Nathan Miller

Lake Hutchin was a nice enough kind of town, leafy enough to attract the odd busload of tourists in the fall, but for the most part it wasn’t on anybody’s radar. Not close enough to any major hub to be convenient, but not isolated enough to feel secluded. Peter and I hadn’t even heard of it before he was offered his position at the new hydro-dam on the nearby Blackstone River. Aside from the burgeoning economic lull of the dam, there wasn’t much going on. But its pride was the lake, which was less of a circular pool of water, and more a meandering presence that wove around waterfront cafes and empty meadows.

It was the last place I expected to run into Nathan Miller.

Nathan Miller was an old high school friend. Glanced at through a single prism, he was the most ordinary guy you’d ever met. Except that this sense of ordinariness, came from all the things he wasn’t. When you combined all of those absences, there was an unusually broad vacancy of characteristics. Put it this way, he couldn’t be described as either loud or quiet. He wasn’t overweight or especially tall, but he wasn’t thin or short either. I’m sure I’d heard him tell a joke once, but I wouldn’t describe him as funny. He’d also never been particularly academic. I don’t think he did more than scrape by with pass grades when we were in high school, and he ultimately dropped out of college. But he wasn’t the athletic type either. Like the rest of us in high school, he’d gone along with things in sports class, but he never really got into it. The only time he refused to take part in sports, or really, the only time he avidly refused anything, was when it came to swimming. He hated water.

‘It just irks me.’ I recalled him explaining once, as three of us, Nathan, Anna and I, lingered in the weeded grass behind the gymnasium.

‘Being submerged, it doesn’t seem...natural.’

‘You’re not supposed to be submerged. You’re supposed to swim, that’s why we have lessons,’ argued Anna.

‘Whatever. You know what I mean,’ he retorted, lighting up a cigarette, ‘it’s the feeling of it, all around you...cold wetness. I don’t know how anyone stands it.’

We’d never been particularly close in high school, it was more of a convenient alliance than a committed union. So when we drifted apart at college neither of us seemed bothered enough to do anything about it. He dropped out of computing in the second year, and I stayed on to finish art history. I hadn’t thought about him once until I ran into him coming out of the Boathouse Grocery on Shore Street.

It was about six-o’clock, and I’d only run up to get a few extras for the dinner I’d already started. We lived nearby in one of the newer houses that overlooked the lake. It was nothing I’d ever imagined we’d afford, so I hadn’t always been modest about it, but we’d been there a couple of years now, and as the novelty waned so did my tendency to boast.

I recognised Nathan because he looked almost exactly the same. Almost. Age has a way of morphing people, even when it doesn’t diminish them.

‘Bree?’ he exclaimed, lifting his sunglasses, ‘is that you?’

Clearly I’d diminished.

‘Nathan Miller.’ I sounded out his name as though it were the title of a science-fiction novel, ‘what on earth are you doing in Lake Hutchin?’

He snickered. ‘I ahh, I moved here,’ he shrugged, aware of the absurdity of it, ‘just arrived yesterday actually.’

I was in a hurry, having rushed out to the groaning annoyance of my family, but in the brief exchange he mentioned his IT job that allowed him to work remotely, and I told him about Peter’s job at the hydro-dam. It’s a small place, and not easy to make friends, so we exchanged numbers at my invitation, and agreed to meet up for coffee.

‘A friend of yours?’ Kay, a fifty-something Texan woman, who owned the Boathouse Grocery back then, asked me when I came in.

‘I guess. An old high school friend. Haven’t seen him in almost twelve years. Why?’

Kay pouted her thin lips and glanced out the window at the spot where we’d chatted, ‘seemed kinda unusual,’ she said.

Nathan and I met at Treehouse Coffee three days later. He was earlier than I was, waiting at one of the aluminum tables at the centre of the service area. He wore a brown varsity jacket that looked surprisingly suave given we were now both in our thirties. Round spectacles sat at the end of his pointed, olive, nose.

It was mid-summer, and the normally quiet cafe was buzzing. Children running around in bathing costumes signaled families coming and going from the lake.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I didn’t think it would be this busy. I forgot about lake season.’

‘Lake season?’ he furrowed.

‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but there’s not a lot to do around here. As soon as it’s hot enough, people swarm around it. It’s a real circus. Not that it’d bother you?’ I guessed.

He smirked, confirming his aversion to water hadn’t softened.

We chatted about our lives, although I did most of the talking, and reminisced about school and things like, ‘whatever happened to Anna?’

