Yesterday Lost

by Lorena McCourtney

  Katy stopped short in the act of slipping on her shoes, her instant readiness to help rescue Maggie sabotaged by this revelation. The river? Mrs. L. wanted her to confront the river?

  She offered an alternate idea. “I’ll call Jace, and he or Joe can—”

  “No, it’ll take too long to get them over here! Just come, Katy, please! I can almost reach her on the branch but not quite. But you’re taller, and you can save her. Please, Katy!”

  Tears and sweat streamed down Mrs. L’s face, and Katy realized she must have run all the way.

  Katy hesitated a moment longer. Not the river, anywhere but the river! Then she gritted her teeth determinedly. She loved that silly cat too, and she wasn’t going to let her fear cost Maggie her life. “Okay. I’ll get the car out of the garage.”

  “The car?” Mrs. L. looked startled. “But there’s no road back to where she’s at.”

  “The meadow is so dry the ground is hard enough to drive on now, and it’ll be faster than running. And you’re in no condition to run back to the river anyway!”

  Katy grabbed the car keys off the hook, flung the garage door open and backed the car out. Mrs. L. still seemed hesitant about taking the car, but she climbed in when Katy pushed the door open. She clutched the seat as Katy raced the little red convertible across the meadow, grass scraping the underside. Clouds covered a third of the sky now, the air thick and muggy. They got almost to the line of trees before a rear tire bogged down in a lingering soft spot.

  Katy didn’t waste time fighting the spinning tire. She flung the door open and jumped out. “Where?”

  Mrs. L. pointed to a spot downstream from where the ground had crumbled beneath Katy that day. Determinedly she willed herself to ignore the roar of the rapids, the crashing white water, and the panic in her heart. Not alone! She pushed her way through the brush, the older and shorter-legged Mrs. L. trailing behind her.

  “I can’t see her!” Katy yelled. But she couldn’t avoid seeing the river. The drying heat of summer had lowered the water level, and not so much raw power surged through this narrow spot, but it looked more treacherous than ever, with dark rocks exposed like the teeth of an evil grin. “Maybe she got down by herself—”

  Mrs. L. caught up with her, puffing and red faced again. “No, she’s right there on that branch closest to the water! Can’t you see her? Oh, Katy, please get her before she falls!”

  Katy edged closer to the water’s edge, eyes searching the thick foliage overhead for some flash of orange fur. Thankfully, the ground beneath her feet here was a solid ledge of rock a couple of feet above the water, no danger of crumbling. If she could just keep her eyes away from the dizzying cauldron of surging, bucking white water, leaping as if greedily reaching to snatch her from the ledge—

  No, water has no consciousness, she reminded herself fiercely. Don’t panic! You’ll be okay if you don’t panic. “Maggie?” she called hopefully. “Here, kitty, kitty—”

  From behind a barrier of brush he watched her searching for a nonexistent cat in the branches over her head. He neither stiffened nor hunkered down in the brush when she frantically glanced his direction. He knew his camouflage cap and clothing and the daubs of dirt on his face blended perfectly into the background, that she wouldn’t see him even if she looked straight at him. He almost smiled with the thrill of victory. Just a few moments more.

  But she wasn’t quite close enough to the edge of the ledge yet.

  Just a couple more steps, he commanded her silently. He hoped the thunderstorm would break soon. A pounding rain would erase any tracks. Not that anyone would be looking for incriminating tracks anyway. This would be just a tragic accident. That’s it, he crooned silently as she edged closer to the brink of the ledge. Just another step. . .

  His hand tightened around the dead branch he’d broken to a suitable length. She stopped, and he cursed softly under his breath. If she turned back too soon. . .

  Now. Do it now!

  Swiftly, delicately, like slipping a slender key in a keyhole, he threaded the long branch through the brush, positioned is just behind her shoulder blades.

  And shoved.

  .

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Katy screamed as a force like a battering ram punched her between the shoulder blades. She plunged forward, hand ripped from the branch she clutched for balance. For one endless moment, arms outflung, she hung spread-eagled over the churning water below. And then it rushed up and smashed into her like a sheet of steel before treacherously melting away and closing over her. The primitive force sucked her under and battered her blindly against underwater obstacles, whirling and tossing her like some demonic machine on a mad rampage, tearing at her lungs, contorting her body.

