Meredith
Present Day
After leaving Art’s, Alice begged to go to the beach. “I want to ask her something,” she said, eyes on her shoes. “It’s important.”
Meredith took Alice’s hand and squeezed. “You know Grandma isn’t here anymore, right? You understand?”
Alice frowned, confused, but nodded, no less determined. “Please can we go?”
Despite her fears over what they might find there, Meredith didn’t have the heart to say no. So they followed the sidewalk until it reached the grassy precipice, which led to a bridge that crossed the rocky edge. They kicked off their shoes at the end of the bridge and walked barefoot through the sand. Meredith watched her daughter pause where the tide washed over the shore, little toes digging into the wetness where she sighed, content.
Meredith slowed her pace. Gaze moving between Alice and the water, the skin on the back of her neck prickled. A wave washed over the beach, and the spray speckled her shins. Alice was already on her knees, a bright smile Meredith hadn’t seen in days on her face. It was a feeling Meredith recognized, one she hadn’t been able to experience until she was in her teens.
The weekend of her sixteenth birthday, Meredith and her friends had snuck down to the cove with a couple of six-packs of wine coolers someone had stolen from their parents’ garage. Her mother was sick that weekend, barely well enough to get out of bed, so she couldn’t physically stop Meredith from going. She’d been telling Meredith for nearly her entire life that going to the water invited trouble. That it was dangerous. That there were things out there looking to get her. While other parents soothed their children’s fears about monsters—under the bed, in the closet, in the bath—Meredith’s mother had described in intimate detail all the beasties hungry for her flesh and thirsty for her blood. This had been her one chance to prove her wrong.
At the cove, someone started a fire with some driftwood and a stack of newspapers abandoned by the side of the road. Her girlfriend at the time, Hannah, laid out a blanket and snacks. They toasted to Meredith, to the night, to the salt spray that sizzled in the fire as the waves crashed against the rocks on either side of the beach. Her initial anxiety over the water, the secrets it held, and the possibility of getting caught faded with every minute (and every sip of the fuzzy navel wine cooler). She finished three bottles on her own, tossing the last into the fire. Everyone cheered at the crash. Emboldened by the booze and Hannah’s smile, Meredith stripped to her underwear and demanded that everyone go swimming. It was her birthday, after all, which meant they all had to do her bidding—not that they needed much coercion.
Meredith hit the water first. She gasped with the cold, and her skin prickled with pleasure all the way up to her scalp. She could have melted on the spot. While the others stuck to the shoreline, splashing each other and screaming with each wave, Meredith wandered farther in, until the water reached her waist, and then she sank down, down, until the water completely enveloped her. Squeezing her eyes closed, she lay down on the ocean floor, running her fingers and toes through the sand.
See? she’d wanted to say to her mother. There’s nothing here that can hurt me.
But then something grabbed her foot. At first, she thought it was some seaweed caught around her ankle and she tried to kick it free, but then the grip tightened and started to pull her toward the deeper water, toward the dark. Fear knocked the wind out of her, and she kicked, hard, but the thing held tight. A hand, she thought. It feels like a hand. Panic shot through her and she twisted, eyes wide and stinging as she tried to see what—who—had her. When she was finally able to kick free, she shot to the surface. Her friends stuck by the shore. Hannah waved.
“That’s not funny,” Meredith shouted.
Hannah frowned.
Even as she said it, Meredith knew it couldn’t have been her. Hannah couldn’t have reached the shore again that fast.
“I’m coming in.” She said it loudly, intently, like an announcement to whatever had deemed her a trespasser. I get it. You don’t want me here. I’m leaving.
She took two steps, and the thing grabbed her leg again. This time, it pulled her down and kept pulling. She clawed at the sand, her screams lost in the water. The blood in her veins seemed to freeze as dread moved up her body. The salt stung her eyes, paralyzed open. She couldn’t tell how fast they were moving, but before she knew it, the floor seemed to fall away, dipping beneath her. Still the thing pulled. Her lungs screamed for air, but even as she kicked and thrashed, the thing’s hold was iron-tight. Her vision went fuzzy at the corners. Her head pounded.
