The Dead Man Across the River

"Turns out your childhood sweetheart isn't dead." It was the fifth year since the rich boy took me for himself, and he was finally bored of me.

He handed me a bank card. "Go find him." I hadn't come back to myself yet, and he already had me up off the bed, telling me to hurry up and move out.

He pulled on his coat, and while he was digging around for his car keys, his phone rang. On the other end was the girl he'd grown up with, crying, frantic. "You broke up with her?

Then what happens to me and Miles?" Chapter 1 I stood outside the door, hauling a few bags, looking like a mess.

From inside the bedroom I could hear Piper still working on him over the phone. "What's gotten into you?

You and Nora have been together all this time." "Last year I heard you flew all the way to Geneva just to pick out a sixfigure necklace for her." "And now you're breaking up, just like that…" Reid was quiet for a long moment, then clicked his tongue, impatient. "So we broke up.

What about it?" "You wanted Miles back then. You asked me to take Nora off your hands. Why else would I ever have been with her?" Piper got a little awkward.

Her voice went soft on him. "I'm just worried about Miles." "You know how it was at Thornbury.

He liked Nora for so long, and in the end I strongarmed him into being with me." "Now that you and Nora are done, if she comes looking for him, my marriage is over!" She said it like it was the saddest thing in the world.

Reid turned his eyes to the window with a cigarette between his fingers, and said it flatly. "It's been five years.

Whatever they had, it should have worn off by now." "Otherwise why would he have gone along with faking his death, just to keep Nora from knowing?" As he said it, he glanced over at me without meaning to. "All right.

Enough." He hung up without another word and came toward me. "You got everything?" "I'll bring the car around." On the drive, Reid gave me the short version again.

He hadn't set out to break up with me. It was only that being around me had gotten boring, that there was nothing in it for him.

He liked a thrill, and I was too wellbehaved, too tame. Now he was bored, and congratulations to me, I was free.

When we got out, he crushed the cigarette between his fingers and raised an eyebrow at me. "Hm?

A hug, to say goodbye?" "From now on, you're on your own." Honestly, some of what he said was out of line. He gathered me into his arms.

But all of it put together still didn't hurt me the way that last line did. He was right. Back then or from now on—either way, I was walking alone.

It had gotten late, and a fine, steady drizzle started coming down. After Reid drove off, for a second I had no idea what to do with myself. He'd kept me shut in too long.

I didn't even know where to go. Then I remembered the corporate housing the company had set us up with, and I turned around and dragged my suitcase back.

Downstairs, past the flower bed, I saw the company's new assistant going up on her toes to kiss Reid on the mouth. The girl was in a white dress, and her smile was bright and loud.

Huh. She looked a little familiar, too. It took me a while to place her. She was me at eighteen. Back before I'd ever met Reid or Piper.

I wore my hair in a high ponytail every day, and I'd drag Miles down the hall to go look at the honor roll. "We tied for first again!" The boy would knock his knuckles lightly against my forehead, easy and gentle.

After we got together, Reid used to hold me and say, with a little regret, "I never got to see you back when you were loud and clawing at everything." See?

He knew better than I did how to make up for what he'd missed. Chapter 2 So he kicked me out and started something with a standin who looked like me. I didn't watch any longer.

I turned around and went into the apartment building. The slip of paper with the address on it was crumpled in my fist.

I thought about it for a long time, and then I opened it anyway. [Riverstone Landing, One Harborview, Building 8.] I kept looking at it, and then I started laughing.

So Miles had been living in that gated block of riverfront townhouses right across from my office.

Three hundred sixtyfive days a year, the two of us might have been walking the same stretch of Sycamore Street.

Maybe we'd bought breakfast from the same place in Ardmore Alley, the one that's been there for decades. We might even have passed each other a few times.

My office window even looked straight out at the river at night. On all those nights I worked late, I'd hold the framed picture from his funeral and drink myself to pieces.

Cry myself to pieces too. And him? What was he doing then? Was he with his wife? Did the two of them look at the river at night together?

Through the blur, I remembered something Miles had promised me once. "Nora, I'm never going to leave you." "Even if we can't be together, I have to stay close and keep watch over you.

Otherwise I won't be able to rest easy." See? He really did do exactly what he said. For a moment the light and shadow of the whole world felt unreal to me. This world was fake.

But being strongarmed was real, and being lied to was real. Back then, Thornbury had the most expensive tuition in the city.

Only two kinds of people got in: the ones who could pay it and the ones on financial aid. Piper transferred in our junior year.

Her family ran a private equity fund, and they'd donated two classroom buildings with the family name on them.

So naturally, with grades that weren't any good, she landed in the honors track, and got seated right next to Miles. "I don't like her." Out in the hallway, in the middle of running flashcards with me, Miles said it out of nowhere.

Miles was gentle by nature. It was the first time I'd ever heard him say anything like that about a person.

I asked, "Why?" "She leans on me all the time, borrows my notes, keeps after me to explain problems." He frowned a little. "And… she's always saying strange things to me." I said, "Do you want to talk to a teacher about switching seats?" He thought about it. "Never mind." Then he came over, took my backpack off my shoulder, and gave me a crinkleeyed smile. "What do you want to eat tomorrow?" I caught his hand, and the two of us walked off talking and laughing.

Neither of us saw the resentful look behind us. After that, Miles started getting busy. He came in late several days in a row, and I was worried.

He shook his head. "Something came up at home.

My dad got let go out of nowhere, and my mom's hospital bills are a little rough." It's not like we hadn't suspected this was Piper's doing.

But what were we supposed to do about it? Coming out of evening study hall with an armful of graded tests, I saw Piper backing Miles into a corner.

She was nasty about it. "You bring me breakfast for a month." "And I'll get the principal to put another fifteen hundred dollars into your financial aid.

