Turning on the Tide

by Jenna Rae

  “How long ago did you figure it out?” Sterling sounded amused, disinterested.

  “It seemed strange, your leaving us alone with Janet. But I wasn’t sure until you started playing with Del. ‘You’re so good at reading people,’ all that stuff.”

  “But the cop didn’t pick up on it.”

  Lola waved around her shackled hands in a vague gesture. “She’s not at her best, you know. Being kidnapped and starved and whatnot, plus Janet and me together in the same place? It’s a lot to process.”

  Sterling nodded. She seemed distracted now, and Lola sat back against the leather upholstery and eyed Sterling’s quarter profile. She was sore all over and very tired, and she let herself doze as they headed south on the 50. She figured she had a few hours at the most, and she wanted to be as well rested as possible. It would be easier, she thought as she drifted off, to just relax completely and accept that this was the end, but she knew Del better than that.

  “She’s going to come and find me,” she murmured, only dimly aware that Sterling was listening.

  “Try to find you.” Sterling’s chuckle rang with overconfidence, and Lola frowned as she drifted off.

  If Sterling was right, then fine. Del would be traumatized by Lola’s death, but Janet would be there, and Tom and Tess and Lin and Marco and Phil. They would all reassure her that she’d done everything she could, that it wasn’t her fault. Oh, she’d have a hard night now and then, but Janet would comfort her. She loved Del and Del loved her, and they would be alive to recover from the whole thing together.

  There was a nagging doubt at the back of Lola’s sleepy mind, and it followed her into sleep: what if she does find me? But she figured Sterling was probably right. How in the world would Del ever figure out they were going to the marina? By the time they reached it, Lola had recovered enough of her strength and awareness to feel every ache in her head and body. She stared at the little boat and made a face.

  “Did you name it?”

  “Her.” Sterling snorted a laugh. “You call a boat a her. And yes, I did.”

  “The deus ex machina? Like in a play?”

  Sterling waited until she’d finished fiddling with a rope and some stuff in a cupboard and was seated across from Lola in the stern. “Spoils it all if I have to explain it.”

  They bounced along the relatively calm waters of the inner bay for a while, and Lola looked up at the dark sky.

  “Did you wait for a waning moon because it would be darker?”

  “Plus I like the poetry of it.”

  “Ah.” They were far enough from land that Lola could see the lights along the shoreline as a pattern. “It’s beautiful.”

  Sterling followed her gaze and pointed southeast. “See that cluster over there? Pacifica.”

  Lola craned her neck to look. What was Sterling trying to tell her? She waited until Sterling’s voice sounded again. Now it was softer, hesitant.

  “From the outside, we were okay, you know? Just another family. Nothing special.”

  “But?”

  “But my life was hell. Every day, every night. You know the details. I know your life. You and I, we survived the same hell. Janet too. That’s what binds us.”

  Lola let that sink in. She had a hundred questions but wanted to let Sterling talk.

  “Then you look at the same cluster again, and you know.” Sterling pointed. “This one is a nice family, good people. That one is a monster, beats his wife. That one is a sweet old lady. A couple of nice, dotty sisters live in the next one. And the one next to that, the lady will kill herself to make sure she cannot abuse her kids. From here, they look all the same.”

  “From here, you can pretend they’re who you want them to be.”

  Sterling’s smile was wide and warm. It was the smile of a lonely, lonely soul who’s finally found a kindred spirit, and Lola found herself crying for the woman whose pain and isolation rendered such small kinship so joyful. “See, I knew. I knew you would understand.”

  Lola reached out to touch Sterling’s hand, and the handcuffs scraped Sterling’s knuckle. “Oh, sorry.”

  Sterling shook off the apology. “I can’t take them off. I hope you understand.”

  Lola nodded. “Would it be okay…? I mean, I accept that I’m dying here, I’m not trying to trick you. I just want to know what’s going to happen and why. Is that okay? Would you mind telling me?”

  “Oh, I will. I just want to get out a little farther.”

