And then something bad happens to Isabelle. Something worse. She is sleeping restlessly beside Henry when her phone rings. And rings.
It’s Jane. There’s been an accident. Joe, socked in by fog overnight in Seattle, took his four fishermen up to Nanaimo at first light and then hit a submerged shipping container when he attempted to land.
“It’s all that shit from the tsunami. It’s a minefield,” Jane says.
“I’m coming.”
“There’s nothing we can do but wait for news. Dear God. Joe…”
“We’ll wait together. It might sound worse than it is. We don’t know…” Isabelle says as she reaches for her jeans.
“Let him be okay. Please. Just let him be okay.”
He is okay. He and the four fishermen are at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, and Joe may have broken a few ribs. One of the fishermen is being observed for heart attack–like symptoms, which later prove to be only the shooting pains of a bad scare. His heart is fine. They are lucky. Joe was water taxiing slowly, treating the area as if it were chock full of objects after reports of fifty-five-gallon drums, lawn furniture, and even a drowned motorcycle in the area. Only the de Havilland was seriously injured. It punctured a pontoon, necessitating their rescue by a crab boat.
“Thank God,” Jane says. “Thank God, thank God, thank God.” Jane is an atheist, but these are pesky details in a crisis.
“When I was in Alaska…” Eddie says.
It is lunchtime before Isabelle realizes.
In her hurry to get here, she left the stuff—the watch, the photo, the bracelet—in her boot at home with Henry.
The sick feeling starts as soon as she remembers. Then comes the terror. She tries to calm herself with reason. Henry is busy. He’s been working on his poems again. He’s also begun the repair of Remy’s rotting deck. The day before, he’d made two trips to Ace Hardware—to buy lumber, a new skill saw, other tools. She is not sure he knows what to do with the tools, and neither is he. But he was happy with his new toys, and he was in his office all evening, watching online videos featuring home-repair guys.
See? He won’t be snooping around, looking for evidence that she’s slipping away from him. He won’t find it and utterly lose his mind. He has things to do. Even if he went into her closet, he wouldn’t see that watch! He’s probably been in there a hundred times already. She’s even had near misses while she was home, and it was fine. Why would he even reach his hand inside her boot? He wouldn’t.
There are a lot of reasons a seaplane might crash. Lots of ways flight can go wrong. Improper techniques and procedures, landing on water with the wheels extended instead of raised, bad weather, gusty winds, rough water pitching the plane, and, perhaps most dangerous of all, glassy water messing up perceptions of height and depth. But how often is there an actual accident? It’s a rarity, she reminds herself.
Then again, all of a sudden there’s a storm, Maggie says. Out of nowhere.
All of a sudden, there’s a half-submerged Harley-Davidson that’ll kill everyone on board.
Isabelle tries to keep the panic down. She can barely focus as Jane discusses the plans to get the de Havilland repaired and Joe back to Parrish and the fishermen up to Alaska to resume their trip, minus the heart-attack man who wants a shuttle home immediately. (Like there’s a shuttle? What kind of shuttle? Jane says. Sure, I’ll just call him a taxi.) She wonders if Evan felt like this during his affairs; if he worried she might pick up his phone or see some hotel bill or spot a fallen earring in his car. The package-sender is almost like a lover, with the hiding involved—with the secrets and the fear of being found out. But also like a lover for the need of connection, regardless of the risks.
Henry could look right in that closet and not see a thing, she tells herself for the hundredth time that day.
And then she gets a text.
Sorry to bother u at work…Don’t we have heavy gloves here? Looking everywhere.
During the drive home, she imagines it: the way she’ll feel the negative electrical charge from down the street. She’ll stand outside the front door, the briny, something-dead smell of the sea wafting past, and she’ll do what she shouldn’t and turn the doorknob. He will be in bed again, his shoulders turned away—
No. He’ll be standing right there as she comes in, face red with rage. He will grab her wrist again. She will try to twist free. More things will break, big ones.
Maybe he’ll just be gone, she tells herself.
Maybe you’ll be number three, Maggie says.
She should have worked harder and faster to find a way to leave, and now it’s too late. Instead of managing the beast and hoping for some magic resolution, hoping he’d leave her after all the distances she’d too gently and politely set around like dishes of candy, she should have just bought a ticket to somewhere and got the hell away. Why did she feel she owed him? Why does she feel she owes everyone? The worse the human, the more she tries. Nothing feels safe, that’s the problem. No plan does.
He won’t hurt me, she tells herself. She still questions if he’s done actual, physical harm to Sarah or Virginia. She knows she must placate him, and she can see his fury sitting just past his insecurity. But she can also now understand the despair that would lead Virginia to her death, and she can understand the anger and alcohol that would lead Sarah to hers. And, well, it’s awful to think it, but if something ever happened to her, his life would be over. She could fall off a cliff of her own accord, and he’d be in prison for good. No one would ever believe a third accident. He would never let that happen.
Like rage is rational? Maggie says. Stupid girl. You must really miss me. Can’t wait to see me again, huh? Hope kills. Naïveté does.
She heads home. Riding along with her is her utter refusal to believe in the truth of her own peril. Peril is for strangers on true crime TV. Peril is not for regular people like her, people who wear flannel pajamas and who eat Grape-Nuts and who get their oil changed when the little sticker tells them to. She knows from the journal that she and Sarah shared the same doubts from the same watch and photo, and that they shared the same demeaning moments, and the desire to flee, but that is all she knows for sure. She and Sarah also both understood Henry. He’s just a wounded little boy inside, Sarah had written.
Stupid, says Maggie.
I know how to handle him, Isabelle thinks.
Arrogance, her mother says. Omnipotent narcissism.
