Catching Genius

by Kristy Kiernan

“That’s a lovely idea,” she said. “We’ll all go. I’ll get Estella.”

  After she forcibly wrangled everyone together, we trooped out of the house, a motley crew of teeming emotions. We spread ourselves out along the sand as though kept apart by magnetic fields. Mother threaded her way around each of us in turn, trying to herd us together before finally giving up and joining Tate, the only one unaffected by the collective sour mood of our family.

  The storm had yet to break. Not a raindrop fell, but the air was heavy and the sand glowed in the strange, muted light that fought its way through the building thunderheads. I cast surreptitious glances up at the sky but marched on. If my son wanted to spend a wet, miserable night being munched on by no-see-ums on a scary, pirate ghost-filled island, well, let him.

  I nearly relished the idea of him coming back in the morning trying to put a brave face on his bitterly fought-for camping trip. This was no posh Verona sleepover at a wealthy friend’s house. He’d be dying to get back to his cushy life, I thought with satisfaction, and when I felt tears prick my eyes again I realized with dismay exactly how right Tate was.

  I did underestimate Gib. Always, and with something that came close to hostility. A hostility that I should have been directing at Luke. The realization made me stop in my tracks. I froze and watched my family move away from me, silhouetted against the edge of the world. Only Estella looked back, then quickly turned forward again. I hurried to catch up, filling the widest empty space in my family.

  “You have your cell phone?” I asked Gib, breaking the silence.

  “Yeah,” he said, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, waiting for me to try to ruin something, change the deal.

  “Well, call if you need anything,” I said.

  “All right.”

  “I still don’t see why I—”

  “Because your mother said so, Carson,” Mother said firmly, and I shot her a grateful look.

  When we arrived at the cut, Tate and Gib dragged the large canoe out from the brush, with Carson getting in the way as much as helping, and we loaded their gear just as the first few raindrops fell. I gave Tate a worried glance, but he and Gib just grinned at each other and hauled the canoe to the water’s edge. I held it steady while they boarded, and then helped push them off.

  The rain came a little harder as they started to paddle, and lightning forked in the clouds over the Gulf, lighting them up from inside like a Japanese lantern. It was followed by low thunder, and Carson sidled a little closer to me, his eyes watching the canoe intently as it slid away from the shore and entered the cut through a silver veil of rain. My oldest son raised his oar, clutched in both hands, over his head and screamed a savage male greeting to the storm.

  Carson gaped after Gib; his face changed from admiration to hero worship when Tate raised his oar to the clouds to bellow his own challenge. The next time the thunder rolled, he didn’t move closer to me, but instead moved toward the water’s edge, waving his arms as the warriors made their way across the cut.

  Dinner was somber. Carson was no longer angry but was dejected instead, pushing his food around and watching the clouds build in the Gulf again. The afternoon storm had been just an advance squall, and my worry came back with a vengeance, all thoughts of enjoying a repentant Gib gone from my mind. As dark fell the rain began again; this time there were no periods of docility—it came in aggressive sideways gusts, hitting the sliders despite their protective overhang.

  Estella retired early, claiming her usual headache, and Mother followed her.

  “You want to come up with me?” I asked Carson lightly, trying to give him an easy out.

  “I told you I’m not scared anymore,” he said, his face turning red.

  “Okay, okay,” I retreated. “I’m going to go upstairs and read. If you change your mind, though—”

  “I won’t.”

  I sighed. “All right, sweetie. Good night, then.” I climbed the stairs slowly, waiting for him to follow me when thunder shook the house. He didn’t. I slid into bed and opened a book, but I didn’t get past the first sentence before I drifted off.

  The phone startled me awake and I grabbed for it with my eyes still closed, convinced it was Gib. The voice was not that of a panicked young man; it was that of a panicked young woman.

  “Connie, Luke told me to call you. You have to do something,” she sobbed.