  “You’ve done this before, I take it?” Lola fought the deep chill that her own words, uttered so coolly, brought. Seeing her shudder, Sterling snagged a thick jacket and arranged it carefully around Lola’s shoulders.

  “That better? Good. I do want to you be comfortable, if that doesn’t seem strange.”

  Lola shook her head. “Thank you.”

  Again, Sterling smiled with relief. “You can’t know how long I’ve waited to hear those words.”

  “‘Thank you?’”

  Sterling nodded. “Usually lost girls are scared. They try to negotiate, bargain, plead for their lives. Offer me money, sex, drugs. All kinds of crazy stuff.”

  “They don’t understand what you’re giving them.”

  “Exactly!”

  “Didn’t understand.”

  Sterling’s smile was truly brilliant this time and Lola grinned in response. “Right. Didn’t—understand. Anyway, I’ve wanted to be done for a long time.”

  “You’re tired.”

  Sterling’s laugh was hysterical. “That can’t even begin to cover it. I’m—”

  “Weary.”

  Sterling leaned close. “I know there’s every possibility you’re playing me. But I’ve waited my whole life for someone who understands me, and I can’t tell you how happy I am that I found you.”

  “I’m not playing you, Sterling.”

  “Can you tell me what you think we’re doing out here? Then I can fill in the gaps.”

  “I think you want to save women who’ve suffered the way we’ve suffered, you and me and Janet. Women who’ve been hurt too much, and now we’re just not right.”

  “Spoiled.”

  “Yes.” Lola took a deep breath. “Like my paper dolls that got wet.”

  Sterling was crying. “They’re never the same.”

  “No, they’re not. Only they don’t know that. They keep trying. They keep wanting to be real.”

  “But they’re not real, not anymore.” Sterling’s sobs choked her and Lola whispered her next words softly.

  “So you set them free.”

  “Yes.” Sterling rubbed her eyes. “I set them free.”

  “You see a woman who’s like us and you watch her to make sure.”

  “I don’t want to take an innocent by accident.”

  Lola smiled gently. “I know. You’re very careful. You arrange to meet her and you give her tests. Like Janet said.”

  “Yes.”

  “She thought she passed, but she didn’t.”

  Sterling mouthed the word “no.”

  “And I failed them too.”

  “Yes. Just like the others.”

  “The others you saved.” Lola waited for Sterling’s vague nod before continuing. “So you make sure she’s one of us. You take her picture. You follow her around and look at her life.”

  Sterling nodded slowly. “I have to be sure. The patterns are very consistent, you know. The little choices, the big ones, people think their lives are in their own hands. But free will is an illusion, Lola. We make the choices we are forced to make.”

  “Forced by our genes, our early lives, Fate, whatever.” Lola nodded in understanding as she spoke. “We get railroaded and don’t even know it. We’re puppets.” Lola held out her shackled hands as though she were controlling little marionettes.

  “I have to make sure, you know. I didn’t take as long with you. I have been there nearly every minute with you. When you went to the marina with that guy that night, I almost had to laugh. You’d seen m
e on the boat, did you remember?”

  “Not then. Not until later.”

  “Remember the homeless woman?” Sterling smirked at Lola’s shocked face. “Yup, that was me. Pretty good disguise, huh? I saw you. I thought my friend, I thought Janet was just pointing me at you because she wants the cop back. But I saw you and I knew you were the one. My special angel. Even if you don’t realize it yet. I had to be sure. Just like with the others.”

  “You find them, somehow. And then you bring them here. You figure out a woman is one of us, one of us who’s lost, and you watch her and you take her picture. You make sure and then you bring her here. You give her medicine, maybe?”

  “So she can relax and not be upset.” Sterling’s voice was that of a child, wondering and dreamy and relaxed.

  “You don’t want to scare her or hurt her.”

  “Of course not.”

  “And then you baptize her. She goes to sleep and you wash her in the salt water—it’s cleansing, isn’t it? And then she’s clean again.”