A fog seemed to come over her then and, with it, a kind of calm. A small voice told her this was what it was like to drown. Soon her lungs would force a breath in, and they’d fill with water and everything would fade. The grip on her leg moved up her body. Hands that clawed and gripped at her thighs and hips and then wrapped around her middle. Like an alligator before it spins its prey, drowning it. She felt cold, too-slick skin against her neck. A mouth.
Suddenly, miraculously, the thing let go. As the fog faded from the edges of her mind, she kicked and pumped her arms until her face broke the surface. She sucked the warm night air in deep and gagged. Her body felt weak, but she fought to tread water and breathed until the coughing slowed. She wasn’t as far from shore as she thought. Her friends waved frantically from the beach. Hannah’s hands were clutched to her chest, like she’d been the one on the verge of drowning.
A splash to Meredith’s left had forced her to look, terrified of what she would see.
But there was nothing there. A ripple. The moon shining off the water.
Back on shore, she tore knots of seaweed from around her waist and legs, and decided that when she’d been drifting along the seafloor, she’d been caught in a tangle of it. It was the current that’d made her feel like she was being pulled. The cold skin she attributed to some kind of fish.
Sitting around the fire later, an untouched wine cooler in her hand, she’d brushed cautious fingers over the spot on the back of her neck where she’d thought, for the briefest second, she’d been kissed.
***
“That’s far enough, sweetie,” Meredith called now.
Alice flashed a thumbs-up, then returned her gaze to the water. She stood tall and still at the edge of the shore, tiptoeing back each time the water got too close. Tranquil and pensive, like a vestal virgin in sacred waters. Her hair swirled with the wind like black silk, and Meredith wanted to run her fingers through it, to marvel at this beautiful creature she’d carried.
She saw a lot of herself in Alice. She remembered being her age, or close, and spending full days up on the bluffs, staring down at the water with longing. Meredith wanted to urge her in, to have what Meredith never could.
But with the memory of her sixteenth birthday fresh in her mind, even she couldn’t take that first step in. She told herself it was her mother’s paranoia, burrowed deep in her head. There was nothing in the water that could hurt her. Nothing unnatural anyway.
Still, that first careful step felt like driving down the highway at ninety miles an hour—thrilling and terrifying. Cool water splashed up her ankle, and all at once she was overcome with a desire to sink down deep below the surface. To lay on the bottom and just…be.
Closing her eyes, she scooped the water in her palms and brought it to her face, cooling her sun-reddened cheeks. She licked her lips and shuddered. It tasted metallic. Bloody. When she opened her eyes again, Alice was looking at her, a worried look on her face.
“What’s wrong?” Meredith asked.
“You’re in the water. We can’t be in the water.”
“Sure we can.” She kicked a tiny wave, aiming a splash in Alice’s direction. “You got me all the way out here, now you want to go back?”
Alice nodded, fingers tangled together. It was a habit she’d had since she was a baby. When she was uncomfortable or scared, it was like she was trying to tie her fingers in knots.
“Is it because of what that girl said?” Meredith asked.
Alice didn’t answer, eyes stuck on the water at Meredith’s feet.
“It was just a mean trick,” Meredith continued. “I promise I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you.”
“Grandma said the water wasn’t safe,” Alice said carefully. “The girl told me Grandma and you and me were gonna die.” Tears welled, but she rubbed them away. “I’m done now. Can we go? Please?”
Meredith’s first instinct was to give in. She hated seeing Alice so scared, but this was exactly what she didn’t want to happen. She didn’t want her mother’s irrational fears to taint this place for Alice the way they had for Meredith.
“Come on,” she said. “Just a little step in. You don’t have to go far.”
But Alice was already shaking her head. She’d started to tremble, so Meredith sighed and came out of the water. Alice didn’t seem to breathe until Meredith was fully up on the shore.
“There. See? Everything’s fine.”
Alice nodded, the trembles settling, but she still couldn’t seem to look away from the waves.
Meredith knelt down beside her. Rubbed her arms. “Hey. It’s okay, yeah?” She kissed Alice’s cheek. “You said you wanted to ask Grandma something. Did you ask?”
