The pond reflects the light of the moon, and Raj’s face tightens like a fist. Daniel sees Raj’s weakness as surely as he knows his own: Raj is afraid of losing Ruby. He’s kept her from the Golds not just because he doesn’t like them, but because of the threat they pose. An alternate family—an alternate life.
But Raj holds Daniel’s gaze. “You’re right. I’m not a doctor. I don’t have a college degree, and I wasn’t born in New York. But I raised an incredible kid. I have a successful career.”
Daniel fumbles, for suddenly, he sees Colonel Bertram’s face. You must think you’re a special fucking snowflake, the colonel said, his grin looming over the wreathed pin. A real American hero.
“No,” he says. “You stole one. You stole Klara’s act.” He has wanted to make this allegation for years, and it revives him to finally say it.
Raj’s voice becomes lower, slower. “I was her partner,” he says, the effect not of calm but terrible restraint.
“Bullshit. You were cocky. You cared more about the show than you did about her.”
With each word, Daniel feels a rush of conviction, and of something initially hazy before it grows clearer in shape: the echo of another story—the story of Bruna Costello.
“Klara trusted you,” Daniel says. “And you took advantage of her.”
“Are you kidding me, man?” Raj tips his head back a fraction of an inch, and the whites of his eyes flash with moonlight. In them, Daniel sees possessiveness, yearning, and something else: love. “I took care of her. Do you know how fucked up she was? Did any of you know? She blacked out. Her memory was in pieces. She wouldn’t have gotten dressed in the morning if it wasn’t for me. Besides, she was your sister. What did you do to help her? You met Ruby once? You talked on Hanukkah?”
Daniel’s stomach rises and turns. “You should have told us.”
“I barely knew you. No one in your family had welcomed me. You treated me like I was trespassing, like I’d never be good enough for Klara. For the Golds—the precious, entitled, long-suffering Golds.”
The scorn in Raj’s voice stuns Daniel, and for a moment, he cannot speak. “You know nothing about what we’ve been through,” he says, finally.
“That!” says Raj, pointing, and his eyes are so alive, his arm so electric, that Daniel has the impression—absurd—that Raj is about to do a magic trick. “That is exactly the problem. So you’ve been through tragedy. No one’s denying it. But that is not the life you’re living now. The aura is stale. The story, Daniel, is stale. You can’t let go of it, because if you did, you wouldn’t be a victim anymore. But there are millions of people still living in oppression. I come from them. And those people can’t live in the past. They can’t live in their heads. They don’t have the luxury.”
Daniel recedes, stepping into the dark of the trees as if for cover. Raj doesn’t wait for his reply: he turns and walks back around the pond. But he pauses at the path to the house.
“One more thing.” Raj’s voice carries easily, but his body is shadowed. “You claim you’re doing something important. Something that matters. But you’re deceiving yourself. All you do is watch other people do your dirty work from thousands of miles away. You’re a cog, an enabler. And my God, you’re afraid. You’re afraid that you could never do what your sister did—stand onstage by yourself, night after night, and bare your fucking soul without knowing whether you’ll be applauded or booed. Klara may have killed herself. But she was still braver than you.”
26.
Raj and Ruby leave before eight in the morning. It rained overnight, and their rental car sits in the driveway, wet. Raj and Daniel load the trunk without speaking. Drizzle clings to the yellow velour of Ruby’s latest sweat suit. She hugs Daniel stiffly. She’s just as frosty with Raj, but Raj is Ruby’s father: she’ll have to forgive him eventually. Not so with Daniel, who feels a visceral despair as Ruby climbs into the passenger seat and shuts the door. When they reverse out of the driveway, he waves, but Ruby has already ducked her head to look at her phone, and all he sees is a mass of hair.
• • •
Mira drives to New Paltz for a department meeting. Daniel walks to the refrigerator and begins to unload yesterday’s leftovers. The turkey skin, formerly crisp, has become shriveled and damp. The pan drippings are opaque, beige puddles.
He reheats a full plate in the microwave and eats at the kitchen counter until he feels sick. He can’t bear to sit at the dining room table, where the Chapals and the Golds ate dinner what seems like years ago. For the first time, Daniel felt bonded to Ruby—felt that he could be close to her, that he need not be ashamed of his role in her mother’s death. And now he’s lost her. Maybe Ruby will visit when she’s eighteen and can make her own decisions, but Raj won’t bring her back and will never encourage it. Daniel could reach out to Ruby, but who knows whether she would respond? The wreck of Thanksgiving was not just Raj’s fault.
After his last blowup with Raj, years ago, Daniel found solace in work. But he can do that no longer: this time, when he thinks of the office, he feels strangled. He will only be able to keep his job if he relinquishes his power, which lies in his ability to make decisions. And if he does that—if he chooses job over integrity, security over free will—he’ll be just as much a pawn as Raj claimed.
His cell phone rings from the bedroom. Daniel walks upstairs. When he sees the number on the screen, he yanks the phone so abruptly that the charger comes out of the socket.
“Eddie?” he asks.
“Daniel. I’m calling with an update on the case. You wanted me to keep you appraised.”
“Yes?”
Eddie’s voice is heavy, strained. “We’ve cleared her of charges.”
Daniel drops down onto the bed. He presses the phone to his ear, the cord trailing like a tail. “You can’t do that.”
“Look, it’s”—Eddie exhales—“it’s a very gray area. How can you prove she killed these people when she never touched them, never even urged them, not in so many words? I’ve spent the past six months trying to pin this woman down. When I came to you, we’d almost closed the case. But I thought there might be one thing I was missing: some shred of evidence only you knew. And you did what you could. You were honest. It just wasn’t enough.”
“What’s enough? Five more suicides? Twenty?” Daniel’s voice splits on the last syllable, something that hasn’t happened since boyhood. “I thought you said she isn’t registered. Can’t you get her that way?”