  “And?”

  Lola finished. “And then she doesn’t have to suffer any more.”

  “I knew,” Sterling crowed. “I knew you were the one.”

  “Because the one girl you really wanted to save, all that time, was you.”

  Sterling hugged herself. “But I couldn’t.”

  “Not without saving as many of us as you could first.”

  “But now I can be done. Now I can rest.”

  “Yes,” Lola said with a loving smile. “Now you can rest.”

  “I’m a little scared,” Sterling admitted. “There’s a reason I drugged them. There’s a reason. So scary and cold. I don’t want to feel anything.”

  “Neither do I,” confessed Lola. “I hope you brought enough medicine for both of us.”

  “Well, no.” Sterling looked embarrassed. “I can’t have the medicine. How would I get you overboard? I have to just deal with drowning awake.”

  Lola looked around the deck of the small craft. Everything was stowed neatly and polished to a high shine. The two women sat in silence for several minutes, and Lola finally shook her head. “I don’t think it’s right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been helping your sisters—how many?”

  “Nine, not counting you and me.”

  “Nine sisters have gotten the fresh start they deserve without a moment’s fear or suffering. Why don’t you deserve the same?”

  “Listen, if this is some kind of trick—”

  Lola shook her head. “It’s not a trick. I just think there’s got to be a better way. What are you planning to do, let me do a Sleeping Beauty dive, then follow me into the drink? You have to be cold and scared and alone? No, that’s not fair.”

  Sterling shrugged. “I knew this was how it would end. It took so long, but—”

  “We could share it. Each take half the dose. Then we’re sleepy and relaxed and you don’t have to suffer nearly as much.”

  “I can’t do that, Lola. I have a sacred duty. I can’t take the chance that you may suffer needlessly. I’m here for you. Yes, I want to die too, but my first responsibility is to you.”

  “Are you straight?”

  “Maybe. Why did you ask? Does it matter?”

  Lola shrugged. “I guess, I was just wondering if you saw this as a sort of Romeo and Juliet kind of thing. You know? Two lovers torn apart by the cruddy world they live in? Death is the only way?”

  “Huh.” Sterling cocked her head. “I guess I see it more like a bouquet for Ophelia.”

  “Yeah, okay. Well, Ophelia, I think you deserve more than freezing to death, scared and alone, in the dark.”

  “It’s what I deserve.”

  “I don’t think so, Sterling. I think you suffered just like we did, and I think you’ve dedicated yourself to saving our sisters and me. That means you should get the peace and release you deserve.”

  Sterling shook her head vigorously, and Lola frowned at her.

  “Why not?”

  “I killed them. My babies.”

  Lola nodded slowly. “But maybe they were better off?”

  “Yes.” Sterling offered a sad smile. “I’m certain of that. It’s the one, I didn’t remember, you see.”

  “I don’t see. What one?”

  “My daughter. It was too late by the time I knew I was pregnant. They kicked me out because of her. But I was going to keep her. I thought my boyfriend—but he was just like the others. I thought she died when he pulled me out of the car, but she didn’t. She didn’t die. They took her because I was a minor and my parents signed her away and got me to sign her away or forged my signature or something. I don’t remember. I was pretty fucked up all the time then. Only she was alive and they put her in the system. And I didn’t even know. I should have known, don’t you think? That she was alive, somewhere out there? I should have sensed it.”

  Lola sat back and let the jacket slip off her shoulders. “But you didn’t. How did you find out about her?”

  “She died.”

  “How do you know? How did you find out?”

  Sterling shrugged. “I just knew. By then I was clean and I just knew things. Nobody had to tell me.”

  “So you think you have to pay for her suffering. For not knowing she was alive and not protecting her.”

  “Doesn’t that seem reasonable?”

  Lola waggled her head. “You believe in an afterlife, right? Well, doesn’t the way you die change who you are? Won’t you be reunited with your daughter? Don’t you want to meet her in a state of peace and love rather than fear and anger?”