Alice hesitated a beat before nodding.
“Did she say anything back?”
Alice’s voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “She said the red-haired girl was right.”
A chill washed over Meredith. She ripped her hand out of her daughter’s, immediately regretting it when she saw the hurt look on Alice’s face, but her hands had begun to shake and every brush of the wind on her ankle was a hand, a rope of hair. “I’m sorry, kiddo,” she said, injecting too much cheerfulness in her voice. “It’s cold. You were right. We should go back.”
Despite Meredith’s prodding and promises of more ice cream, Alice spent the walk back to the house in silence. Not for the first time, Meredith thought that by bringing Alice here, she’d let her down. She told herself they should leave. Go back to Arlington and try to pick up their lives where they’d left off. But the house… she thought, and guiltily tossed a glance over her shoulder at the ocean.
Somewhere, deep down, she wondered if there was something about this place that got into her, got into her mother, that made it too easy to let down the ones they loved. And if it came down to it, would Meredith be brave enough to walk away now that she had the taste of the ocean and the sand in her mouth? Would she be able to leave it behind for Alice’s sake? For her own? Or would history just keep repeating itself?
***
They had just finished dinner when someone knocked gently on the front door. Meredith thought about ignoring it; sure, the lights were on and it was clear someone was home, but she wasn’t in the mood for company, especially if it happened to be Vik passing by to see if she’d changed her mind about the lighthouse.
Whoever it was knocked again.
“Mom. Door,” Alice said.
“I hear it, kiddo.” She shut off the kitchen light and pulled Alice close. “Let’s play the quiet game and see if they go away.”
Alice hid a giggle behind her fists and nodded.
Another knock, this one more insistent.
“Shit,” Meredith muttered.
“You lose,” Alice said.
Meredith tweaked her nose. “Hush. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
Through the peephole, she saw a man in a dark-gray suit, a large envelope in his hand, checking his watch. Her stomach flip-flopped.
When she opened the door, he didn’t bother with a hello. “Meredith Strand?”
Her mouth went all cottony, but she forced out “Yes.”
He pushed the envelope into her hands. “You’ve been served. Have a nice evening.”
The door stayed hanging open as she turned the envelope over in her hands. The return address was an attorney’s office in Arlington. They’d only been gone a few days, but remembering that they had a life outside of the cape was jarring. Her fingertips buzzed, itching to open the envelope, but her chest felt tight, and it hurt to breathe.
“Mom?”
Without looking at Alice, she said, “Go up to your room.”
She expected a fight—Alice was a curious kid—but she must’ve felt Meredith’s anxiety because she went upstairs without another word.
Meredith tore into the envelope. The stack of papers inside was thick and official looking, with date stamps in almost every corner. She flipped to the last page and found Kristin’s signature, wide and looping, with a starlike flourish at the end where ink had blotted with the force of her pen. She turned back to the first page: Petition for the Dissolution of Marriage.
Divorce.
Meredith’s jaw clenched and tears burned her eyes. She only just pushed away a flash of white-hot rage that ordered her to rip the paper in half. This was what Kristin had been doing while ignoring her texts and phone calls. This was what Kristin had deemed thinking about our relationship.
What about Alice?
Fighting against the knot in her chest, Meredith flipped through the paperwork, scanning for custody, finally finding the page toward the end. Petitioner is willing to concede all parental rights to Respondent if the following conditions are met—
Meredith sank against the wall, unable to hold herself up. She couldn’t decide if she was angrier that Kristin didn’t want their child (had she ever?) or that she would dare to put in writing a list of demands before she gave Alice up.
Still clutching the paperwork in one hand, Meredith shakily scrolled through her phone to find Kristin’s number. She jabbed the screen and listened to the other line ring. And ring. And ring.
“Hi, you’ve reached Kristin…”
The sound of Kristin’s voicemail’s outgoing message, passive and almost robotic, only fueled the fire in Meredith’s belly.
Beep.