  I held the phone away from my ear and blinked at it, certain I was dreaming. But the storm still raged outside, and when thunder cracked, making me jump, I knew I was fully awake. “Who is this?” I finally asked, though I already knew the answer.

  “It’s me, it’s Deanna,” she said, her voice shaking.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, her panic beginning to infect me.

  “They—he—Luke’s been arrested,” she said, her voice a mere squeak.

  I was stunned into silence. Arrested? Could it have been something I’d done? Something I’d told Angie? The Escalade? Nothing made any sense, and the crying on the other end of the phone finally cut through my thoughts.

  “Deanna, calm down and tell me what happened,” I said firmly, speaking to her as though she were a child.

  “He didn’t come home,” she started, and then at least had the grace to falter when she realized what she’d said.

  “Yes,” I said impatiently. “What then?”

  “I was so worried, and then his lawyer called me and I had to go down to the jail, and the lawyer told me that they arrested him on some sort of fraud charges. He can’t even get him out until tomorrow, and he said Luke wanted me to call and tell you because he would need for you to free some account. The lawyer said to call him tomorrow and he could tell you more. What am I going to do?”

  Deanna dissolved, and I heard the phone fall and her scramble to pick it up. “Hello, hello?” she said.

  “I’m here,” I said quietly. “I don’t know what to tell you, Deanna. Let his lawyer know I’ll call tomorrow, if my lawyer thinks it’s a good idea. There’s not much more I can do.”

  “But—” Deanna started.

  I gently hung up on her. After searching for what I was feeling, I realized that it was relief. I had no questions left about what I was doing. Angie would guide me through the official paperwork, but emotionally, I was formally divorced.

  A crack of thunder made the windows rattle, and I swung my legs off the mattress and headed down the stairs to check on Carson, wondering what I was going to tell him and Gib about their father. I pictured him huddled beneath his covers, shaking, but too proud—or too scared—to brave the staircases up to the library in the dark.

  Mother and Estella’s lights were out, and only a night-light glowed beneath the door to Gib and Carson’s room. I gently pushed the door open.

  “Carson, honey,” I whispered. “You okay?” The lump on his bed didn’t move. I placed my hand on it, feeling nothing but blankets and sheets. I pushed harder.

  The other bed was empty too, as were the closet and bathroom. I hurried to my mother’s room and knocked frantically.

  She opened her door, bleary eyed, squinting at the hall light. “What’s wrong?”

  “Is Carson in there with you?”

  “No. He’s not in bed?”

  “No,” I called behind me, already down the hall at Estella’s door. I rapped just as she opened it.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

  I didn’t stop to wonder that I was her first concern, but instead looked past her, noting that her bed was empty before I even asked my question.

  “Is Carson with you?”

  “No. Did you check the bathroom?”

  “Not there,” I said and raced up the stairs. He wasn’t in the bathroom off the living room, or curled up on the living room floor, and when I threw the sliders open to the storm, he wasn’t on the patio. I ran back downstairs to find Estella and Mother in Carson’s room, looking at each other with drawn faces, Carson’s blankets clutched in Mother’s hands.
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  “What?” I cried. Estella turned toward me.

  “His backpack’s gone,” she said. “I saw it at the door when we came in this afternoon. It’s not there, it’s not in here, and the door’s unlocked.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. It only took a second for me to figure it out, but by then Estella was already pushing past me, racing to her room. I headed for the back door; before I was halfway down the boardwalk, Estella was hard on my heels. We ran through the storm, stumbling and falling in the sand, down to the cut, where we gasped for breath as we scanned the shore. Lightning flashed like a klieg light, illuminating the beach, and Estella pointed toward the brush.

  The small canoe was gone.

  Estella

  Connie freezes when she sees the space where the little canoe isn’t, and I see the horror that crosses her face when she realizes what Carson has done. Only the clap of thunder releases her, and she looks to me, the way she did as a child, because I always know what to do, I always know how to fix it.

  It makes me move.

