Chapter 82 - The Black Abyss
The ice grooved beneath my boots as the wind howled off the expanse of Lake Champlain, carrying the sharp, metallic tang of the frozen abyss below. Hoffman’s gloves were shredding against the razor-sharp rim of the fracture. His knuckles were pale ivory, mottled with the bruised purple of hypothermia.
"1999!" he spat again, his voice cracking against the scream of the blizzard. "Eleanor bought her a ticket out of Boston! She didn't drown, Emma! She’s alive!"
"You're lying," I whispered, the words freezing instantly in the sub-zero air. "You spent twenty years using her ghost to bleed my father dry."
"Ask the vault in Montreal!" he shrieked, his fingers slipping another precious inch toward the black water swirling three hundred feet deep beneath us. "Look at the registration for the Saint-Laurent freight line! Eleanor paid the retainer every December twenty-fifth! Why do you think she hated that holiday? Why do you think she called Lily a burden? Because your daughter was born on the exact anniversary of the payout!"
The sheer gravity of his words rooted me to the ice. Lily's birthday was December twenty-fourth. Every single year, my mother had refused to celebrate it, insisting on merging it into Christmas Eve dinner, turning every cake and candle into an occasion for cold venom. I had spent six years believing Eleanor despised me because I was an inadequate daughter.
I looked down at Hoffman. His eyes were wide, white rims showing around dilated pupils, stripped of all the polished menace he had carried in Zurich and Albany. Behind me, the roar of snowmobiles surged as two Canadian Mounties slid across the shelf, their weapons drawn, tactical lights cutting through the blinding spindrift.
"Do not move!" the lead officer shouted in clipped French-accented English. "Step away from the ledge!"
Hoffman’s right hand lost its purchase. The wet lip sheared away, sending ice chards clattering into the dark water. His left arm jerked, muscles tearing under his own dead weight.
I didn't step back. But I didn't kneel to take his hand either.
Instead, I planted my heel firmly beside his shivering grip, leaning over just enough so he could see my eyes. "The debt dies tonight, Hoffman. You tell your story to the crown prosecutor."
Before his fingers gave out completely, the two RCMP officers threw themselves onto the ice behind me, their heavy tactical mittens locking onto Hoffman's collar and upper arm with practiced, violent precision. With a coordinated heave, they dragged his soaked, screaming frame over the lip and onto the safety of the shelf, rolling him onto his stomach and pinning him down. Handcuffs snapped shut with a definitive, ringing click that seemed to echo across both nations.
I turned my back on him. Across the perimeter line, wrapped in a fluorescent yellow rescue blanket inside the cabin of a heated cruiser, Lily was pressing her small hand against the frosted glass, watching me.
May you like
The clock on the dashboard of the approaching support vehicle flashed 12:05 AM. It was the first morning of the new year, and for the first time in my life, the air didn't smell like Eleanor Vance’s house.
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