Chapter 5
My husband buried me before I died.
I was still clinging to the water, to the air, to the tiny, stubborn command to live beating somewhere beneath my heart.
I was still clawing through the black, icy depths, still trying to understand where the sky was, where the bottom was, which side of the world held people who could breathe, while Adrian was probably already standing in a lifeboat, holding Nikki close in my life jacket and mentally choosing the first proper words he would give the police.
I knew him. He would not sob. He would not scream my name until his voice gave out.
He would wear the face of a man who had endured tragedy with dignity, because even another person's death was raw material Adrian Mercer could mold into a reputation.
"I tried to save her." "It all happened so fast." "She was panicking.
" "We held out hope until the very end." He would say it in a low voice, with carefully measured pauses and that wounded rasp that usually brought tears to women's eyes.
And no one would ask why his mistress had the life jacket issued to me.
No one would ask why there had been room in the boat for a handbag.
No one would ask what the order "push her off" sounded like when it came from the man who had once promised you would never be alone again.
The water was not water but a vast black mouth, chewing me slowly with cold indifference.
I do not remember how long I fought. In moments like those, time falls apart.
It is no longer hands on a clock or seconds passing, but ragged pieces of terror: a breath that will not come; pain in my chest; the fabric of my dress dragging me down; hair plastered to my face; one hand growing weaker; my belly, where I am trying to press my palm, though my palm will no longer obey me.
I opened my mouth and swallowed icy filth instead of air, then coughed underwater, choked, and thrashed like a fish on a hook.
And somewhere inside that agonizing, animal struggle, such fury suddenly rose in me that the cold receded for one second.
Not today. Not like this. Not for them. I could not die in a dress my husband had chosen for me after he had chosen another woman.
I could not give Vivian Mercer a convenient story about her grieving son.
I could not leave Nikki my watch, my life jacket, my bedroom, my air, and then my death as the final accessory to her gold dress.
I kicked hard and lunged upward. I saw a blurred, murky patch of light and reached for it with such hunger that it might have held not air but my entire stolen life.
My fingers slid over something solid, perhaps a piece of wreckage, perhaps someone else's hand.
I could not tell. Someone struck my shoulder, or a wave hurled a body against me.
I tried to scream, but only a bubble escaped my throat.
My chest burned. My head grew heavy. My thoughts drifted apart.
Adrian's face flashed before my eyes, not the face he wore now, not the terrible one, but the face I had once fallen in love with.
He stood in the hallway of the group home, tall, foreign to that place, impossible, dressed in an expensive coat among the peeling walls, looking at me as though he had truly seen me.
"You're not alone anymore," he had said.
God, how easy it is to buy a girl no one has ever chosen.
All it takes is one beautiful sentence at the right moment, and she will hand you the keys to everything she has not yet had time to lose.
I broke the surface. Not beautifully, not triumphantly, not like the women in movies who lift their faces to the rain and breathe while music swells.
I burst out of the water a gasping, half-dead mass of pain, seized a piece of floating wreckage, and coughed so violently it felt as though my lungs were turning inside out.
The air was cold and jagged, reeking of smoke, diesel, burned metal, and wet iron.
Everything around me was screaming. The water was strewn with lights, people, debris, and orange blots of life jackets that moved, vanished, then appeared again between the waves.
The riverboat lay off to one side like an enormous, twisted carcass, smoke pouring from it, and suddenly the sheer scale of it terrified me beyond reason.
That white palace, where an hour ago everyone had applauded another woman's pregnancy, was now sinking like any cheap boat, and with it sank every belief I had ever had in rules.
I tried to find Adrian's lifeboat. I could not see it.
Maybe it had already pulled away. Maybe he was far from here.
Maybe he was holding Nikki's hand and telling her everything would be all right.
I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood.
Let him tell her. I no longer had the strength even to hate. Only to hold on.
"Hey! Ma'am!" someone shouted from the side, though the sound reached me as if through cotton. I turned my head and saw a light. The narrow beam of a flashlight slashed across the water, swept over my face, and blinded me.
