Jack was fresh and strong. He caught her up and pulled her to the shore.
Pulling her arms up and turning her on her side, he tried to make her comfortable for the next few seconds while she coughed and spit up water. He grabbed his jacket where he had left it on the sand and covered her with it. Nina was starting to black out and barely felt Jack yanking at seaweed tangled in her hair. Cursing, he let go and stood up.
“Remy!” he shouted toward the ocean, his voice a piteously small squawk in the roar of wind and surf. He walked to the edge of the water, waded in until the water was waist deep, calling again in all directions, but no head appeared, no hand. The waves continued to crash and the sky continued its glorious light show.
Nina was sitting up, rigid with shock. Her eyes too scanned the horizon. When Jack tried to help her off the beach, she shouted and raged incoherently. He pulled her up the stairs to the road. Stuffing her into the backseat of his car, he found a beach blanket in his trunk and tucked it around her. A hand was beating on the window.
He rolled his window down. “Jesus, Paul. Remy’s still out there somewhere! Do something!” Paul took one look at Nina, nodded, and ran to the beach.
Jack turned on the heater in his car and began to drive toward the hospital.
“Jack, take me home,” Nina said. She sat up and grabbed him by the hair, repeating, “Take…me home,” through clenched teeth.
“I’ll take you to my place, honey, it’s closer, and we’ll figure it out from there,” she heard him say, and then she lapsed into shivering that reminded her of childbirth, a natural force completely beyond her.
Five minutes later they arrived in the Highlands. In the dark backseat, her head lolling against the upholstery, her face puffed purple, Nina looked like a drowning victim. Jack didn’t want to wake her up. He debated again turning toward the hospital. She hadn’t been unconscious in the water, but he knew she was in danger. He tried to pick her up, but she cried out in some pain, so he half woke her. Then he saw the welts on her body, the fresh blood in her hair, the wounds that seeped. They lumbered up the porch steps. Wet, cold, and cursing, he said, “Where are the goddamned keys!” He located them in the planter.
Once inside the empty cabin, he wrapped Nina in a dry blanket while he called the Coast Guard rescue number, then turned up the thermostat and lit a fire. He put a kettle on the stove to heat. Nina was lying on the couch with a sleeping bag over her, shivering violently, and Jack remembered reading that shivering was a good sign. He woke Nina again nevertheless to satisfy himself that she was still alive and marched her into his bedroom. Her clothes seemed soldered to her body. He peeled as much away as he could, lifting first her legs off the bed to pull off the pants, then supporting her back with one arm, tugging at the shirt. “What the hell’s happened here?” he mumbled as he worked on her. The seaweed had dried in her hair. He left it.
Tucking her under a thick comforter, piling a few extra blankets on top for good measure, he put in a call to his own doctor, whose service assured him he would call back right away. “Emergency. Urgent,” he told them, trying to find the right words. “Life-and-death.” He stripped off his own wet clothes and pulled on his sweats, shivering quite a bit himself, though he wasn’t feeling cold. Adrenaline still surged through him.
He brewed some tea. When he returned to the bedroom, he found her standing beside the bed, rummaging in a dresser drawer. “Get back in that bed,” he commanded. “Either you stay right here or I shackle you to the bed.”
Her teeth chattered uncontrollably. “Don’t leave, Jack. Don’t leave yet.”
He held her head against his sweatshirt until she was quieter. “Can you talk? What happened?”
“She tried to kill me.” Nina sputtered out a few more words.
“Because she missed a deadline? A stupid, shitty mistake she made? She killed two people and attacked you? No, no.”
“Yes.” Nina closed her eyes.
Paul arrived a few minutes later. “The Coast Guard told me you called from here.” He wanted to see Nina. When he saw her sound asleep on the bed sprinkled with sand and seaweed, face puffy with bruises and cuts, he yanked Jack out of the room.
“We couldn’t find Remy. The rescue boats arrived with searchlights.” Paul spoke like a man without feeling, but his hands were shaking too much to hold his cup. He put it down. Jack watched his old friend’s face crumble. “We got there too late.”
