Chapter 5 #3
She started to object, but then, perhaps after seeing my face, went silently to the small television against the wall and raised the volume.
Adrian appeared on the screen. He stood beside an ambulance in a wet shirt, a scratch on his cheek, pale, handsome, tragic enough to make me sick.
Nikki stood beside him in my life jacket, wrapped in a blanket, her face streaked with tears.
Vivian was a step behind them, straight-backed and composed, her hands on Nikki's shoulders.
My husband told the reporters, "We did everything we could.
Lana... she was frightened. I tried to reach her, but people began to panic.
I believed until the very end that they would find her.
" His voice broke in exactly the right place.
The cameras moved in for a close-up. Nikki covered her face with one hand.
Vivian pressed her lips together in a performance of courage.
And as I watched them, I felt something soft, final, and helpless drain out of me.
Not love. Love had died earlier. What left me was pity for myself.
The anchor continued. "Sources previously indicated that tensions had been building in the Mercer marriage regarding Lana's condition.
The philanthropist has not released an official comment about his personal life.
" My wedding photograph flashed across the screen.
The one where I looked up at Adrian as though he were my savior.
The caption read: "Lana Mercer, missing.
" Missing. What a convenient word. Not "abandoned.
" Not "pushed away." Not "left without a life jacket.
" Missing, as though I had simply vanished because my feelings became too much for me.
"Lie down," the doctor said quietly, without sternness now.
I slowly lowered myself onto the pillow. My entire body was shaking, but not from the cold.
"They said I'm unstable."
"Reporters say ugly things all the time."
"It wasn't the reporters. It was them."
The doctor said nothing.
I turned my head toward her.
"What's your name?"
"Dr. Irene Foster."
"Dr. Foster, if anyone asks, I'm not here."
She studied me very carefully.
"That could be dangerous."
"Being his wife was dangerous. Everything else is just weather now."
A low male voice came from the corner of the room:
"Not a bad line for a woman they just pulled out of the river."
I whipped my head around and saw him only then.
He was not standing in the corner. He was sitting there, in a wheelchair beside the door, in shadow, which was why he had blended into the darkness at first. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with short dark hair, wearing a plain black T-shirt that emphasized his powerful arms and the motionless legs beneath a blanket.
His face was hard, carved not from stone but from something that had survived fire.
A thin white scar ran from his temple to his cheekbone.
His eyes were dark, observant, and unpleasantly honest. He did not look at me with pity. That made him dangerous at once.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Graham Lawson. My house. My people. The river, unfortunately, belongs to everyone."
"Do you always welcome drowning women so warmly?"
"Only the ones who argue with a doctor three hours after making the clinically foolish decision to survive."
Dr. Foster sighed.
"Graham, she needs rest."
"She needs the truth," he said without taking his eyes off me. "They already tried to give her eternal rest at the bottom of the river."
I looked at him and could not understand why his harshness comforted me more than every soft voice in my former life. Perhaps because he did not stroke my pain and coo over it. He called it by its name.
"They'll be looking for me," I said. "Not to save me."
"They already are," Lawson replied.
My throat tightened.
"Who?"
"Your husband. His security team. The police. Reporters. And a few other people who are deeply unhappy that the river sometimes returns what it was ordered to take."
I closed my eyes for one second. Adrian was looking for me. Of course he was. Not for his wife. For a witness. A problem. A pregnant mistake who had failed to drown on schedule.
"I'm not going back," I said.
One corner of Graham Lawson's mouth lifted, without a trace of amusement.
"No one is inviting you back to hell. The question is something else, Lana. Do you want to hide, or do you want to come out one day in a way that makes them regret leaving you without that life jacket?"
I opened my eyes.
A faint ache pulled through my belly again, and I carefully laid my hand over the blanket. My baby was there. For now. I was here. For now. Beyond the window, the river that had failed to hold me darkened beneath the sky.
"I want my husband, for the first time in his life, to understand what it means to beg and be denied," I said slowly, feeling each word become a bone in my new spine.
Lawson studied me for a long moment. Then he nodded.
"Then start living. Taking revenge for the dead is inconvenient."
And in that moment, lying in a stranger's house beneath a stranger's blanket, with an IV in my arm, my ruined past behind me, and one tiny for now beneath my heart, I understood for the first time that Adrian truly had buried me too soon.
But he had overlooked one thing.
Sometimes what rises from the grave is no longer a wife.