The Storm King(8)

The gutters were utterly clogged. So far it had been only drizzling, but the aluminum troughs already brimmed with tannin-stained water. He reached into the downspout and pulled out handfuls of deteriorated leaves and twigs. As if he were disemboweling the carcass of a strange creature, each fistful came out in dripping clumps.

While he worked, Nate mentally composed how he’d deliver Nia’s pathology results to the Kapurs. She needed more than surgery now. Chemo, radiation, and immunotherapy were the usual options, but these were beyond Nate’s expertise. When he spoke to her parents, he’d give them a short list of good oncologists to take over her treatment. The facts of her condition were clear, but the tone in which he delivered them would be critical. Hope would be an essential element to any future course of treatment, but Nate wouldn’t mislead them on medical realities. He had an obligation both to them and to the truth. There would be more conversations to come, but it was important that he get this first one just right.

He’d just moved to another corner of the roof when his phone buzzed. He shucked off his work gloves, letting them flutter to the lawn below. When he worked his phone from his pocket, his wife and daughter’s faces grinned from its display. He slid his finger across the screen to answer.

“Sorry, I meant to call,” he said.

“Where are you?” Meg asked.



“On the roof. There’s about a decade’s worth of leaves in these gutters.”

“Bea didn’t waste any time putting you to work, did she? Always liked the lady’s style.”

“Was the drive okay?”

“Some traffic on the bridge. A little more than ninety minutes door to door. Can’t complain. You’re the one with the eight-hour bus ride.”

“Do you guys have enough groceries?” Disaster preparedness had become competitive sport, and the networks had been hyping Medea even before they knew she’d turn inland. Nate felt a clench of guilt to not be there with them.

“It’s not like it’s the apocalypse.”

“It’s probably not the apocalypse,” Nate corrected her.

“We’ve got enough bread and eggs to survive an asteroid collision and simultaneous zombie invasion.”

“That’s what I like to hear. How is the monkey?”

“It’s sad monkey faces all around, I’m afraid.”

“Are the drops helping?”

“Who can tell? Dr. Klieg swears she’ll grow out of these. Before she’s thirty, hopefully. How are things there?”

“Fine,” he said. “Good.”

“Liar.” Nate could almost see her brush a lock of long dark hair from her face. “You want to tell me about it?”

Nate’s life with Meg felt so full that it was easy to forget how incomplete a sketch of his youth his wife must carry in her head. Nate imagined that a part of her enjoyed the fantasy that he’d blossomed into true personhood only upon meeting her. That everything before then had been practice, and, in a way, perhaps it had been.

He’d told Meg many stories about this town along the shore. But he hadn’t told her everything.

“Wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Well, let me know when you figure it out. How’s Bea?”

“Indomitable. I was thinking we could have her down for a week around Thanksgiving.”



“Livvy would love a turkey day with Grams, wouldn’t you?”

“Is she there?” He could picture them, snuggled under the yellow bedspread in his in-laws’ guest room, tapping through a game on the iPad as stars from her night-light pinwheeled across the ceiling above them.

There was a burst of static as the phone changed hands.

“Daddy?”

Nate smiled at the rustle of his daughter’s voice. “How are you feeling, monkey?”

“My head hurts.” Livvy spoke too closely to the receiver, making everything she said sound like a secret.

“I’m so sorry. Momma’s taking good care of you though, right?”

“Tell me a story. Tell me about the Night Ship. Momma says you’re there. She says you’re by the lake.”

“I wish I was with you.” From the top of the ladder, Nate needed only to swivel his head to see the Night Ship’s towers stark as obsidian against the colorless water.

“Did you go there? Will you take me?”

“It’s no place for little monkeys.”

“I like ghosts.”

Nate had once mentioned the Night Ship in his dramatically censored stories of Greystone Lake. It had latched onto Livvy’s mind. She asked about it before bed and during baths. She drew pictures of it and constructed it from sheets and pillows.

“You’re a very brave monkey. I’m not as brave as you are.”

“Some ghosts are nice, I think.”

Not in the Night Ship, he thought.

“Did I ever tell you about that time Ronald the Rhinoceros lost his horn, and his friend Bali the Blue Parrot had to help him find it?”

“Ronald can’t lose his horn!” Livvy giggled. “They don’t come off!”

“That’s what he thought, too. But one morning he woke up and looked in the mirror to brush his teeth and couldn’t find it anywhere.”