"She's alive! One alive over here!" a man yelled. I wanted to answer, but another coughing fit seized me, and I nearly slipped off the wreckage. The water immediately pulled me down, greedy and offended, as though I had dared escape too soon.
"Hold on! Do you hear me? Hold the hell on!"
His voice was rough, angry, alive. For some reason, those words suddenly sounded more beautiful than every tender thing I had heard throughout my marriage. Because there was action in them. There was a hand preparing to pull me in, not push me away.
A small motorboat came toward me. It was not one of the riverboat's lifeboats, nothing glossy or designed for wealthy guests, but a dark workboat with peeling paint along its sides and two men in rain jackets.
One held the flashlight while the other threw me a life ring.
It splashed down beside me, but I could not lift my arm.
My fingers would not obey. My body had become foreign and heavy, as though my bones had been replaced with lead.
"Your hands! Give me your hands!" the man shouted.
I tried. I could not do it. He cursed and leaned so far over the side that the other man grabbed him by the belt, then clamped a hand around my wrist. Pain sliced through the scraped skin.
I cried out, and that sound became the first proof that I was not dead yet.
"Pull!" he roared. They hauled me upward. My soaked dress had become impossibly heavy and kept dragging me down, as though all the luxury of my former life had decided to finish drowning me.
"What the hell is she wearing, body armor?" one of them hissed.
"Cut it," the other replied.
"No!" I rasped, without understanding why. Perhaps because that dress was the last thing connecting me to the woman who had still had hope that morning. The man stared at me as if I were insane.
"Beautiful, it's the dress or you. Choose fast, before the river chooses for you."
The knife flashed. The fabric split along my side with a sharp rip, the cold sank its teeth into my skin, and they rolled me over the gunwale.
I collapsed onto the bottom of the boat, coughing, shivering, and curling against the spasms. Someone covered me with a jacket. Someone slapped my cheek. Someone said:
"She's breathing. Pulse is weak. Is she pregnant?"
I seized on that word like a life preserver.
"The baby," I forced out. "Please... my baby..."
The men exchanged a glance. The one who had pulled me out crouched beside me. His face was broad and wet, covered in gray stubble, and his eyes were exhausted. Not kind. Kind eyes often do nothing but watch. His acted.
"Can you hear me? What's your name?" he asked. I tried to answer and could not. My name was lodged in my throat. Lana Mercer? Lana Hale? Adrian's wife? The dead woman? No one? The words scattered.
"What's your name?" he repeated more firmly. I opened my mouth, but another cough came out instead. He muttered a curse.
"All right, don't talk. Just don't black out. Look at me. That's it. How far along are you?"
"Not far," I whispered. "Hardly at all..."
"Got it. Mike, call the house. We need a doctor now. And tell Lawson we didn't catch a fish. We caught trouble in an evening gown."
Lawson.
The name glided past my consciousness like a dark bird. I did not know then that one day it would become not even my salvation but a dividing line: before him, I had been a woman abandoned to die; after him, I became a woman taught not to ask permission to live.
The boat shot forward. The engine howled, water struck the side, and another coughing fit racked me.
I lay on the bottom wrapped in a stranger's jacket and stared at the sky.
It was low, black, starless. A sky like that offers no comfort.
It simply looks down like the lid of a coffin that has not yet been closed.
Somewhere behind me were the riverboat, Adrian, Nikki, Vivian, the high-society guests, my little box, the cracked pregnancy test, and the words "prove it" and "push her off.
" All of it was receding, but none of it disappeared.
It raced after me from the inside, through my blood, my bones, every spasm, every breath that came with such difficulty.
I was shaking so hard my teeth chattered, and the man who had pulled me out pressed his palm to my shoulder to hold me steady.
"Don't black out, you hear me?" he said. "If you die in my boat, I'll take it personally. My shift has been lousy enough already."
I tried to smile. I could not.
"I'm not... planning to," I whispered.
"Good. Dying is a bad habit anyway. Especially over men."
I closed my eyes.
He could not have known.