Sound good?" Miles turned his face away and didn't say anything. The next day, when he brought me breakfast, he brought one for Piper too. The whole class started hooting.

I took the brown paper bag from him and looked back without thinking. I caught Piper spearing a piece of waffle on her fork and holding it up to Miles's mouth. He started to refuse.

She fell into him laughing, loud and pleased with herself. After that came summer. I heard he'd taken a job tutoring Piper.

Twentyfive thousand a month, enough to fill the hole his family was in. I waited for Miles outside that neighborhood of big singlefamily houses.

Chapter 3 The sun was blazing, and I waited a long time at the entrance to that neighborhood.

When he came out, I pushed the money into his hand, bills I'd folded up neat in my pocket. "Miles, stop going to her for help. I picked up a dozen odd jobs.

Let me help you put the money together, okay?" "I don't mind being a little tired.

You don't have to ask her for anything." By the end of it my voice was shaking, and I couldn't have told you why. Miles and I had been childhood sweethearts, ten years together.

It was the first time I'd ever felt he was going to leave me. That day Miles looked at me for a long time, his eyes soft.

He pushed the money back at me, took my hand, and walked me home. "What are you thinking?

There's nothing between her and me." "Once my mom gets through this, I promise you, I'm done being tangled up with her. All right?" I said all right.

But out of the corner of my eye, I was looking at the hand holding mine. There was a pink hair tie around his wrist. After that day I never saw the hair tie again.

But by the end of the summer, what Piper asked for had gotten more and more shameless.

Even after they moved the two of them apart in class, Miles still put his notes on her desk out of habit every day. Brought her breakfast. Bought her tampons.

The money she gave him, Miles kept spending on things for me. He handed me an expensive tube of hand cream and said, gently, "Nora, you've always had it hard because of me.

I'm really sorry about that." But when I took the gift, when I should have been happy, I couldn't get a word out.

That summer after junior year, she locked Miles in the equipment room at the gym and kissed him on the mouth. "Be my boyfriend." His ears went red with anger, but he was forced into saying yes.

He only asked for one thing. That she pay off my four years of tuition. Thornbury wasn't cheap.

He knew I'd been worrying about that tuition for a long time, just so I could go to the same school as him.

The night I heard about it, I went to the principal and told him I was pulling out of the school.

I was crying and yelling. "Miles, I don't want your help!" "Where do you get off agreeing to be with her as the price of helping me?" "Do you have any idea how much this hurts?" Clearly, he didn't.

He held me tight and could only apologize under his breath. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Reid showed up right around then.

Piper had asked him to, and he transferred back from that boarding school out east. The day he transferred in, he had me backed into a corner.

Reid was every bit as good at it as Piper was. She ordered Miles around, and Reid wouldn't leave me alone.

He liked getting other people to bully me so he could come out and rescue me. All through senior year, the two of us were stuck being their toys.

The whole school felt sorry for us. "Those two are a menace." "And they had to go after the bestlooking couple in school…" But later they'd all say, "Still, the cold one who's ranked first, with the rich girl who doesn't do any work." "And the sweet girl everybody's in love with, with the rich boy who never takes anything seriously." "Total opposites.

Honestly? They're perfect.

I'm shipping them so hard." Somewhere in all that noise, somebody said quietly, "Didn't Miles and Nora use to like each other?" "And they just got split up like that.

What a waste." The night we graduated, Miles asked me to come out. When I got there, Piper had his arm, her face pink.

Reid was standing there talking with them, and when he saw me, he turned around and picked up a plate. "What do you want? It's on me." The four of us sat down, two and two.

Chapter 4 Piper teased me, smiling. "Reid was a real hellraiser around Chicago. Never listened to anybody. And look at him, this into you." "So let's do it.

Both couples, we all apply to the same college!" "Maybe the four of us end up friends for life." When she said it, the little steak Reid had cut up for me was sitting right in front of me.

I hadn't taken a single bite. And I bent over and threw up. Threw up until my eyes went red, until everything in me turned over.

In the second the room spun, I saw the alarm on Miles's face. Then I looked away, too tired to hold it. After that she seemed to catch on to how much I couldn't stand it.

Piper stopped bringing up the four of us all the time. And Miles didn't dare bring me around Piper again. Then the acceptances came, and we settled on schools.

He took a trip to Sedona. He said wishes really come true out there. He laughed and said he'd bring me back a desert marigold. And then? He was in a car accident.

I couldn't find him anywhere after that. The last call he made was still to me. His voice kept breaking up. "I'm sorry, Nora.

From now on, you're on your own." "Reid really likes you. Let me go, and be good to him." What he said was so gentle. But the gentleness was terrifying.

That was how he handed me off to somebody else. After that, Reid was always there. He shut me up in that house across the river.

He wouldn't let me go out and work, he put trackers in my car and in my bag, and he guarded me against every man who came near.

My mom tried to talk me around. "He's hung on all these years, and he's been good to you.

When your grandma took that fall at home, he drove three hours himself to come get her." "I know you loved Miles, honey. But he's gone.

Maybe you should do what he asked you to do…" Once in a while Piper would come see me. She looked a lot more worn out.

And I no longer put up all my spines around the two of them the way I used to. The dead don't come back. Little by little I let go of everything that happened back then.

Thinking about it now. Tsk. What a beautiful plan they had. They just didn't count on one thing. Five years on, Reid got bored with me. Reid really did seem to like that girl.

The next day at work, I hadn't slept all night, and nothing I put on covered the gray under my eyes. My head was swimming. I stepped off the elevator and pitched forward.

Reid was right beside me, and his hand stopped dead in the air. In the end my head hit the corner of a desk, and it was a coworker who helped me up