Chapter 7
That evening, Nikki lit a candle for the repose of my soul.
I was still breathing, swallowing bitter pills, counting the minutes between the dragging cramps low in my abdomen, afraid to so much as turn onto my side because Dr. Irene Foster watched me as though every movement I made could tip the scales, with my child's life on one side and everything Adrian Mercer had managed to destroy inside me on the other.
I was still warm. My fingers trembled, my palms stung, my shoulder ached, an enormous bruise spread across my ribs, and my hair smelled of river water and medicine, but Nikki was already standing before the cameras in a black dress, holding a slender wax candle the way one holds a symbol of someone else's victory: beautifully, mournfully, with the perfect turn of a wrist no longer adorned by my watch.
They had probably taken it off. Even treachery has stylists.
Andrew turned on the television. He didn't mean any harm.
He brought me tea, set a mug with a slice of lemon floating in it on the nightstand, and muttered, "Five minutes of news, then I'm turning it off.
Otherwise you'll work yourselves up so badly with no information that the doctor will strangle me afterward.
" I wanted to tell him I didn't need information, that I already had so much of it I couldn't fit it into my lungs, but then the anchor said the name Mercer, and I fell silent.
The screen showed the facade of our house.
My former house. White stone, tall windows, the rain-slicked drive, security at the gates, reporters behind barricades, black cars lining the lane.
The house looked flawless, even in mourning.
The wealthy have designers for grief, too: the right flowers, the right lighting, the right people standing in front of the right door.
Then the camera moved closer to the front steps, and I saw Adrian.
He wore a black suit. He was so handsome I wanted to smash the screen with something heavy.
Not because I still wanted him. No. Nothing remained of the warm, hungry admiration with which I once watched him fasten his cuff links in the morning.
Now his beauty felt like a mockery. The face of a man who knew how to look tragic even after ordering someone to shove you away.
Vivian Mercer stood beside him, straight-backed and severe, holding a white carnation.
She wore the expression of a woman who had lost not a daughter-in-law but an inconvenient expense.
A little behind them stood Nikki. Black dress, hair swept back, eyes damp, one palm resting on her stomach.
She wasn't clinging to Adrian brazenly, the way she had yesterday.
She held on carefully, as if she were afraid her presence might cause him pain.
God, what an actress. What subtle, vile work.
Not one unnecessary movement. Everything calculated: I'm beside him, but I'm not taking her place; I'm grieving, but I carry his future inside me; I'm not celebrating, I'm simply the one who survived.
"Turn it off," Graham said.
I hadn't noticed him in the doorway. He sat in an armchair near the threshold, his face dark with anger, his hands gripping the armrests so tightly his knuckles had gone white. Andrew was already reaching for the remote, but I raised my hand sharply.
"No."
"Lana." Graham Lawson's voice dropped lower.
"You can't watch this."
"There are so many things I'm not allowed to do anymore, I'm tempted to publish them as a separate book. Don't turn it off."
Dr. Foster, standing by the window with a tablet, exhaled in irritation.
"I'm about to throw all of you out."
But she didn't. Because she was watching, too. Everyone was watching. Even people who hadn't known me twenty-four hours ago understood: this wasn't the news on the screen. This was a live demonstration of how neatly someone could take my place while the sheet beneath my fingers was still warm.
A reporter held a microphone out to Adrian.
"Mr. Mercer, the entire country is following the search for your wife.
Is there still hope?" Hope. That word again.
It stalked me like a murderer in white gloves.
Adrian lowered his eyes and paused. Perfectly.
Expensively. It was the kind of pause a person rehearsed not in front of a mirror but inside himself, year after year, if he was accustomed to controlling other people's tears.
"There is always hope," he said. "But we have to be prepared for any outcome. Lana was... a very fragile person."
Fragile.
I laughed. Short and dry and so frightening that Andrew looked at me warily. A fragile person. This from the man who had thrown me into icy water and now seemed surprised that broken glass could cut his fingers. Adrian continued:
"The past few months have been difficult for her. We tried to help, but sometimes pain proves stronger than love."
I went cold beneath the blanket. Stronger than love.
He had already turned my pain into an illness, his betrayal into tragic helplessness, my possible death into elegant philosophy.
