Not here. The Atlantic this time of year, this far offshore, could not be any warmer than midfifties Fahrenheit. The heat of my body would be sucked away without mercy. I guessed I had fifteen minutes, twenty at the most.
Yet I would not go quietly.
I kicked off my shoes as I paddled.
With difficulty and much gasping of the salt water, I pulled off my jacket and dropped it too. I kept my sweater, not really sure if it helped retain any body heat.
Wave after wave spun over my head.
**
Already I was tiring.
I thought of my pants. Long, long ago, during the swimming lessons that all of us children were required to take, the instructors had shown us a trick. Tie the end of each pants leg in a knot; grasp the waistband on each side and raise it high and pull down quickly, trapping air inside the legs so that it might serve as a temporary life jacket.
I wondered if I would have the dexterity to do that. Already, my hands were becoming terrifyingly numb.
Then I remembered.
The cigarette lighter in my pocket.
One of my legs, of course, was heavier in the water than the other. My prosthesis, made of plastic, bobbed somewhat.
I knew what I needed to do; I did not know if I would be able to do it, or even if it would work.
With difficulty, I dug the lighter out of my pocket. I put it in my mouth and bit hard. It was the only way I could hold it and peel off my pants.
Paddling with one arm, I reached down with my other and undid my belt and pants. I leaned over and pulled my pants off, using both hands. With only a leg and a half to kick myself afloat, I began to sink.
I let go and thrashed to the surface again. I took the lighter from my mouth, sucked in the biggest lungful of air that I could, and once again attempted to remove my pants.
The extra air in my lungs helped keep me higher in the water. With agonizing slowness—and still sinking—I peeled my pants down and off my legs.
Again, I fought for the surface. I paddled for a few moments, trying to get energy back. I felt numbness creep into my arms and legs.
I was tired. Oh, so tired.
I thought of Claire pushing me off the yacht. Did she believe that my death would prevent me from contesting her husband’s inheritance? Had she made a choice that if I would not marry her, she was better served remaining with Pendleton?
I let anger warm me. It was an illusion, of course. No anger could defeat the cold of the Atlantic. But it was enough to force me to fight.
Again, I filled my lungs with air, and again I leaned forward, using my arms, not to paddle but to remove my prosthesis. And again, I slowly sank.
When I finally had it loose, I kicked toward the surface, lopsided because a whole leg had so much more propulsion than half a leg.
How many minutes had passed? How many minutes before my life slowly ebbed from my body?
I could not tell.
I could only concentrate on my final hope, one I doubted would work.
Paddling my arms, prosthesis in my left hand, and buoyed now by the air in my pants, I took the lighter from my mouth with my other hand.
I kicked with my legs as hard as I could, trying to keep my shoulders and head clear of the water as I lifted both arms into the night.
Water slapped at my face, stinging my eyes.
I flicked the lighter.
As Gillon had so casually mentioned, it worked.
A sure, bright flame appeared in my right hand.
I attached it to the toes of my prosthesis.
This was my hope. That the rubberized plastic would take the flame and begin to burn.
I kicked hard, but it wasn’t enough. My shoulders sank beneath the surface. Then my chin. My nose. My eyes and the top of my head.
I kept my arms aloft, blindly trying to hold the flame of the lighter against the prosthesis.
When I could hold my breath no longer, I brought my right hand down and paddled with it. That was enough to bring me to the surface again.
I blinked against the salt water.
The foot of my prosthesis was embroiled in flame, so bright it almost hurt my eyes.
Paddling with my right hand and kicking with my good leg and my other thigh, I fought the waves as long as I could.
Would it be enough?
Would spotters in the Coast Guard chopper sent out to search for Gillon and McLean ever see this light among the swells of the waves?
I didn’t allow myself the luxury of guessing.
I paddled—one-armed and one-legged—until exhaustion forced me to drop the beacon that was my burning prosthesis. I dropped it with a sour thought. If I died, at least I was rid of it.
I concentrated on staying afloat.
I had another sour thought. They called it the dead man’s float, the instructors during those long-ago lessons.
“Lie on your back in the water, tilting your head so that your face is skyward; fill your lungs and hold. Those few quarts of air in the lungs will help the body float. Release the air slowly, draw in again. Use your arms to maintain balance in the water.”
I felt more and more of my body going numb. As I felt, too, my willpower draining away with the heat of my body.
And, with my mother’s final words echoing in my mind,
I had a peace of sorts.
She had not abandoned me.
Nor had God.
**
I was about to die. I knew it. One minute, maybe two. No matter how much willpower I summoned, my brain would shut down as all heat drained from my body.
I was about to die with a final memory, knowing how much I had hurt the woman who paid such a price to be my mother.
“Oh, God,” I croaked.
It hurt so badly, thinking about my mother. I desperately wanted to be able to cry, to find tears for the first time since I had been orphaned. Even now, I could not.
“Oh, God. Oh, God.”
I felt warmth on my face.
Tears.
“Please, God. Forgive me. Please, God.”
