Plus she had a terrible suspicion that Martha was right: Once she was established in the Worley Center, she would probably never come out again.
Her heart ached at the thought.
So she drove through the gathering darkness toward Grayson Springs, listening to the intermittent hiccup of the windshield wipers that she had turned on to combat the drizzle, watching the neon glow of passing strip malls and the gleam of headlights hitting shiny, wet streets, pretending to a lightheartedness she did not feel.
“Dr. Spencer’s going to yell at me if he finds out.” Lisa glanced mock-reproachfully at her mother.
Her mother chuckled. “I’ll take the blame.” Her head turned as she looked out at her surroundings. “It’s so good to be—out of that hospital. Could you—roll down the window? I want to—smell the rain.”
Lisa obligingly rolled her window down about halfway. She chose her window rather than the passenger one because she didn’t want the full force of the wind blowing in on her mother. The warm, damp air with its earthy smell rushed into the car, ruffling her mother’s hair, lifting tendrils of her own, the bulk of which was confined in a ponytail, to whip around her face. She tucked them behind her ears with one hand.
Martha inhaled.
“I used to love—rainy nights. You were born—on a rainy night.”
“Was I?”
“Mm-hmm. I remember—your daddy rushing me to the hospital—through the rain. Of course—that night—I had other things on my mind. Like having you. You came—early, you know. I was—so scared. But excited. So excited to be—a mother.”
“Was I sick when I was born?” The question had been burning in her mind ever since Scott had told her about the medical records, but she hadn’t liked to just abruptly spring it on her mother. With such an opening, though, she couldn’t resist. “With something called ARPKD, or whatever?”
Martha glanced at her in surprise. “How did you know? You were—indeed. When you were born—you seemed fine. You were small—but you were early—and I thought that was—all it was. Everybody did. Then—the next day—they told me—you had a very serious disorder. It was something—to do with your—kidneys. ARPKD. I’d never—heard of it. But they said—you might not live. They said most babies—who had it—died.” She went quiet for a moment. Glancing at her, Lisa saw that her face had gone almost gray.
“Mother—” she said sharply, fearing that something was wrong.
“I’m all right.” Martha looked at her. “I was just—remembering. It was—the worst moment—of my life. I was so—afraid. If you had died—I would have died, too.”
“But I didn’t. I got well.”
Martha smiled. “Yes. Thank God. I prayed, you know. I got down on my knees—by your little bassinet—and I begged God to—leave me my daughter. The doctors said—there was no way to know—if you were one of the ones who would live—or not. Three quarters died—within months. They wanted—to keep you there—but I took you home. To Grayson Springs. It was—the right decision. Mama and Daddy—took care of us both. I never left your side. I held you, and I cried, and I prayed. I prayed day and night. And you got better. You were fine. You are fine. It was a miracle, Annalisa. A miracle—for us both.”
“You never told me.”
“I hated remembering. It was—a terrible time. And you had—gotten well. I was—afraid to jinx it. Afraid that if—I thought about it—or talked about it—the thoughts or words would go out into—the universe, I guess—and you would get sick again.” She smiled. “That sounds stupid, doesn’t it? But I was—so afraid. And you’ve been so—healthy. Except for the chicken pox—you’ve hardly been sick.”
They were out of the city now, driving along the two-lane road that led to Woodford County. Here beyond the reach of any streetlights it was dark as pitch, and Lisa switched to her high beams. In her rearview mirror, she could see the lights of maybe two other cars, one close, one farther away. The rain was picking up, and a fat drop blew in to splatter on her shoulder. She would have closed the window if she had been alone. But her mother liked the smell.
“The chicken pox was bad, though.” Lisa tried to lighten the mood. “I remember feeling like my skin was on fire, it itched so much.”
“And you always wanted—to scratch. I had to put you in—baking-soda baths.”
“That just made me itch more!”
Martha laughed. “It was supposed to—bring all the pox out—so that you recovered faster.”
Lisa laughed, too. “That was torture, Mother. Of your own child, too. You should be ashamed.”