“Listen, Paul. Nina just told me the most incredible story—”
When Jack’s doctor showed up, Jack left Paul in the living room, his head in his hands.
The doctor woke Nina. Plucking her eyelids, probing with tiny lights and forcing her to answer questions to which she replied dully, he said, “You should have taken her straight to the hospital.”
He explained that she was in shock with a dangerously low body temperature. She needed fluids intravenously. She needed to be warmed slowly, in a place where they were equipped to deal with hypothermia.
Would she die without that treatment? Jack asked. The doctor, exasperated, said, “Maybe.” So they waited for an ambulance.
The paramedics lifted Nina expertly onto the gurney and wheeled her out. She stopped them, motioning to Jack and Paul, saying so softly, as if talking to herself, that they leaned in to hear, “Richard tried to blackmail her. He’s the only other person who saw the paperwork except Astrid—she doesn’t read what she types.” Nina clutched at Jack.
“Ninety days. She missed the deadline.”
CHAPTER 53
REMY HID UNDERWATER FOR AS LONG AS JACK AND NINA were still in sight, coming up quickly just to gulp breaths of air. When they finally left the beach, she crawled out of the water, creeping up the edge of the beach in case anyone was watching. But she found herself bloated with salt water and colder than she had ever been, sluggish, shivering uncontrollably, and knew she was very ill.
She lay for quite a while on the hillside behind a small pine tree trying to gather her strength, but the rest seemed to have the opposite effect, leaving her enervated, barely able to move. The cold air swirled around her as she shook out of control on the rocks for a long time, then made her way up the hill to the street. She wished she had time to change her clothes, but she couldn’t take the risk. She had to leave right now. This was a time for intense self-discipline. She spotted Paul’s car parked by her house, but he was down on the beach, she could see him like a moving pin dot.
Her keys were gone, lost in that wild battle with Nina. She was exhausted and slow, searching underneath her car for the extra key. She hadn’t had time to throw her suitcase in before Nina surprised her, but she always kept a day bag with spare clothes in the trunk, and cash and a credit card in her glove compartment.
Her body shook so she could hardly stand. With great difficulty she opened her car door. Once inside, she took her time pulling out onto the street, not wanting to draw attention to herself from the beach below. Some people down there were looking for her body. She would have laughed if she could, but she was concentrating on her clumsy fingers, trying to steer.
Flipping a lever, feeling the blast of cold air, she remembered that the heater had broken again. Another challenge to surmount, that was all. Confidence was everything. If she wasn’t so numb, so clumsy, so slow—the police weren’t even following her yet. She thought she had at least an hour to get somewhere before an all-points went out on her car. Monterey Airport wasn’t likely to have flights out at this hour; anyway it was too small, much too dangerous. San Francisco would be better, more anonymous, but that might mean another hour on the road and she didn’t think she had that kind of time.
She settled on San Jose International Airport, turning onto Highway 68 east, watching nervously for cruisers. None appeared.
The shaking had slowed into occasional wracking spasms, and she felt sleepy. She couldn’t afford to stop and find something dry to put on. She willed herself to stay awake, turning on the radio, listening for news. Nobody ment
ioned her. After she got onto Highway 101, she headed north, driving easily up the hills, past the Red Barn flea market, like a movie set in the night. She had stopped feeling cold at all now, but her hands kept slipping off the wheel and her eyes weren’t focusing well on the speedometer.
Mustn’t get pulled over for speeding—as the car mounted the last hill before the descent into Gilroy, it choked once and went dead. The stupid thing was out of fucking gas.
She pulled to the side of the road. Before she had time to think what to do, she saw the Highway Patrol cruiser in her rearview mirror. She leaped from the car, taking just enough time to slam the door behind her. She ran, cutting her bare feet on rocks, until she found cover behind a stand of eucalyptus trees. The patrol car pulled up behind her car and parked.
