Chapter 8 The Other Side
The Other Side
Julian
Same evening
The impact throws me forward and I catch myself on the cabin housing, barely keeping my feet. Captain Medina is already cutting the engines, his voice sharp with controlled panic as he radios for help. The deck tilts sickeningly to starboard.
"Eliza!" I shout, pushing off from the cabin. "ELIZA!"
No answer. Just the groan of stressed metal and the slap of waves against the wounded hull.
I run forward, scanning the deck. Empty. Loose cushions have slid toward the starboard rail. No sign of her.
Someone is screaming from the water. "Julian! Help! Please!"
I reach the starboard rail and look down. Margot is in the water below, her life jacket keeping her afloat but her face white with terror. She's flailing, splashing, making the kind of panicked movements that exhaust you in minutes.
I lean over the rail. "Where's Eliza? Did you see her?"
Margot points toward the tender coming into view beyond the stern. "They got her! I saw them pull her up!"
Relief crashes through me so hard my knees nearly buckle. She's safe. Eliza is safe. The tender got to her first.
"I can't..." Margot is coughing, struggling. "Julian, I can't keep my head up. Please."
I don't hesitate. The water is cold when I hit it, shockingly cold, but my jacket keeps me buoyant and I've been swimming in these waters since I was a child. I reach Margot in seconds and grab her arm.
"I've got you. Stop fighting."
"I can't... the waves..."
"Stop fighting. Let me pull you."
She goes limp, which is what I need, and I hook my arm around her chest and start swimming toward the approaching tender. The boat is close now, maybe fifty yards, and I can see two crew members on deck preparing to receive us.
My arms burn. My lungs burn. Margot is dead weight in my grip, trembling and gasping, but she's alive and Eliza is already safe and we're going to be okay.
The tender's engine cuts to idle as we reach it. Hands reach down and I push Margot up toward them, watch her get hauled over the rail, then grab the ladder and pull myself aboard.
The moment my feet hit the deck I'm turning, scanning, looking for my wife.
She's not here.
"Where's Eliza?" I grab the nearest crew member, a young guy in a windbreaker. "The woman they pulled from the water. Where is she?"
He looks confused. "We haven't pulled anyone from the water. You're the first."
No.
No, that's not right.
"She was in the water." My voice sounds wrong, too loud, too sharp. "Margot said you picked her up. A woman with dark hair, she was wearing..."
"Sir, we just got here. We haven't picked up anyone else."
I spin toward Margot, who is hunched on a bench seat, coughing up seawater. "You said they rescued her. You said you saw them."
Margot looks up at me, her eyes wide and frightened. "I thought... I saw the tender coming, and I thought..."
"You thought WHAT?"
"Julian." The helmsman's voice cuts through my rising panic. "If there's someone else in the water, we need to know where."
"The other side of the yacht." I'm already moving toward the bow. "She was on the port side. She must still be..."
The tender swings around the listing hull of the Celestine, and I grip the rail so hard my knuckles go white. We round the stern and there she is, a small figure in a bright orange life jacket, floating in the chop maybe thirty yards out.
"THERE!" I'm pointing, shouting, ready to jump back in the water if that's what it takes. "That's her, that's my wife, get to her NOW!"
The helmsman opens the throttle. The young guy in the windbreaker, Sam according to his jacket, is already at the rail with a rescue line.
We reach her in seconds that feel like hours. Sam throws the line; Eliza grabs it with one hand, her other arm tucked against her chest. They haul her aboard and I'm there, reaching for her, pulling her into my arms.
She's shaking. Cold and wet and shaking, and there's something wrong with her wrist, and she's looking at me like I'm a stranger.
"Eliza." I cup her face in my hands. "Are you okay? Are you hurt? I thought you were... Margot said..."
"Don't." Her voice is flat. Cold. Nothing like the woman who kissed me three days ago in our study.
"What?"
"Don't touch me."
I drop my hands like I've been burned. "Eliza, what..."
"I was in the water." She's not yelling. Somehow that's worse. "I was in the water on the other side of the boat, and I watched you swim away from me."
"I didn't know. Margot said you were already picked up. She pointed at the tender and said..."
"You swam the other direction." She keeps her eyes on me. "I saw you choose her."