Daughter of Deep Silence (14 page)

A
t first, Shepherd’s touch on my shoulder is hesitant but then he’s pulling me against him, tucking my head under his chin. It’s the first time since being rescued I’ve let someone hold me while I cried.

But I don’t allow myself to draw too much comfort from it. Because if there’s anything I’ve learned from my time adrift, it’s that you can’t depend on anyone. They will all abandon you in the end.

“You can’t blame yourself, Frances,” he murmurs.

That name on his lips jolts me, wrenching me from the past. I push away, dashing the tears from my eyes and shaking my head to clear it. “You’re right,” I tell him, walking back inside. I shuffle through the stack of notebooks on the bed until I find the one I’m looking for. Flipping it open, I thrust it at him. “I blame
them
.”

I point to the photo of Grey and his father, taken moments after they’d been rescued. It ran in half the newspapers—the powerful Senator and his golden-boy child who survived.

He starts to laugh. But when I don’t join in, the sound dies out and his eyes go wide. “Wait, you can’t be serious.”

“That isn’t what someone looks like when they’ve been cast adrift for three days.”

“Maybe, but—”

I cut him off before he can say more. “How about this. Tomorrow you go lie on one of the rafts in the pool and stay there for a few days. And then we can compare. You think your skin will look that good—no open sores?” I point at the picture. “No third-degree burns from the sun? For God’s sake, even their lips aren’t cracked from dehydration!”

“What you’re saying is . . .” He struggles for the word.
Ridiculous. Impossible. Absurd. Crazy
. I hear all the possible choices in my head—I’ve thought them all before.

“What I’m saying is there were three hundred twenty-seven people on that cruise ship and three hundred twenty-three of them were murdered. Libby and I only escaped through dumb luck. But Grey and his father”—I shake my head—“that wasn’t luck.”

I take a step forward. “What I’m saying is they lied. You laughed earlier when I told you, but it’s the truth. There was no rogue wave, the
Persephone
was taken down by armed men.”

“Do you have proof?” he asks.

“That’s why I’m here,” I bite back.

He lets out a long breath and paces across the room thinking. “Okay, then why not go to the cops?”

I shake my head. “Don’t you think I’ve already considered that? My word against a well-respected sitting Senator of the United States and his son? There isn’t enough proof. Remember when that Malaysian Airlines plane went missing a while back? The whole world mobilized to look for it because the disappearance was unexplained. But what would have happened if the plane had just flown into a storm and a few days later they’d found two survivors—a Senator and his teenaged son? If the Senator blamed it all on the storm, who would second-guess that?”

When he says nothing, I answer for him. “No one. And even if they’d found another survivor a week later who said it was hijacked, who’d have believed her? They’d say she went mad from dehydration and starvation. Sure a few conspiracy theorists might grab hold, but nothing would come of it. And you can forget even the loons listening if she came out with that story four years later.”

At my argument, Shepherd’s expression shifts from utter disbelief to measured uncertainty. With a sigh I sit on the edge of the bed and run my thumb over the ghost of Libby’s ring still visible at the base of my finger. “Look, I watched those men kill my parents and Libby’s mom. I watched Libby die and it was not an easy death.”

I press my palms against my eyes, wishing I could erase the searing images. “I tried to move on. I tried to have a normal life. But how could I? There’s not a night I don’t have nightmares. There’s not a moment that I forget the sound of those bullets or the look on my mother’s face when those men pulled the trigger.”

I open my mouth to say more, but know that if I do, my voice will waver and crack. And so I sit silently a moment, forcing the memories back.

The bed shifts as Shepherd sits beside me. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off him. I drop my hands to my lap, staring at the sliver of empty space between the edge of my knee and his.

“I used to think that I just needed to understand,” I tell him. “That if I could find out the truth, that would be enough. And the truth still matters to me, don’t get me wrong.” I press my lips together and shake my head.

“But that’s not enough anymore. There were 5,783 minutes between the moment when Grey and his father were rescued and when Libby’s father found us—5,783 minutes of agony. Of thirst and hunger and desperation. Every second drove us closer to death. That’s 5,783 minutes where the coast guard could have found us. If they’d kept looking. But they weren’t, because Grey and his father lied about what happened on the
Persephone
.”

“You can’t know that for sure,” Shepherd interjects.

“Our chances of getting rescued earlier would have been a whole lot higher with the coast guard still looking,” I point out. He says nothing, conceding the point.

“Here’s the thing, Cecil always hoped I’d make something out of Libby’s life. And for a long time that’s what I wanted too—to make him proud. To prove myself worthy of having survived.

“But I can’t do that anymore. I can’t move on until this is settled. And to do that I had to come back. I had to confront Grey and his father—shake loose the truth.”

I turn to face him, trying to make him understand. “At best Grey and his father lied because they were scared. And at worst they lied because they were somehow involved. Either way they lied and I intend to find out why. You can hate me if you want. You can blame me for all of this, for keeping the truth from you. You can help me, or you can leave.” I keep my voice cold, resolved. “But the one thing you can’t do is stop me.”

T
he next morning my legs feel a little sluggish, but I still force myself out on my usual run. I can’t afford to miss it. I’ve just reached the tip of the island and turned back when I see Mrs. Wells in the distance, making her way slowly across the boardwalk to the beach. As she does every morning, she pauses when her feet first hit the sand, and stretches.

