Shattered (40 page)

"Annalisa." Her mother's eyes were fastened on Lisa's face. The air bag hung down in front of her, limp now, like a tired ghost. Her fingers twitched frantically in her lap.

"I'm going to get you out." Fighting to stay calm, Lisa got her seat belt off and grabbed for her mother's, fumbled with it, yanked. The car was sinking fast. Water covered the console now. They were awash to the waist. Time was running out.

"No." Martha's voice was a hoarse, almost unrecognizable rasp. Her eyes, Lisa saw as she glanced up to meet them, were black with terror. "We're going to--go under any second. Leave me. I'm dying anyway. Annalisa . . ."

"I'm not leaving you." Lisa's voice was fierce. Her hands were underwater now as she struggled with the seat belt. "Damn it, why won't this thing . . . ?"

Turning her head for the window, she screamed for help again.

The seat belt unlocked. Water was reaching chest height, starting to pour in through the open window. Lisa could feel the rush of it hitting her back like a waterfall. Time was, she feared, down to seconds only. Already she thought she could feel a gathering suction, a sense of increasing pull.

Oh my God, if we don't get out of here we're going to drown.

In the distance she thought she could hear sirens.

The water swirled toward her shoulders, lapped at her mother's chin. Martha was gasping like a landed fish, her face ghastly white in the gloom. The harsh sound of her breathing filled the small space. Frantic with fear, screaming for help at the top of her lungs, Lisa grabbed her mother's arm and hauled her over the console with a strength born of desperation, closing her ears to the panicked sounds Martha made, to her jerky pleas for Lisa to leave her and go.

We have to get out.

If there were indeed sirens, she could no longer hear them. She couldn't hear anything above the sound of her own pulse thundering in her ears. The water was rising fast. It was warm, like a living creature, as it swirled and eddied around them. Only Lisa's head was above the surface now. Freed of the seat belt, her mother floated with her face turned up toward the ceiling. Paradoxically, it made moving her easier, as the water took her weight. Panting with terror, Lisa grabbed the edge of the open window and pulled herself and her mother toward it. She felt that there might be no more than a few heartbeats' worth of time left. The sensation that the car was sliding backward into the depths was suddenly pronounced.

"Help! We're in the water!" she screamed into the night.

It's too late. The car's going down.

She knew it instinctively. There was no time left to think or scream or do anything but get out of that car as the river surged up toward the roof. Swallowing what seemed like gallons of dirty-tasting river water, choking as it went up her nose and down her throat with as much thrust as if it was being shot from a fire hose, half blinded by the onslaught of it against her face, she forced herself through the incoming torrent. She slithered head and shoulders first out the window, pushing herself through the opening in the teeth of the rushing water that poured in now with terrifying force, gripping the top of the window frame with one hand as she thrust up with her feet against the seat until her head was completely above the surface. Gulping air, determined not to let go even to save herself, she held on to her mother's wrist for dear life. A desperate glance down at the scant inches of space remaining between the top of the window and the river told her nothing: She couldn't see her mother at all. All she could see was the black water pouring into the car and the gleam of the Jaguar's roof floating like a turtle's shell on the surface. But she could feel, and what she felt told her that Martha wasn't moving, not her head, not her hands or fingers. She wasn't even trying to grasp Lisa's hand anymore. She was as limp as--as a corpse. That dreadful thought made Lisa go cold with fright.

"Mother!" she cried, but of course Martha didn't answer, and she could only pray that her mother was still in a position where she could get air. Lisa was all the way out now; she was through the window, clinging to the window frame, kicking frantically to stay afloat. Heart pounding with fear and exertion, using the car for ballast and calling on every bit of strength and will she possessed, she finally managed to pull her mother out, too, dragging her through the torrent that gushed in the window, fighting against the water until her mother's head was above water. But Martha's eyes were closed. Her lips were slack. Her head lolled back so that only the pale oval of her face was visible above the blackness. Her limbs floated, limp as wet ribbons, bobbing in the current.

