December 2024
Anneliese
AS SOON AS Hendrik cut the motor, the silence was filled by the roar of the wind and the gurgle and the spitting of the sea. With each passing second, the tide carried the dinghy farther from shore. Anneliese knew little about boats or the sea, but surely conditions were too rough to be out in the dinghy.
“Turn the boat around,” she repeated.
Hendrik was looking in her direction, but past her.
“Where are we going?”
He made no reply.
“Hendrik, answer me,” she said, her voice rising in pitch.
His eyes slid toward her. “Louisa is dead because of you.”
For a moment she stared. He wasn’t well. He was confusing her with someone else. She pushed back panic.
“Look at me, Hendrik. I’m Anneliese, Willem’s fiancée. I was a child when Louisa died.”
“We argued about you the night before. If not for you …” His voice trailed.
She glanced across the water at Wexalia, shrinking into the mist. Willem was at the summerhouse, possibly already missing her and worried. She had to get back to him.
“Start the motor,” she yelled.
“You’re Mirella.”
“What?”
“Your laptop,” Hendrik said. “Don’t you know better than to use your birthday as a password?”
Not even Willem knew her actual birthdate. “You looked at my laptop?”
“Everything’s in your folders and your search history. Your deceitful little plan. Katja didn’t want to meet you, did she? You should have respected her wishes.”
Hendrik must have read the social worker’s letter, which Katja had kept inside the pages of the diary. Hendrik was the one who had removed the diary, the letter, and the key from Willem’s cardigan. But why was he threatening her? It didn’t make sense.
She glanced around for another boat—for rescue, for safety. But they were alone on the water. What to do? Jump? Talk? Push him overboard?
“You got pregnant on purpose, so Willem would marry you. Don’t bother denying it. You left a trail. The site you visited: Five sneaky ways to get pregnant.”
No, no. She couldn’t let Willem find out.
She would delete her search history.
Willem would believe her over crazy old Hendrik.
The hair on her arms rose as the pieces of the puzzle slotted together. She wondered why the possibility hadn’t occurred to her before. Hendrik was tall, but like her, his build was slight, his eyes dark, his gray hair still streaked with black.
“Are you my father?”
“Stupid girl.”
“Who is?”
“It’s the wrong question.”
The swells grew larger, the peaks and valleys more pronounced. The dinghy swung wildly and tipped, taking in water before righting itself. Anneliese thought she might start praying.
“What in hell is the right question?”
“You should ask who your mother is.”
“Katja is my mother.”
“She can’t have children.”
“You’re lying.”
“It’s the truth.”
Her brain shifted into gear. There had been two women hiding at the hotel in Den Bosch. She wished she’d had the chance to study the diary. What if Katja had only pretended to be pregnant? What if it was Louisa who had been pregnant, and they were hiding from Hendrik?
Anneliese felt no connection to Katja. Oh my God! She had felt an instant connection to Willem. If Louisa was her mother, he was her half brother, and he was the father and the uncle of the child growing in her belly.
She howled and jerked off the sling. She grabbed the paddle from the bottom of the boat and swung it at Hendrik. He blocked the blow with his arm. The paddle made a sodden thud when it struck flesh and bone.
A broken arm would help level the playing field, but he ripped the paddle from her hands and raised it. He froze in that position. His eyes gleamed, as if he were rekindling a long-forgotten memory. She took advantage of his indecision, if indecision it was, and scrambled up, rocking the dinghy with her feet. Hendrik grabbed the sides to keep his balance, and Anneliese jumped over the side.
The cold water took her breath away. Her coat billowed, and for a moment she floated. But she couldn’t move her limbs to stay afloat. Murky water closed over her head as she sank to the bottom, only two meters at most, but it might as well have been twenty. Darkness surrounded her except for a ghostly glow above. It took her full concentration to keep from inhaling water. Seconds ticked by. A half minute. The shock of the cold abated. She could move her limbs again. She pushed off the bottom with her feet and shot upward, toward the light. Broke surface. Mouth open and gasping.
The paddle slammed into the water, missing her head by inches, and she dove again. She stayed under until her lungs screamed for air. When she surfaced, she saw that the dinghy had drifted away. Hendrik started the engine. She pulled another deep breath into her lungs and ducked, hoping he hadn’t caught sight of her, but she had gotten her bearings. Lutine was closer than Wexalia, and she swam toward the sandbank. She moved her good arm and kicked, but she couldn’t make headway, the tide carrying her farther out to sea.
Her life depended on making her left arm pull its share. Each stroke hurt more than the last, until she couldn’t bear the pain. From behind her, the rumble of the engine increased to a roar. She dove and a dark shadow passed overhead, the water churning in its wake. She came up gasping and sputtering, swallowing water and breathing it into her lungs. The dinghy was coming back.
First her hands and then her knees scraped something solid beneath the surface. Lutine. She crawled onto the sand and staggered to her feet, her teeth chattering nearly hard enough to break. She saw Hendrik jerk the steering wheel, but he was too late, and the side of the dinghy slammed into the sandbank. The impact threw him overboard. The engine cut and the little craft spun away. Seconds went by. A minute. Maybe two. Still no sign of him. Her relief was immense, and she collapsed on the ground.
She heard splashing.
Hendrik crawled dripping onto the sand like a prehistoric sea monster. She looked around for a weapon. Strange objects littered the sand, strange because they didn’t belong on a sandbank in the middle of the sea. Sports shoes. Lightbulbs. Pink plastic toys. Flashlights. Her eyes darted back to Hendrik, his face screwed up in hate.
She grabbed a flashlight, lunged, and landed a one-handed blow on the top of his head. Before she could hit him again, he grabbed her ankle and she toppled backward. Pain like an electric shock shot through her tailbone. Jerking her ankle free, she kicked him in the face, felt the crunch of cartilage or teeth. She scooted backward and scrambled up, wielding the flashlight. She aimed for his head again and swung.
His face exploded into red pulp. He turned and dragged himself on hands and knees toward the water, guttural strangling sounds escaping from his ruined mouth. She tightened her grip on the flashlight, ready to have another go at him if necessary, but he slid into the water and dog-paddled toward the dinghy, which was drifting away in the outgoing tide.
She dropped the flashlight and leaned forward with her hands on her thighs, breathing hard, watching Hendrik’s head bobbing in the water until it vanished beneath the waves. She watched for a couple of minutes longer, to be sure. She felt as if her insides had been sucked out, leaving behind an empty shell. Wearily, she straightened and turned toward Wexalia. It seemed impossibly far away; she could never make it. But if she waited on the sandbank for rescue, she might die of exposure. Her best option was to attempt the long slog over the mudflats.
First, there was something she had to do.
She followed the footprints left by the police—just messy indentations in the sand. The individual steps had merged and been filled in with rain. The storm had all but leveled the dunes. Her shoulder throbbed. She missed the sling. Her face stung from the raw wind, and her ears ached. She trudged over a slight rise and found what she sought: a stretch of canvas flat on the ground that was held down by pegs. The police hadn’t filled in the grave, which meant they intended to return and finish the job. She knelt and, one by one, worked the pegs out of the sand. She peeled back the canvas and peered into the hole. She thought about Louisa’s decomposing remains alone on the sandbank, her location and fate unknown to the outside world, the people who were supposed to love and cherish her silent except for their lies. What kind of person deserved such an ignominious passing?
She spat into the grave.