  It shot her upwards, and her bursting chest instinctively grabbed a lungful of air before it dragged her under again, spinning her like some helpless bug going down a deadly drain. Burying her in a liquid netherworld without light or air, where there was only terror filling every nerve, every muscle, every cell. Lord, help me!

  Yet with the terror and the plea for help, deep within her mind an explosion beyond the physical detonated, a blaze of illumination that lit up the dark pit and split its walls like the bursting of a bubble. Out poured terror-memory of another time like this, falling, whirling in a chaos of white water.

  The river flung her against something hard and unyielding. She fought to escape, water pressing her against the obstacle with lung-crushing force, raw instinct flinging all thoughts of anything but survival out of her mind. She clawed upwards, fingers and elbows, knees, toes, every inch of her body battling for survival.

  Her head pushed through the surface, and she gasped and choked, but she was breathing, breathing as the water surged around her. A slosh filled her mouth, and she struggled for another inch or two to escape the strangling clutch of the river and the barrier trapping her.

  She shook her head, realization dimly coming that the rock she was crushed against was not an enemy but a tiny island of safety. She clamped her legs around it and risked one hand to swipe water from her eyes and clear her blurred vision.

  And then vision inside her also came unblurred as a floodblurst of memories streamed through the shattered walls of the dark pit. So many memories they overwhelmed her. A life passing before her eyes, but not the life of Kat Cavanaugh! The shadows were no longer faceless silhouettes. It was all there. Joy and sadness, love and loss, computers and—oh, Cricket! For an instant the old pain was so great that it submerged even the desperate fear of the moment.

  Then the current dragged her to one side, and she fought to regain her precarious position centered on the rock protruding from the water. Cautiously she turned her head, and astonished relief charged through her. She was no more than eight or nine feet from shore, a bare three armstrokes from the ledge! Safety! The river had taken her on a savage carousel ride more vertical and circular then horizontal.

  The giddy relief vanished as desolate realization set in. She might be only three armstrokes from the ledge, but safety was as unreachable as the treetops looming above the river. If she let go, water swooping in slick green torrents past both sides of the rock would instantly plunge her into the lethal ambush of rocks and savage white water below.

  Yet she couldn’t hold on long. The cold water was already stealing the feeling from her legs. But where was Mrs. L.?

  “Mrs. L.! I’m here, down here! Where are you?” she shouted, the words ending in a sputtering gurgle as she slipped on the slick rock and her mouth plunged beneath the surface.

  Desperately she fought to regain her few inches of sanctuary on the slippery rock. Was the older woman, already exhausted from running back to the house once, frantically racing for help again? Or was she battling her way downstream, trying to find Katy among the rocks in that maelstrom?

  If she could just get far enough up on the rock to keep from losing consciousness before help came . . .

  Out of the
corner of her eye she saw movement on the ledge. Then Mrs. L.’s familiar face peered down at her. Seen from Katy’s position at water level, the housekeeper’s stocky, matronly body looked abnormally tall and gaunt looming against the cloud-covered sky, her face uncharacteristically long and somber.

  “Keys in the car!” Katy gasped as Mrs. L. just stood there. “Get help!”

  Mrs. L.’s only movement was to clutch her hands together helplessly, her face twisted as if in pain. Another figure appeared beside her. In spite of the camouflage clothes and dirt-daubed face, Katy recognized him from the photographs. Evan! Evan miraculously dropped out of nowhere to save her!

  She waved one arm frantically because it almost seemed as if he didn’t see her, the way he just stood there with arms folded across his chest. “Evan! Down here, here!”

  He dropped to a sitting position on the ledge and dangled his legs over the edge like some tourist casually surveying a view. Katy didn’t understand. Why did he just sit there watching her as if she were some bit of driftwood caught on a rock?