She watched from far away as the officer called in her license number. She heard him talking on his car phone, reading it out loud, waiting for them to tell him he should find her. She dragged herself as far as she could up the hillside toward the piles of granite that would hide her better. Finding a dark hole between two icy boulders, she crawled inside, wishing for the first time not to be so thin, so dangerously numb.
“I’m afraid,” she thought, experiencing the darkness around her, the small alien noises of the night. She wasn’t shivering at all anymore, though she seemed to feel a distant aching all over.
She looked up. No stars, clouds over her eyes. She was not the type to give up. She would hide until the policeman left and make a new start. She was good at that. She tried to lean forward to see around the rocks to the road below, but discovered she couldn’t. She commanded and her body refused. With amazement she recognized that she would not be able to leave this hole, that her only hope was to call for help. Her mind, now loose, slow, failed her. It began knitting colorful webs around pictures of her life in Chicago and California.
She played with the pictures, amused herself with changing the colors and images, thought once of Klaus—something nice for the old man—stopped fighting.
And let the sleepy cold and dark carry her home.
EPILOGUE
Three weeks later
AFTER WIPING PEANUT BUTTER FROM HANDS THAT HAD amused themselves all the way from preschool smearing the inside window of her car, Nina extricated Bob from his car seat. He had had even more fun making this process as difficult as possible, holding his arms tightly against his chest, laughing, refusing to budge once she had him unshackled. Finally, firmly, she picked him up and set him down. He ran screaming around the front lawn. She loaded his backpack onto her shoulder. Dragging herself to the mailbox, she collected envelopes.
Matt stood on the porch, watching, then took pity on her. “At least it’s Friday,” he said, removing the backpack slung on her other shoulder. Inside Aunt Helen’s cottage, a fire crackled. Matt’s boots dried on the hearth, stinking like cabbage. His college-application notes lay piled on the coffee table and he hadn’t got to the dishes.
Nina felt as warm as the orange logs in the hearth at these sights of normal life. She hung Bob’s pack on a peg by the door after peeking inside to make sure nothing would rot there overnight.
Matt was back with Bob and her, clean and detoxed, helping as much as he could. She smiled at him and collapsed onto the couch.
“What can I get you?” Matt asked.
“White wine, a half bottle in the fridge. Majorly large serving.”
“You’re not nervous I’ll suck it down and substitute lemon-flavored water?” Matt asked from the kitchen.
She heard liquid glugging into a glass. “Should I be?”
He sighed. “Call me responsible. Yes, I’m reliable.”
She leaned back, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, her wine awaited, poured into an actual wineglass. She sat up and took a sip. Matt knelt by the hearth, poking at the logs, adding to them, apparently hoping to create a raging bonfire in Aunt Helen’s big old fireplace.
Her face flushing in the heat, Nina stretched. She used a fingernail to peel open the mail. She slit open the phone bill, the utilities bill, the newspaper bill, the water bill, and made a neat stack to be dealt with when she felt financially sturdy some fine future day. Eventually, after discarding the junk onto the floor, which Matt confiscated for the bonfire he was nursing, she came upon a white envelope addressed in Jack’s handwriting.
She opened it. Inside, on a kiddie valentine, a boy in overalls presented a girl in a pink dress with a flower. “To my funny valentine, Nina,” Jack wrote. “Love forever from your Jack.”
He was in San Francisco this week, interviewing with some firms for a job.
“Why, Jack?” she had asked him when he’d first broached the subject of leaving the firm. “I thought you loved it here. I never pictured you leaving.”
“Lots of people to help, Nina, even in the city. It’s a great opportunity. I feel obligated.”
“Dreamer.”
“And you love that about me. Come along for the ride?”
“You know I can’t.”
“Not yet?” he had asked, hopeful.
She remembered smiling.
She closed the note. Her mother’s problems, Remy, all this turmoil, all had conspired to bring her to her own career decision. She had decided to go into criminal law. Like Jack, she felt obligated.
She flipped open another envelope. “Uh-oh.”
Matt looked up.
