When Kayla reached the Wauwinet gatehouse, she grabbed a handful of change from the console of her car and ran to the pay phone. She stared at the receiver of the phone, and the buttons. Did 911 require money? Certainly not. But Kayla slid a quarter and a dime into the slot anyway and dialed her house. She needed to talk to Raoul.
After two rings, Theo answered the phone. “Hello.”
“Put Daddy on,” Kayla said. Her voice sounded calm, maybe tinged with low-grade anxiety, as if to say, / have a flat tire, or I’m stuck in the sand.
“Mom?” Theo said.
‘Theo, put Daddy on, please. It’s important.”
Theo hung up the phone.
Kayla thought, Call 911! But she put more change into the slot and dialed her house again. The phone rang until the answering machine picked up. Kayla called back a third time. After three rings, she heard the hoarse croak of Raoul and she burst into tears. Time was of the essence-she knew that-but it took Kayla several seconds to regain her voice enough to tell him that Antoinette went swimming and didn’t come back to shore.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“The Wauwinet.”
“Where’s Val?”
“Back at the Point”
“You’ve called the police?” he asked.
“Not yet”
“Well, call the fucking police, Kayla. Call 911,right now. I’ll call the fire department. Jesus, Kayla.”
“I want you to come out here,” Kayla wailed. “Leave the kids. They’ll sleep.”
“Call 911,” he said. “Do that one thing and then drive back out and wait with Val. Don’t go in the water, Kayla, do you hear me?”
He hung up and Kayla called 911. The dispatcher was a reedy-voiced woman-Charlotte, her name was. She had a daughter in Luke’s grade. Kayla told her there was a woman missing in the water off Great Point.
“This is Kayla Montero. I’m calling from the pay phone at the Wauwinet. This woman is a friend of mine. Can you send someone out right away?”
“We’ll send the Open Water Rescue Squad,” Charlotte said.
“And they’ll be able to find her? Even in the dark?”
“They’ll do their best,” Charlotte said.
Driving back out to Great Point, Kayla remembered Antoinette’s daughter, Lindsey. What if she showed up in the morning to find Antoinette missing? I’m sorry, but Antoinette’s missing. She danced into the water last night, and now she’s.… gone. Lindsey would blame herself. Because maybe Antoinette had disappeared on purpose to avoid this child of hers. Motherhood was firmly ensconced in Kayla, anchored like her soul in her body, but she could imagine what a terrific fear it might be for Antoinette to be faced with motherhood when she had rejected it so long ago. And Antoinette was just about to confess something. Maybe the confession was that she was planning to disappear for a few days, to ditch the daughter. This sounded cruel, not to mention unlikely, but Kayla liked it better than the thought that Kayla’s accusation had made Antoinette retreat to the water and that, once swimming, Antoinette was swept out to sea. Because then it would be Kayla’s fault.
By the time Kayla got back to the lighthouse, the approaching lights of a boat were visible. Val paced the beach wearing her white shirt and a beach towel tied around her waist. She had Antoinette’s Chuck Taylors on each of her hands and she banged the soles together like a child playing with blocks.
“She’s gone,” Val said. Her eyes were round and empty. “She just danced away.”
The remains of their picnic lay about. Kayla picked up the Methuselah and ran with it to the water’s edge, where she heaved it into the ocean.
“What are you doing?” Val said.
Kayla picked up the three champagne glasses and tossed them into the water as well; they shattered against the wet sand.
“It’s called destroying the evidence,” Kayla said. “You’re a lawyer, Val, you should know that.”
“We have nothing to hide,” Val said. “It’s not like we committed a crime here, Kayla.”
“We’re drunk!” Kayla screamed. “Antoinette was drunk!”
Kayla tossed the food and trash into the middle of the blanket and shoved it in the back of the Trooper. She loaded in the empty cooler. The lights of the boat got closer; she could hear the motor. She saw two more pairs of headlights driving up the beach. Please let that be Raoul, she thought.
“You’re crazy,” Val said. She ran to the water’s edge. “If they find that bottle, they’re going to think we’re guilty of something.”
Guilty of something. Kayla watched Val wade into the water and retrieve the Methuselah. Kayla hadn’t thrown it very far, and unlike Antoinette, the bottle had washed back to shore, whole and unharmed.
Soon, Great Point was swarming with men. How incongruous, Kayla thought, that their women-only ritual was being invaded by these foreign creatures. A true sign that something was wrong. And what did it say about her that she was relieved, happy even, to see all these men-the men in the coast guard who piloted the search boat, two men on WaveRunners, the men of the police and fire departments who arrived in their Suburbans with their lights flashing, and finally Raoul, who trundled up the beach in his red Chevy? He ran to her like a hero from the movies. Raoul was the luckiest man Kayla had ever met. Just his presence would help.
Paul Henry, a policeman Kayla had known for years, climbed out of one of the Suburbans. Paul was short and wiry, quietly intense. He dressed like a math teacher, or like Mr. Rogers, in cardigan sweaters and canvas sneakers, and he had a crew cut. Kayla asked him once if he’d ever been in the military. Navy, he said-but the crew cut he’d had since he was six years old, and he’d never seen any reason to change it.
“Kayla, Valerie,” Paul said. “Tell me what happened.”
“We were swimming,” Kayla said. “I mean, Val and I were sitting here on the beach and Antoinette danced into the water.”
“She what?”
“She danced into the water. She put her arms out like she was holding a ball, and then she pirouetted into the water. Look, here are her footprints.” Kayla showed him the deep gouges that Antoinette’s toes had left in the sand. “Once she started swimming, we lost track of her.”
Paul Henry pinched his lips together like he’d just eaten a bad clam. “Never, never swim up here without a spotter. At night, no less. It’s irresponsible. Because this is what can happen. This is the danger. Do you see that rip, Kayla?” Paul Henry pointed. “You know better than this. You’ve lived here, what, twenty years? You wouldn’t let your kids do it, and you shouldn’t be doing it yourself.”
“Paul,” Val piped up. “Scolding us now isn’t helping Antoinette.”
Kayla and Val walked with Paul Henry to the water line. The waves lapped over Kayla’s feet, and over the tops of Paul Henry’s canvas sneakers.
Val pointed to an imaginary spot in the dark sea. “I saw her out there.” “And she swam straight out?” Paul asked. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Val said.
“I’m not sure,” Kayla said. “Now I can’t remember where I saw her.”
“It was here,” Val said.
“What was she wearing?” Paul Henry asked. “Did she have anything on-a sweatshirt or anything- that might weigh her down?”
“She was nude,” Val said.
“Why in the world were you ladies out here in the middle of the night swimming nude?” Paul Henry said. “What was going on out here?”
“We come every year,” Kayla said. “For Night Swimmers.”
“Night Swimmers?”
“It’s a tradition,” Kayla said. “We’re always careful.”
“Well, not careful enough,” Paul Henry said. “Not tonight.” He radioed the coast guard boat. The boat had a roaming searchlight, there was more talk of the rip current, and they were all silent when someone on the coast guard boat cut through the radio static and said, “With a rip tide like this, a person could be washed out to sea in a matter of minutes.”