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Who, right on cue, gave me her parting shot, the look I knew was coming but was never quite able to deflect.
The look that said, There’s the freak who killed her own boyfriend.
She was wrong, of course. I hadn’t actually killed Jason. I was just the reason he was dead.
CHAPTER TWO
I was already stripping off my clothes by the time I got to the secret cove that is my little sanctuary. I was way too pissed off to bother with the wetsuit.
Fuck Linda, I thought, as I tore off my shirt and bra.
Fuck Rockabill helped propel me out of my jeans and panties.
And fuck me accompanied my shoes and socks, and then it was a short sprint into the ocean, whose waves reared up and enveloped me the way my mother’s arms had when I was a little girl. In fact, swimming was all I had left of my mother, really. Her real face, the face in my memories, had begun to fade years ago, leaving behind only details I’d memorized from photographs. But I would never forget our clandestine nightly swims. The little secret that bound us together when I was a child.
And which, I suspected, had driven my family apart.
My mother, Mari, had turned up naked as a jaybird one night right before an awful storm hit. My father and the other young men of the town had been racing around for the preceding few hours, helping people board up the windows of the shops and houses that lined our small main street and central square. Then, out of nowhere, his buddy Trevor had let out a low whistle of surprise at the same time that Louis said, “Holy shit,” in the awestruck voice he used when they went to the big Fourth of July celebration in Bangor to see a real fireworks display. My father, along with just about everybody else who lived in Rockabill at the time, had looked up to see a naked young woman, black hair swirling down to her waist, sauntering down the street as if she had an invitation that specifically requested “stark naked, only, please. ” No one moved, except my big brave father, who took off his coat and went and put it around the young woman’s shoulders. She smiled up at him, and that’s the moment he says that he knew he loved her and couldn’t live without her.
For propriety’s sake, he’d taken her to the Grays’, Rockabill’s only bed and breakfast at the time. That it was strategically so close to our house was never mentioned in the official story. Nick and Nan were still alive and in charge, not Stuart’s nasty parents, Sheila and Herbert. Nick and Nan gave her a bed for the night but weren’t all that surprised when they woke up to find it empty. Nor were they surprised when they found the girl and my dad at the local diner that morning, sharing a big breakfast of bacon and eggs and pancakes. I came around about a year later into an ideal family. My parents adored one another; Nick and Nan served as the perfect surrogate grandparents (my father’s parents had passed away before I was born), and soon Jason joined his grandparents, Nick and Nan, to take his place as my best friend and soul mate. For six years I lived as happily as a child could live. Until the night another big storm struck, one almost as bad as the one that was raging the night my parents first shared a bed together. That morning, my mom was gone as suddenly and inexplicably as she had appeared.
Then I learned the truth about our family: that the cozy nest of happiness in which I’d enjoyed growing up was a sham. Rockabill, except for Nick, Nan, and Jason, had never accepted my mother. Many in the village considered her dangerously different and were happy to have their worst suspicions confirmed by her abandonment of her husband and young daughter. That a young girl whose mother had deserted her deserved any sympathy was trumped by the fact that I looked almost exactly like her: the same dark hair and eyes, the same pale skin, and, as I grew older, the same dangerous curves. Rockabill wasn’t an overtly religious community, but our Puritan ancestors must have channeled Melanie Griffith down through the generations. Like her mother, they whispered, that girl has a bod for sin. The whispers had stuck, growing into shouts as the years went by and other worse things happened.
Angrily, I swam and swam, letting the powerful currents and riptides of the Old Sow and her piglets jostle me back and forth. I wanted to lose myself in the whirlpool, and she was always happy to oblige.
The Old Sow used to be the bane of Rockabill’s fishermen and had killed more than her fair share of our men. Now, however, she was our livelihood: the tourist attraction that we depended on for sustenance. She was one of the five biggest whirlpools on earth, and boats had to be careful to avoid her. But there I was, plunging along her outermost boundaries like a naked little seal.
