Anna was awake. A dozen times before, she’d thought she was awake, only to slip back into nightmares until she could no longer tell what was real, what had happened, and what was only a dream.
Only a dream.
There was no “only” about the dreams that pulled her down. They were a force as powerful as any she had encountered. They followed her into the waking world and threatened to drag her back.
“I am awake,” she said. Her voice creaked. Her tongue was as stiff and dry as weathered wood. If taste was any indication, weathered wood from the bottom rail of an old pigsty.
“You’re awake,” a kind voice agreed. “And alive.”
Anna rolled her eyes, eyeballs scratching against lids that felt packed with sand. “We’ll see,” she rasped. Heath was bent over her, a huge annoying smile on her face. “I feel like shit. My face hurts.”
“You’re hungover,” Heath said, still grinning like a fool. “Your head got a hard whack, but it isn’t broken, according to Aunt Gwen.”
Anna reached up with shaking fingers and felt above her eye. There was a lump the size of a walnut, and tender to the touch. Not broken; that was good news. At least not broken on the outside. The gray matter inside of her skull felt as if it had been scrambled like eggs. Lying down was disorienting, and she struggled to sit up. The room spun. Her stomach lurched into her throat. A hammer wielded by an invisible hand slammed into her left temple.
“Do you want to sit up?” Heath asked.
“Of course I want to sit up!” Anna grumbled. “Do you think I’m flopping around because I like looking like a landed fish?”
“Somebody got up on the wrong side of the ocean today.”
Elizabeth was perched on the end of the couch where Anna lay. Anna tried to glare at her, as Heath, more trouble than help, worked to get her into a seated position without falling out of her wheelchair.
“E!” Heath said. Rising smoothly, Elizabeth trotted around the back of the sofa. Between the two of them, Anna was shoved and shored up into a sitting position.
“Damn, but I feel like shit,” Anna said as bile rose up her gorge. “I’m going to be sick.” Heath bobbed out of her line of sight, then bobbed back up again, a bowl in her hand.
“Gwen said you might be,” she said, putting the bowl between Anna’s hands.
Anna retched into the bowl, spewing up thin acid and stinking chunks.
“Done?” Heath asked gently.
“Don’t be so nice,” Anna said. Nice made tears threaten, and Anna was too sick to cry.
Heath smiled. “Take this, would you, E?”
“Eeeeew,” Elizabeth grimaced as she removed the mess from Anna’s lap.
“How long was I asleep?” Anna asked.
“Half the day,” Heath said. “Gwen thought rest was the best thing for you. She gave you an antibiotic, but we didn’t try and clean or dress your wounds.”
“I have wounds?” Anna asked, surprised. When every inch of one’s body hurt, it was hard to tell.
Elizabeth was back on her perch. “One of your heels is all scraped up, and your bottom has major road rash.”
An image of her booted toes, seen down the length of her naked body, bouncing along black asphalt flashed through Anna’s mind.
“I was dragged,” she said, more to herself than them.
A cackle of questions battered in stereo. “By who? Where? Why? Do you remember? Dragged?”
Anna ignored them. Her skin was too tight, her hair stiff and matted; thinking was difficult. Poison pervaded her being. She was sick unto her bones.
“I need a shower,” she said softly. Then, raising her head, she looked into Heath’s concerned face. “A shower.”
Heath and Elizabeth exchanged glances. Anna glowered. “Help her with a shower, E,” Heath said finally.
“I don’t need any help.” Anna stood up, tottered, then fell back on the couch. For a moment she sat blinking stupidly as resistance drained away. “That would be good, E,” she said with moderate civility. “Thank you.”
Leaning against the tile wall for support, hot water pouring through her salt-encrusted hair, Anna began to feel slightly more human. Most of the night and the day before were a blur. She remembered going to bed. She remembered seeing the toes of her boots. She remembered plastic sticking to her face. She remembered someone saying she was a lobster.
Four memories that didn’t add up to anything. Caked in salt, contusions on her butt and heel, a knot on her forehead, a small hole that ached in her left arm, up by the shoulder, probably a needle stick: drugged, dragged, and dumped into saltwater. Without the aid of memory, logic dictated that much. Since she was not dead, one could assume she had subsequently been fished out of the saltwater. Heath and Wily had found her naked, tied to the cargo ring on the lift, shortly before sunrise.
Again, since she wasn’t dead, logic suggested she was put there by the fisher-of-out, either so she would receive help or as a warning to the island’s residents. E, as a stalkee, being the most obvious.
Both theories were absurd.
That didn’t make them untrue.
“Are you still alive?” Elizabeth asked from the other side of the shower curtain.
“Getting there,” Anna said. She could see the girl’s shadow where she sat on the commode, standing by in case Anna fell or drowned.
“Let me know when you’re ready to do your back,” E said.
Elizabeth’s comfort with her own and other people’s bodies was a wonder to Anna. Nudity, injury, snot, puke, washing hair, clipping toenails—E did these things for other people as casually as she did them for herself. Maybe loving someone who occasionally required personal assistance had given her these skills. More likely she was born with them, and loving Heath had brought them to flower.