  “I’m sorry, Katy, so very sorry.” Tears ran down Mrs. L.’s face, still pink from exertion, and she swiped a knuckle across her cheek. “I didn’t want to do it, but there wasn’t any other way.” She gave her son a sideways, half-hopeful glance.

  Until that moment, raw survival instinct hadn’t given Katy time to think how she’d tumbled into the water. Now, remembering that pressure against her back, it almost seemed as if she’d been pushed. But that couldn’t be!

  She watched mother and son, unmoving as paper cutouts as they watched her desperately clinging to the rock, and she knew the truth.

  Yes. Pushed.

  She clawed a fraction of an inch higher on the rock, found a toehold for one foot. They weren’t going to rescue her.

  Not Evan, muscular and well built, good looking in spite of the mud-daubed face and camouflage visor cap pulled low over his eyes. Evan, who’d pretended to share his memories with her, had made her laugh with stories of childhood escapes. Not Mrs. L., who’d doctored her scratches and baked cinnamon rolls and given her a crash course in Kat Cavanaugh 101.

  A flood of visions tumbled chaotically in her head, the real past mixing with the past she’d tried to learn and assimilate and make her own.

  “I’m not the real Kat, am I?”

  Anguished look from Mrs. L., indifference from Evan. He swung his legs and pulled the cap a little lower.

  “You killed her, didn’t you, Evan?” Katy asked. She didn’t know why, but she knew this truth. “You killed the real Kat.”

  How very strange, Katy thought with detached numbness as she slipped and then laboriously regained the inch she’d lost on her precarious island of safety. Here she was, carrying on an almost polite conversation with the man who had killed her predecessor and was in the process of murdering her to keep that first crime from surfacing. The river still roared, but the sound seemed muted now, as if her ears filtered that sound out to let only the voices through.

  Mrs. L. put a hand to her mouth as if in sudden horror or astonishment, but any surprise she felt, Katy knew, was only surprise that Katy now knew this truth about the real Kat’s death, not that Mrs. L. had just been hit with a shocking new fact. Mrs. L. had known all along that the real Kat was dead and that Evan had killed her. Had known when she made false identification in an Oregon hospital. Had known when she cheerfully handed over the real Kat’s life and career and material assets to a stranger. Anything for Evan.

  Oh, she was good, Katy thought with detached observation even as she swallowed a sudden slap of water in the face. Very sweet-little-lady believable. Making up that oh-so-credible story about taking Kat to meet friends in Redding. Glibly dovetailing the dangerous awkwardness of a Katy with a different personality into the little-girl Kat of long ago, instantly inventing on-the-spot explanations about those Fourth of July shadows in Katy’s head and any other discrepancies that arose, giving today’s truly dramatic lost-cat performance.

  “Maggie’s fine, isn’t she? Where is she? Safely locked in your bedroom?” Katy asked, and, as if now welded to the truth, Mrs. L. nodded guiltily.

  “And there wasn’t any Aunt Cora desperately needing a transplant, was there? Evan got the money.” Just as Joe had suspected.

  Mrs. L. didn’t answer those questions, just gave her son an uneasy side-glance.

  A sudden twitch of current swept Katy’s legs into the deadly flow, and she laboriously dragged them back to the rock again. How long could she hold out here? Not as long as mother and cold-blooded son could. No wonder Mrs. L. had been so tired and upset lately. She knew this was coming, and she hadn’t wanted to do it, yet some cross-wired sense of protective mother love forced her to it.

  “You somehow managed to run Barry out this morning, didn’t you?” Katy said to her. “Because his being here would have ruined all your plans.”

  Again Mrs. L. could only say, “I’m so sorry, Katy.” As if, even though she knew this wasn’t the real Kat in the water, the substitute she’d chosen had become “Katy” in her mind.

  The chill of the water was seeping into Katy’s muscles and bones now. Hypothermia, wasn’t it? But that wouldn’t get her. She’d drown first. Mrs. L. leaned forward, still crying, and started to say something, but Evan flung out an arm to stop her.

  “Don’t talk to her. She’s just stalling for time.”

