Learning to Swim

by Sara J. Henry

  Something shifted in her then, and I could almost see two people within her: one angry and resentful, one who felt something like regret at having abandoned her brother. “Claude wasn’t as indispensable as he thought he was,” she said at last.

  She altered her stance, and her tone became almost mocking. “Poor Claude—I’m sure he was shocked when I cut off communications with him, especially after he picked up the ransom for me. But then you came along with Paul, taking him to Ottawa, going out with Philippe as if you thought you could take my place.” She laughed at my stunned expression. “Oh, yes, I saw the newspaper photo, and I came up there. I missed running you over, but this is even better, getting you down here.”

  She watched my face as I took this in. She had wanted me here in Burlington, away from Paul and Philippe. I had played right into her hands. Somehow she had lured me here. Something clicked in my head, and then I knew she had been the one who had sent the Craigslist response about the kidnappers having lived here. She had played with me, setting up meetings, waiting for this moment when she could watch me learn the truth.

  Sweat trickled down my side, despite the coolness of the evening. I had blundered along and ruined part of her intricate, brilliant plan, so she had needed to prove she was smarter than me. And she just had.

  Then she reached into the purse on her shoulder and pulled out a small gun that glinted in the moonlight.

  I couldn’t keep the disbelief from my voice. This was a scene from a bad detective novel. “You’re going to shoot me? And what, tell the guys you thought I was a burglar?” Even as I said it, I was figuring how fast her finger could pull the trigger, calculating how quickly I could drop to the deck or if I could leap overboard before she could adjust her aim and fire. And how loudly I would have to yell to bring Vince and Thomas above deck.

  She raised an eyebrow. “I won’t have to tell them anything. They’re out cold from the Rohypnol I put in their wine, but they’ll just think they drank too much and fell asleep. If you had drunk yours, I could have just walked you up the stairs and pushed you overboard.”

  I couldn’t imagine how she thought she could get away with shooting me. But she’d pulled off everything so far, so of course she thought she could. And not that it mattered—I’d be dead whether she got away with it or not.

  I had to ask one more thing: “What about Paul?”

  She knew what I meant. “Oh, I had him kept as long as Philippe continued paying, and when that was over, zut, time to get rid of him.” She waved the gun theatrically.

  The one truly crazy thing I’d done in my life was diving off the Burlington ferry, and I’d done that without a moment’s thought. This woman had a gun pointed at me, and I knew enough about guns to know it’s hard to miss something vital from such a short distance. But when I heard her speak so casually about getting rid of her son—a child I’d loved probably since I’d seen the look on his face when he was beginning to drown in Lake Champlain—something exploded within me.

  I lunged without thinking.

  She fired, but not before the force of my body had swung her arm into the air. The shot went high and I felt a burning pain in my left shoulder. I grappled with her gun hand, banging her arm against the mast. The gun fell from her fingers and skittered across the deck.

  She was smaller and older and less fit than me. But she was vicious and acted without hesitation. She twisted one arm away from me and hammered at my bleeding shoulder, sending waves of pain through my body. She kicked at my shin while I was still reeling, and I fell to the deck. Get up, get up, get up, a voice was telling me, and I was forcing myself to my feet when something hit the arm I was using to lever myself up.

  There was a sickening snap as the bone in my right forearm cracked, and the arm was instantly numb, a dangling dead weight. As I fell forward I saw Madeleine coming at me again, swinging a fire extinguisher at my head. Simple physics told me it could likely crush my skull. I spun on my butt, scissoring my legs and knocking her off balance. She fell heavily, and I heard the fire extinguisher thud to the deck and roll away.

  She dived after the gun and I flopped after her desperately, pushing myself up with my left arm, ignoring the pain in my shoulder. She was twisting, reaching out for the gun, her fingers inching closer to it. I hesitated momentarily and then lunged upward desperately, slamming her throat with the edge of my left hand.

