Chapter 10
By morning, Scarlett Walsh was the woman who tried to drown herself.
She found out on the little television in her bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed with the door still locked.
Every morning show had it. They had her buoy text in big white letters on a blue background.
They had her pearl-earring picture. One of them had a psychologist on a couch, a man with a beard and a soft voice, who had never met her, explaining to the country what it meant when a woman writes about swimming out and not coming back.
“Often,” the psychologist said kindly, “these messages are a cry for help that nobody around them hears.”
“Nobody around them,” the host repeated, and shook her head, and they cut to a picture of Ryan.
Scarlett turned it off.
Outside, the helicopters were back. More of them than the first time. They went around and around over the house like big angry insects. Out front, news vans lined the street again.
She had been dead. And then she had been a miracle. And now she was a sad, drunk, lonely woman who had jumped off her husband’s boat and then made up a story about it because she couldn’t face the truth.
All in three weeks.
* * *
Sheila Gaines called at nine.
“Scarlett,” Sheila said. Her voice was different. No darling. No miracle. “I’m so sorry to call with this. I want you to know it was not my idea.”
Scarlett closed her eyes. “What wasn’t.”
“The board met last night. By phone. After the—after the article.” Sheila took a breath. “They’ve voted to place you on leave from SwimSafe. Just for a while. Just until things settle down. For your wellbeing, Scarlett. That’s the word they used. Everyone is worried about you.”
Scarlett didn’t say anything.
“The donors are nervous,” Sheila said. “Barb Hughes called me at midnight. The mayor’s office called. They’re saying we can’t have you standing in a pool with children while the whole country is asking if you’re—” Sheila stopped. “I’m so sorry.”
“I built it,” Scarlett said.
“I know, darling.”
“I built it before I ever met him. I taught the first eight kids in a public pool in Little River with a bag of kickboards I bought at a garage sale. You didn’t give it to me. The foundation didn’t give it to me. I brought it to you.”
“I know.”
“And now you’re taking it away from me for my wellbeing.”
Sheila didn’t have an answer to that.
Scarlett hung up.
She sat on the edge of the bed and thought about Andre, the little boy from the kickoff, floating on his back with his eyes squeezed shut.
She thought about Destiny at the orange buoy.
She thought about a hundred kids in red swim caps getting a letter this week that said Miss Scarlett won’t be teaching this summer, and she put both hands over her face and screamed into them, quietly, so nobody downstairs would hear.
* * *
Agent Kerr came to the house at eleven. She had to come in through the back, from the neighbor’s yard, because of the vans.
They sat at the dining room table again. Kerr looked tired.
“I can’t stop the press,” Kerr said, before Scarlett could ask.
“I wish I could. I can’t. The texts are out now, and they’re going to stay out.
” She folded her hands. “And I’m not going to lie to you.
The U.S. Attorney’s office called me at seven this morning.
They read the article too. They’re asking questions. They’re asking if I’m sure.”
“Are you?”
Kerr looked at her for a long moment.
“I’m sure somebody put a sedative in your drink,” she said. “I’m sure you were in the water for seven hours. I’m sure Dr. Burke is lying about something.” She tapped the table. “What I’m not sure of yet is whether I can prove the rest. Those texts make it harder. A lot harder.”
Scarlett looked down at the table.
“There’s one thing I keep coming back to,” Kerr said.
“The lawyer’s email. It says Dr. Burke found your phone on the back deck of the yacht the morning after you went in.
Picked it up and kept it safe. Didn’t give it to the Bahamian police.
Didn’t give it to us. I asked her lawyer why this morning.
He said he wasn’t going to say anything more without a subpoena.
” Kerr put her glasses on her head. “So I’m getting a subpoena. ”
* * *
Luke came at one.
Scarlett heard the gate buzzer, and Ryan’s voice on the intercom, short and cold. Then the front door. Then Luke’s voice in the front hall, loud and smooth, the voice he used in boardrooms.
She unlocked her bedroom door. She walked to the top of the stairs, on her side of the line, and stood just out of sight behind the corner of the wall, and listened.
“—every channel in the country,” Luke was saying. “Every single one. Glen Pratt called me this morning. Glen Pratt, Ryan. He wants to know if his money is safe with a man whose wife is—”
“Careful,” Ryan said.