“How could you?” The words burst out of her mouth like the first massive wave of a tsunami. “Not even a fucking phone call? You can’t even talk to me before you send this… You fucking… I can’t…” Each word was fighting for its place in her mouth, so many she choked. “Right after my mother died, you cunt.” It didn’t matter that Kristin didn’t know. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t her fault. Meredith railed into the phone until the digital voice informed her the message had exceeded recording length. She hung up and called back, daring Kristin to pick up the phone, and when she didn’t, Meredith unleashed a torrent of abuse so sharp she tasted blood. Finally, throat burning, she hung up midsentence. The phone felt like a brick in her hand; she dropped it at her feet along with the divorce papers.
Movement upstairs snatched a sob from her chest. Alice. God, what was she supposed to tell her? Alice was just as much Kristin’s daughter as Meredith’s. How was she supposed to tell Alice that Kristin was leaving them both? That Meredith had no idea if she could be a single mom? Kristin had been the balance, the one who taught Alice how to ride a bike, how to read, because Meredith had been too busy just trying to keep her fed and safe and alive that there hadn’t been room for anything else. Meredith lived her life just trying to get through to the next day. Would that be enough?
Meredith found Alice curled up in a ball on top of the covers. A small Thalia plant from the funeral sat in a bowl on the nightstand; several petals had fallen on the pillow, like a halo around Alice’s head. Her little body shivered.
“Kiddo…” She didn’t know what to say. It would all be okay? Don’t worry, we both love you? Was she supposed to lie? “Kristin—”
Alice turned over, her face red and blotchy with tears. “It’s not that.”
She’d heard. Meredith flushed with shame.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Alice pulled the pink shell she’d been carrying around out from under her pillow. “It’s my fault.”
“What? No. Of course not. We—”
“No!” Alice wiped her hand across her face and sniffed. “Not her. I mean Grandma.”
Meredith flinched like she’d been slapped. How could Alice think…?
Alice continued. “Grandma didn’t want me to have the shell. She threw it back in the water, and I was so mad I yelled and thought bad things, but then it came back! I kept it, and I think Grandma saw and that’s what made her go away.” It all came out in one breath, her voice cracking at the end. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I wanted to! But I thought you’d be mad at me.”
Meredith’s insides shattered. Fighting back new tears, she took Alice’s hands and kissed her fingertips and her nose and the tears on her cheeks and said, “What happened to Grandma is no one’s fault, especially not yours.”
Alice nodded, but it didn’t look like she believed her. “She talks to me sometimes.”
“Who does?”
“The girl.”
“The red-haired girl?”
“No. The other girl. She lives in the water.” She held up the shell. “She talks in here.”
“Okay…” Alice had never had what she would have called an imaginary friend before. Was this because of Meredith’s mother? Kristin would know. Kristin would be able to fix it.
But she doesn’t want to. She wants to run away to live happily ever after without you. Without Alice.
Meredith rubbed her eyes, brushing the tears away before Alice could see.
“I thought if I talked to her, maybe she’d give Grandma back.” She hunched over, looking smaller than ever. “I tried, but I can’t do it. I don’t want to go to the beach anymore. I don’t want to see the water or talk to the girl.” She looked up at Meredith, barely able to open her eyes for the tears streaming down. “Can we go home?”
Meredith climbed into bed with Alice, bending her legs and back to conform to Alice’s shape. Shushing her, she buried her nose in Alice’s hair, which, even when she was a baby, always seemed to smell like the ocean. Soon, their breaths rose and fell in sync as Alice calmed and the tears slowed.
She wanted to tell her of course they would go home. But now that Kristin had taken that step, Meredith didn’t know if she could.
Neither of them moved for what felt like hours, until Alice fell asleep. Meredith kissed her head and rolled out of bed, feeling raw and spent, but still an undercurrent of electricity pulsed at her core, feeding the anger that throbbed there. Her only relief—and it was a twisted relief—came from the thought that Alice was too caught up in her own manufactured guilt to worry about her parents’ divorce.
Back downstairs, Meredith found her phone, the notification light blinking.
One missed call from Kristin.
One new voicemail.