"Mother!" Lisa called to her, terrified, but Martha remained unresponsive. It took all Lisa's strength to keep her from sinking again. Behind her she was vaguely aware of splashing sounds, of spurts of white water kicked up against the blackness, of flashing blue lights and shrieking sirens heading her way, but she was so focused on her mother that she registered those things only peripherally.

With one part of her mind she knew that people were coming, but she was afraid to the depths of her soul that they were too late.

There was a loud gurgle, and the car went down. Just like that. It happened so fast that she was still holding on to the edge of the window and had to let go. Hampered by her mother's weight, she made a convulsive effort to kick away, to swim. But the suction caught her, pulling her down, dragging her beneath the surface, grabbing at her mother as if she was engaged with the river in some life-or-death tug-of-war for her.

Sucked down in the Jaguar's wake, Lisa found herself caught in a vortex of choking wet blackness that rendered her blind and helpless. It whirled her downward with such strength and unexpectedness that her mother's wrist was wrenched out of her hold.

No!

Frantically she snatched at the water in every direction, trying to find her mother again, opening her eyes and enduring the sting of it but unable to see anything at all. Lungs full to bursting, knowing that she was just seconds from drowning herself, she had to give up. Clawing for the surface, she fought instinctively to reach air, while inside her head Lisa screamed and screamed and screamed.

31

It was hours
before her mother's body was recovered. Lisa stood on the riverbank all that time, wrapped in a blanket that someone had draped over her shoulders, shaking until her body passed beyond that stage, crying until there were no more tears, adamantly refusing to leave. As she talked to the police, telling them about the accident, learning from them that it was a hit-and-run, that the other vehicle involved hadn't even stopped but had, instead, fled the scene, Scott arrived. Summoned at her request by the police, who had asked her if there was anyone she wanted them to call, he appeared within fifteen minutes of the time she was pulled from the water by a cop who'd tied a rope around a tree and come in after her at considerable risk to his own life.

As soon as she had seen Scott, she'd melted into his arms. He'd stayed with her ever since, holding her when she cried, conferring with the rescue teams in low-voiced conferences that she wasn't meant to overhear, acting as a buffer with the police, keeping the media away from her.

The rain had stopped, but the night stayed dark and overcast and a light wind blew. It carried the smell of the river on it, a smell that now made her nearly catatonic with horror and fear. She couldn't take her eyes from it, or tear her thoughts away from the terrible picture of her mother lost in its depths. Police cars and rescue vehicles lined the road, their flashing lights bright as colored sparklers in the dark. TV trucks crowded in beside the official vehicles. Their spotlights shone out over the river, illuminating the scene for their viewers who were watching the rescue efforts live at home. Lisa knew they were on TV because Nola arrived, breathless and stunned at what had happened, to tell her so and to be with her. Joel came, too, with his father, as did Robin and Andy and Lynn and, it seemed, practically everyone she or her mother knew until a crowd had gathered to stand vigil. Kept back from the water's edge by hastily erected barricades, they huddled on the wet bank in an amorphous, murmuring group that watched in dread as patrol boats swept the river with searchlights and helicopters circled overhead, turning their beams on the racing water, too, so that it was crisscrossed with light and churning with activity.

It was Scott on whom she leaned during that terrible time, Scott into whose arms she turned when one of the boats searching the river radioed back that they had found her, Scott who supported her when her mother was brought to shore and pronounced dead and taken away.

It was Scott who took her home with him, although Nola as well as a weeping Robin and Andy wanted to step in, wanted her to go with them. She just shook her head at them and went with him, leaning on his strength, instinctively seeking comfort from the person whose presence most comforted her. It was Scott who put her in a hot shower, summoned a doctor, got her some sedatives, and put her to bed, lying down with her and holding her close and letting her cry in his arms until at last exhaustion claimed her and she fell asleep. It was Scott who was there when she woke up, who fixed her scrambled eggs and toast and made sure that she ate some of it, who went with her to the funeral home to make arrangements, who took care of her in a thousand and one ways in the first terrible days after her mother's death.

If it hadn't been for Scott, she couldn't have gotten through it.

He was a rock, as she had always suspected he would be in times of trouble.