“Yeah, she’s not registered. But she’s barely making any money. The bureau thinks it’s a waste of time. Besides, she’s an old lady. She won’t be around much longer.”
“What does that matter? You look at people who have done horrible things, despicable things, it doesn’t matter how late you get justice. The point is you get justice.”
“Easy, Daniel,” Eddie says, and Daniel’s ears become hot. “I wanted this as badly as you. But you have to let it go.”
“Eddie,” says Daniel. “Today is my day.”
“Your day?”
“The date she gave me. The date she said I would die.”
This is Daniel’s last card. He never thought he would share it with Eddie, but he is desperate to make the agent reconsider.
“Oh, Daniel.” Eddie sighs. “Don’t go there. You’ll only torture yourself, and for what?”
Daniel is silent. Outside the window, he sees a delicate, crystalline flurry. The snowflakes are so weightless he can’t tell whether they’re drifting toward the sky or the ground.
“Take care of yourself, okay?” Eddie presses. “The best thing you can do today is take care of yourself.”
“You’re right,” says Daniel, wooden. “I understand. And I appreciate everything you’ve done.”
When they hang up, Daniel hurls the phone at the wall. It breaks into two pieces with a dull crack. He leaves them on the floor and wal
ks downstairs to the study. Mira has already stripped Ruby’s bed, put the linens in the laundry machine, and turned the futon back into a couch. She even vacuumed the floor—a thoughtful gesture, but one that makes it feel even more like Ruby was never here.
Daniel sits down at his desk and pulls up the FBI’s Most Wanted. Bruna Costello has been removed from the Seeking Information page. When he plugs her name into the Search bar, a short line of text appears: Your search did not match any documents.
Daniel leans back in the desk chair and spins, bringing his hands to his face. He returns to the same memory he has many times before—the last time he spoke to Simon. Simon called from the hospital, though Daniel didn’t know that at the time. “I’m sick,” he said. Daniel was stunned; it took a moment for him to identify Simon’s voice, which was both more mature and more fragile than it had ever been before. Though he didn’t let on, Daniel felt as much relief as he did resentment. In Simon’s voice, he heard the siren song of family—how it pulls you despite all sense; how it forces you to discard your convictions, your righteous selfhood, in favor of profound dependence.
If Simon had made the slightest apology, Daniel would have forgiven him. But Simon didn’t. He did not, in fact, say very much at all. He asked how Daniel was doing, as though this were a casual phone call between brothers who had not been estranged for years. Daniel didn’t know whether something was truly wrong or whether Simon was simply being Simon: self-centered, evasive. Perhaps he decided to call Daniel as thoughtlessly as he’d decided to go to San Francisco.
“Simon?” Daniel asked. “Is there anything I can do?”
But he knew that his voice was cold, and Simon soon hung up.
Is there anything I can do?
He can’t save Simon and Klara. They belong to the past. But perhaps he can change the future. The irony is impeccable: on the very day that Bruna Costello prophesied his death, he can find her and force her to confess how she took advantage of them. And then he’ll make sure she never does it again.
Daniel stops spinning. He removes his hands from his face, blinking in the study’s artificial light. Then he hunches over the keyboard and tries to remember phrases from the FBI posting. There was a photo of a cream and brown trailer, a string of aliases. And the name of a village in Ohio—something Milton—he read Paradise Lost in college and was struck by the word when he read it. East Milton? No: West Milton. He Googles the phrase. Links to an elementary school and a library appear, as well as a map, West Milton outlined in red and shaped like Italy without the heel. He clicks on Images and sees a quaint downtown, storefronts hung with the American flag. One picture shows a small waterfall beside a set of stairs. When Daniel clicks on it, he’s routed to a message board.
West Milton Cascades and Stairway, someone has posted. This place is not well taken care of. People are throwing junk and the stairs and railing are not too safe.
It seems a better place to hide than the main drag. Daniel navigates back to the map. West Milton is a ten-hour drive from Kingston. The thought makes his pulse speed. He knows nothing about Bruna’s precise location, but the cascades seem promising, and the entire village is barely more than three square miles. How hard could it be to spot a rundown RV?
He hears a shrill ringing from the kitchen. These days, they use the landline so infrequently that it takes him a moment to place it. The only people who even have the number are telemarketers and family members, the odd neighbor. This time, he doesn’t have to check the caller ID to know it’s Varya.
“V,” he says.
“Daniel.” She was unable to come for Thanksgiving, having committed to a conference in Amsterdam. “Your cell phone was off. I just thought I’d check in.”
Eddie’s voice crackled from the highway, but Varya’s comes through the receiver from four thousand miles away with such clarity she could be standing in front of him. She speaks with a cool self-control for which Daniel has no patience.
“I know why you’re calling,” he says.
“Well.” She laughs, brittle. “Sue me.” There is a pause that Daniel makes no effort to fill. “What are you doing today?”
“I’m going to find the fortune teller. I’m going to hunt her down, and I’m going to force her to apologize for what she did to our family.”
“That isn’t funny.”
“It would have been nice to have you here yesterday.”
“I had to give a presentation.”
“Over Thanksgiving?”
“Turns out the Dutch don’t celebrate it.” Her tone has tightened, and Daniel’s resentment plumes again. “How did it go?”
“Fine.” He’ll give her nothing. “How was the conference?”
“Fine.”
It enrages him, that Varya cares enough to call him now but not on any other day, and certainly not enough to come see him. Instead she watches from above as he scurries around, never coming down to intervene.
“So how do you keep track of these things?” he asks, pressing the phone to his ear. “A spreadsheet? Or do you have it all memorized?”
“Don’t be nasty,” she says, and Daniel falters.
“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.