Swim Deep

by BETH KERY

  I, of all people, had come to know that firsthand.

  “I believe that Noah killed Elizabeth when they had that last confrontation, because I know Noah. He would believe it was his only course of action if she insisted upon cutting all ties with him. It would be the only thing he could do, being the narcissist that he is, and given those circumstances. In Noah’s eyes, it would have been like Frankenstein realizing the monster had become something he hadn’t expected, that it had evolved into something uncontrollable. Once the monster took on a life of its own, once it obtained a will of its own… it had to be killed at all costs. Elizabeth’s only use was in being precisely what Madaster wanted her to be. And once that was finished, once she demonstrated a will of her own, and wouldn’t back down from it? That was the end. He terminated her very unhappy life.”

  I didn’t want to believe him. But the story had a raw, tragic note to it that struck a cord somewhere deep inside me. It had the terrible, clear tone of the truth.

  In that moment, I had never seen Elizabeth so clearly, and it was a painful image. I had envied her, once. I had hated her for her seemingly effortless, powerful influence over everyone in her sphere. I had feared what I’d believed to be her ghost in my nightmares.

  Now I pitied her. It was somehow worse than my envy.

  “My point is,” Evan continued, his recitation of the facts striking me as merciless in that moment, even though he was only doing what I’d demanded. “Even though I believe Noah murdered Elizabeth, I also knew from all those years of experience that he would insist until his dying day that he adored and loved her above anything else.

  “I confronted him with my suspicions before I left Les Jumeaux seven years ago, and that’s exactly what he did. He insisted no one on this planet came near to loving Elizabeth like he did. But in typical Noah-fashion, which is in a sly, elusive way, he admitted to me that he had been responsible for her disappearance.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He agreed with me that he’d never seen his daughter in so much pain as she’d been in recently. He accused me of her unhappiness, for stirring her up, for confusing her about what she wanted. And then he said that his love for her was greater than mine, because if he’d ever seen her so unhappy, he would certainly have done anything to stop it.”

  “Even kill her?”

  “She was his absolute obsession, the reason he rose from bed in the morning, the ultimate motivation for every decision and action that he ever made. Including snuffing out her existence.”

  For a few moments, an uneasy, poisonous silence settled. But then Evan continued.

  “A couple years ago, I first heard about Noah’s accident and the resulting spinal cord injury. I learned that he’d become a virtual captive in the tower at the South Twin, a prisoner in his own body, as you put it once. I started to realize that possibly the only way I could ever expose him for the rapist, abuser, manipulator, and murderer that he was, was to make him somehow admit his sins himself.”

  “And that’s when your plan took shape. You’d find someone who looked like Elizabeth. They say we all have a doppelganger in this world. At this point in history, everyone is putting their photo out there somewhere. You had the whole world to access, given the Internet. You just had to have the time and resources to find that face. Once found, you would bring the double to Les Jumeaux and parade her in front of Noah. With his damaged body, and more than likely damaged mind, Noah would be forced to look at the image of his daughter day in and day out, the one that you say was his ultimate obsession… the child he loved above all else. The daughter he murdered.”

  Realization struck. I gasped like I’d been hit in the solar plexus. My throat swelled.

  “That’s why you situated me up on the overlook, first thing. It was so that Noah would see me painting every day. See you kissing me… touching me. You did it all just out of his reach. You did it all to drive him mad, to force his confession.”

  “I stopped visiting you up there. At first, I thought it might drive the knife deeper if he was forced to see us together, but then I couldn’t make myself to do it. More and more, I hated the idea of him watching you, even though it’s what I originally planned as a means to force him into some kind of action… some admission or revelation. My feelings for you kept evolving and deepening, and I started to doubt myself more and more. I never believed he could actually harm you, made helpless as he was by his injury. But I knew just seeing you could potentially do a great deal of damage to his psyche. Enough so that it might break him. Expose him.

  “But I began to have a change of heart about that. I didn’t want him to even see you. It came to strike me as deeply wrong… possibly dangerous, even, from a distance, like those electrical transformers that cause cancer with constant exposure. I’d sit in my office and worry about you up there on the overlook. I knew it wasn’t rational, my worry, but I couldn’t seem to shake it. That’s why I suggested you move to a different spot to paint, a place where he couldn’t watch you anymore. And when I said I’d leave if you chose it, I meant it, Anna.”

  “I’m so lucky, to have you thinking of my welfare.”

  He winced at my sarcasm.

  “I deserve that. I know. But believe me when I say that I never planned to put you in harm’s way. I always wanted you to be happy. I told myself that while I knowingly used you for my own purposes, I would make your life better for it in the end. I wouldn’t have done this if I weren’t confident I could give you what you wanted, after this business was finished. By the time we married, I didn’t want you to leave me. Far from it. I dreaded the idea. I hoped, maybe stupidly so, that once we spent more time together, you’d realize my feelings were true.

  “But if you left me—something I tried to resign myself to, difficult as it was—at least I would have left you the financial resources to give you freedom. I knew how much you wanted the time and opportunity to paint.”

  “I didn’t come to Les Jumeaux to paint. And I never wanted your damn money. God, I believed you,” I said, freshly terrified by the words.

