Chapter 1 #2
Scarlett sat at the head of the table because Ryan liked her there.
From that chair she could see everyone. Glen and Linda.
A couple from Atlanta who owned half of a hotel chain.
Two partners from a fund in New York. Alexis, across and three seats down, laughing at something one of the partners said.
Scarlett smiled. She passed plates. She asked Linda about her grandchildren and listened to the answers. She made the man from New York tell the story about his boat getting stuck on a sandbar, because it was a good story and he liked telling it.
Under the table her hands were fists.
Ryan stood to make a toast. He was good at toasts. He thanked everyone for coming. He thanked Troy and the crew. He said something about the water here being the kind of thing that made a man remember what he was building for.
“And to my wife,” he said, lifting his glass toward her, “who makes all of this look easy. Nine years, and she still lets me keep the boat.”
Everyone laughed and raised their glasses. Scarlett raised hers. Across the table, Alexis raised hers too, and looked at Scarlett over the rim with an expression that was almost kind.
After the toast Glen stood up and announced that he was in. There was cheering. Ryan shook his hand. A steward brought out champagne.
Alexis took two glasses from the tray and walked around the table. She set one in front of Scarlett.
“You look like you need this,” she said quietly. “It’s been a long day of being perfect.”
Scarlett looked at the glass. She looked up at Alexis.
“Thank you,” she said.
She didn’t want it. She wanted to pour it in the doctor’s lap.
But every face at the table was turned toward her, happy, waiting, and Glen Pratt was raising his glass to her husband, and Scarlett had spent nine years not being the woman who made a scene.
So she lifted it and drank. She drank half the glass in one swallow, to get it done.
It tasted like champagne. Slightly bitter at the end. She thought it was her own mouth.
* * *
Within the hour, the lights were wrong.
They had halos around them. The strings of little bulbs over the table looked like they were melting. Scarlett blinked hard. Linda Pratt was talking, and her words arrived a half second after her mouth moved.
“Scarlett? Honey, you’ve gone white.”
“I’m fine.” Her tongue felt thick. “Too much sun. I think I need to lie down.”
She stood. The deck tilted, and it wasn’t the boat. She put a hand on the back of her chair. Her stomach rolled.
She had been drunk before. In college, after conference finals, the whole team had gotten drunk on cheap wine in a motel room. This was not that. Her legs felt like they belonged to someone else. Her thoughts kept sliding off the edge of whatever she was trying to hold.
Half a glass, she thought. I had half a glass.
Ryan wasn’t at the table. She looked around. The investors had broken into groups. Troy was on the bridge, a shape in a lit window. Somebody said Ryan had gone up to show Glen the stars.
She went up the stairs to the upper deck holding the rail with both hands.
Glen wasn’t there. It was only Ryan and Alexis, standing together at the front rail of the sky deck, away from the lights.
Their backs were to her. They were not touching.
Their heads were bent close, and Ryan was talking in a low voice, and Alexis was listening the way a woman listens when the words are for her alone.
Scarlett could not hear what he said. She could hear the tone. It was the tired, soft, honest voice from the messages. The one she had not heard in years.
“Ryan,” she said.
He turned. It took him a second to find her in the dark. “Hey. There you are.”
“I don’t feel right.” Her voice came out smaller than she meant. She hated it. “Something’s wrong. I need you to come with me.”
He looked at her. Then, briefly, he looked back at Alexis. It was only a flick of the eyes. Scarlett saw it anyway.
“Give me ten minutes,” he said. “Okay? We’re right in the middle of something. Go lie down. I’ll be right there.”
Ten minutes.
She stood there and let those words land. She was sick and her husband was asking her to wait so he could finish talking to another woman under the stars.
“Let me look at her,” Alexis said, already moving. Her voice was gentle and full of concern. “She’s probably dehydrated. It happens out here. I’ll get her settled, Ryan. You stay.”
“You’re sure?” Ryan said. And he sounded relieved. That was the part Scarlett would remember. He sounded relieved.
“Of course. It’s what I do.”
Alexis came toward her and took her elbow. Scarlett pulled her arm free. She turned and went back down the stairs on her own, gripping the rail, and Alexis followed.
* * *
Scarlett did not go to the cabin.
She went to the back of the boat because she wanted air, and because she could not stand the idea of lying in that wide bed waiting for ten minutes to be over.
She went down the last short set of steps to the lowest deck at the stern, where the swim platform stuck out over the water.
In the daytime the crew lowered it so guests could jump in.
At night it was a dark shelf above the rushing wake.
The noise of the engines was louder here.
The white water behind the boat hissed and churned.
She held onto the rail and breathed through her mouth.
Her head was spinning. The little gate in the rail, the one that opened onto the platform, swung loose on its latch and banged softly with each roll of the boat.
“Scarlett.” Alexis came down the steps behind her. “You shouldn’t be back here. Come inside.”
“Don’t touch me.”
“You’re not well. You’ve had a lot to drink.”
“I had half a glass.” Scarlett turned around and leaned back against the rail. The lights from the deck above lit one side of Alexis’s face. She looked calm. She looked like a doctor. “I had half a glass of the champagne you brought me.”
Something moved in Alexis’s eyes. For a moment.
Scarlett took out her phone. The green case was slick in her wet hand. She held it up so the doctor could see it.
“I read them,” she said. “All of them. Every call. You’re the only one I can say this to. I have pictures of every message. Every single one.”
Alexis looked at the phone.
“I’m sorry you found out that way,” she said softly. “Truly. But Scarlett, you have to understand. He needed someone. You weren’t there.”
“I was in the next room,” Scarlett said. Her voice cracked. She was so angry she could barely see. “I was in the next room for two months. He could have knocked.”
The boat rolled. Scarlett’s knees went soft and she grabbed for the rail. Her head swam. The gate banged beside her.
“Careful,” Alexis said. She stepped close. Her voice was low and warm. “The gate’s open. Let me help you.”
Her hand settled flat on Scarlett’s back, between her shoulder blades.
For a second it was almost gentle.
Then it pushed.
Scarlett’s hip hit the loose gate and the gate swung out.
Her foot found the edge of the platform and then found nothing at all.
The phone was gone from her hand. The lights of the Halcyon tilted up and away from her.
She saw the white hull. She saw, clearly, the underside of the swim platform coming at her face.
Something cracked against her head.
Then the noise of the engines was above her, and around her, and fading, and there was only the cold, and the salt in her mouth, and black water closing over her like a door.