Chapter 13 #2
Nine minutes. Then twenty. Then forty-five. She always ended them. He never once pushed past the end. But the sun started coming through the high windows earlier, and they’d still be sitting on the bleachers when the first swim team kids started banging on the side door.
In the seventh week, he asked.
“You don’t have to answer this,” he said. They were in their towels on the bottom row of the bleachers. He was looking at the water, not at her. “Ever. If you don’t want to.”
“Ask.”
“The winter,” he said. “The texts. Kerr offered me the file. I didn’t read it. I’m not going to. But I’ve been thinking about it every day.” He turned his head. “What was it like? That year. Being in that house. With me not there.”
Scarlett looked at the water for a long time.
Then she told him.
She told him about eating dinner alone at the long table four nights a week.
About going to bed at nine so the day would end.
About the board dinner in January, the patio door, the forty minutes, and finishing the meal alone at the head of the table with twelve people watching her pretend.
She told him about driving to this building at ten o’clock that night and swimming until her arms shook.
She told him about all the charity lunches where people asked her about Ryan’s new tower, and not one of them asked her about SwimSafe, and how after a while she stopped bringing it up.
She told him about the day she realized she was a name on a letterhead in her own life.
She talked for almost an hour.
He didn’t interrupt once. He didn’t say I’m sorry every thirty seconds.
He didn’t say but I was working so hard.
He didn’t turn it into a story about his guilt.
He just sat on the bottom bleacher with his towel around his shoulders and his eyes on her face and listened, the way she’d always wanted to be listened to.
Once, when she said I stopped bringing it up, his jaw went tight, and his hand closed into a fist on his knee. That was all.
When she finished, he was quiet for a long time.
“Thank you for telling me,” he said.
That was all he said. It was exactly right.
* * *
In the eighth week, she told him the thing she hadn’t told anyone.
It was early. They were standing in the shallow end, waist-deep, after the swim, because the bleachers were being painted. The water was warm. The building was empty. The lights over the lap lanes made long wavy lines on the bottom of the pool.
“I have to tell you something,” she said. “And I don’t want you to be nice about it.”
He waited.
“On the island,” Scarlett said. “I didn’t hide the whole time because of the concussion.
Or because of Luke and Alexis. Not the whole time.
” She made herself look at him. “At first I didn’t know.
I didn’t remember. I didn’t know if you were part of it.
That was real. But then my memory came back.
And I knew you weren’t. And I still didn’t come.
For days. I let you keep thinking I was dead.
I let you keep diving. I knew exactly what it was doing to you, and I let it. ”
He didn’t say anything.
“I was so angry,” she said, and her voice broke. “I was so angry at you, Ryan. And some ugly part of me thought, good. Let him find out what it’s like to lose somebody. Let him lie awake. And I hate that. I hate that part of me. You were in hell, and I let you stay there, on purpose.”
* * *
Ryan stood in the water and looked at her.
“I’d take you alive and hiding,” he said finally, “over anything else in the world. Over every other version of that week. I would take it a thousand times.”
“That’s not—”
“Let me finish.” He said it gently. “You were right not to trust anyone near me. Luke was near me. Alexis was near me. My brother was texting her from my own boat, writing your obituary. You had a concussion and a hand on your back and no proof. If you’d come back that week, she’d have been the one standing there to treat you.
” His voice went rough. “You kept yourself alive. You did it by yourself, in the water and on that island. You don’t owe me an apology for the way you did it. ”
“I let you suffer.”
“I let you drown,” Ryan said. “For a year. In our house. I’m not going to stand here and hold a few days against you.”
She put her hands over her face.
When she took them away, she said the rest.
“I watched you,” she said. “On the island. The search came to the harbor. The man who pulled me out, his boat was one of your search boats. I watched you through the shutters. Every day. I saw you go out diving. I heard you tell the reporters I could swim for hours. I saw you on the end of the dock at two in the morning, crying. I got halfway down the road to you.” She swallowed.
“And I saw her get off the plane. And I saw you let her hold you.”
She waited.
She waited for him to ask. Why didn’t you come? You were right there. You watched me and you let me sign that paper and fly home?
He didn’t ask.
He stood in the shallow end with the water around his waist, and his face crumpled, and he said, very quietly, “I’m so sorry you had to watch her do that.”
That was all. Not why. Not how could you. Just that.
I’m sorry you had to watch her do that.
* * *
She didn’t decide to kiss him. She was just suddenly close enough to.
She stepped through the water. He didn’t move. She put her hand on his wet chest, over his heart. He was shaking, very slightly, the way he’d shaken in the closet. She looked up at his face, at the water on his eyelashes, at the gray at his temples.
And she kissed him.
It was nothing like the kitchen. It was slow and soft and it tasted like chlorine.
His hands came up out of the water and rested on her waist, very lightly, like he was afraid she would break, or disappear.
He didn’t pull her closer. He let her set the pace.
She opened her mouth and he opened his, and the warm water moved around them, and her whole body lit up with it, every inch of skin.
It was the gentlest kiss of her life.
That was what scared her.
She pulled back. She took her hand off his chest. She stepped away through the water, one step, two.
He let her go. He didn’t reach. He just stood there, breathing hard, with his hands at his sides under the water.
“That’s all,” Scarlett said. Her voice shook. “That’s all for today.”
“Okay,” he said.
* * *
She drove home to the apartment over the dry cleaner’s with her hair still wet and her hands tight on the wheel.
She parked. She didn’t get out. She sat in the car in the morning sun with the engine ticking and put her forehead on the steering wheel.
She wasn’t afraid of him. That was what she understood, sitting there.
She had been afraid of him for months. Of what he’d do. Of what he’d say. Of whether he’d hurt her again.
This was different. This was worse.
She was afraid of herself. Of how much she had wanted to stay in that water. Of how much she wanted, more than anything, to try again. And of how badly it would break her, this time, if she did, and she was wrong.