  It was a command and warning with such weird logic that hysterical laughter simmered on the edge of Katy’s fear. As if conversation were some valid delaying tactic that could turn away the river’s deadly power and give her a chance at survival!

  “Why did you kill her, Evan?” Even as she asked the question, other thoughts pushed that one away. Jace, oh, Jace! How unfairly suspicious of him she’d been! Her body and limbs were almost beyond feeling, but inside, her heart could still ache. She’d never get to tell him that no daunting list separated them, that she loved him, that the faith he lived by was her faith too. And Barry. She’d been unfair to him too. Whatever his faults, he was no murderer. And unjust to Joe too, suspecting sweet old Joe of deliberately trying to run over her.

  Evan stood up and with unexpected fury hurled a handful of high-water debris stranded on the ledge at her. “Shut up!”

  The photographs hadn’t shown how short he was, she realized. Muscular and well built but barely an inch or two taller than his mother. Once she had innocently thought that if anyone could release her memory from the dark pit, it would be Evan. And he had! But the irony that it should be like this, while he was trying to murder her. A found memory, a lost life. The river trash bobbed briefly within inches of her face, then swept down the deadly green slide to the churning death trap beyond. She heard the first rumbles of thunder, and raindrops dimpled the slick swoop of water beside her.

  Suddenly Mrs. L. grabbed Evan’s arm and shook it, her other hand pointing to something behind them. With their backs to her, the sound of the river and more thunder blurred their voices. Then, as suddenly as the turning on of some cosmic sprinkler, a crashing downpour dropped an instant veil between her and the ledge. Evan disappeared, and she thought he’d run to escape the downpour, but he returned a moment later carrying something. A long, stout branch! Hope unexpectedly burgeoned within her. He’d changed his mind! He was going to rescue her after all!

  She leaned toward the branch as he thrust it across the slick sweep of green water. It jabbed her shoulder, the pain sharp in spite of its slow message reaching her brain, but a little pain didn’t matter. Nor did the rain battering her face, half blinding her. If she could just get hold of the branch, he could pull her to safety.

  Cautiously she released the grip of one arm on the rock and tried to snag the branch. It jumped out of reach, and she stretched farther. Almost, almost. It wasn’t until Evan moved sideways to reposition the pole and it struck her neck that she realized the deadly truth. Evan wasn’t trying to rescue her. He was trying to shove her off th
e rock, push her into the green slide to certain death!

  For a strange moment time crashed to a stop. She thought of her wonderful experience coming home to the Lord last night. Thank you, Lord, thank you for bringing me home before it was too late! Because even if this life ended now, this wasn’t all there was. Eternity waited beyond. But even with that comfort, she wasn’t giving up. Not yet! She still had a little strength of her own, and, more important, she had the strength of the Lord to call on! If she could grab the pole, even if Evan let go, maybe it would catch crossways between rock and ledge, and she could work her way across it to shore.

  “They’re coming! They’re almost here!” Mrs. L.’s body seemed turned to stone in the rain, only her head moving as her gaze flipped wildly from some invisible presence in the meadow to Evan and Katy, and turbulent hope flooded through Katy again. Someone was out there; someone was coming! If she could just hold on a few minutes longer—

  The pole battered her, and she couldn’t escape the cold-blooded blows. Head, shoulders, hands! The blows rained down on her, relentless and merciless, with a fury that eclipsed the pounding rain. And even through the growing numbness of her body, a cruel jab at her wrist brought such sharp pain that she cried out and let go of the rock. Instinctively she lunged for the only thing within reach, the pole.

  She caught it, felt it buck and twist in her hands as Evan tried to wrench it away from her. Blindly she clung to it. Then it was loose, unfettered. She hadn’t lost her grip, but he had! Arms windmilling wildly, feet slipping on the wet ledge—

  For a peculiar moment something like a dark shadow loomed over her, arms outstretched like the wings of a vulture. A splash rolled a fresh wave over her, but it was insignificant in the deluge of rain and river already surrounding her from above and below. Momentarily his face, terrified now, slid by only inches from hers, his hands desperately reaching for her. Then the swoop of green water took him, and her too, sweeping her into its relentless pull.