Salvage Read Free Page B

in fact had insisted he take her home without receiving any answers—but death was no longer a mystery. Police dramas and murder books, especially the ones by Martin Savage that his mother liked to read, had filled in the details like some macabre checklist, so that Owen and his mother knew all the signs a forensics team would have looked for: blood in the lungs, burst blood vessels in the eyes, bloating, a bluish tinge to the flesh, dirt and algae under the fingernails, metabolic acidosis, acute renal failure. He had called later to talk to the officer in charge, but they had ended up playing phone tag. He knew from a handful of television programs that proving homicide in a drowning case could be extremely difficult. Still, some dark part of him suspected foul play must have been involved.
    "You're right," Owen said, distracted—not by thoughts of Lori's death, but by his mother, who seemed to have gotten into an argument with the old, jittery-eyed man who'd accused him of looking like his stepfather. "How would I know about drowning?" he said, watching his mother show the old man to the door with a fierce thrust of her hand.
    Hanson squinted at him. "It's all right to grieve," he said, laying a hand on Owen's shoulder. Owen looked down at it and said nothing, while across the large, dim room, the old man leaned in close to Margaret Saddler to voice his parting words. She slapped the old man hard across the face. Owen had never seen his mother slap someone before, despite the countless times she'd lost her temper, and wondered what he must have said to deserve it. The old man gave a disheartened nod, turned his reddened cheek away from her, and slinked away.
    "Just know that Lori isn't just here ," Hanson was saying, and when he laid a palm flat on Owen's chest, Owen snapped his gaze back to the kid. "She's also here ," the kid said, and swept a robed arm to encompass the totality of the pub, indicating Lori's eternal oneness with Everything.
    Owen looked around himself, not quite getting it. His sister's philosophical friend scowled, and took that moment to slip away.
    3
     
    A few hours later, Owen sat on the steps outside the pub, clearing his head. A light rain was falling, a cool mist on his skin, the sun sinking behind the big Anglican church down the street, when Gerald stepped outside for a smoke.
    "Hiya, Owen," Gerald said. He wore his characteristic hangdog expression. Not that he necessarily felt guilty for anything—though he had much to feel guilty about, in Owen's opinion. It was just how his eyes were shaped, drooped at the corners, his mouth downturned from the weight of his jowls.
    "Gerald," Owen said, avoiding eye contact, looking instead at the passing traffic.
    "You know," Gerald said, hovering behind him, "Lori and I were reconnecting before—well, before she went up to that place ."
    Reconnecting , Owen scoffed. More like meeting for the first time. Gerald Kinsman had only been around full-time for the first five years of her life, and had been blind drunk through most of those.
    "She told me."
    "Any idea what she was doing up there?"
    "Where?" Owen said, his tone laced with anger.
    " Chapel Lake . Did Lori… did she tell you anything, Owen? She never said anything to me about going up there, never even called, like she promised—"
    "Why would she tell you anything , Gerald? You were barely in her life. She didn't even know you."
    The man's stubbly Adam's apple bobbed as he choked back an emotional response: whether exasperation or grief, it was difficult to tell. "Someday you'll understand how hard it is, walking into a family that's not yours," he said, his tone eerily calm. "Being the outsider. Trying to step into the shoes of a father who was never there to a kid who never wanted one."
    "Like you ever tried," Owen said. He wanted to hit the old man as hard as he could, this man who'd once claimed to want to be his father, pretender to the throne in the Saddler house. He wanted to dig his hand