  Sterling eyed Lola suspiciously. “Don’t demean us both with games, sister.”

  “I guess I am a little scared. I understand it’s got to happen, but I still feel scared. I’m a coward. I just want to go together instead of alone. Is that so bad?” Lola stood slowly on shaking legs and turned to face the open waters of the Pacific Ocean. She didn’t dare look at Sterling but kept her gaze on the rising swells that glistened in the faint moonlight.

  Sterling stood next to Lola and rubbed her back. “I appreciate you thinking about me, but—”

  Lola didn’t think about it. She just eased the second, smaller stun gun out of her pants pocket and gripped it tightly in her left hand. She’d practiced using the thing for a long time, worried she might accidentally shock herself, and she ran through the practice and the online instruction manual carefully for a few seconds before pressing the business end of the stun gun into Sterling’s hip. She kept it pressed hard against Sterling even as the taller woman convulsed and flopped to the floor—deck, Lola corrected herself—and twitched into unconsciousness.

  Standing there in the vast loneliness of the ocean with her kidnapper lying helpless at her feet and the knowledge that nine innocent women were dead somewhere beneath her, Lola considered her options. Even handcuffed, she could get Sterling over the side before she awoke. No one would ask many questions. After all, they could have struggled. There could have been a moment when somehow, as they fought, Lola managed to get a lucky break and shove Sterling. Sterling could have gone overboard that way. She was, after all, a serial killer. No one would question it. Even if they wondered, deep in their hearts, they would never pester Lola about their doubts. Because, they would think, killing a monster was a kind of public service, right?

  But that was the thought that kept Lola from actually doing what she was considering. Sterling believed, truly believed, she had saved those women. She thought of herself as their savior. As a doer of public service.

  So in the remaining seconds before Sterling could again become a threat, Lola used her restrained hands to truss Sterling using the neatly coiled rope in one of the stow bins under the bench and to find the hypodermic needle and the little glass jar in the small medicine bag and administer the premeasured dosage to keep Sterling asleep. She steered the little boat as close to shore as she dared, then drifted for a while until she could calm do
wn enough to call for help. Someone, she never quite figured out who, talked her through dropping anchor in a safe place.

  Waiting for the rescue boat to pick her up, Lola watched Sterling’s sleeping face. She was childlike. Round cheeks, dark curls, relaxed mouth. She would go to prison, Lola figured. What would she become there? What would she do to the women in the prison? Lola had always assumed women were usually in prison because they’d killed an abusive husband or boyfriend or father. If that was true, and she wasn’t sure it was, were those women more likely to have been abused as children? Would Sterling feel compelled to “save” them too?

  “Who could you have been? If your parents hadn’t hurt you, would you still have been a monster?” The question haunted Lola. Weeks later, after life had resumed a less hectic pace, Lola would find herself looking in the mirror and wondering why she was herself and Sterling was who she was.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  “You okay?”

  Lola nodded and smiled, but she was clearly deep inside her own head, as usual these days. All through finding out Lola was still alive, through the arrests and trial preparations and sentencing, Del had been watching Lola, waiting for her to return from the landscape of her thoughts, but it wasn’t happening. Thanksgiving and Christmas went by with all the appropriate food and decorations and gifts at both of their homes, and through it all Del felt like she was doing a scene in a play, acting alongside a robot.

  “I miss you,” she blurted one day.

  Lola turned, her face a mask of surprise and confusion. “What? I’m right here.”

  Del shook her head. “No, you’re not. You’re out on that boat or somewhere. But you’re not here.”

  Lola smiled and came close, rubbing Del’s arms. “I’m a little shaken up, that’s all. Does it seem so strange?”

  “I guess not.” But it was.

  Day after day, Del tried everything. She was patient, loving and kind. Attentive but not hovering. Loving but not demanding. It was exhausting and it didn’t make a difference. It had been more than a month since Sterling and Janet were sentenced in their separate trials, and Lola was still fathoms deep and unreachable and frustratingly, painfully polite.