‘So, if you can work anywhere, why Hutchin?’ I asked, as the conversation fell into a natural pause.

He finished off the last of his cranberry juice.

‘I just...liked the sound of it I suppose,’ he shrugged, before adding, ‘seems out of the way enough to discourage my parents from visiting too often.’

I told him what little I knew about the town; the shops and restaurants with bad service, and the annual events he’d probably try and avoid. I didn’t ask any more about why he was here. Although it was obvious there was a story, it was equally obvious he didn’t want to tell it. In all we sat talking for about forty-minutes, before I had to collect the kids from swim class.

Although we both left Treehouse saying we’d meet again soon, it was mid-October before I contacted Nathan again, inviting him for Sunday lunch. Three months had passed, but I had been busy with work, the kids were having difficulties at school, and the humdrum of life had drowned out my enthusiasm for a new thing with old friend. Excuses I know, but in my defence he hadn’t reached out in that time either, though I did pass him in the car once or twice.

He was so impressed by the house when he arrived, I almost felt embarrassed. I guess I had gotten used to it. I skipped the tour and took him outside. We sat at an oak picnic-table while Peter manned the barbeque. To the right of the table, a thicket of beech and birch trees, each spangled golden-red by the season, separated us from the neighbours. Before us, a leaf-littered lawn sloped down to one of the lake’s many inlets (or arms, as we told the kids, given there were eight) where at the end of our quaint wooden jetty, the kids’ canoes floated on the stone-grey water.

The hillside reaching upward across the way, meant this sliver of lake was perpetually lost in shadow.

‘It’s beautiful here,’ Nathan remarked, looking up as the wind tore flaxen leaves from the tips of the beech trees, scattering them across the lawn.

‘Thanks, couldn’t afford it without Peter’s salary,’ I said, trying to sound humble, ‘you never married?’

He shook his head. I remembered then that in school I once considered he might be gay, and worried my question sounded presumptuous. Then again, that was no bar to marriage these days.

‘Just never found the right person...I guess,’ he offered after a long pause, leaving my unspoken curiosity to linger.

‘Oh, right. So, your place on Wilt Street, just you?’ I asked. He had given me the address, but it wasn’t a street I frequented, and I couldn’t picture the place.

‘Pretty much, unless you count the cat,’ he joked, and stirred the ice in his tea.

We ate. Peter talked about his work at the dam, and the kids drank in the attention of the new guest. I wouldn’t have called Nathan a natural, but my kids are pretty persistent. He had almost warmed to them, after Molly’s third chatterbox routine, when Luca, my eldest, wanted to show Nathan his boat.

‘Well,’ Nathan hesitated.

I panicked, remembering I hadn’t warned anyone about his water thing.

‘It’s fine,’ Nathan mouthed at my alarm, as I jumped to dissuade Luca from the idea. I dropped my shoulders. Of course it was fine. He hated swimming, he wasn’t afraid of it.

So Luca led Nathan down to the jetty and Peter followed, as Molly and I cleared the table. Several minutes later though, I heard Peter’s boisterous laugh follow with, ‘come on, you’re not scared of the water are you?’

When I reached the jetty Nathan was tremulous. Peter (on his third beer) was holding the large rowboat and, as I understand, suggesting the three of them set out for a paddle. Nathan had been catatonic, but my appearance at the end of the jetty seem to release him. He shook himself and put a hand against his cheek, blinking and widening his eyes, as if shaking off slumber.

‘Ahh, sorry Bree. I realised, I’ve umm...I’ve actually gotta be somewhere this afternoon. I completely forgot,’ he said, and rushed past me, up the lawn.

‘That’s okay,’ I called, a little shaken myself, ‘do you want a lift? I could -’

‘No, it’s fine. Really. Thanks,’ he shouted, disappearing in the mirrored glare of the patio glass, and racing out of our house.

A few weeks later, on a November afternoon, when our quaint little town was near drowning in ochre and crimson, I saw Nathan hurrying away from the Boathouse Grocery, with a yellow envelope between his fingers. Given the store doubled as a post-office, I thought nothing of it, but Kay had concerns.

‘Strange cat your friend,’ she huffed, as she nodded toward the lakeside park where his figure was fast vanishing behind plumes of shriveled scarlet foliage.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Came in all frazzled. Couldn’t open the lock to ‘is post-box. Starts banging on it. I come over and ask if he need a hand...he looks at me like I’m the freakin’ reaper. Even stepped back a little. Then he hands me a letter, hands all shakin’, ask that it go today. Real spooked he was. Even told me, not to read it. Can you believe?’ she scrunched her face and shook her head, ‘okay mister, but only cause you asked special,’ she rolled her eyes and scoffed.