I didn’t know why I was such a powerful swimmer, since I was so small, or why I loved it so much. And yet I was never happier than when I was in the water. If I was honest with myself, there was more to it than that. I really had to swim. It was as much of an addiction as it was a desire. Not that I understood the implications of that need. I knew my swimming was the key to something, but it was that annoying, anonymous key that hung on every inherited key ring. The key that didn’t fit any door in the house, or any drawer in the office, or any suitcase in the attic. Swimming was my mystery key that constantly nagged me with its presence. But, no matter how many locks I tried, it never revealed anything about what it concealed.
I tried to push away my negative thoughts and focus on my delight as the thunder clapped and the rain poured down, causing the ocean to buck in response. The storm that was percolating when I drove home from the grocery store had struck while my father and I were eating dinner. It was all I could do to get through the meal without banging down my fork and running off into the night like some maenad. I was still so angry from my biweekly run-in with Linda that I was short-tempered with my father. Which made me feel guilty, which made me feel frustrated, which made me feel even more angry…
When I got like that only a swim helped.
And if any old swim was therapeutic, a swim during a storm was better than Prozac. Maybe it was because my mother had appeared, and disappeared, during a storm that made me so obsessed with them. But I was never happier than when the sea was wild and thrusting and angry and I was roiling around in it as powerless and riveted as one of Linda’s paperback heroines confronted with her first unbuckled swashbuckler.
A particularly strong wave dunked me, and I realized I was getting dangerously close to the Old Sow. Who, in her bounteous unpredictability, was happily swirling away despite the fact that she should really be quiet at this time of night. But I was so pissed off that only really rough water was going to do for me tonight. Whenever I had a run-in with Stuart or Linda, I couldn’t help but think about my mom. Her disappearance was like a sore tooth demanding to be prodded.
I used the riptide caused by one of the Sow’s piglets to help shoot me up into the air so I could dive back down, like a porpoise. I landed more heavily than I’d anticipated, the piglet forcing me into a strong current that wanted to carry me to her mother. I fought hard to free myself, but the current had me in its vicelike grip. The Old Sow was nowhere near the most powerful of the earth’s whirlpools, but she was far too strong even for my freakish swimming abilities. I had gotten way too close, and it was taking everything I had to extricate myself from the current.
I was fighting and fighting, but not going anywhere, when I felt the panic start to rise. If I did drown, I’d be so pissed off. It would prove that everything they’d said about me after Jason’s death was true, even though it was a total pack of lies.
But then, as if by magic, the current around me slacked off, just for a second. With an almighty effort I was free, backing respectfully away from the Old Sow and her progeny. I treaded water, still feeling the adrenaline surging through my veins. I couldn’t believe I’d been dumb enough to get that close. I was cursing my own stupidity as my heart thudded in my chest, partially from exertion and partially from fear.
Then everything froze: My heart felt like a cold hand had shot out of the water and wrapped around it, stopping it midbeat. My brain ceased all coherent
function. Only my hands and feet continued treading water as if on autopilot, keeping me afloat.
I’d gotten out of the Old Sow unscathed, but somebody else hadn’t.
I could see a shape bobbing in the grasp of the main whirlpool like some nightmarish buoy. And I knew from terrible experience that it had to be a human. If I thought I’d been afraid before, I nearly Roadrunnered it to shore as my fight-or-flight response kicked in. Every fiber of my being told me to get the fuck out of the water and not face whatever was out there.
It’s not that I thought it was some kind of monster. I assumed it was somebody I loved: dead and drowned, because of me.
Who could have seen me come to the cove? I’d come from my house, through the back door, and out through our woods. Nobody lived by us except the Grays, and Sheila and Herbert wouldn’t be hanging around outside on a cold night like this. That left Stuart, but if Stuart had thought I was drowning he certainly wouldn’t attempt a rescue. He’d sit down and light up a cigar to celebrate my demise.
That left my father. At that thought my heart, which had tentatively begun beating again, seized right back up.
But then my brain kicked in. My father knew I swam even if he didn’t talk about it, and he wouldn’t attempt a “rescue. ” So the only way I was going to find out if, once again, I’d gone and killed somebody was to get that body out of the Sow.