Chapter 3

Soffocato: Muffled, damped; choked (Ital.)

I tugged Gram’s body up the mud bank and left it under a tree, sobbing at her bloated face and those beautiful, brilliant blue eyes, now disfigured by hungry fish. The earth shifted, tilted beneath my feet, and I plopped down beside her, losing my balance.

Reaching toward her, I shook her shoulder—was I trying to wake her? Her cold skin burned my fingertips and I jerked my hand back. Even in the darkness I could tell the skin was not alive and no longer bore the color of life.

I reached over to touch her hair. Usually soft and snowy white, the curls now escaping from the flowered pink bathing cap were dank, clotted with lake weeds. We would never again brush each other’s hair. Never rub each other’s feet. Never hug, kiss. Never resolve our spat. My arms ached to hold her, but this thing beside me wasn’t her. She was gone. Gram was gone.

My hands went to my face, but the stench from the body that clung to my fingers stopped me before I buried my face in them.

I made it to my feet stiffly, searching in my panic for what to do next.

I had to tell someone, had to—what do they say on TV?—notify the authorities.

The only thing I could do was swim back to the eastern shore to call for help. The return trip felt twice as far. I began to fear I might not make it. My hands shook badly as I stood dripping on the beach and tried to dig my cell phone out of the pile I had left on the sand. The tympani still beat in my temples, almost blinding me.

My cell phone wasn’t there. I’d lost Peter again! No, I remembered I had left it charging in the cabin. I stood for only a few seconds, still in shock, then swooped up my things. After casting one last glance across the water where Gram’s body was, I realized I had to get help in a hurry.

The only thing I could think to do was run up the hill to Grace Harmon’s. A tall man I took to be her husband answered my frantic pounding.

“Gram,” I blubbered. “She’s… she’s …”

Grace came up behind him. Warm light spilled around them into the darkness where I stood. “What is it, Cressa? What’s the matter?”

“You’re shivering.” The man reached a long arm around my shoulders. He guided me to their couch. Grace shook out an afghan from the back and wrapped it around me.

I took a couple of deep breaths. “I found Gram.” Tears sprang to my eyes again. “She’s dead. She’s drowned.”

“Drowned? Ida? Here? In the lake?” Grace’s blue eyes grew huge. She threw a glance at the man.

The genial expression on his face disappeared into a frown. “What happened to her? Were you swimming together?”

“No, no. I went for a swim and she was on the other side. Underwater. Drowned.”

“Oh. My.” Grace sank, dazed, into the rocker behind her. It gave a couple of feeble rocks, then settled. The kind man sat beside me on the couch.

“Cressa, this is my husband, Al.” Grace murmured. “This is Ida’s granddaughter.”

“I’m so sorry to finally meet you under these circumstances. Where is she now?” he asked, his voice somber.

“I pulled her onto the bank. On the other side of the lake. I had to leave her there. We need to get her. I need to call nine-one-one, but I left my cell phone in the cabin.” I was dizzy. The world spun off-kilter.

“I’ll call.” Al got up and walked to the kitchen where I heard him dialing and speaking softly, much calmer than I could have been. After he hung up he said they were sending an ambulance.

The cup of tea Grace handed me rattled in the saucer and it warmed me up a bit. Al accompanied me down the hill, just in time to see them load her body, zipped into a dark bag, into the back. They had commandeered a boat to get her to this side of the lake. From the looks of the dripping EMT, he had done more than a little wading in the process.

My legs threatened to give way. I swayed and Al caught me.

“Where are you taking her?” I asked the technicians, barely able to talk through my chattering teeth. I wasn’t cold—on the outside at least—but couldn’t stop shivering.

The young female driver walked over to me as the EMTs slammed the back door of the ambulance.

“That’s my grandmother,” I whispered.

“I’m so sorry. We’ll take her to the funeral home here in Alpha. That’s the usual procedure until she can be looked at.”

“Can I come?” I asked, not wanting to let her go with these people. It was a struggle to understand her words, to make sense of what was happening around me.

“There’s really no need. There’s nothing you can do tonight.” Her voice was gentle, handling me like I might break. “You can go in tomorrow to make arrangements. The coroner ought to take a look at her, but he’s out of town until the day after tomorrow. We’ll have the doctor in Cambridge pronounce her tonight. I’m surprised. No one has drowned out here for a few years.”