  “You should have believed me. You believed that I loved you because I did. I do. I think I loved you without knowing it since the first time we met… before, even, when I looked at your paintings. I defended myself against that feeling, of course, given my plan. The realization of how much you meant to me, the full extent of my feelings, didn’t hit me until we came here, though. Until the threat of Noah was so near. I am completely and hopelessly in love with you, Anna. I wouldn’t have married you, otherwise. I didn’t need to, in my original plan… before we even met. I just needed to get you here.”

  “A clueless double of Elizabeth. You were confident you could seduce somebody so stupid. That was the easy part,” I bit out, fury spiking through the thick emotional fog that had settled from hearing this tragedy. I saw him open his mouth to defend himself. “Just finish, Evan. Finish telling me about your little story of revenge.”

  He took a moment to gather himself. I waited, impatient now, increasingly desperate for this to be over.

  “I put all my resources into finding a double,” Evan said. “I’d almost given up hope by the time the private investigator I’d hired sent me your dating profile. He and two other people, whom he’d hired specifically for this case, had been combing sites for years, everything from Facebook to Twitter to professional social media sites to dating sites. They did a worldwide search. For a few years, we came up short, though. I’d already taken steps to hire an actress if need be… to find someone with a passing similarity to Elizabeth who might be willing to have some minor surgery done in order to look more like her.

  “When the private investigator finally sent me the link to your profile, and I saw your photo, I was stunned. You might have passed as Elizabeth at twenty-three. And when I say that, I mean you might have passed with people who knew her well. It was amazing to think you were right there
in San Francisco the whole time. We’d been searching the globe, and you were only a few miles away from me. Then I met you in person.”

  “And you were shocked to the core,” I said bitterly, repeating what he’d told me once about how he’d felt upon our first meeting. “Wasn’t that what you said? That you were stunned to see something so new. So fresh. Honest. Rare. You fucking liar.”

  I stared at him with blistering defiance, but fresh tears spilled down my face.

  An angry glint flared in his eyes. “When I told you that, I was being honest. You were unlike anything I’d ever expected… anything I’ve ever known. I get the irony of that, Anna, given what I was planning. I get the screaming bad luck of it all. I’m being punished. Not for wanting to see Noah Madaster exposed for what he is. But for plotting to use you to get justice against him. I fell in love with you, against my will and against my better judgment. Fate sent me a gigantic Fuck You, Evan Halifax. I deserve your scorn, and I deserve for you to leave me and never look back. But don’t try and make out I was lying about my feelings for you. Don’t twist this story any more than it already is. God knows it’s sick enough.”

  “I’m not the one who has been twisting things, and you know it. You realize that your plan for revenge is working, don’t you?” I asked him in a high-pitched voice. “Your plan to torture Madaster? First, he punched his fist through that pane of glass when he saw me. And he’s spent the last few days in the hospital because of a heart attack.”

  I saw his expression shift subtly.

  “You didn’t know about his most recent heart attack? You must be so pleased. He’s been suffering and weakening, just like you’d planned, seeing me on the grounds of Les Jumeaux.”

  “Anna, please try to understand. Elizabeth’s body was never found. There was no means for finding the truth… for serving justice.”

  “I’m not your means, Evan,” I shouted.

  I stood and headed toward the bathroom. The full knowledge of what he’d done, how he’d manipulated me like a piece on a chess board, made my legs rubbery and my head feel like it was about to explode.

  “Anna—”

  “I’m getting a tissue and a drink of water,” I snapped, meaning to come off as defiant, but in fact, only sounding peevish and tired.

  It was too much to take in, all in a matter of hours, too much to absorb. The husband whom I’d loved with all of my spirit, and whom I’d believed loved and cherished me equally as much, had really been plotting to bring me into his life for the sole purpose of revenge.

  And I told Jessica that I loved him so much because he’d seen me. It seemed so ridiculously naïve and embarrassing in retrospect.

  I stared at my pale, tear-damp face in the bathroom mirror.

  You thought you were so special, didn’t you? But you knew, deep down, it was too wonderful to be true. All he saw when he looked at you was a means to an end.

  It had happened. The floor had dropped away from my known world.

  But I was still standing.

  When it came down to it, I realized that you just kept going in the face of impossible pain. Why? Because there was nothing else to do. The heart kept beating doggedly. The cells kept up their chemical function.

  The feet kept moving.

  “Anna? Are you all right?” Evan asked anxiously when I came out of the bathroom. He stood five feet outside the bathroom door. His face had a strained, pinched look.

  “No. I’m not all right,” I replied evenly. “I’m going now. I’m taking the car. I assume you’re okay with that.”

  “No, Anna. You can’t go yet,” he said loudly, taking several steps toward me. I swung my body out of the reach of his outstretched hand and walked past him.

  “I haven’t explained everything yet. You still don’t understand the whole story.”

  “I understand enough. I understand how ridiculously out of place I am here,” I said, my gaze glued to my suitcase. One step at a time. I’ve got to get out of this house. This hell.

  Because if he touches me, I honestly don’t know what I’ll do. Hit him? Once I get started, I might never stop pummeling until he’s a bloody mess.

