Shadows on the Sand

by Gayle Roper

  “They’re trying.”

  We stood and moved back a boulder, and the incoming tide splashed over the place I’d just been sitting. “But the women? Why do they join? I can’t imagine sharing a husband with other women. I don’t think I’m particularly selfish, but if I marry, that man will be mine and mine alone for life. I’m not letting another woman near him.”

  He grinned at me. “Possessive, huh?”

  “You know it.” Our eyes held, and I thought of my new watch. A time to every purpose under heaven. My heart raced. Was what I’d longed for, prayed for, coming to pass? Was now my time?

  Greg’s fishing rod jerked, drawing his attention. He climbed off the jetty and hurried to it. He gave it a tug, then shook his head. “Whatever that was didn’t take the hook.” He climbed back beside me.

  “What about the women in cults?” I asked.

  “My theory is that many of the women who join come from backgrounds similar to yours. They’ve been abused, hurt, maybe raped. They’ve been made to feel worthless. They find life overwhelming. The cult offers safety and security. You’ll be taken care of all your life. You have to marry, but your sister-wives take much of the sexual pressure from you. You’re told what to do, so you know exactly what’s expected of you. You have rules and assignments that regulate your life. Choices and the uncertainty they bring disappear. And you’re part of a forever family. There is no divorce in groups like The Pathway.”

  I was startled by the idea that many of the women were from backgrounds like mine, though it did make sense. If your life was hard, fragmented, or frightening, security forever would look very attractive. Did women join groups like The Pathway, then leave when they felt they had control of themselves again? Or was the world forever scary? Were they even allowed to leave?

  “Wouldn’t Jesus be a more sensible way to deal with the pain and rejection?” He had been for me. “With Him you have security and family, but you also have freedom and room to grow as a person.”

  “So says a woman who is strong and independent.”

  We stood, preparing to move back from the relentlessly encroaching water again. I took a step as I smiled at Greg over my shoulder. I liked being thought of as strong and independent.

  My athletic shoe struck a slick spot where moss grew, and before I knew what hit me, I was on my back with my leg bent at an extreme angle.

  35

  Carrie!” Greg was beside me in an instant. “Are you all right?”

  I blinked at him. “I think so.” Except for the pointy rock sticking into my back. I put out a hand to push myself upright.

  And found I wasn’t quite as all right as I’d thought. A shaft of pain shot up my right arm from my wrist. I yelped and pulled my arm to my chest, cradling it in my other hand. The pain dulled from a ten to a four and throbbed in time with my heart. I’d become one of the many that the Keep Off Jetty signs were written for.

  “Your wrist?” Greg reached to take hold of it.

  “Don’t touch!” I sounded like a two-year-old yelling, “Mine!”

  He blinked and pulled his hands back. “I wouldn’t hurt you. I’ve had lots of emergency training.”

  I nodded, feeling foolish at my overreaction. “I must have put my hand out to catch myself when I fell.” With care I extended my injured arm and studied it. Already the wrist was swelling.

  “Can you move your legs?”

  My legs. I tried to move, and while one leg cooperated, the other didn’t.

  “I can’t move my left leg!”

  We both looked and saw the problem at the same time. When I’d fallen, my foot had kicked forward and gotten wedged between two of the jetty’s boulders, toe down, heel up. Somehow when I’d landed, my leg, already caught, had been wrenched and twisted at an awkward angle. My knee was bent, and the inside of my leg lay flat on the jetty. All I could see of my foot was the thick heel of my athletic shoe.

  “I can wiggle my toes without any pain, so I don’t think it’s broken. Just stuck.”

  “Well, let’s get you unstuck and to the hospital to have that wrist looked at.” Greg slid his hands down to my ankle and began the process of releasing me from my rock trap.

  “I can’t have a broken wrist!” The implications of losing the use of one hand, my right one no less, loomed large. “I’ve got to work! How can I wait tables with only one arm? O-o-ow! Stop! My foot doesn’t bend that way.” I felt it all the way up in my hip.