She deleted the voicemail without listening to it. It gave her a sense of control, something that, in this moment, she craved more than anything. It was like the universe had conspired to strip her of it, a fraction at a time, ending with the complete erosion of everything that’d grounded her. Her daughter was breaking in front of her eyes, and there was nothing she could do about it. She felt untethered and uneasy. And the one person who should have been here to help her, her mother, was gone. More than that, her mother had abandoned her, had left her to deal with the shambles of the house and the light and to sort through these complicated feelings that came to her in waves all on her own.
Her eyes settled on a scratch in the wood floor, and she hated that scratch. The floor. The room. She hated the walls that connected it to the ceiling and the memories—she lived in a house of dead women. The paint was poison, and the windows were enemies, and she wished she could burn it all to the ground.
Her hands seemed to work without thought, searching for Art’s number and then calling.
“Can you come over?” she asked.
“Of course. Yeah. What is it? What happened?”
“I need to get out of here. Just for a couple of hours. Alice is upstairs sleeping. Please.”
“I’m on my way.”
***
The Anchor was the kind of place that’d seen a dozen or more incarnations in its lifetime, but it was the only bar on the peninsula worth a damn. When Meredith was in high school, sneaking in through the back door when a friend worked as a waitress there, the Anchor was a Bar and Grille. In college, it’d dropped the Grille and catered to metal bands and their fans. Then new owners kicked out the metalheads and embraced the nautical theme, hoping to lure in lighthouse tourists. Now, the building was sandwiched between a furniture depot and a Polish market and, without the neon sign flashing BAR, Meredith would’ve mistaken it for a gift shop. Tiny anchors, about the size of her palm and made of different materials and all different colors, dangled along the edge of the overhang.
Inside, there was just enough light to see the drink in front of you and not much else. She wound her way to the bar, avoiding a couple in the throes next to the one pool table and a shattered glass either no one had noticed or could be bothered with. A woman with dark hair and soft features caught her eye. Smiled. She reminded Meredith of Kristin, so the attraction was instant. She offered a smile back that was all teeth and turned away, embarrassed. She noticed Vik sitting midway along the bar. She paused, wondering if she should leave, but if she did, where else would she go? Almost like he heard her thoughts, he turned and saw her staring. He waved half-heartedly before turning back to the bar. He threw back a shot, scattered a couple of bills on the bar, and then slid off the stool like someone trying very hard to appear sober. He didn’t look her way again before leaving. She sank gratefully onto a stool but had only a second’s respite before she saw the sign.
Karaoke Tonite!!
The bartender, a dark-eyed man with the tattoo of an anchor on the side of his neck, pointed to the sign. “You sing?”
“Sometimes,” Meredith said. “Whiskey, please.”
He poured the drink and wisely left her to it. She leaned over the bar, grabbing a saltshaker, which she shook generously into the whiskey before swallowing half of it in one pull. It burned down her throat, warming her chest and loosening the knot there.
She shouldn’t have been surprised. Kristin wasn’t the type to have a change of heart, nor was she one for confrontation. She was incredibly independent, a quality Meredith had found attractive at first—her own independence shaky on the best of days—but soon became the wedge that drove them apart. Ironic that having Alice has been Kristin’s idea.
Meredith had never been the kind of girl who thought about growing up to be a mom. Even as a young woman, when her friends and acquaintances were getting pregnant or looking forward to getting pregnant, they talked about motherhood like Meredith sometimes talked about the cape—with awe and longing. Motherhood, to Meredith, hadn’t seemed like something to look forward to. If anything, it terrified her. The only examples she’d ever had were her own mother, who at the best of times was inconvenienced by Meredith, and the stories her mother told about her own mother and grandmother. Women who lost their minds, who threw themselves into the ocean. All of them, mothers.
Kristin had insisted Meredith carry the baby. Her job was more flexible. Her body less likely to respond badly. Kristin’s words.
Meredith’s eyes kept finding the microphone, untouched despite the DJ’s urging from the booth in the corner.
A third glass replaced the second. She took a sip, then wiped the condensation from the glass onto her thigh.