Her sharp eyes then met mine, as she twirled a lock of her wiry brown hair, ‘he on the juice or sumthin’?’

‘Nathan? No. Never. I mean he smokes like a chimney, but that’s about it.’

It didn’t seem like Kay believed me.

I left the store and decided to head into the park after Nathan, but when I reached the pine bridge over the tributary, I stopped.

In the dappled light between the paper birches and the maples, he stood leaning over the frothing black water. Leaves rained around him like ruddy-brown snow. Dolorous, he held his head in one hand, the letter in the other. I knew the moment was too private to interrupt.

Suddenly, he craned his head toward the sky, beyond the bare branches, reached into his pocket and withdrew a gold watch. I was near enough to hear him curse at the time. Then, with urgency, he tore up the letter into what seemed like a hundred pieces as they danced in the updraft of the afternoon gale, and fell into the frothing black currents of the stream. Then he turned, and hurried off into the woods.

I don’t know if Kay ever opened the letter he gave her, or if she ever sent it.

I know that neither me, nor anyone else, ever saw her again.

When I started my run the next morning, and passed the intersection where her modest shop sat under wooden rafters, police were already outside.

The scene hadn’t been cordoned off yet. I could see straight through the placarded front window, to the blood splattered walls and counter.

I froze. It was the second most terrifying moment of my life. I looked down. Along the narrow cement path, the blood continued. Immediately I was ushered away. Officers spoke at me, but I couldn’t take it in. Their intention was to direct me away from the horror of what lay inside. A good, but futile intention. I was led toward the lakeside park, where I had followed Nathan only yesterday. There, in the grassy scrub where the path began, was Kay’s hair. Clumps and clumps of Kay’s wiry brown hair. All of it, it seemed. But that was all anyone ever found. They never found her body.

That night, after police had finished questioning me, and Peter had tried futilely to comfort me with far too many cups of jasmine tea, the doorbell rang. We had not long put the kids to sleep, but in the darkness of that day, it felt like the dead of night. My husband and I lingered, looking at each other across the kitchen counter-top with a strange new fear in our eyes. By the time we answered it, he was already at the bottom of the drive. I will never know for certain if it was Nathan. The figure disappearing into the drizzly night was obscured by a green parka. Under the amber glow of the sullied streetlamp flickering above, it could have been anyone. In the distance a neighbourhood dog barked warily.

In the morning I woke to a text message from Nathan:

‘Hey Bree, I’m glad I ran into you. It was nice seeing a familiar face these last few months, even if we only caught up twice. I just wanted to ask you, if you ever get a letter from me, don’t open it. It’s my letter, but it’s not meant for you. Please, destroy it. I don’t want this happening to you.’

With everything that had happened, Nathan’s message sent me ice cold. I drove over to Wilt Street to talk to him in person. But when I knocked on the door at number thirty-two, the man there had never heard of Nathan, or anyone who matched his description.

It was actually Luca, of all people, who initially discovered Nathan, two days later. We’d gone rowing on Lake Hutchin while Molly was at a birthday party. Mercifully, it was only the rope that Luca saw, jarringly cyan between the lake’s silver surface and an increasingly overcast sky. It was just rope, but my heart pounded hard, a plane about to crash. I covered Luca’s eyes as Peter used the paddle to pry free what was submerged below the branch. It was Nathan. Nathan was submerged.

Blue rope festooned his arms and torso. He was tangled in it, but he was not bound. I remember wanting to be sick as his buoyant form, bobbed to the surface, and turned. His sallow, life drained face, surrounded by cold wetness. I pushed Luca’s face against my waist and I swallowed away that awful feeling.

The funeral was a quiet affair, held locally. His parents flew in and arranged it. It turns out they hadn’t seem him in over a decade either, and so could provide no answers to all the questions I still had about what Nathan was doing here, his life since college, and how he ended up dead in Lake Hutchin.

It was eighteen-months or so later, the whispers about Kay having long since died off, when a letter arrived on my doorstep. It hadn’t come with the regular mail, and it was addressed to, ‘An Old Friend’, followed by our street address. Curiously, the penmanship on each didn’t seem to match. I was about to tear it open when I noticed the fine, almost precision, calligraphy, in the bottom right hand corner of the envelope; ‘from Nathan Miller’.