I was becoming confused and disoriented. I couldn’t get my mind to move past those words. I couldn’t put any thoughts together to complete my prayer to the God I’d spurned all my life.
It seemed I was struggling to find something important.
My lips were numb.
What was it?
What was it I wanted so badly to remember?
My arms and legs were deadweights. I could hardly command my body to maintain the rhythm of the deep breaths that were allowing me to float nearly submerged.
Deep from my memory it came. A slow gradual recollection of Amelia and how she had coached the man she brought back to life.
“Jesus,” I cried. The terror of death filled me completely. I was not so much afraid of death itself, but of dying with such emptiness and futility. My life had meant nothing because I had chosen to do nothing with it.
“Jesus,” I cried again. Did I cry it aloud, or was this plea only in my mind? “Jesus, Jesus. Oh, Jesus. Please forgive me.”
It was my last conscious thought before sinking beneath the surface of the water.
With that final cry, the light of heaven washed over me.
**
I did not die, of course.
The pitiful flare I had improvised from the synthetic materials of my false half leg did draw that same Coast Guard chopper in my direction.
The light of heaven was not the light of heaven. But in another way, it was.
I do not have a near-death experience to relate. I am no William Carruthers, brought to religion and faith by the voice of Jesus sparing me from the flames of hell.
In a media-driven age where only the near-hysteria of fanatical religion is able to gain any prominence, I cannot relate, as some do, the touch of a higher power.
Yet.
The edge of death profoundly changed me.
**
In calling out the name of Jesus, peace filled me. T
he cynical will maintain that my brain manufactured a natural opium. I will not defend myself against the scorn of cynics. They will never understand because they will never allow themselves to understand.
The peace is certain.
Because it finally let me believe that in this life my soul is like a fledgling, held to a nest constructed of gravity and time and the spatial existence of my body. That the God of love who created me and this universe around me stands outside of it in a way I will not comprehend until the day that my soul is released from my body. That through his love, he waits for my first flight beyond the nest, a flight into eternity that I will not and cannot fully understand during the minute span of years I spend on this tiny planet lost in the mysteries of the universe.
All I need to do to learn to fly is believe.
**
The light flooding me as I began to slip under the water was the light of the chopper’s searchlight.
I was told later that my life hung on a difference of thirty seconds. It was so close that the Coast Guard rescuers didn’t wait to lower a line. Instead, the chopper dipped low, and my rescuer jumped directly into the water as my body began to sink. I was caught just under the surface and held there as the line was lowered.
When I woke, the roar of the chopper confused me. Until I was able to focus my eyes, I truly wondered if the light of heaven had been a deception to take me into a rattling, shaking hell.
Then I realized I was wrapped in a blanket, propped and held in an upright sitting position as the chopper swept back toward Charleston and the same hospital where Edgar Layton had breathed his last.
I was alert enough in the chopper to see the lights of the city approach as we crossed above the dark outline of Fort Sumter.
I knew the first call I would make upon reaching shore was to Amelia. Perhaps the one night that caused our lives to intertwine as children could lead us to exploring more of life together as adults.
Ahead, the lights of the mansions of East Battery were a distant necklace of glittering diamonds.
Diamonds I never wanted to possess.
Chapter 44
The door to the Barrett mansion was open a few inches. I pushed it open the rest of the way and stepped inside.
It had been years since I’d walked across the gleaming hardwood of the wide entrance hallway, years since seeing the curved stairway that led to a landing that overlooked the entrance. Then, I’d had both legs. Now, with my prosthesis somewhere in the Atlantic and another on order, I was on crutches.
I was not trespassing; this house was mine, if I wanted to claim it.
“Claire?” I called out. “Claire?”
I had not seen her since the night before. At the railing of the yacht. Less than twelve hours had passed. I’d been sent to emergency, then released. Her phone call on this morning had woken me at the bed-and-breakfast.
“Claire?”
“Here.” Her voice echoed in the mansion. “In the sitting room.”
**
In odd contrast to the centuries-old oil paintings on the wall, the sitting room held a large-screen television and home-theater system and was almost filled by a large sectional sofa. It smelled faintly of stale beer, and broken potato chips littered the floor at the edges of the sofa.
“You weren’t afraid I called you over to try again?”
Claire asked it almost sweetly. She wore a red dress, matching her shade of lipstick. Her hair was tied back in a short ponytail that looked oddly elegant. She sat on the far end of the sectional sofa, her legs and feet curled beneath her, her hands tucked beneath her body, as if she were a cat in repose. Her face was so eerily calm that I felt a stab of fear.
I looked closer. What I’d thought was lipstick were traces of blood. Her lip had puffed. I saw shiny tears in her eyes.
“No,” I said, hiding my fear. “Last night, it was simple for you. Man overboard is an easy story to defend. Here and now, you’d have much more difficulty.”
“Killing you? Helen did have a gun, you remember.”
“No. Hiding the fact that you killed me.” I tried to make light of it. The calmness in her face was almost unworldly. Either that or insane. “I weigh too much for you to throw me over your shoulders and hide in the trunk of your car. Plus there’s the bad publicity. Might ruin your run for mayor.”
