Such thoughts, such memories, as Rachel gathered up the drugged old dog in her arms and carried him up the stairs.
THE NEXT MORNING, driving back to the farmhouse after dropping Marky off at work, she searched the radio but there was nothing but music and DJ jabber and ads, nothing about the accident, nothing about those two girls. The drive was ten miles coming and going—south and then north along the Upper Black Root, crossing it twice on the old trestle bridges, and why not just drive up there? Why not drive up to Rochester, leave some flowers with the nurses at least? But the thought of running into Tom Sutter, those eyes of his, those lawman’s eyes, made her shudder, and she drove on toward the farm.
Ten years. Like yesterday. A cold, clear day like today. She would’ve been going in the opposite direction then, five miles almost exactly from the Plumbing & Supply to the Edendale Mall, where she worked. Looking forward to seeing Gordon Burke later that night. Thinking about Danny, the way he’d taken off in the middle of the night. Hunting with Cousin Jer? What the heck was that all about? Mysterious boy! The morning at the store passing like any other: Rachel in the back room tagging sweaters to the muted bursts of ringtone from the jackets and purses of the salesgirls. At ten o’clock she’d walked to the far end of the mall, to the building’s—maybe the world’s—last pay phone (the cell phone Danny and Marky had given her for her birthday—Look, it takes pictures!—sitting dead in a kitchen drawer, next to the dead camera). She intended to call Gordon, tell him the new plan, but at the last moment she dialed Danny’s cell phone instead, got his voicemail. She asked him to leave her a message at home, just to say he’d arrived at Cousin Jer’s OK, then she hung up and began the long walk back to the store. She would call Gordon later, on her lunch break. It was Thursday, and they had a date.
But back at the store something had happened. Leslie stood alone on the sales floor, her thin arms folded over her thin stomach. Fifteen years younger than Rachel, she would talk about things like chakras and third eyes and orgasms. Now she came toward her as if Rachel were some teenager with a hundred-dollar blouse stuffed up her shirt. In the door of the back room Rachel saw two salesgirls, heads down and thumbing feverishly at their phones.
There’s been an accident, said Leslie, and the store rolled and Rachel pitched backwards, sickly, into a scene on the highway, Danny’s truck upside down on the shoulder, wheels to the sky…
No, no, Leslie said quickly. Not that, not one of yours. It’s Holly Burke, she said. Gordon Burke’s girl. They found her this morning in the river.
9
She went under. She went under and she swam those cold yellow waters for days and days, tumbling in the river’s underworld, its constant current, constant deep pull, the lights of the car spinning through the yellow water and lighting up the hair of the other girls who were down there with her, so many girls, or maybe just one girl passing again and again through the lights, the way this girl’s hair moved in the lit-up currents like the hair of a mermaid, like seagrass, the way the light caught the whites of her eyes, and her teeth when she smiled. How smooth her face when she reached out and brushed the girl’s cheek with the back of her hand, how soft her lips when she kissed them, how warm and thrilling the breath this girl blew into her own empty lungs…
And when she surfaced at last and drew her first breath in the new world, the new life, she was not cold, and she was not wet, and she was not in the river at all, and a man was sitting next to her, and after a few spinning, blurry moments she saw that it was a man who looked like her father, only older, thinner-faced, his hair gone white and wispy on his head, but those same blue eyes that she’d looked into all her former life.
Holding her hand, this man, and she lay in a bed in a room she didn’t know and there was a window and it was early morning, or late in the day, and something hard and annoying was up inside her nose but she could not lift her right arm and there was pain all up and down her body as if she’d been pounded on by fists as she slept.
That you, Sheriff? she thought—only she must have said it aloud, because he smiled and gripped her hand more tightly and said, “It’s me, Deputy. I’m right here, sweetheart.”
“Where are we?”
“We’re in Rochester. The hospital in Rochester. You’re OK. You’re going to be just fine.”
She ran her tongue over her lips and swallowed thickly. “Thirsty,” she said.
With his free hand he brought the plastic cup and the straw to her lips and she drank. She drank and drank. All that time in the river, drowning, and now all she wanted was water—there would never be enough of it for her thirst! She emptied the cup and kept sucking noisily at the air of the cup.
“Easy, easy,” he said. “I’ll get you more in a second. I’m gonna go get the doctor now so he can look at you.”
“Don’t go. Please.” Gripping his hand, or trying to. She was so weak.
He smiled. How thin his face was! She felt the tears on her cheeks and watched as he wiped them with his thumb, his good big old thumb.
“I drowned, Sheriff.”
“No, you didn’t, sweetheart. You’re right here with me. You’re just fine. The doctor—”
She squeezed at his hand. “I did, though. We both did. Caroline and me, both together. But it was all right, because we were together. And also—”
He waited. “Also what, sweetheart?”
She rolled her head and looked up at the ceiling, and the tears ran from the corners of her eyes. She shook her head.
She turned back to him, to his eyes. Nothing but love and worry in those eyes.
“Did they find her?” she said.
“You rest, sweetheart.”
“Daddy.”
He swept the hair from her forehead.
“I saw her go under, Daddy. I saw her go. The current got her and carried her off under the ice.”
“OK, but not now. You just—”
“Did they find her? Did they find Caroline? That’s all I’m asking.”
He nodded. “Yes, sweetheart. They found her at the dam. At the power plant in Riverside. The water never freezes there. That’s where she was.”
Audrey watched his face, his eyes. “How far?”
“How far what?”
“How far from where we went in.”
He frowned. He shook his head.
“Daddy.”
“Two miles. Maybe three.”
All that way in the dark, under the ice. Beautiful, strong Caroline.
She turned and looked at the ceiling again. Her body was so sore. She could not lift her free hand, her right arm. As if it were frozen to the ice. The bed. She felt profoundly and forever drugged. Her eyes would not stay open—But stay awake, she told herself. He is sick and he needs you with him. How much time? How much did you waste by sleeping? Stay awake!
“You used to take me fishing there, Sheriff. Remember?”
“That was another dam,” he said. Then he said, “Of course I do. In the summertime.”
“The trout like it behind the dam.” Her heavy lids lowered. Her hand relaxed in his.
“Hush now, Deputy,” he said from far away… don’t spook the fish.
“The water’s so cool and deep there, behind the dam. We’d… we’d stand on the bank and cast and… the bait just… down to them in the current.”