbell.

“Oh, thank God,” he moans, wiping at his face, leaving a red smear on his cheek. The figure in the black coat stands over him, one booted foot on Bill’s neck to keep him down.

“No,” I whisper.

The monster I’ve been chasing has brown eyes ringed in gold. It’s not Bill Campbell, of course. It never was.

“Hello, Alex,” says Parker.

28

The wind dies.The storm, shocked into silence. “You,” I say. My voice is barely louder than a whisper. “I can’t— I don’t understand.”

Parker looks at me with so much sorrow that I wonder if I’ve misunderstood somehow. But his voice doesn’t waver.

“I told you to go back to New York,” Parker says. Below him, Bill thrashes like a fish on a hook. His cheeks are smeared in blood, now freezing to his face.Please, he moans over and over.

“Let him go,” I say. “Please.”

Parker looks down at Bill as if he’d forgotten he was there. “Stop it,” he says coldly. Bill stops struggling, but he begins to sob. I wonder if I’m going to throw up.

Parker looks at me. “You know he bribed people to settle the case, but do you know all of it? How he wheedled and paid and threatened them. How he set them against each other, called her testimony a lie. All to protect himself.”

Parker kicks Bill sharply in the side. The older man cries out.

“Tell her,” Parker says. “She deserves to know.”

I should speak, tell him to stop, but not a sound comes out.

“I— It wasn’t supposed to be me,” Bill says, “in the boat that day. If Fred hadn’t been late, it never would have been me.”

“Tell her.”

Bill winces as though Parker had kicked him again. “I pushed Tommy into the water,” he says. “I—held him down.”

I see it like it’s happening in front of me now. The ice is gone. Thesun is shining. A hot summer day. Tommy goes into the water. He shouts for help.

“He tried to get back in the boat,” I say.

Bill begins to sob. “She told me to hit his hands. Make him let go. She said it’s how you learn.”

“And you did,” I say.

“Please,” Bill says, but he’s not looking at Parker anymore, he’s looking at me. Pleading with me. My stomach lurches again.

“He was a child,” I murmur, but I’m not sure if I’m talking about Tommy or Bill. I look at Parker, my voice firmer now. “Bill was a child too.”

Parker’s face is stone. “And was he a child when he lied about that day over and over? He called her a liar. She drank herself to death while Sister Cecile tended her garden.”

My brain feels sluggish with cold. “She—you mean Sarah Dale?”

“Nothing happened to them. While my mother suffered—” Parker’s voice cracks.

---