The Sister Season (21 page)

C
laire wouldn’t know this until later, but her bare toes were already cracked from the cold and bleeding, leaving trails in the snow, even before she got to the tree line.

She didn’t care about her feet, or about anything other than racing through the soy field as quickly as she could.

Her nephews were down in that pond—the pond she knew in and out, up and down, like the back of a mermaid’s fin—and she had to get to them.

She should have said something. That was the thought that kept circling, circling in her head as she dashed past the beehives. She should have told Julia that she thought Eli had been going down to the pond at night. That she’d seen footprints and that she’d thought she’d seen him in their father’s recliner at night too. That he’d been acting weird, testing his luck, testing his life, on the ice.

But she hadn’t. She hadn’t done it, and why? Because there was a part of her that thought maybe he was just being a kid sliding around on the ice the way she did when she was little? Maybe. But she knew better. She knew, after one glance at Eli four days ago, that he wasn’t just a normal kid who thought of and did normal kid things.

So why didn’t she do it? Why didn’t she tell like she’d said she would?

Probably because if she told, it would mean she was involved. It would mean she was part of this family, part of a whole. And being part of a whole scared the holy living shit out of her, didn’t it? Maya was right. That was why she ran away to California ten years ago. That was why she preferred one-nighters with douche bag guys she’d never even look at twice in a sober moment. And that was why she was running away from California now.

That was why she’d broken up with Michael.

She had to stay disengaged, because being a part of a whole was scary. Being a part of a whole could mean hurt. Being part of a whole could get you knocked on your ass at the bottom of the stairs with two black eyes.

But, God, how she wished Michael was there right now. For Eli, but also, more important, for her. She needed him. Even if that need scared the ever-loving shit out of her. Because she hadn’t realized it until she was sprinting toward the tree line with her heart in her throat, but facing life without him scared her even more.

She plunged into the trees, her feet and arms pumping, her breath pulling in and out in great puffs. She felt numb all over. Not from the cold, but from fear. She could hear Molly’s cries, thin and distant, and Maya’s shouts not too far behind her, but nothing coming from ahead. Not a sound from the pond.

She bulldozed through the thicket, not worrying about branches hitting her arms, her hands, her face, not worrying about following any sort of trail—really at this point just a barely worn path where mushrooms would crop up in the fall and squirrels would skitter during the spring and summer. She saw the edges of the pond up ahead. She thought she heard a splash. Maybe a ragged grunt. A breath, maybe? A sound of life? The thought propelled her even harder. She ran faster, faster than she’d ever run before. Faster than she’d ever even thought she might be able to run. Her feet sank into the mushy snow and she thanked God that she’d been running on a beach every day for ten years, and momentarily had a sense of purpose.
Maybe this was the real reason I was led to California,
she thought.
To prepare me for today, for this very moment. Maybe this was predestined.

Claire wasn’t a religious person by any means, but she guessed that God wouldn’t predetermine the death of two children. No way. This had to be a failure on someone’s part. Maybe Maya’s and Bradley’s. Maybe Julia’s. Probably her own.

Or maybe this was just what happened when you let yourself into the Yancey Farm. You got hurt. Maybe the place was cursed.

She heard the splash and grunt again, a breath being expelled and then sucked in, just as she pulled up onto the bank, her heels pushing deep holes into the mud as she ran.

She didn’t stop or even slow down, though she tried to be aware, to take everything in.

There was something on the ice. Something red. A child’s coat? Dear God, Will’s coat? Soaked, and discarded next to a jagged hole about four feet across.

Not far from it was Will, waterlogged and shivering, pale, in his shirtsleeves, coughing. He lay on his side on the ice near the bank, his cheek pressed up against it.
Hypothermia
. The word blared through her mind. He was so little; it wouldn’t take long, and all kinds of bad things happened with hypothermia, right? Frostbite, heart attack? Death?

She whipped her head around. Eli was nowhere to be found. She’d heard a grunt, a breath, some splashing a few seconds before. Was he still in there? The water had to be thirty degrees, and who knew how long Eli had been in it? He might not last much longer.

Whose child did she choose? Which sister? Julia, who had confided in her, who was silently suffering this very possibility every day, that her son might die? Or Maya, the one who had just lost her husband, the one cowering from cancer, the one who had only moments before finally begun to trust her, to let her in, the tiniest bit?

The choice seemed impossible and unfair, but in the end it was the fact that Will was still breathing that made her turn and rush toward the hole in the ice.