“Whose wife is unwell. That’s all I’m saying.
It’s a fact. It’s in the papers.” Luke’s voice dropped.
“Listen to me. Listen. You have a way out of this. It’s right there.
Her lawyer made you an offer. You tell the FBI what you saw that night.
That’s all. Not a lie. She was drinking.
Everybody saw it. She was upset. She got sick.
She went to the back of the boat. She fell.
It was an accident. A terrible, tragic accident.
You say that, and the texts go away, and the story goes away, and Alexis goes away, and we all get to go back to our lives. ”
“Alexis pushed her into the sea.”
“You don’t know that. She doesn’t know that. She had a concussion, Ryan. She had a hole in her memory the size of a truck. She’s been through hell and she needs something to blame that isn’t—” Luke stopped.
“Isn’t what?” Ryan said.
“Isn’t herself.” Luke said it gently. It was the worst thing about it.
“Think about it. Do you really want those texts read out loud in a courtroom? I want to leave him. He hasn’t looked at me in a month.
In front of a jury? In front of the press?
You want her to sit there and hear that?
Take the deal. For the company. For the lenders. For her. Do it for her.”
There was a long silence in the front hall.
Scarlett stood at the top of the stairs with her hand flat against the wall and her heart pounding. Say it, some awful, tired part of her thought. Say yes. Get it over with. Show me who you are.
“No,” Ryan said.
* * *
“Ryan—”
“No. I’m not going to tell the FBI my wife was drunk and fell.
Because it isn’t true. I’m not going to trade my wife’s safety for her privacy.
And I’m not going to let a woman who pushed her off my boat blackmail me with my wife’s own words.
” Ryan’s voice was quiet and steady, and it filled the whole front hall.
“And you’re going to stop telling me what I’m doing for her.
You don’t know one thing about her. You never bothered to. ”
“I’m trying to save your life—”
“You’re trying to save the company. You’ve always been trying to save the company.
That’s fine. That’s your job.” Ryan took a breath.
“But you went to the FBI, Luke. You walked into a federal building and told them my wife was struggling for months. You backed the woman who drugged her. You called my wife fragile on the record so the lenders would calm down.”
“I was protecting you.”
“You’ve been protecting me since I was sixteen years old,” Ryan said.
“You covered for me when I wrecked Dad’s car.
You covered for me with the board every time I blew a deadline.
You covered for me for two months when I was on the phone every night with my doctor, and you told me it was harmless, and you told me every guy in my position needed somebody to talk to.
And I let you. Every time. Because it was easier.
That’s on me. That’s all on me. But I’m done.
I’m done letting you clean up after me. Get out of my wife’s house. ”
“Your wife’s house?”
“It’s in her name. Get out.”
The front door opened. And after a long, long moment, it shut.
* * *
Scarlett went back into her room and locked the door, and stood in the middle of the carpet, shaking.
She didn’t know what she was feeling. It was too many things at once. She was angry. She was still so angry. For two months when I was on the phone every night with my doctor. He said it like it was a fact of the weather. Like it was just true.
And he had said no.
She heard the study door downstairs. She heard him on the phone. She heard Harold and I don’t care and then I’ll find another lawyer and, once, very loudly, No, Sheila, you listen to me.
Then she heard the front door open again.
She went to the window at the end of the upstairs hall. It looked out over the front of the house, the long drive, the big black gate.
Ryan was walking down the drive.
He was alone. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and no jacket. He was walking straight toward the gate and the wall of cameras and microphones and vans on the other side of it.
“No,” Scarlett whispered. “Ryan. No.”
* * *
He didn’t open the gate. He stopped a few feet inside it, and stood there, and let them come to the bars.
They came. All of them, at once. A roaring, shoving wave of cameras and microphones pushed up against the black iron, and a dozen people shouted his name at the same time. The sound carried through the window glass. The helicopter dropped lower overhead, wind pulling at his shirt.
Ryan waited until they stopped shouting.
It took a long time. He didn’t move. He just stood there with his hands at his sides. Finally the noise dropped. He wasn’t using a microphone. He didn’t need one. His voice had always carried.
Scarlett opened the hall window a few inches so she could hear.
“I’m going to say a few things,” Ryan said. “Then I’m going to go back inside. I’m not taking questions.”
The cameras clicked like rain.