John Donne said no man was an island. He didn’t say anything about women. Anna keenly felt her physical isolation from the rest of the human race, with the exception of her husband, Paul, an isolation she preferred. Every woman in her own skin, every mind in its own cranium.
Until she couldn’t take care of her own skin or trust her own mind.
“I’m ready,” Anna said.
“Incoming,” Elizabeth replied cheerfully as she opened the shower curtain. Anna braced both hands against the opposite wall, holding herself up, while Elizabeth carefully washed the scrapes on her buttocks.
“Not as bad as we thought,” E said. “Sort of like a skinned knee, but all over. Not so much bleeding as oozing. Some bleeding on your bottom, but nothing as bad as your heel. Aunt Gwen did that up while you were out cold. Now that the bandage is wet, she’ll have to redress it. She said your heel is pretty much like hamburger. Nothing broken, though. She didn’t want to mess with your back until you’d slept. We took a look at it. Heath and I thought we should put you out of your misery, but Aunt Gwen said it wasn’t too bad, and it isn’t.”
Whoever had dragged her across the pavement must not have dragged her far, Anna decided. A protracted trip would have left her skinned alive.
“Where is Gwen?” Anna asked, mostly to keep Elizabeth chattering. Unlike the prattle of other people, the prattle of her goddaughter was soothing, like rain on a tin roof. Usually Anna listened for clues of what was happening in E’s world, and heart, and mind. Sometimes, like now, she just rode the flow of words, enjoying the murmur of a happy life burbling past her ears, a sweet cacophony more soothing to the soul than silence.
“Aunt Gwen is in Bar Harbor meeting Dez Hammond—one of the old ladies who lived here—for coffee. Aunt Gwen felt guilty about abandoning you, but she said it was very important. An errand for Chris Zuckerberg, the other lady, the one that’s sick. Some sort of meeting Ms. Zuckerberg was too sick to go to.
“Aunt Gwen took her medical bag. She said she was going to get a DNA sample or something. She had a glass tube and Q-tips and everything. Very CSI. Of course she wouldn’t tell us what it’s about since it’s a doctor thing.”
Anna’s knees were growing weak. Her arms, bracing her against the shower wall, were tiring. “Are you about done?” she asked.
“Done,” E said. Anna felt a towel being draped over her shoulders. Pulling her aching arms away from the wall, she noticed a red mark on the inside of her arm at the elbow. “Another needle stick,” she said, turning to show Elizabeth the way a little girl might show her mother a splinter.
“That was Aunt Gwen. She took blood while you slept. You didn’t even move an eyelid,” Elizabeth said with obvious pride in her aunt’s needlework.
“Took blood?” Anna echoed stupidly.
“CSI on every channel today. She’s getting it tested for drugs,” E said matter-of-factly.
“She’s not in law enforcement,” Anna said.
“She’s a doctor. They do all that blood stuff.”
Of course. “I’m not thinking straight,” Anna admitted.
“Duh,” E said, holding out a second towel for Anna’s hair. “Sit.”
Obediently, Anna sat on the lid of the commode and let Elizabeth towel-dry her hair. Gray splotches floated in the corners of her eyes, as amorphous and will-o’-the-wisp as her recollections of the previous night. The shower had washed away the salt, the blood, and the last of the anger she’d brought with her from the other side. Without the anger, her brain was a cold and sluggish thing, thoughts being forced out like the last of the toothpaste from the tube.
“Was I raped?” she asked, before her brain had time to mention that might not be an appropriate question to ask a sixteen-year-old girl, and one’s goddaughter at that.
“Nope,” E said as if it were the most obvious question in the world—and it was. “Aunt Gwen said there was no evidence to indicate any kind of sexual trauma. She did a rape kit anyway. Don’t worry. The rest of us, even Wily, were banished from the entire house while she did her exam.”
Anna was absurdly relieved. Bad enough if E and Heath had seen that sort of thing, but if Wily had, she’d have had to resign from the pack in shame.
Three taps sounded on the door. “Are you guys about done?” Heath asked. “E, your visitor has finally seen fit to come, so make sure Anna has something decent on.”
Both caught the sour emphasis Heath put on the word “visitor.” Anna raised an eyebrow.
Turning to take a terrycloth robe from a hook on the back of the bathroom door, Elizabeth said, “It’s my friend.”
“The one with the boat,” Anna said.
“Yes.”
“What made you decide to blow Boat Boy’s cover?” Anna asked.
“Before, he needed you not to know more than you needed to know. It’s the other way around now,” Elizabeth said as she held out a thick yellow chenille bathrobe.
Anna snorted. Now she was on a need-to-know basis with her goddaughter. Elizabeth had grown from a skinny little kid into an entire human being, and Anna had seen every bit of it, a terrifying miracle.
“Are you going to arrest him?” Elizabeth asked.
Anna stood and let her goddaughter help her into the robe.
“I sure as hell feel like arresting somebody,” she said.