  Or worse, I might sink into his arms and beg him to tell me that it was all a mistake? That I really am the love of his life?

  That I really am special in his eyes?

  The thoughts, heavily laced with a brutal self-disgust, were just what I needed. My vision cleared as I grabbed my suitcase and purse.

  “Anna, please.”

  “I’ll leave a text as to where you can pick up the car,” I said through a throat that was closing. “And for Christ’s sake, if it’s true that you ever cared even a little bit about me, don’t say anything else, Evan. Just leave me be.”

  Storms in the Sierra Nevadas can be capricious, saber rattling and booming threats over the distant mountains, but never quite launching a full out attack.

  As unpredictable as Elizabeth Madaster herself, I thought as I pulled Evan’s sedan out onto the drive.

  It was unusually gloomy and dark for this time of day because of the hovering, undecided storm. Or was it? I wondered hazily. What time was it? How much time had passed in this nightmare of an afternoon? A quick glance at the dashboard clock told me it was four thirty.

  At least I’ll have daylight for a few hours while I make my escape.

  Escape to where, exactly?

  I had a quick, vivid image of me driving Evan’s car across the country to my parents’ house… of my mother holding out her arms as I crossed the threshold of the front door, of my father’s concerned face as he patiently listened to my woeful story.

  I gasped loudly at the image, my body convulsing, more damned tears spilling down my cheeks. Or maybe it wasn’t the imagined scene that made me cry out and grab the wheel in a death’s grip. It was more the sure, slicing knowledge that it would never happen.

  I could never go home again. I could never be comforted. Not in that way. If there was one thing Evan had done by maneuvering his way into my life, he’d made me grow up.

  He’d aged me.

  I forced myself to focus on the road in front of me, squeezing unwanted tears out of my eyes. The giant pines waved and frothed, stirred up by the storm that hung and rumbled at the top of nearby mountain peaks.

  Fairyland doesn’t want you to leave.

  I mentally scoffed at that random thought. Not only was Les Jumeaux the direct opposite of a magical place. It could never care about me. I was a glitch here, a curious interloper, a freak meeting of random genes and a vengeful, single-minded man.

  What would she think? What would Elizabeth think of Evan’s plan for revenge?

  I gripped the wheel even harder, amazed at the thought. It’d popped into my head seemingly out of nowhere.

  I passed the fork in the road, forcing my increasingly buzzing, churning mind away from the charged memory that flashed into my head of Evan waiting for the ambulance to pass, of him holding my hand and pulling me into the center of the road—

  He’d wanted Noah to see us together there.

  Just like he’d tried to keep me from driving into Tahoe Shores, because he knew the locals would recognize my resemblance to Elizabeth.

  I pushed aside the volatile thoughts, because it was necessary to drive, to move foot by foot, yard by yard, away from Evan.

  I passed the gatehouse, recalling against my will our arrival at Les Jumeaux, how I’d taken the card key and rubbed it against my shorts, Evan’s small, slightly incredulous and yet accepting smile when the card had opened the gate.

  I should have known it only required a sprite’s touch.

  I braked the car hard at the turn off to the mountain highway, gravel popping beneath the tires. Lightning flashed. Thunder answered in a fury.

  The storm had stopped its prevarication. It raged down the mountainside.

>   Right or left?

  I released my clamped jaw. Right. Turn right.

  I started to turn left, done with trusting with my own instincts. I broke so hard, my seatbelt snapped against my chest.

  Another car raced by on the mountain road. Not there one second; there the next. Startled, I watched openmouthed as it passed. My first impressions were of speed, and vivid red amongst the muted gloom of the oncoming storm.

  The ends of a white scarf fluttered around the female driver’s shoulders as she sped past. She wore the scarf tied around her head like Grace Kelly or Audrey Hepburn might have in old movies, to keep their hair from blowing about in a convertible.

  And this was a convertible, I realized dazedly as the car zoomed by. This was a convertible that would show up nearly every convertible on the planet. The top was down, despite the impending storm. Chic, sleek, and fast. I caught the prancing horse emblem on the shiny red of the paint, and then the car zipped around a curve and behind a mountain.

  I gasped, my lungs unfreezing. Only a split second had separated us from crashing together in a fiery mess of metal, but she’d been unfazed. She’d never even glanced around. The red replayed in my mind’s eye like a speeded up, repeating film clip, played faster and faster, the mechanics of the recorder losing control.

  Chic. Red. Fast.

  Elizabeth.

  “Noah had given her a rare, vintage Ferrari Spider when she got her driver’s permit. Cherry red.”

  Light from my darkness.

  You are no outsider to this place, Anna.

  The thoughts came at me like mortar fire. I didn’t know if they were mine, or someone else’s. That’s what scared me the most at that moment.

  Thunder shattered the very air around me, seeming to split atoms in half. I cried out, grabbed the wheel tighter, and butted my forehead hard against it.

  I welcomed the jolt of pain.

  Chapter Nineteen

  That’s how Evan found me, gripping the wheel like I thought it was a life preserver in a stormy sea, my forehead pressed against it, my body shuddering.