  “Sorry.” He tried again.

  “Pain! Stop! Let me try.” I shifted my weight, but my foot, sneaker sole caught beneath an uneven protrusion on the boulder, remained immobile. A wave washed over the rock I sat on, sliding inexorably toward me, wetting my legs and bottom. It was uncomfortably chilly, and my jeans sopped up the wet like a denim sponge. As the water receded, I realized my trapped foot was now submerged in its crevice, water gurgling around it. Time and tide were not going to wait for me to get free.

  I started to get nervous. “How high will the water get where we are?”

  “Uh.” Greg looked around in the fast-falling dusk. We were quite a ways out on the long jetty. “Three feet maybe?”

  How far was it from my bottom to my nose? How deep was three feet? I looked to my right and left to see where the tide line normally was. I tried to picture how high the water would be where I sat when the waves washed higher than usual on the beach. I began to fear I was going to become one of those wild animals who chewed off their foot to get free from a trap.

  “Before you panic, let’s just untie your shoe, and you can slide your foot out.” Greg, the ever practical.

  “Right. Good. Wonderful idea.” Such a brilliant and easy solution.

  But my foot was wedged upside down, and the laces were not only under water but unreachable.

  A man I’d never seen ran out onto the jetty. “I saw you fall. I called 911 for you. I told them we needed an ambulance and a rescue squad.”

  As I tried to smile my thanks, a piece of silver plastic riding on the water bumped against my leg. Greg picked it up.

  “Looks like the cover on a slide phone,” the 911 guy said.

  My cell phone was that color. With my good hand I reached for my belt clip. Empty. That wasn’t a rock in my back when I fell but my phone, and the fall shattered it. I should have gotten that extended warranty.

  As I mourned the loss of my phone, I became aware of wet dripping down my neck. I reached back with my good arm, and my hand came away sticky. “My head’s bleeding!”

  Greg whipped off his sweatshirt, then his T-shirt. He folded it up and slapped it gently against the back of my head. “Hold this.”

  I held it as he pulled his sweatshirt back on. Then he moved my hand, lifted the compress, and examined my head. His hands moved through my hair, and I thought how I’d dreamed he’d do this but under slightly different circumstances and for slightly different reasons.

  I could feel 911 Man peering over Greg’s shoulder as another wave washed over me. By now I was sitting in sea water, very chilly sea water. Stripers might like it cold, but I didn’t.

  “How soon do you get hypothermia?” I asked.

  Greg put the compress back in place and held it there. “I think you’re safe for a while,” he said with a smile in his voice.

  I heard a rumbling noise, and a strobe light began playing across the water, turning the foam red and blue by turns.

  “Oh, good,” 911 Man said. “The cops.”

  I looked over my shoulder. The cop car had driven right up on the boardwalk. Close on its heels came an ambulance, lights flashing.

  I didn’t rate a siren from either.

  People poured out of both vehicles, and the jetty became crowded. Now 911 Man had his smartphone in hand and was texting away. He was very unhappy when he was sent back to the boardwalk to watch the action from afar.

  “But I called it in,” he protested, as if that gave him the right to take up precious space on the jetty.

  “And we appreciate
it,” Maureen Trevelyan said. “You can help us, sir, by keeping everyone away from the area.”

  Slightly mollified, he left, doubtless to regale the small crowd gathering with what was going on when he wasn’t texting the Twitter world.

  I crooked a finger at Greg, and he bent to me. “Are they all Twittering about me back there?”

  “Probably. Does it bother you?”

  I shrugged. “Twice in one week. I’ll be famous. Though come to think of it, they don’t know it’s me. Ouch!”

  I glared at Maureen, who had tried to free my foot.

  “How did it get wedged?” she asked, as if people caught in a jetty were all in a day’s work—which they undoubtedly were.

  “I slipped and fell, and it was stuck.”

  “I think she’s broken her wrist,” Greg said. “And she has a cut on the back of her head, but I don’t think it’s serious. More an abrasion than a laceration.”