“Yes, but—” My voice caught, unable to finish my thought. It would have been a denial that she drowned, but I was looking at the evidence in that horrid bag.

The ambulance driver reached out to touch my arm, hesitated, then gave me a pat and climbed into the driver’s seat.

Debussy had long ago given way to Chopin’s ponderous Funeral March, the stark piano version. The one Gram had encouraged me to practice over and over for a recital. I watched my beloved Gram disappear with the taillights as they bounced along the gravel road, then faded to nothing.

At last I was alone in Gram’s cabin. All the things I had wanted to say to her jumbled together in my mind, whirled round and round, and ceased making an iota of sense.

Al and Grace had been wonderful. They’d even offered to let me spend the night there, but I wanted to be alone in Gram’s place.

My note to Gram sat where I’d left it. With more force than necessary, I grabbed it and wadded it into a tight ball.

“Oh, Grammie, I hope you know …” I couldn’t finish the thought. The incomprehensible echoed in my mind: she drowned. The impact of those two words was simply unbearable. And how could a mere two words describe the fact I no longer had a grandmother, that she was lost to me forever?

One of the supports of my life, my Gram, was gone. A chasm was opening under me and I teetered at the edge of it.

I needed to talk to someone. Neek.

I had met the person who became my best friend only a year ago. Even though we lived in the same apartment building, and I knew her by sight, we connected in a yoga class given at a nearby high school. We were as different as a bass viol and a flute. Neek was definite about everything and always knew her place in the world, whereas I would probably always be tentative about my abilities, despite Neek’s assurance that I was talented, smart, and not too bad-looking. She later said she predicted we’d be friends the first night of that class.

My cell phone wasn’t in my purse. I remembered it was plugged in. Peter was charged now, but had zero connection bars. I took it out onto the glassed-in porch, built out over the hill on the back of the cabin. It held cheerful-looking white wicker furniture, a rocker, a settee, and tables, as well as a brass daybed where I knew Gram sometimes slept. I stopped. It hit me that the afghan I had crocheted for her in seventh grade was draped prominently over the foot of the daybed.

She kept it all these years.

The workmanship was nothing to brag about, but Gram had taught me to crochet and that was my first finished piece. I realized tears were racing down my face.

I fingered my afghan, then punched Neek’s number into my cell phone and it leapt to life. There was only one bar, but maybe it would be enough.

She answered on the fourth ring, as I was about to give up.

My hello sounded weak to me.

“Are you okay? You sound like you have a cold. Can I send you something? I have a great new cold cure. It’s a powder and you mix it with orange juice.”

I wasn’t masking the thickness in my throat. I steadied my breath.

“No, I’ll be all right.” I didn’t really believe that. “But Neek, that big change you talked about earlier today?” My voice was still trembling.

“Was it not a good one? I was afraid it might not be.”

“Oh, Neek. She’s dead. Gram’s dead.”

For once Neek was speechless. I told her about swimming across the lake and finding the body, then about the Harmons, and about the ambulance taking her away. My voice became steadier as we spoke.

“She was so tough, Cressa. I didn’t think she’d ever die. So where are you now?”

“I’m here, in the cabin.” I sniffed, feeling a little more human. “It really is cute. I like it, even without the piano. I wish I could tell her that.”

Neek was silent for a moment. “You’re not going to stay there alone, are you?”

Where else would I go? “I… I think so.”

“Are you sure? Will you be okay? Should I come down?”

“I want to stay, Neek. There’s no place else to go. And I have to make arrangements tomorrow. And I guess,” I was thinking ahead of my words, “she’ll be buried here. Next to Gramps in the Alpha Cemetery. No reason for you to come. I’ll probably be here for a few days.”

I pictured her name carved next to his. The only thing missing on her side of the stone was the last date. Now it could be filled in.

“But, Cressa. How did she die? Did she get caught on something under the water?”

“No, I don’t think so. There’s nothing in the lake but fish.”

“Do you really think she drowned? You’ve told me what an expert swimmer she was.”

“Yes, yes she is… was.” Neek had a point. How could Gram have drowned? “But she had to have drowned, had a cramp or something. That’s the only explanation. Isn’t it?”