“You don’t have to come in,” Jamie called. “I won’t say you’re yellow.”
But Marian stepped into the creek. The current was fast, the creek bed uneven, and she held out her arms for balance. Icy water splashed into her boots.
“Move over,” she told Jamie when she reached the car.
“You always drive. Go around.”
“It’s too deep over there.”
“Climb over, then.”
As Marian grabbed at the edge of the ruined backseat, the car tipped, and its right front wheel came loose from the rocks. She let go, dropping back down into the creek. The car’s body slewed around so the current hit it broadside, rushing up over the floor. Jamie gaped at her as his chariot swayed and then slid toward the deeper water, the freer current. Floating now, the Ford pivoted languidly and plowed forward, the radiator disappearing little by little under the water.
It didn’t go far. Once the wheels caught in the rocks again, water poured in over Jamie. Marian, trotting along the bank, called to him. His pale head disappeared and resurfaced in the current, sleek and small, swept along. Stumbling on the rocky shore, Marian couldn’t keep up and for a moment lost sight of him entirely. Panting, ducking under branches, she rounded a bend. There he was, sitting on a sandbar. Drenched and breathing heavily, his overalls dark and heavy, his boots gone, Jamie got to his feet. Then he let out the kind of wild, exultant whoop she’d only heard grown men make. He stomped his feet, picked up a rock and hurled it into the creek, raised his knobby arms. She was filled with a terrible envy. She wanted to be the one who had survived.
Ossining, New York
August 1924
One year and three months later
When Addison emerged from the gates of Sing Sing, his lawyer, Chester Fine, was there waiting, his three-piece suit characteristically rumpled, engrossed in a book he held in one hand. Chester had taken the train up from the city, and he rode back down again with Addison, the two of them watching the passing Hudson in silence. For years, Chester had been Addison’s only visitor. Lloyd Feiffer had shown up one Sunday early on, but Addison had declined to see him. Later, the clerk in the canteen said Lloyd had added forty dollars to his account, but Addison was careful not to spend it. Lloyd had also sent a few letters that Addison threw away unopened, and he’d offered to buy Addison’s house for an inflated price that Chester relayed one Sunday.
“Mr. Feiffer asked me to tell you it’s the least he can do,” Chester had said in the crowded visiting room. Both men were perched on wooden stools and separated by a waist-high divider, Chester in his wrinkled suit, Addison in his gray uniform. “He says he wants to do something for the twins.”
“The twins don’t need his money.”
“They might someday. And Feiffer’s never criticized you or scapegoated you, at least not publicly. That’s a loud silence.”
“I hauled him out of the sea once when we were young. He took it to heart.” Addison rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “No, sell the house to someone who’s not Feiffer. Sell everything in the house that can be sold and throw the rest away.”
“Everything? There’s nothing of sentimental value? Nothing of their mother’s to be kept for the twins?”
“Nothing.”
When Addison was released （six months early, thanks to Chester Fine’s persistent efforts）， the forty-three dollars and sixty-six cents left in his canteen account was handed to him in an envelope that he slid into his inside pocket. Otherwise he carried only a slender cardboard portfolio, tied closed with string.
In Grand Central, Chester Fine shook his hand, bid him good luck and goodbye, handed him a train ticket, and was gone with a doff of his hat. Addison looked around. Pale light descended from the high windows at a stately angle. Higher still, noble gold zodiac figures and a smattering of stars occupied a tranquil, blue-green heaven. It had been more than nine years since he’d stood under the real stars.
All around, people scattered across the grand marble floor and rattled away down tunnels like dropped ball bearings. They were disorienting, even frightening in their numbers, their hurry, their prosperity, their freedom. He had grown accustomed to being watched at all times, and he had, without realizing, assumed that when he returned to the world, he would still be famous as the cowardly captain of the Josephina Eterna. He had foreseen jeering crowds at the gates of Sing Sing, recognition and revilement everywhere he went. Instead he found bustling, indifferent strangers. Under painted stars, with a dismal burst of pleasure, he understood he had been forgotten.