The room looked cocooned in a white glow. She couldn’t keep still, chewing on the skin around her nails. Her toes curled in her shoes. Buzzed, she thought. Heavy and weightless all at once. Floating, but she could feel the denseness around her, like being at the bottom of the ocean.
The DJ’s voice boomed from the speakers. “Tell you what, folks, the first person in front of that mic gets a free drink.”
Fuck it.
Drink in her hand, she beat out a couple of giggling twentysomethings to the stage. Her nose bumped the mic, and the feedback screeched like a banshee.
“What’ll it be, beautiful?” the DJ asked.
Meredith cringed, sipping from the glass to hide her expression. Finally she spoke into the mic, “Dealer’s choice.”
After a short silence, the walls shook with the opening bars of “Black Velvet.”
She drained the watery remains of her drink, closing her eyes against the harsh yellow light. Then she put her lips against the microphone and began to sing.
It was easy to get lost in the music. She didn’t even know if she was singing the right words, but it didn’t matter. The rest of the bar sang over her, words tumbling around her head. It felt good. Felt like a release. When she finally opened her eyes at the end of the song, she thought she spotted the red-haired girl watching from the bar. She blinked, and it was the woman she’d seen earlier, a smile spreading across her face. While the rest of the bar clapped half-heartedly, the woman stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled.
Back down at the bar, she set her empty glass down and raised her hand, gesturing for another.
She watched the woman approach after the song was over. She tried to ignore her, part of her hoping she’d get the hint and walk away. Another part—a stronger part—hoped she wouldn’t. “What are you drinking?”
Meredith told her and she wrinkled her nose.
“Never could stand the stuff.”
Any witty retort Meredith could’ve conjured while sober left as quickly as it formed. The woman watched the bartender slide the free drink in front of Meredith and then tapped the lips of her glass against Meredith’s. “You have a beautiful voice.”
“Are you flirting with me?” Meredith asked, regretting it the second it came out.
The woman laughed. “Trying to.” Then, “Most people say ‘thank you’ when they receive a compliment.”
She sounded like Kristin too. Was it really revenge, flirting with someone who reminded her of her wife? Because that was all she wanted right now. She studied the woman’s slender neck and shoulders, the shadow of a tattoo peeking out from under her shirt collar. What would happen, Meredith thought, if she brought the woman into the bathroom right now, fucked her, the entire thing recorded on Kristin’s voicemail?
“Thank you,” she said.
“See? It’s not that hard. I say something, you say something back. Pretty soon we’ll have a conversation.”
“A conversation would be nice.”
“It would.”
The woman smiled, and for the briefest second, it was Kristin’s smile. Meredith wanted to rip it off with her teeth.
“Want to get out of here?”
***
The woman drove while Meredith hummed along to the radio, switching the stations between songs, her hand grazing the woman’s thigh each time she reached for the dial. Kristin left me, Meredith thought when guilt threatened to chase away her buzz. It’s over. It’s all over.
They parked on the street, only a few feet from the shore. Meredith jumped out of the car before the woman had the ignition off and started for the water, still humming a nameless tune.
The woman followed.
The moon’s glow glittered on the peaks of the waves just before they washed over the sand. Something inside Meredith throbbed. Beside her now, the woman kicked off her shoes and started pulling up her shirt.
“Wait,” Meredith said, grabbing her elbow. “Not here.”
Meredith led the woman farther down the beach, a smile burning across her face, until they reached the cove. “It’s private here,” Meredith said.
She couldn’t remember if it was or wasn’t anymore, but that wasn’t the point. Meredith was in the throes of self-destruction. When she thought back to a time when she’d been most afraid, her mind came here. To the cove.
The woman stripped slowly, evocatively, and Meredith felt torn between watching her and watching the water. Its spray on her face and neck was like kisses that tingled down her spine and spread across her body. She needed more—to feel it on every inch of her skin. She slid out of her clothes as easily as a snake shed its skin only to be covered again by the woman’s hands and mouth. Meredith closed her eyes, tangling her fingers in the woman’s hair as she kissed down Meredith’s neck and shoulders. Her chest. Her stomach.