After the first two days, when he barely left her side, he had to return to work, but he made sure she was never alone, although that meant his apartment--a big, airy, loft-style space on the top floor of a newly converted former downtown warehouse--always had people in it. Nola was there with her for hours at a time. In fact, it was because of Nola that she made a slightly unsettling discovery. Nola brought over some photo albums, and in looking through them in search of pictures of her mother to display at the funeral home, she found pictures of herself, at maybe two or three years old, sitting on the front steps of Grayson Springs while a dog lay panting at her feet. The dog was big and black, a dead ringer, she thought, for the dog in the picture with the Garcias, and the caption, written neatly in her mother's hand beneath the picture, read
Annalisa and Lucy.

So, there had been a dog named Lucy after all, although it had apparently belonged to her family and not to the Garcias. It was one more troubling coincidence, but almost as soon as she stumbled across it, she let it slide from her mind. All her energy had to go toward simply making it through the next few days.

Nola was not the only one to keep her company. Robin and Andy, nearly as riven with grief as she was, practically haunted the place, and paradoxically in attempting to comfort them she found some comfort for herself. Joel came, and for her sake he and Scott were perfectly civil. Barty stopped in with Jill and the boys, and stayed for the obligatory half-hour condolence call. For the first time ever Lisa was thankful for the existence of his second family, because their presence kept her from having to talk much to Barty, which she could hardly bring herself to do, given the terrible thing she was now pretty sure she knew about him. Not that he seemed to want to talk to her, either: Jill and her sons were left to carry the conversational load, while the few words she and Barty exchanged were as stilted and uncomfortable on his part as they were on hers.

Other friends visited, bearing flowers and cards and various other tokens of sympathy. Chase was in and out. So were the other kids, and Rinko and Jantzen. Scott's brother, Ryan, who Lisa only vaguely remembered, came over several times. Martha's friends were there in force, bringing with them full meals, soups, desserts, breads, so many that Scott soon ran out of room in his refrigerator, and every night devolved into an impromptu dinner party for whoever was over at that time. Most of the prosecutor's office dropped by, which meant that any hope of keeping her and Scott's relationship private had pretty much flown out the window by the end of the week. Not that she cared. She was too grief-stricken to care about much of anything, and Scott gave no indication that having everyone who worked for him know that they were a couple bothered him.

If it was going to be a problem, it was a problem that could be dealt with later. After the funeral, after the media hoopla had died down, after the police had found and charged the hit-and-run driver. What they were going to charge him with was still up in the air. The obligatory autopsy (which Lisa could hardly bear to think about) had revealed that Martha had not drowned, as Lisa had feared. Her heart had simply given out under the stress of the accident. Given Martha's physical condition, the charge was more likely to be manslaughter than murder. Unless . . .

"What if it wasn't an accident?"

The suspicion had been in her head almost since the moment the Jaguar had been struck, but it had taken days--until this moment, in fact--before Lisa felt strong enough to voice it. It was Sunday night, almost eleven-thirty, and the funeral was scheduled for the next day, Monday at five. She had spent most of the day at the funeral home, where Martha lay closed inside the beautiful bronze casket that Scott had helped her choose, where the line of people who had come to offer her a few words of condolence had stretched out the door and around the corner without letup for hours. At ten, Scott had taken her out of there despite the fact that some people still lingered, and she was now curled in a corner of his couch flipping channels as she sought anything to watch but the news, which featured regular updates on the accident that had claimed the life of the owner of the fabled Grayson Springs farm. The couch, like the matching chairs at either end, was black leather. The TV was a forty-two-inch plasma affixed to one of the exposed brick walls that was a feature of the combined living/dining/kitchen area. A number of steel-framed floor-to-ceiling windows, shades still open to the night because the height made it impossible for anyone to see in, looked out over Lexington's sparkling skyline. Highly polished oak floors and chrome-and-glass tables added to the clean, contemporary look. There were two bedrooms, a master with a king-size bed, which she and Scott now shared, and another, which he had turned into a home office, and two and a half baths. It was all very sleek and modern, the perfect bachelor pad. To Lisa, it now felt like home.