  I think I pulled the blow at the last moment, with awful visions of crushing her larynx. I’d never hit anyone before, and it’s more difficult than you might think. It made a horrible thwack and she gagged, but as I fell back she got her hands around my neck, those immaculate nails digging into my throat. I couldn’t pry her fingers loose. I slid on the deck, desperately pushing with my heels to get away from her, but she came with me. Part of me slid under the bottom cable of the railing and over the slight lip at the edge, and she was pushing against my broken arm with her body weight while choking me. I felt wave after wave of pain. I couldn’t get a full breath. She banged against my broken arm with her torso. I wrenched back, pushing away from her, trying to escape the pain, and toppled into space. Her hands were still around my throat, and slowly, horribly, she tumbled with me.

  As we fell, I swung my left arm and hit her jaw with my elbow as hard as I could. Her hold broke, and I hit the water alone.

  It seemed I went down forever. It wasn’t as cold as when I had dived after Paul, but it was darker, and I was almost numb with pain. Finally I stopped descending. I was tired, so tired, and part of me wanted to let go, to drift off into nothingness.

  But I saw Paul’s face, and I thought of the nightmares he would have if I drowned. I thought of the other people who would miss me. And from somewhere I found the will to toe off my sneakers and force myself to kick, softly at first and then harder, bracing my broken arm against my side. Up and up I went, as if something were pulling me along.

  I saw her then, a few yards away, lit eerily by the moonlight shining through the water. Her eyes were open, looking straight at me. Her hair was floating above her as Paul’s had, with one hand at her throat where I’d hit her. She pirouetted slowly, reaching her other hand out toward me. I hesitated, then stretched out my left arm. Our fingertips brushed as I rose and she sank.

  I DIVED DOWN ONCE, AWKWARDLY, BUT SHE WAS GONE.

  The movement of the water had pulled me away from the boat. I was oddly calm. I knew this lake flowed north; I knew it had been glacially formed and that the water was around sixty degrees this time of year. I knew the ladder on the side of the boat hadn’t been extended, and I wouldn’t be able to board. I shouted, in case she had been lying about Thomas and Vince, but there was no response.

  I rolled onto my back. My shoulder was bleeding and there must be something I should do to stop it, but I couldn’t think what. I was grateful my shirt and shorts were lightweight synthetic that I’d chosen in case I got wet on the boat. Heavy cold cotton would have dragged me down.

  I began gently kicking, aiming where I thought shore might be. I think I eventually fell asleep, or may have passed out. I came to, sputtering, when water washed over my head, a wake from something far off or long gone. Then I floated on, fluttering my legs gently, letting the water carry me where it would.

  I thought about Paul and I thought about Philippe. I thought about little blond Janey at the children’s shelter, and wondered if she had ever found a home where she was loved. I thought about all the things in life I hadn’t done yet. I thought about when I’d learned to swim at age fifteen, alone at night in the pool of a neighbor who was out of town, pushing myself off into the deep end and making myself learn to tread water. I thought about an evening swim at the beach I’d taken a few years ago, where the darkness of the night and the immenseness of the ocean had triggered the release of some of the emotion and pain bottled up inside me, which was when I’d discovered that you can’t swim and cry at the same time.

  But when you’re floating on your back, you can, in fact, cry quietly.r />
  A long time later my head nudged against something. When I twisted around, my grasping fingers found the dark, wet wood of a dock piling. I could smell the creosote that coated it. When I peered upward, I saw one odd large figure standing on the deck. “Help me,” I whispered, trying to shout. I tried again, my voice a hoarse squawk, and slapped at the water with my left hand. The figure separated eerily into two. It was a pair of students, I found out later, who had thought a 1:00 a.m. stroll at the waterside would be romantic. Probably I took the glamour out of moonlit strolls for them forever, but very likely they saved my life.

  The boy pulled me out, with help from his girlfriend, but I screamed when they took hold of my right arm, and fainted dead away.