Dizzy, she gently pulled away from the woman and started for the water.
The woman stood, clinging to Meredith’s arm. Her cherry breath in Meredith’s ear, “I’ve never done it in the water.”
Water up to their waists, waves threatened to drag them farther. The woman held tight to Meredith, laughing with each splash until their lips met. Hot and cold clashed. Hands tore and grabbed and stroked and touched.
Meredith wanted to drink this moment, the water, inhale it through her pores until it filled all the holes gouged by the last few days. She wanted the air from the woman’s lungs. The voice from the woman’s throat. The salt from the woman’s skin. The thoughts seemed to come from outside of herself but embedded into her mind as easily as if they were her own. Drunk on the whiskey and the feeling of the water on her skin, it was like she floated outside of herself. Words and feelings drifted over her, meaningless and airy.
With the water up to their shoulders now, they tumbled into each other with every wave. The woman knocked her head into Meredith’s mouth. She tasted blood.
Laughing, she dragged her nails down the woman’s shoulders. The woman gasped and then pressed her body harder against Meredith. For a moment, she felt nothing. An exquisite numbness. Her body felt heavy, and she imagined letting go, drifting down to the ocean floor and letting it eat her. Light and shadow played in the corners of her eyes—one shadow bigger, darker than the others—and a small voice in the back of her head tried to sound a warning, but the numbness was stronger, easily quashing the voice before Meredith could hear it properly.
Meredith dug her fingers into the woman’s arms. The woman barely flinched, her face a tranquil mask.
Down, a voice in her head ordered. Down.
A flash of red cut through the corner of Meredith’s eye. She turned, still holding the woman, and saw there, on the beach, wind whipping her hair like a comet tail, the girl from the funeral. From the bar. From the bluffs. The girl who told Alice she would die. And all at once, all Meredith wanted in the world was to face her down and ask her why.
Like a wave against the rocky shore, a sharp cry ripped through the dark.
Meredith pushed the woman away, gaze fixed on the red-haired girl as she swam for shore, limbs heavy and head spinning. The numbness still lingered, promising calm and tranquility at the bottom of the sea.
But she pushed harder until her fingers grazed sand. Finally in the shallows, she stood.
The red-haired girl sprinted away, toward the dark part of the street.
Shit. “Wait!”
She struggled into her clothes, leaving her shoes behind, and ran after the girl. Her calves burned until she reached the street, and then she managed to step on every broken shell and twig. Pain shot up her legs, but she didn’t stop. The slap of her soles echoed along the road where she thought she saw the girl’s ethereal form disappear around a corner. Meredith followed, but when she looked down the street where the girl had gone, it was empty. She started down the sidewalk but caught someone watching her from their front window. She could only imagine how she looked. Still, it was like she could feel the red-haired girl watching her from some dark corner.
When Meredith finally stopped, accepting that she’d lost the red-haired girl, she realized her mother’s house was on the next block. Part of her thought she should go back and check on the woman she’d left at the cove. Adrenaline had sobered her enough to remember pain, and her mouth still tasted like her own blood. In her drunk, self-destructiveness, had she hurt the woman? No, she decided. She would have remembered that.
Besides, she no longer particularly wanted to go back.
She walked the rest of the way to her mother’s house, flinching with each step. Cold, aching sobriety cracked across her skull. She focused on the dull throb starting at the back of her head instead of what’d happened in the water. She told herself it was nothing. The woman was fine. They were drunk. She was lonely. That was all. She wasn’t actually going to—
From the street, she saw lights on in the living room. Upstairs, too, in Alice’s room. As she got closer, she realized the front door was ajar. Despite the pain in her feet, she jogged the rest of the way, her heart hammering and her skin prickling, knowing in that deep-down animal way that something was wrong.
She found Art unconscious on the stairs, his face blackened and bloody. Blood bubbled from between his lips with each raspy exhale.
White-hot fear sent her flying up the stairs and into Alice’s room.
The bed was empty and the room was trashed, the Thalias crushed beneath the overturned nightstand.
“No,” she breathed.
Alice was gone.