I watched his lips and suddenly remembered how they had touched my temple on our first night after the wedding, how he had whispered:
"You're mine. Everything will be all right now."
Back then, I had trembled with happiness. Now hatred shook me so hard that the IV line gave a faint rattle against the pole.
"Bastard," Andrew said quietly.
Graham said nothing. He watched the screen as if memorizing a target.
The reporter turned to Nikki.
"Nikki, you were with Mr. Mercer when the tragedy occurred. How are you holding up?"
Nikki flinched, drew the candle to her chest, and looked up at Adrian. Subtle. Tender. Almost with the same openness with which I had gazed at him in our wedding photograph.
"I don't want to talk about myself," she said in a trembling voice. "Lana is all that matters right now. I'm praying they find her. And if she..."
She broke into a sob, covered her mouth with one hand, and let the camera capture a close-up of the tear sliding down her cheek.
"If she can hear us, I want her to know we don't hold anything against her."
I stopped breathing.
We don't hold anything against her.
Me.
They. Didn't. Hold. Anything. Against me.
The room tilted. Not from weakness. From an absurdity so monstrous my brain couldn't process it at first. I was lying in a stranger's house because my husband had taken my life vest for his mistress; my child was holding on through injections, bed rest, and some unfathomable mercy from God; my name was being dragged through the news like a filthy sheet; and Nikki, in a black dress with a memorial candle, was magnanimously forgiving me.
I tried to inhale, but no air came. It felt as though straps had been cinched around my chest. Irene rushed to me.
"Lana, breathe. Do you hear me? Slowly. Look at me."
"She..."
I couldn't finish. The words scraped the inside of my throat.
"She said..."
"I heard her. Breathe."
Graham snatched the remote from Andrew and turned off the television. The screen went black. But Nikki didn't disappear. She stayed inside me, with her candle, her black dress, and her borrowed magnanimity. I clenched the blanket and tried to sit up, but Irene held me down by the shoulders.
"Stay down."
"I want to go there."
"No."
"I want to stand in front of them and say..."
"No."
"Why does everyone keep saying no to me?" I snapped.
"Yesterday they told me no in the lifeboat, and today you're telling me no in bed. Is anyone ever going to ask what I want?"
Irene didn't back down.
"Do you want to live?"
I fell silent.
"That's what you want," she said harshly. "Everything else comes later."
I turned to face the wall. The tears came anyway, angry, hot, humiliating.
I hated them. Every one of them. I hated that I was crying in the wrong place, in front of the wrong people, without the right weapon in my hands.
I wanted my tears to turn to acid, burn through my skin, spill out, and reach Adrian, Nikki, Vivian, everyone watching the report and thinking: poor fragile Lana, poor strong Adrian.
But tears were only water. And there had already been far too much water in my life over the past twenty-four hours.
"They're going to make me out to be insane now," I said, staring at the wall.
"They already are," Graham replied.
"Thank you. That's very reassuring."
"Reassurance is for people who need you asleep."
I turned my head. He had moved closer to the bed, and now I could see his face without shadow. Lawson had the eyes of a man who had once watched a lie become the official version and had never forgiven it. Not the world, not himself, not the people who signed the papers.
"And what do you need?" I asked. "For me to stay awake?"
"For you to remember everything."
"Believe me, I won't forget being left to drown."
"You'll forget details. The mind is merciful toward its weakest places.
Later they'll tell you that you got confused, that you were in shock, that you misunderstood, that Adrian was trying to save you, that Nikki didn't know, that the guard acted on his own.
They won't attack the event, Lana. They'll attack your faith in yourself.
That's why you need to record it now. While the pain is fresh and hasn't learned to fear attorneys yet. "
I watched him and felt that silence before a gunshot rise inside me again.
"Record it?"
"Voice recorder. Paper. Anything. Who said what. Who stood where. Who took the life vest. Who gave the order to push you away. The bag. The lifeboat. Witnesses. Kyle. The guard. Nikki. His mother. Everything."
"I can barely hold a pen."
"Then you'll dictate."
"Do you always give orders to women after they've nearly drowned?"
"Only the ones planning to come back from the dead with grievances."