  I head to the water’s edge and kick my shoes off, my muscles screaming and pulling at me to get in the water!—but I make them wait. I wait and I watch as Connie clutches my arm and yells things I don’t hear.

  The lightning flashes again and now I am moving into the water, shaking Connie’s hands off, scanning the storm-chopped waves.

  Nothing.

  Now thunder, and now lightning again, slamming almost directly behind us, and now I see it. It could be a trick of the rain, or my mind, or the stuttering white light of the lightning, but I don’t wait to figure it out. I plunge into the Gulf and begin to stroke for the tiny thing I saw bobbing on the waves.

  It is drifting more than halfway across the cut, and I can only hope to catch it before it is carried past the tip of Little Dune, before it is caught in the current that runs around the curve and out to the deeper Gulf. Before it moves beyond where I can go.

  I can’t see anything, but I aim as well as I can. For once I embrace the numbers that are racing inside my head—they allow my muscles to forget that they are exhausted within moments of fighting against the current—and plow on.

  My mind is a machine in my damaged skull.

  My body is a machine in the hostile waves.

  I pause, just for a second, just for a breath, and when the lightning comes again I see it, and it is not a trick of the rain or my mind or the waves. It is the canoe, bobbing wildly. I can reach it; it won’t get away from me. I am about to slam my battered body toward it again when I see something out of the corner of my eye.

  Numbers split and crash back together like wild things in my head. And now I have to choose. Because while Carson is obviously in trouble in that canoe, there is worse trouble behind me.

  Connie is in the water.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  God forgive me, I hesitated. I watched Estella disappear into the water to save my son and I waited. It was only a moment, but it will haunt me for the rest of my life.

  I waited.

  But I followed her as soon as I caught sight of that canoe, and I was in trouble the second I hit the water. My arms weren’t right, my legs weren’t right, my breath wasn’t right. I was still gasping from our panicked run down the beach, and when I threw myself at the water in imitation of Estella, I slammed onto, rather than into, a wave. My cotton pajama bottoms tangled around my legs, and I wasted precious moments wrestling them off with my feet while trying to keep my head above the water.

  The rain stung my face, the salt water stung my eyes, and I swallowed enough of them both to make me choke. I caught occasional flashes of Estella’s arms pinwheeling toward the canoe, toward my son, and I willed her on, even as I struggled after her.

  The undertow was stronger than I’d ever felt it, the stuff of my nightmares. It seemed impossible that Estella was moving through it as quickly as she was. She was superhuman; she was strength and speed and fierce will. I made progress, but my muscles were tiring so quickly that I knew I would not make it.

  But Estella would. My Sun, my ruler of planets and protector, would make it to my boy. She took my father, but she would give me back my son, and it was a trade I was more than willing to make.

  I couldn’t go forward, and I couldn’t go back, but I could still manage small snatches of air, and I continued to catch sight of her moving inexorably toward my child. I made feeble attempts to get closer to them, knowing it was useless, but once in a while the waves were on my side and I was buoyed toward them through no effort of my own.

  I went down, once, twice. I came up a third time, and saw Estella looking toward me.

  No! I wanted to scream at her. No! But then she moved back under the waves and, relieved that she must have somehow heard me, I tried to float, tried to remember how to stay alive, how to breathe.

  But my relief was wasted, because she didn’t hear me, we had no telepathy, she was not going to save my son, she was coming for me. She was coming to save me and sacrifice my child. I struggled again, wheeled my arms, churned my legs, and then she had me, and she was yelling, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying because I was choking.

  And then she flipped me over like a turtle, like I weighed nothing, and I couldn’t fight her, and she was tugging me along, hauling herself and me through the waves with one arm. Her legs fought under me and I realized that I was tangling my own legs in them. She had my head completely out of the water, and I tried to fill my lungs, tried to will my body to float up and out of her way, and it suddenly started working.

  She tugged and jerked me, allowing me to catch my breath, allowing me enough of a rest to scream out, “Let me go!”