“I thought the first thing you’d do after last night was—”
“Bring the police into it?” I shook my head. “So that it would be the word of a respected soon-to-be-mayor against mine? Not likely. Besides, I’m too tired of all of this. I just want to go. To be away.”
“I wish I had known that.” An attempt at a smile. She licked at the blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. Smiled at the taste. “I heard the news this morning. About your rescue. Here I thought if I was going to get hung for one, I might as well get hung for another.”
I leaned against the opposite armrest of the sofa, keeping distance between us. “Well,” I said, “there’s lots of things I wish I had known.”
“Helen’s dead. Did you know that?” It was the conversational tone of her voice that kept me off balance. That and the blank calm of her face.
“I did not know,” I said. Carefully. I began to realize Claire’s calmness was that of someone on the verge of shattering.
“Oh yes. When I docked the yacht last night, I went below to get her. But she wouldn’t wake up. The doctors believe it was sleeping pills. She’d touched up her makeup and laid back on the bed. No fuss for anyone. No mess when she was found. Some might have used a gun. I mean, it was in her purse. But then, she was a lady of the South.”
“Of course.” I said this carefully too.
Claire locked her gaze on mine, and it took effort not to look away from the growing madness in her eyes.
“You called me here this morning,” I said.
“Yes. Yes, I did.” As if she’d forgotten until I reminded her. “I wanted to show you something. I thought it would make you happy. I owed you that after last night.”
“Pendleton knows you’re here?”
Her smile, this time, remained on her face. “Yes. He’s in the kitchen. You can say good-bye to him if you want.”
“I will,” I said.
“You’re not angry with me for last night?”
I drew a deep breath. “No. I feel sad for you. I even feel sad for Pendleton. What you’ve both chosen to make important, that’s enough punishment. I doubt either of you would tell me that you’re sorry for all that happened, but that doesn’t matter. I wish the best for both of you. Really.”
I meant it. Holding on to my anger and bitterness simply let them control me. It had taken too much for me to learn that truth. I’d always thought forgiveness was a gift to the wrongdoer. But it also gave blessed freedom to the wronged.
“You have no idea how hysterically funny this is.” Her monotone voice contradicted her words. “I should have spoken with you first.”
“Spoken with me before . . .”
“Pendleton’s in the kitchen. Say good-bye to him, Nick. Before it’s too late.”
**
I saw blood.
Pools of it. Beneath Pendleton’s crumpled body. He’d fallen beside the kitchen island. Smears of blood on the side of the island showed where he had tried to pull himself up, only to slide down again.
I reached him in two steps.
He breathed in shallow gasps, with a wheezing particular to a punctured lung. The knife was on the floor beside him.
I yanked open drawers, scrambling to find what I needed.
Plastic food wrap.
Cellophane tape.
I knelt beside Pendleton and pulled open his suit jacket. His white shirt was soaked red.
I put him flat on his back. I took off my sweater and folded it to make a pillow. I rested his head on the sweater. His eyes fluttered open a few times. I don’t know if he recognized me.
The wound entry was difficult to find in the gore. I stood agai
n, grabbed a towel. I wiped him clean and found the wound oozing blood like a hidden spring. Another wipe. I slapped a patch of food wrap over it, and his next breath sucked it flat against his skin. I taped it as well as I could, knowing it would slide off as more blood leaked.
I’d been kneeling with my back toward the kitchen entrance, but when I stood and turned to get to the telephone, Claire was watching from the door frame, leaning against it with the pose of a pinup calendar girl.
“What are you doing?” she asked. Same weird calmness.
“Call the paramedics,” I said. “I’ll hold the wrap in place.”
“I already made my phone call. To you. I thought this would make you happy.”
The phone hung on the wall beside the entrance. I saw blood on it too, evidence of the truth in her statement.
“Make another call,” I told her.
“No.”
“Then I will.”
“No,” she repeated. “Let him die. He’ll never hurt me again.”
“Listen to me, Claire. It’s not too late. For you. Or for him. This is your chance to turn it around. What you did was in self-defense. Any jury will buy that. Don’t let his life be on your hands. Move on from it.”
I took a step toward the phone.
She lifted the gun higher, training it on my chest. We were only three paces apart. “You can let him die, Nick. No one would blame you.”
“Claire, you’re going to have to shoot me to stop me from making the phone call.”
“All right then,” she said. “I will.”
Her hands shook. Then wavered. Then dropped.
“I’m all messed up,” she said. She sagged to the floor and buried her head in her arms.
Chapter 45
Another few days passed after the paramedics saved Pendleton’s life before once again, I sat on a pew in the coolness of the Mount Carmel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
On this morning, I was not alone with Pastor Samuel, who stood gravely near the organ as Etta sat behind it and with a puckered face concentrated on long, sad notes that filled the church and my heart. Glennifer and Elaine had joined us, their black dresses appropriate for the occasion. Nor was it just the five of us. At the front, beneath the pulpit, with the backdrop of the cross on the wall behind it, was the mahogany coffin that held the remains of my mother.
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