  Maureen moved behind me and shined her flashlight on my head. Greg removed the compress he’d been holding in place.

  “I don’t think it’s even bleeding anymore,” Maureen said.

  One of the EMTs dropped to his knees beside me. “Hi, Carrie. I’m Ryan and that’s my partner, Amy.” He pointed behind me, and I craned my neck to see who he was pointing to. Amy and I smiled at each other, well-mannered even in catastrophe. “Can you tell me if you hit your head hard?”

  “I didn’t. I don’t remember hitting it at all. It’s my wrist.” I held out my arm and winced at the sight. Instead of being indented at the base of my hand, my wrist was the size of an Easter ham and just as pink in the flashlight beams.

  “Let’s make sure the rest of you is okay,” Ryan said. “Then we’ll get you to the ambulance.”

  “The rest of me’s great. Except for my foot.”

  He put his hand on my knee and followed my leg to the foot. He felt around down there, his hands submerged, while I made little yips as he tried to turn it.

  He frowned. “You are caught, aren’t you?” He looked at the wave that rolled over us, soaking me to the waist and him partway up his thighs. He looked up at Maureen. “We need heavy rescue and fast.”

  “What?” I turned to Greg, on his knees across from the EMT, also soaked well up his thighs.

  “Just a precaution,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  I might have felt better if he didn’t look so distressed.

  Maureen, in water above her ankles, stepped away and spoke into her shoulder mike. I couldn’t hear her, but I knew what she was saying.

  More rumbles, more lights, more crackling radios, and the heavy-rescue truck pulled up beside the ambulance, followed by a fire truck.

  “Why a fire truck?” I asked Greg as I tried not to shiver.

  “Part of the first responders. It’s better to send them home unneeded than to get them to an emergency too late.”

  A fleece blanket fell around my shoulders. Ryan’s partner smiled down at me. “Let’s keep you as warm as we can.”

  Greg tucked it close, and I smiled my appreciation.

  Suddenly the jetty was bathed in bright light as the rescue team kicked into action. The light revealed the wave that was barreling toward me. It hit and I was lifted from my rock by the force of the water, floating for a few seconds. Greg and Ryan were both shifted by the surge and scrambled for balance. I put my hands out to keep from falling backward into the water and yelped as my bad wrist took some weight.

  It always amazed me the small amount of water that was needed to create a dangerous situation, especially moving water. It was people who didn’t comprehend this fact who stayed to ride out hurricanes and who often died. Right now I was at the waves’ mercy. First came the slap and the push, then the suck and the pull.

  As the wave receded, I settled back on the boulder, my free foot pressing against the same rock that held me captive, trying to keep me steady. It took me a moment to realize that my left leg wasn’t bent at that unwieldy angle anymore. I reached forward. I still couldn’t feel the laces on my shoe, but I could feel its side.

  “My foot’s shifted! Cut it off!”

  The last was lost in the gurgle as I turned my head to escape a wave full in the face. I floated again, then settled, spitting out salt water. I held my breath as I reached down into the swirling foam. What if my foot had been turned back with only the heavy sole showing again?

  “Cut it off! Cut it off! Quick!”

  36

  Greg forced himself to breathe slowly and deeply. He could do this. He could. The trick was to breathe without hyperventilating. Water swirled around him, but that was nothing compared to the emotions swirling inside. In a strange way, he felt proud he’d managed to hold it together this long.

  Then Carrie yelled, “Cut it off!” and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He thought he’d be sick.

  All around him lights strobed, radios crackled, and people moved with purpose. Memories surged, threatening to drown him more thoroughly than any of the waves rolling in. Waves he could fight. Waves he could run from. But this vivid recall? Memories lived inside, inescapable and terrible.

  “Why don’t you move back, Greg?” Maureen said. “Let the rescue guys in.”

  “Right,” he mumbled. He should have gotten out of the way as soon as they showed, but he’d been paralyzed. He’d been fine when Carrie fell, when she realized her head was bleeding.

  Then they came, and with them the noise, the lights, the panic.