  I awoke in a hospital bed. The room was nearly dark, and it took a moment to recognize the hanging curtain and the controls on the bed and realize where I was. My broken right arm was heavily wrapped, and I could feel a thick bandage on my left shoulder. There was a phone beside the bed. With some effort I pulled it to me with my left hand, lifted the receiver, and pressed zero. I licked my lips. “Collect,” I croaked out. “From Troy.”

  Philippe answered on the first ring. “Philippe,” I said, “you need to come here.”

  “Where are you? I can barely hear you.” His tone was sharp.

  “In the hospital, in Burlington.”

  “What’s happened? Are you hurt?”

  “Please come.” I dropped the receiver.

  I always will maintain that I didn’t faint that second time; I just fell asleep. At that point, I thought later, Thomas and Vince were likely just beginning to wake up from the drug Madeleine had given them, and wondering where the two of us were.

  I awoke once more, and pulled open the drawer of the bedside table. There was my bedraggled wallet, sitting atop a plastic bag. I needed to stop jumping into lakes with my wallet in my pocket—it wasn’t going to survive another dunking. I pulled it open and fumbled out the card from one of its compartments. Wet but readable. I punched in my phone card number, concentrating to get the numbers right, then the number from the business card.

  “Alan Jameson, please,” I whispered.

  “He’s not in. May I take a message, please?”

  It was difficult to think. “Tell him … tell him Troy is in the hospital. Tell him Madeleine is dead.”

  “Hello? Who is this calling, please? Hello?”

  “This is Troy,” I said, and hung up. I realized it was late Saturday or, more likely, very early Sunday, and fumbled the card over. Now I punched in the home number, concentrating to place my finger squarely on each button. A machine answered, with Jameson’s terse voice.

  “It’s over,” I said to the machine, tears beginning to stream down my face. “It’s over. She’s dead now. She’s really dead. She drowned.”

  I let the receiver drop into the cradle and cried until I fell asleep.

  JAMESON GOT THERE FIRST. HE’D BEEN AT HOME AND HEARD his machine record my message, and had called his office and my cell phone. Somehow he’d tracked me down, and then gotten in his car and driven through the night, undoubtedly faster than someone without a police badge could have.

  When I opened my eyes, he was sitting by the bed.

  “You picked a helluva time to call me at home, Troy,” he said. “The first time I’ve had a woman in my house in a year, and you leave a message like that.”

  I tried to force a smile. “You said I could call you anytime.” My throat hurt, and my voice seemed to be coming from a long way away. “Did they find her? Did they find Madeleine?”

  “Divers are looking now. So she drugged Vince and Thomas and, what, threw you overboard?” It wasn’t quite a question.

  “We both went over,” I whispered. “I hit her in the jaw to make her let go of me. I saw her drowning.”

  He looked at me, eyes narrowed. “Troy,” he said, almost harshly. “You were shot. Your arm was broken. What, you were supposed to let her drown you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, hot tears running down my face. He grasped my left hand roughly, and held it until I stopped. I wouldn’t have thought of Jameson as the hand-holding type, but the warmth of his hand was a connection to life, pulling me back from yesterday’s nightmare. I hung on as if it were a lifeline, lifting me out of the lake.

  “So what happened to your date?” I asked, finally.

  He shrugged. “Put her in a cab and sent her home. Guess she’s pretty ticked.”

  I smiled weakly. “Flowers. Flowers are always good.”

  He gave me a look I couldn’t interpret, and handed me the box of tissues from the bedside table. I wiped my face and blew my nose and then, without prompting, I talked. I told him every word Madeleine had said on the boat, every move she’d made. I told him about the moment when I realized she was Madeleine, and about our battle, move by move. I could have been recounting a bad dream to a therapist. He pulled out a small notebook and scribbled notes, then went off to talk to the local police. And presumably to let the Montreal police know the body they had found was not Madeleine Dumond’s.

  A nurse checked my temperature and pulse, and a doctor appeared. He told me the bullet had passed through my left shoulder and they needed to let the swelling subside in my broken arm before casting it, probably tomorrow. I was grateful for their briskness and efficiency—I couldn’t have handled compassion at this point. I’d never felt so adrift, so not quite human. My emotions seemed to have frozen.