There’s a little table where she drops her towel and then she takes her time stuffing her hair into a bright yellow swim cap. The Wellses are nothing if not wed to their routines.

I keep my pacing even, watching her as I jog closer. From this far away I can’t see any of the details—her bathing suit is nothing more than a brush of black against pale skin, her goggles mirrored reflections over her eyes. It’s low tide and she takes her time walking toward the water. She enters it haltingly, pausing when it hits her knees and using her hands as cups to splash the rest of her body.

The storms over the past few days have churned the ocean some, but this morning the waves have calmed. The whitecaps are muted and dulled, more rolling hills than cutting cliffs.

She makes her way deeper, her arms spread wide with her palms hovering against the surface, swishing her fingers back and forth. When she dives under it’s an elegant movement, the curve of her body graceful and slick. She kicks a few yards farther out and then turns parallel to the beach, swimming up the coast toward me.

I increase my pace, pushing myself harder as I watch her. Waiting to see if today’s Refreshergy is the one that I poisoned.

Her strokes are crisp and even, elbow pulling high out of the water by her ribs before stretching forward. She’s done this every summer morning for years—decades. So often she probably doesn’t even think about it anymore. Like me with running, she probably lets her body fall into its pattern, untethering her mind to drift free.

Which is why when the first cramp hits her, it must come as such a surprise. The muscles spasming first in her gut, twisting so hard it’s like she’s ripping in half. She wouldn’t be prepared for it, her thoughts would already be too far away. By the time she reels them in, forces them to focus, it’s too late. It’s hit in her other muscles: calves and hamstrings knotting impossibly tight, back cramping.

I see the moment it happens. The way her arm crumples as she reaches forward. The yellow curve of her head jerking from the water. She’s splashing and panic. Pain and terror.

Unlike Mrs. Wells, I’m prepared. I’ve run through this all in my head too many times to count. Racing down the beach as fast as I can, I rip my cell phone from my armband and punch in 911. It rings only once and the moment the dispatcher picks up, I start reciting.

“Send someone quick!” I shout, modulating my voice so that it has enough panic to be sincere, but not so much that it is incoherent. “I think she’s drowning!”

“Okay, ma’am, calm down,” the dispatcher says in a soothing voice. “What’s the address?”

I glance toward the Senator’s house. “Oh God, I don’t know. Um . . .” I pull the phone away from my mouth and scream, “HELP!” as loud as possible, hoping someone might hear.

Out in the ocean, Mrs. Wells continues to thrash, barely keeping her head above water.

“Ma’am—”

“It’s the beach in front of—it’s the Senator’s house. Senator Wells’s house.” I’m gasping now, from sprinting.

“I’m sending a rescue crew but can you—”

“She’s—oh my God, I think it’s the Senator’s wife!” She’s about twenty yards from shore, gasping, crying—trying to scream but unable to get enough air. Her head goes under, stays under. Bobs to the surface again.

More panic creeps into my voice, making it high-pitched and scratchy. “They’ll be too late. I have to help her!”

“Ma’am—”

“Tell them it’s the Senator’s house! Tell them to hurry!”

And then I fling the phone up the beach, not even bothering to turn it off, and race toward the water’s edge. My heart seizes at the shock of entering the ocean for the first time since the
Persephone
. The tide grips at me greedily, and I have to force myself not to turn back to the safety of dry land. Foam splashes over my feet, clinging to my thighs as I run out as far as I can, leaping over the waves before eventually diving in.

The flood of salt causes me to gag, but I push it all aside to focus on reaching Mrs. Wells. The water around her is a churning white. She’s beyond panic now. Beyond any kind of thought at all. This is pure survival mode. I’ve studied enough about drowning victims to know that the most dangerous thing you can do in a rescue is let them get ahold of you.

They’ll push you under in a heartbeat if it will allow them to get their own head above the surface. By the time I’m within reach, she’s weakened enough that every time she slips under, it takes longer for her to surge up again.

I maneuver behind her, one knee raised and ready to kick her away if she tries to turn and grab me. My plan all along has been to save her. Drag her to the beach while the media swarms, lauding me as a hero. Making it so that the Senator is in my debt. So that he cannot keep me from Grey.

So that Grey himself feels indebted to me.

The next thing I’m supposed to do is slip my arms beneath hers and lean back, pulling her to the surface on top of me. She’s within reach. I’m perfectly positioned.

Yet I hesitate. Thinking for one brief moment that perhaps the best thing for Grey and his father is for them to lose someone they love desperately. So that they understand the pain of it. The absolute hollowness.

It would serve them right. Whether they had a role to play in the sinking of the
Persephone
or not, it seems so unfair that they escaped with their family intact when I did not.

When I didn’t even escape with my own self intact.

In this moment I am the most powerful force in Grey’s and his father’s life. More powerful than even the sea itself. Their lives are mine to control, their futures mine to dictate.

Mrs. Wells’s hand breaks the surface, but she is unable to pull her head above water. Still, I don’t move to rescue her.

Could I really let her die?
I ask myself.

The most alarming realization is the sudden and sure answer:
yes
.

I could absolutely let her die.