They were nearing the bridge that marked the boundary with Woodford County. She could just see its low stone walls, denser than the night as they arched against the dark sky. Below it, the river rolled past black as oil, and Lisa realized that the water had risen almost to the top of the banks. Very much more rain and it would flood.
“I’m glad about—you and Scott,” her mother said. “The thing I’ve hated—most—is the idea that you’ll be—all alone when I’m gone.”
Lisa cast her a quick frowning look. “You’re not going anywhere for a while yet. And as for Scott and me, well, we’ll just have to see where it goes.”
“I wish I . . .” Her mother began, only to have her words cut off abruptly as something slammed hard into the car from behind. Lisa screamed as the Jag was catapulted forward. The shriek of metal crunching metal rent the night.
The jolt snapped Lisa’s head back into the headrest. Her eyes went wide. Her heart leaped. Her hands clenched the wheel. Instinctively she slammed on the brakes. The tires shuddered and screeched as they fought for purchase to no avail. The back end started to fishtail on the wet pavement. The smell of burning rubber reached her through the open window.
“Annalisa,” her mother cried.
Galvanized with fear, Lisa jerked the wheel to the right, toward the center of the road, and might possibly even have regained control if the rear wheels hadn’t left the pavement and taken the front pinwheeling after it. The car bumped and rocked and skidded over grass that felt slippery as ice. The tall trees edging the road loomed terrifyingly close. Her foot was to the floor, jammed down on the brake. Horror flooded her as she felt something in the brake assembly snap, and suddenly there was no resistance at all beneath her foot. The pedal went flat against the floor.
The brakes are gone.
Disbelief suspended her every faculty for an instant. Time slowed down, stretched out. Her heart hammered. Her pulse pounded. Her mouth went dry. Foot straining against the now useless brake pedal, fighting the wheel as if she might actually be able to alter their course, Lisa realized that she was helpless. The car was out of control. The edge of the bridge flashed past the windshield as they spun. Another vehicle streaked through her line of vision, lights blazing, at right angles to the Jag. Then they were flying backward, shooting out into nothingness. Gasping with horror, Lisa found herself looking back the way they had come: at trees and fields and oncoming headlights silhouetted against a black sky.
The Jaguar tilted with its trunk downward and dropped like a stone. Heart thundering, stomach plummeting along with the car, she heard screams that she only dimly recognized were her own and her mother’s. Frozen with horror, she realized that they were plunging into the river only an instant before they hit with a tremendous splash.
Something smacked her hard in the face, violent as a punch. She saw stars, but a wave of lukewarm water surging through the open window sent a life-saving rush of adrenaline rocketing into her veins that restored her to her senses almost instantly. What had hit her was the air bag; it was already deflating. They were in the river. Water was filling the car. It was sinking, back end first, the headlights slicing up toward the low-hanging night sky. She glimpsed the silver sparkle of raindrops falling through their beams. Inside the car, it was dark and claustrophobic and terrifying. As she shoved the limp air bag out of her way, she saw that the backseat was already almost submerged. The Jag was slipping benea
th the surface fast.
A jolt of icy panic shot down her spine.
“Mother!” she cried, her eyes slewing toward Martha as she fought to free herself of her seat belt. Her mother was a shadowy pale figure lying limp as a rag doll in her seat. For one heart-stopping second Lisa thought she was unconscious, or even dead, but then Martha’s head turned in her direction, her eyes gleaming through the darkness, and Lisa felt a quiver of relief. They had at best only a few minutes, Lisa judged. She hit the horn, in sharp, hard blasts in hopes that someone might hear and realize that they had gone into the river. There had been cars behind them; the vehicle that had hit them—where was it? Where were its occupants? They had to be nearby. She screamed out the window for help even as she struggled with her seat belt. Her hands shook, her fingers were clumsy, the seat belt clasp wouldn’t release. Water sloshed between the front seats, licking at the console, getting her wet, rising fast as it worked to swallow the car. Black and swirling, it gurgled as it tried to suck them down.
“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-voice
d 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.
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