“Paperwork from the County of Monterey.” Nina held up a thin sheet against the fire, as if she could see through the paper. “It’s the DNA test results.” Matt came over to stand beside her while she read the contents of the notification and read them again. “What the—oh, no. Someone screwed up big-time. This is impossible.”
“Let me have that.” Matt took the paper from her hand.
Nina rubbed her mouth, then grabbed her glass, downing its contents in a couple of gulps. She coughed, then jumped up and paced the room.
“Don’t you worry, Nina. There’s an explanation.”
“This is impossible,” she repeated.
“Or—now don’t jump on me, Nina. Is this impossible? Maybe you made a mistake?”
She leaned into the fire, watched it flick, felt her heart flickering. “Oh, my God.”
“Ah,” Matt said. “You are human. Just as I suspected.”
A laugh rose and grew inside Nina until she could no longer contain it. She felt tears, relief, fear for the future. Holding her stomach, she asked, “Where’s Bob?”
“Comfy in his room, playing his keyboard.”
“Ha-ha—Matt—oh, oh—”
“What? What, Nina?”
“Richard’s not Bob’s father!”
“So they say. But—”
“Oh, I just can’t—this is too much—”
“The tests are right, aren’t they, Nina? It’s not impossible at all. Bob doesn’t have any Filsen DNA in him, does he?”
“So it—ha-ha—seems!”
“So who is Bob’s father?”
“I’m so happy it’s not Richard! I never saw him in Bob, but I thought that was because—oh, this sounds terrible, but it is absolutely true. I never wanted to see him in my son.”
“Nina—” Matt paused. “Do you now know for sure who Bob’s father is?”
She slapped his arm. “Of course I know.”
“Hey, I’m just asking.”
“I can’t think about what this means right now! I can only celebrate. Isn’t that awful?”
“You’re evading.”
“No. I just have to think.”
Matt stirred the fire. “Okay, so now what?”
“No idea.” Nina tossed down a handful of peanuts from a bowl. “Excuse me, Matt. I’m going to have a shower, then hug Bob till he screams for mercy. Then I am going into my room to laugh. And cry. Then I’ll be really hungry for dinner.”
“I’m making quiche, okay?” Matt said.
“You know how to make quiche?”
“Well, as a way to cope with
the shakes and the shivers and the sweats, we had various life lessons. This one took. I mean, it’s not so hard: frozen crust, eggs, milk, and whatever the heck else spices you can find.”
“You found actual useful food in my fridge?”
“Leftover sausage. Leftover chicken. Leftover spinach. Chunks of cheddar and Havarti cheese. I bet you throw this stuff out, mostly.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, not tonight.” Matt moved toward the kitchen, then stopped in the doorway, silhouetted, still heartbreakingly young and so vulnerable. “I’m feeling pretty good. Guess what. I met someone.”
Nina thought about what that might mean. “Another recovering addict?”
“No. She’s a social worker named Andrea. Funny, huh? I think I’m in love.”
She hugged him. “I’m so glad for you.”
Moving into the hallway, Nina listened to Bob’s dissonant music. She heard Matt clanking around in the kitchen, finding lids, chopping on the wooden board. In the backyard, the sun turned vague as the evening fog drifted in.
Her mother’s favorite chair sat out on the front porch, rocking slightly in the coastal wind. Nina gave herself a minute to sit out there on the porch step, feel the coolness, remembering. Early budding crocuses reminded her that spring was not so far away. Winter in California could end in a blink.
Spring, season of new starts.
Jack came up the walk.
Her heart lurched, watching him approach. She wanted to be in love, but she could settle for this good, warm man for now. Didn’t she deserve that much?
But she had made mistakes. Shouldn’t she avoid mistakes?
She doubted that she could. As her mother had said numerous times when she was young, before she got sick, and as Nina herself had repeated in her mind, if it’s not terrifying, it’s no fun.
Jack took her in his arms, and they watched together as the sun set in a riot of rose over the Pacific. Matt, with a delicacy she didn’t know he had, left with Bob as soon as they all finished eating.
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