  He rose and made his way off the jetty onto the dry sand. He stood there, useless and jumpy. He wanted to go home, to safety and quiet. For the first time in a very long time, he thought about how comforting a few stiff drinks would be.

  While he stood there, mute and useless, others came and helped. And then Carrie was free.

  The rescue squad guy whose name escaped Greg held up a white athletic shoe with one side sliced from edge to sole. He held it toward Carrie. Greg saw her shake her head as she was helped to her feet and assisted off the jetty. She looked fine, upbeat and in control. He, on the other hand …

  She was bundled into the ambulance. Just before they closed the door, she called, “Greg, would you call Lindsay for me?”

  Somehow he managed a nod.

  The bright lights illuminating the jetty blacked out, and the darkness of a fall night was extra black in contrast. The fire truck rumbled off the boardwalk, following the ambulance. The rescue truck left as soon as the lights were stowed. In what seemed the blink of an eye, he was alone except for Maureen Trevelyan and Rog Eastman.

  “You okay, Greg?” Maureen asked.

  “Sure,” he lied. But he knew she knew it was a lie. Maureen had been one of those who responded when Ginny and the kids were killed. She was a tough cop, but she had a tender and insightful heart, and she made Greg very nervous.

  “I imagine you’re going to the hospital to check on Carrie after you call Lindsay.”

  “Right.” He’d already forgotten about his promise to call Lindsay.

  “Where’s your car?” Maureen asked.

  He pointed vaguely in its direction.

  “Come on. I’ll walk you.”

  Because he couldn’t figure out how to lose her, he went with her as she walked up the stairs to the boardwalk and down the Twentieth Street ramp. Rog followed, driving their squad car down the ramp behind them. When Greg found himself hoping the cruiser’s brakes held, he was somewhat cheered. That was a normal thought, right?

  When they reached Greg’s pickup, Rog put the poles, fishing gear, and the two stripers in the cooler in the back of the truck.

  “Thanks,” Greg managed. He’d forgotten all about that stuff.

  Maureen looked at him with concern. “She didn’t die, Greg. She’s going to be fine.”

  But she could have! Somehow he managed a nod as he got behind the wheel. And it would be my fault!

  “Don’t forget Lindsay,” Maureen said as he closed the door.

  He nodded again an
d pulled out his phone. He had to dial 411 to get the apartment number, and he was glad for the automatic connection. He didn’t think he could push the right sequence of numbers because his hands were shaking too much.

  It was because he cared. He hadn’t had any negative reaction to the sirens and static, the calling voices and organized chaos when he found Jase’s body. Of course he’d been sad about Jase, but if he’d been upset about anything, it was that he wasn’t part of the action.

  He’d felt almost jealous of the team dealing with the crime. He frowned. Maybe jealous wasn’t the right word, but he’d felt something strong. Displacement? Here was his world, but he was no longer part of it.

  But that day there hadn’t been even a touch of the fear that struck with such ferocity tonight. What if he’d lost Carrie as he’d lost Ginny and the kids?

  He couldn’t let himself love again. He couldn’t. It was too frightening, too risky. When you thought about it, you lost everyone you loved, guaranteed, and he couldn’t take any more loss. If that made him weak, then he was weak.

  He was forcing himself to breathe deeply when Lindsay picked up.

  “She’s all right,” he said several times. “She’s all right.”

  But saying it didn’t ease the constriction in his chest or relieve the paralysis in his limbs. Maureen and Rog were long gone before he managed to put the truck in drive and head for the hospital.

  He had just entered the emergency room when Lindsay burst through the door, eyes wide. She saw him and ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck. He automatically returned the embrace, patting her on the back.

  “I’m so glad you were with her.” She gave him an extra squeeze. “No one could have been as helpful and as comforting for her as you.”

  The cramp in his gut intensified.

  Mary P rushed in. Lindsay must have called her. “How is she?”

  “She’ll be fine,” Greg assured her. “She’s wet and cold and I think she has a broken wrist, but she’s fine.”