  Jameson returned with two members of the Burlington police, and sat in a corner of the room as they talked to me. They were far less skeptical than they had every reason to be. I knew it was because Jameson had known the right people to talk to, the right things to say, the right things to be done. No one seemed amazed at my story that the Burlington professor’s wife had really been the Canadian businessman’s wife who had faked her own murder and had her son kept captive and dumped off the side of a ferry. I had to repeat parts of it several times, but they seemed to believe me. And no one admonished me for having poked around looking for kidnappers as I had. Maybe they figured I’d been punished enough. I’d seen myself in the bathroom mirror; I knew how bad I looked. And how bad I felt.

  Philippe was on his way here, Jameson told me, and would be in by early afternoon. I didn’t ask how he knew.

  I’d done all this for Philippe and for Paul—okay, maybe some for me, so I could stop feeling guilty about having delayed the search for the kidnappers—but this wasn’t what I’d envisioned. I’d been foreseeing a tidy wrap-up, with anonymous kidnappers handily caught and locked up. Troy exit stage left, to enthusiastic applause.

  Instead, Philippe would be finding out that his wife had murdered someone, that she had tried to drown me and likely tried to drown their son. And that she was only just now dead.

  In a bizarre way I felt guilty, which even I knew didn’t make sense. Most of this had happened long before I appeared on scene. Without me, Paul would have drowned. But without me, Madeleine wouldn’t have. It was too much for me.

  But I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Philippe.

  It was early afternoon before I did. He appeared in the doorway of my room, looking more drawn than I could have imagined. Jameson nodded curtly at him and left us alone.

  “I’m sorry it took so long to get here,” Philippe said. He spoke like an automaton, probably the same way I was talking. “I waited until dawn to leave, and then the police here wanted to see me.”

  “So … they told you?” What I meant was They told you Madeleine is dead?

  He nodded. “They found the body,” he said, and by his expression I knew he’d seen it. Maybe he’d wanted to, or maybe the police had asked him to identify her. Of course he’d already made one misidentification, but maybe there was a specific feature he could point out—a scar, a birthmark. Although I suspected that this time they’d be doing DNA testing as well.

  We didn’t talk long. I was exhausted and he was in shock, and it seemed clear that he woul
d rather have been in denial. If he hadn’t just seen the body of his wife and if I wasn’t swathed in bandages in a hospital bed, I don’t think he would have believed any of it.

  Before he came in I’d pulled the collar of my hospital gown up around my neck. Because no one’s last memory of their wife should be the marks of her fingers around someone’s throat.

  He kissed my forehead before he went, telling me he was going to check into a nearby motel and make phone calls.

  Then Thomas stopped in, so soon after Philippe left that he might have been waiting in the hall. He’d brought my toiletries, some clothing, and my cell phone, and for once I greatly appreciated his methodical nature.

  He was still gray with shock, horrified that he had introduced me to a woman who had tried her best to kill me. But when he tried to say something, to start to apologize, I cut him off. He couldn’t possibly have imagined that his friend’s wife was the mother of the child I’d rescued—although I wished he had happened to mention that Vince had married this woman less than a year ago. Not that I would have guessed she was Madeleine, although maybe something in my brain would have kicked into gear fractionally sooner. But I doubt it.

  Vince, Thomas told me, was grief-stricken, incredulous, finding it difficult to believe that the beautiful, charming Marguerite he’d met in an online French-language chat room had faked her own kidnapping and death. And had not, in fact, been his wife at all, because her own husband was alive and well.

  I imagined Vince was more than a little relieved that his children were safely off at boarding school.

  Philippe called to say that he was tied up for the rest of the afternoon. I supposed I’d realized he would have some arrangements to make. He was, after all, the widower—previously the prime suspect, now just a widower. I thought about calling Alyssa, but the idea exhausted me. Thomas would be picking up Tiger from her, and would fill her in and tell her I’d contact her tomorrow. The news couldn’t be released yet, so she wouldn’t miss her story.