“Jesus.” Charlie stumbled back.
“Please leave.” Judith dropped the empty magazine from the gun. “I told you, I’m not going to hurt you.”
“What are you going to do?” Charlie’s heart quivered as she asked the question.
She knew what the woman was planning to do.
“Charlotte, go.” Judith found a box of bullets and scattered them onto the table. She started to load the magazine.
“Jesus,” Charlie repeated.
Judith paused her work. “I know how ridiculous this is going to sound, but please stop taking the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Okay,” Charlie said. Ben was listening. He was probably on his way, running through the woods, jumping over trees, pushing limbs aside, trying to find Charlie.
All she had to do was keep Judith talking.
“Please,” Charlie begged. “Please don’t do this. I have questions to ask you about that day, about what—”
“You need to forget about it, Charlotte. You need to do what your daddy told you and put it in a box and leave it there, because I am telling you right now that you don’t ever want to remember what that horrible man did to you.” Judith jammed the magazine into the gun. “Now, I really need for you to go.”
“Oh, Judith, please don’t do this.” Charlie felt her voice shake. This couldn’t happen. Not in this kitchen. Not to this woman. “Please.”
Judith pulled back the slide, loading a bullet into the chamber. “Leave, Charlotte.”
“I can’t—” Charlie held out her hands, reaching toward Judith, toward the gun. “Please don’t do this. This can’t happen. I can’t let you—”
Bright white bone. Pieces of heart and lung. Cords of tendon and arteries and veins and life spilling out of her gaping wounds.
“Judith,” Charlie cried. “Please.”
“Charlotte.” Her voice was firm, like a teacher in front of the classroom. “You are to go outside immediately. I want you to get in your truck, and drive to your father’s house and call the police.”
“Judith, no.”
“They’re used to handling these sorts of things, Charlotte. I know that you think you are, but I can’t take that on my conscience. I just can’t.”
“Judith, please. I am begging you.” Charlie was so close to the gun. She could lunge for it. She was younger, faster. She could stop this.
“Don’t.” Judith placed the gun behind her on the counter. “I told you that I’m not going to hurt you. Don’t make me go back on my word.”
“I can’t!” Charlie was sobbing. She felt like razors were pumping through her heart. “I can’t leave you here to kill yourself.”
Judith opened the kitchen door. “You can and you will.”
“Judith, please. Don’t put this burden on me.”
“I’m lifting your burden, Charlotte. Your father is gone. I’m the last person who knows. Your secret dies with me.”
“It doesn’t need to die!” Charlie screamed. “I don’t care! People already know. My husband. My sister. I don’t care. Judith, please, please don’t—”
Without warning, Judith charged toward her. She grabbed Charlie around the middle. Charlie felt her feet leave the ground. She braced her hands against the woman’s shoulders. Her ribs felt crushed as she was carried across the kitchen and thrown out onto the porch.
“Judith, no!” Charlie scrambled to stop her.
The door slammed in her face.
The lock clicked.
“Judith!” Charlie yelled, banging her fist on the door. “Judith! Open the—”
She heard a loud crack echo inside the house.
Not a car backfiring.
Not fireworks.
Charlie fell to her knees.
She pressed her hand to the door.
A person who has been up close when a gun is fired into another human being never mistakes the sound of a gunshot for something else.
WHAT HAPPENED TO SAM
Sam alternated her arms in the water, cutting a narrow channel through the warm waters of the swimming pool. She turned her head every third stroke and drew in a long breath. Her feet fluttered. She waited for the next breath.
Left-right-left-breathe.
She performed a perfect flip-turn against the wall of the pool, keeping her eyes on the black line guiding her lane. She had always loved the calmness, the simplicity, of the freestyle stroke; that she had to concentrate just enough on swimming so that all extraneous thoughts floated away.
Left-right-left-breathe.
Sam saw the mark at the end of the line. She coasted until her fingers touched the wall. She kneeled on the floor of the pool, breathing heavily, checking her swimmer’s watch: 2.4 kilometers at 154.2 seconds per 100 meters, so 38.55 seconds per 25-meter length.
Not bad. Not as good as yesterday, but she had to make peace with the fact that her body worked at its own speed. Sam tried to tell herself that accepting this truth was progress. Still, as she got out of the pool, her competitive streak niggled at the edge of her encouragements. The desire to jump back in, to improve her time, was only dampened by a dull throb down her sciatic nerve.
Sam quickly showered off the salt water. She dried herself with the towel, her wrinkled fingers catching on the Egyptian cotton. She examined the furrows in her fingertips; her body’s response to being submerged for so long.
She kept on her prescription goggles as she rode up in the elevator. At the lobby floor, an older man got on, newspaper under one arm, wet umbrella in his hand. He chuckled when he saw Sam.
“A beautiful mermaid!”
She tried to match his ebullient grin. They talked about the bad weather, that a storm working its way up the coast was expected to bring even heavier rains to New York by the afternoon.
“Almost June!” he said, as if the month had somehow sneaked up on him.
Sam felt caught a bit unawares herself. She could not believe that only three weeks had passed since she had left Pikeville. Her life had easily gone back to normal since then. Her schedule was the same. She saw the same people at work, conducted the same meetings and conference calls, studied the same sanitary storage bin schematics in preparation for trial.
And yet, everything felt different. Fuller. Richer. Even doing something as mundane as getting out of bed came with a sense of lightness that had eluded her since—well, if she was being honest, since she had woken up in the hospital twenty-eight years ago.
The elevator bell dinged. They had reached the old man’s floor.
“Happy swimming, beautiful mermaid!” He waved his paper in the air.
Sam watched him walk down the hall. He had a jaunty step that reminded her of Rusty, especially when he began to whistle, then loudly jangled his keys to the beat.
As the elevator doors closed, Sam whispered, “‘Exit, pursued by a bear.’”
The wavy chrome that lined the doors showed a woman in ridiculous goggles, smiling to herself. Slim build. Black one-piece suit. She ran her fingers through her short, gray hair to help it dry. Her finger caught the edge of the scar where the bullet had entered her brain. She seldom thought of that day anymore. Instead, she thought of Anton. She thought of Rusty. She thought of Charlie and Ben.