Her whole world got grainy and slow, like she was seeing everything in a dream or through a strobe light. Like one of those ridiculous bars Judy was always making her go to, where they’d wear children’s glow necklaces and drink potent mixed drinks out of tall plastic mugs that flashed blue, green, red lights as if a parade were coming through.

She felt as if she couldn’t see, couldn’t take it all in, but later she would be able to recall every vivid detail, every tick of every second perfectly. It would keep her up at night. Rack her body with sobs.

She fell to her knees next to the hole and plunged her arms into the water. She felt something that might have been hair, but not enough to wrap her fingers around. She dropped to her belly and stretched so that her arms were submerged up to her shoulders. This time she thought she might have bumped against skin, but it was cold, so cold, and she couldn’t be sure what she was feeling. She thought something brushed against her arm. A hand? Was that a hand? But then nothing more.

She heard Maya coming close, her cries and sobs and gasps all intermingling into one ugly sound. It was the sound of a terrified mother. The sound of worst fear, realized.

“Will!” Maya shouted. “Oh, my God, Will!” Claire glanced back. Her sister was on her knees on the edge of the ice, pulling Will into her lap, her face frantic and horrified. “Where’s Eli?” They seemed to be the only words she could wrap her mouth around. Over and over again. “Where’s Eli? Where’s Eli?”

Claire braced herself for the cold. She felt it in her chest. Grief. Dread. Fear. She sucked in a great lungful of breath and ducked her head, raised her arms and pointed them toward the hole.

And then she slipped headfirst into the water.

T
he water was so cold her immediate reaction was to want out. To scramble back up the side of the broken ice and call for help. To give up, let fate take over.

Her yoga pants, so restricting just a few hours ago, felt like nothing against her skin. No protection. No warmth. Her feet stung and ached and floated little trails of blood through the murky water. Her arms felt heavy and slow.

Still, she angled herself downward and opened her eyes, searching for a sign of her nephew. Bubbles would be nice. Bubbles would be miraculous.

She didn’t see him.

She looked up toward the top again, hoping he’d found the air pocket that always seemed to reside between the ice and water. Hoping she’d see kicking legs, a head tilted up, sipping in oxygen. But again she saw nothing.

Claire knew every centimeter of the pond, and she knew that where the ice had broken was above a fairly shallow portion of it. Deep enough to swallow two children, for sure, but shallow enough to reach the bottom in one breath.

Using every ounce of strength that she had, she kicked straight for the bottom. God willing, she wouldn’t find Eli there. God willing, he’d be hiding out in the woods or back home in front of the fire by now and this all would have never happened at all. A dream. A really, really bad dream.

Please don’t do this to Julia,
she prayed as she kicked her ever-slowing legs, propelling her toward the bottom of the pond.
Please don’t rip my sister’s heart out
.

But then she saw him. He almost seemed to pop up in front of her out of nowhere. He was flailing, his eyes wide and panicked. He was holding out his arms toward her like a toddler wanting to be picked up. His lips were pursed tight, small bubbles leaking out of them and floating over his head. His eyes seemed to be telling her that he couldn’t hold his breath much longer, and that he couldn’t get up top again for more. More important, they told her that he wanted out. He wanted to live.

She kicked extra hard, reaching for him, feeling like she was going nowhere through the water.

Just hang on, Eli,
she pleaded inside her head, the fear and dread she’d been feeling before now looming so large it almost felt as though it was pulling her down.
Please hang on!

She stretched so far her shoulders ached, her fingers splaying and grabbing until they found his hands, his elbows, his shoulders. She gripped him, praying that her fingers would bend and clutch and not let go. To her relief they curled and she was able to drag him toward her.

She pulled him up against her chest with one arm, noticing for the first time how thin he was. Still just a boy, really.

And as she got her feet onto the ground underneath her and pushed herself back up toward that light spot in the ice, her lungs full to bursting, wanting to take a breath so badly, mightily pulling through the water with her free hand, everything in her world seemed to slow down.

Fronds and sediment floated around her, unmoving. Fish wove through the weeds nearby. Sounds, muted and melted, drifted down into the water in bangs and creaks. Eli’s hair drifted up in front of her face; his scarf waved like a flag.

And she realized, with something akin to a punch to the chest, that this was the first time she’d ever held him. Her nephew. Her sister’s little boy. Her blood. She’d never gathered him into a sticky hug as a toddler, and here he was turning into a young man. A very troubled young man. And she wanted nothing more than to turn back the calendar pages, to go back to when Eli was born, to be there for her sister. For both of her sisters. Time had marched in on the wave of anger and grudge, had swept an opportunity out of her hands like a finger snap, and had left her empty before she’d even realized that it was ticking.