  Waves crashed over both of us, but for once it didn’t happen as I was breathing in, and my throat was nearly clear of salt water. I barely heard her scream back, “No!”

  I found the strength to struggle, and just as I fought my way out of her grasp she allowed me to go, slipping her arm from around my chest, and then she was off like a shot again, with me flailing behind her.

  Her ruthless rescue had given me enough of a break that I could fight my way through the waves again. As lightning flared I saw the canoe, and then Estella plowing her way toward it. She would reach it in moments, but it didn’t matter, because in that instant of light I saw what I’d been too far away to see before.

  The canoe was empty. There was no Carson huddled on the seat, no oar splashing futilely at the waves. It might have made me weak, it should have made me give up, but as soon as I saw that empty canoe a surge of pure adrenaline came over me and I exploded through the water in my own clumsy way, screaming a refusal to the waves and the undertow and the storm.

  I felt an arm, felt Estella hauling me in, while her other arm clutched the rim of the canoe, rocking it wildly as she pulled me to it. I grabbed on with both hands, nearly capsizing it as we both struggled to breathe, and as the canoe rocked toward me, I saw him.

  Carson stared up at me from the bottom of the canoe, hunched over on the floor of it on his knees, clutching his backpack to him, water sloshing almost halfway up the inside.

  “Mommy!” he screamed, lurching toward me. I screamed back at him, something inarticulate and wild, but overlying it I could hear Estella screaming louder.

  “No, Carson! You’ll flip over!”

  Carson froze, his eyes locked on mine. “Stay down, stay down!” I yelled, suddenly realizing that we weren’t out of danger. We were holding on to a canoe that was nearly full of water and that was moving swiftly past the point of Little Dune and out to the Gulf. Estella crowded in close to me and yelled directions in my ear.

  “Stay on this side, get to the front, and we’ll pull it to the island.”

  I nodded, unable to speak. But she’d given me a chance, and now that I had something to help keep my head above water, I was going to be strong enough to save my son. She disappeared under the canoe and I walked my hands over each other and kicked hard against the current until I was at the
front, where Estella was already waiting for me. She screamed “Swim!” at me, and together we swam, one arm clawing the water, the other hooked over the edge of the canoe, and finally we began to move toward the island.

  All I could focus on was a palm tree curving up into the sky, its fronds dancing gracefully in the wind, as though it were a different wind than the one violently buffeting the Gulf. There was nothing graceful about the waves, but they seemed to recede as I concentrated on the fronds, and soon there was nothing else in the world but that palm tree. It filled the sky. It stayed where it was, and stayed where it was, and stayed where it was—and then it was suddenly closer. I was roping it in, pulling and pulling and pulling through the water.

  When Gib appeared before me I stopped swimming, and the bow of the canoe knocked me hard enough on the back of the head that I went under. I knew that he wasn’t a mirage only when he hauled me back up, sputtering and gasping, and threw my arms over the edge of the canoe. He grabbed ahold of the bow and began pulling hard.

  We made the shore in minutes, the canoe fairly flying through the water. Gib hit the sandy bottom first, scrambling to his feet and hauling the water-heavy canoe while I tried to get my footing and get to Carson all at once. But Tate, hauling the other side of the canoe without me even realizing it, got there first, scooping Carson into his arms and up to the beach with me straggling behind.

  Carson struggled to get down. When Tate released him, he ran to me, hitting me hard. I couldn’t keep my footing and we both went down, slamming into the wet sand. I pushed his head back so I could see his face, scraping the hair out of his eyes. He squinted up at me, his tears indistinguishable from the rain.

  “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” I asked, just as Estella reached us.

  He nodded hard, flinging his hair back in his face, and then shoved his head into my shoulder and sobbed as Estella fell to the sand beside us. I leaned into her, and the three of us huddled there on the beach in the storm, trying to catch our breath. Gib and Tate dragged the canoe past us and anchored it in the brushline before coming back.