The thought filled her with horror. How many things had she lost over the past ten years? How much love, how much warmth would she never get back? How many more things would she lose if she kept herself closed off from love?

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t go through life alone like this. She wanted Michael. She wanted love. She wanted time to leave her with sweet memories, not empty handfuls of missed ones.

She broke through the surface of the water without even really trying. Automatically her chest heaved in a breath and expelled it back out again, and thank God for involuntary bodily responses, because she may have never breathed again.

Breaking through the water was like walking into a chaotic room. There was screaming—Molly’s and Julia’s—and sirens in the distance, though Claire thought they might be heading across the old soy field toward them. There was a rough coughing, frayed around the edges, and Claire realized only vaguely that the sound was coming from Eli, who was frantically clawing at the ice around the hole. Julia was lying on the ice in front of him, sobbing, pulling on his arms, trying to free him without breaking the ice further, and Claire, still in the water, was pushing him, though she had no foothold to give her any strength. There was shouting coming from Elise and hands reaching and Eli sliding on his belly across the ice to safety and Maya repeating, “Oh, thank God, thank God, oh, thank God . . .”

And Elise called, “Back here!” to the paramedics who had finally arrived and were slogging through the tree line with their equipment.

Claire pulled herself out of the water, not caring when the ice she was clutching broke loose and dumped her back in. Barely even noticing how big the hole had gotten as she pulled herself up again and this time freed herself, breathing heavily, shivering, unsure exactly what had just happened and who had saved whom.

H
e was still alive.

Not that he cared.

Not that he wanted to be.

Not that he should have been.

But he knew he was because he could hear the clock from his bedroom ticking all the way in the den and he could feel the tag of his flannels scratching up against the small of his back and he could still feel a little bit of a tingle in his pinkie finger. Frostnip, the doctor had called it. Made him sound like he belonged in a freaking Christmas carol.

He was breathing. In, out. In, out. His heart was beating.
Ka-thud, ka-thud, ka-thud.
He was alive.

They had tried to keep him in the hospital, but he’d begged his mom not to make him stay. He was fine. He was cold, but he was warming up and he was fine.

He’d heard her repeat those very words to his dad on the phone later. He’d given them a hell of a scare. Nobody knows what they were doing on the ice, no. It was just an accident. A very frightening accident and they were all very lucky. And he was a hero! He’d saved his cousin’s life!

But he knew better. He knew he was no hero. He knew it wasn’t an accident. He knew he’d caused it. And he was fine.

Goddamn it!

He was fine and his little cousin was still in the hospital and they were saying things like hypothermia and frostbite and needing to watch him for a couple of days and there was nothing he could do to take it all back.

Nobody could get ahold of Uncle Bradley. Aunt Maya had tried. She’d called his cell phone over and over and he hadn’t answered it. She’d begged him on his voice mail to call her back.

“Please,” she’d cried into the phone. “Something has happened. Will’s in the hospital. Please, Bradley. Call me.” But he didn’t, and they had all eventually left her and Will there at the hospital and gone home and just slowly drifted off toward their beds.

And he was here. Alive. Reliving what had happened in his mind over and over again. His cousin’s coat coming off just when he got him to the top of the water. And his cousin splashing back down into the pond again, leaving him there clutching a stupid empty coat and crying like a baby. Watching his cousin sink to the bottom of the pond and going back underwater after him, his arms and legs feeling like they’d been plugged with lead. And finding his cousin again and dragging him up by one arm and pushing his cousin out of the water but unable to pull himself out no matter how hard he tried. And then drifting down, which should have been exactly what he wanted, should have made him happy and calm because it was finally going to happen. But instead of letting death take him, he’d panicked and headed back up to breathe, over and over again, until his body physically couldn’t do it anymore. He’d swum toward his aunt Claire, afraid, afraid, afraid of dying, and being thankful.

Thankful to be saved.

Fuck.

Everyone was asleep. Nobody left their bedrooms tonight.

Except him.

He couldn’t sleep.

He was alive and he shouldn’t have been.

He curled up onto his side and felt the wool of the recliner press into his cheek. He stared out the window, where the moon shone down brightly onto the head of the snowman he’d built with his little cousins earlier that day. Tears snaked out of the corners of his open eyes.

He stayed that way until morning.