Isabelle keeps her keys in the pocket of her jeans, though. She leaves the car doors unlocked. Just in case. In case she needs to be out of there, fast.
Her chest feels hollow. She is sick with dread. She opens their front door.
“Hi, sweetie!” Henry calls. “Hope you’re hungry, because these potatoes I just made are fabulous.”
The potatoes are fabulous, and so is the roast chicken. Her relief has helped her appetite. Henry bought some chocolates at Sweet Violet’s, which he sets on the coffee table, alongside two tiny glasses of amaretto. He is talking animatedly, about two-by-fours and joists, about the call he’d gotten from his brother, about Jerry’s promotion and his niece’s gymnastics meet.
“Maybe you’ll actually like it,” he says.
After the words uneven bars her mind wandered, and she’s lost the thread. She has no idea what he’s talking about. She’s been watching Henry, remembering the reasons she fell for him. Such a handsome man. So smart. So organized and confident. What a wonderful life it would be, sitting on this couch, eating chocolates and drinking a cordial after a meal like they just had, made by this man, with his gorgeous hair and beautiful grin, and his command and wit.
“Like it?”
“The new poem? ‘Renewal’? Are you even listening?”
“Of course I’m listening. I’m sure I’ll love it.”
“Like you loved the others.”
“Henry, no words would be enough for you.”
“Are you saying I’m needy?” he says, but his voice is light. “I am needy. I need you.”
He leans in, kisses her. His tongue is a distant thing to her, an invading, poisonous creature she wants to fend off. His hands are over her, and now he’s on top of her. It’s dark out, but the lights are on; anyone taking a dark solitary walk on the beach will see them. “God, it feels like forever,” he says.
It has been a while. She’s used every excuse, from fatigue to periods. She’s tried all the tricks, from falling asleep to staying up late.
He unbuttons her jeans, works them down her hips. The keys in her pocket clank to the floor. He doesn’t notice. She tries to concentrate, tells herself this is the Henry she first met, the innocent Henry, the one she couldn’t get enough of. It doesn’t work, and so he becomes Evan, and that’s bad, too, so he becomes some stranger, and that’s no good, so he becomes Joe, the early Joe from high school, not the one of today, cherished pal, still thankfully alive but with broken ribs and, after today, with a story to rival any of Eddie’s.
Nothing is working, but no matter, because Henry sits up suddenly.
“Do you hear that?”
“What?”
“Is that rain?”
She listens. Yes. There’s the pit-pit, pat-pat of drops on the roof and the garbage can lids and the decking.
“Oh, shit! I left all the tools out there.”
He pops up off her. He pulls his jeans back up, leaving the belt hanging loose.
She sits up, too. Yanks her bra back down.
He opens the sliding door to the deck, lets in the delicious night smell of wood smoke and damp earth. “Hell, I should cover them, at least.”
He hurries off toward the garage, and she gathers her jeans, those keys. In the bedroom, she changes into her robe. She feels down inside the boot and finds the watch and the bracelet and the photo still there. Close call, but everything is fine.
A chocolate sounds nice.
She is choosing. She thinks the square ones are caramel, but she’s not sure. You never can tell, until you poke the bottom, or just go for it and pop it into your mouth. That’s the trouble. Even chocolates are a risk. She knows that round one has the potential for being a revolting cherry, so—
“What the fuck, Isabelle?”
There he is, standing right there, and she goes from chocolates to shock in two flat seconds. She’s in utter disbelief, because after all the worrying and all the imagining of every bad thing, she never imagined this. She didn’t ever foresee him standing there with the tarp from her car in one hand, and the will in the other.
“What. The. Fuck.”
“Henry. Henry…I didn’t—”
“Where did you get this?”
“It came in the mail, Henry. I’m sorry. I should have told you…”
“Oh, you think? You think you maybe should have told me that asshole was sending stuff to you? Instead of hiding it in your trunk?”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t even know who it came from!”
“I know who it came from! New Caledonia? That fucking sanctuary? It came from that asshole Gavin Gray! The fabulous Gavin Gray! Who was fucking my wife.”
So fast, it happens. The slide from peace to fright. From potatoes and chicken to red rage. Of course it’s fast, though, if it’s always been there, sitting off the coast, waiting for the right drop in atmospheric pressure.
“Henry. I’m sure—”
“You’re sure what? What are you sure about, huh? I told the police, you want to find Sarah? She’s probably there, with him! They went! They looked! They said no way. The prick was too sick to get it up. Wow, look who’s had a miraculous recovery. Look who’s still trying to ruin my life.”
No. No miraculous recovery, but she doesn’t say this. Honestly, she’s too stunned to say anything real or right. She’s too shocked to do anything but ward off.
“It doesn’t mean anything, Henry. He’s just trying to, I don’t know! Tell me something about you, and Sarah’s money…But I already know—”
“It doesn’t mean anything?” He flings down that tarp. His face is right in hers. “I don’t give a fuck about the will. You want to see the will? I got a copy here! I’ll show you! Just ask me! I’ll show you anything, I told you! I don’t care about all those people. Virginia’s friends, Sarah’s people…I don’t even care about him. But you? You! You hid this, Isabelle! You fucking hid this!”
She backs up, bumps the coffee table. She thinks of her keys, now back on her nightstand in the bedroom where she keeps them. His face is huge in hers, and his mouth contorts. She feels his breath on her cheek.
“I didn’t—”
“You did. You did.” He presses forward, and she moves back, and he still comes at her, everything large—voice and body. There is nowhere to go. She is almost over the ledge of that open door, where just beyond, the rain pours and the rotting boards have been yanked off in spots. “You hid this in your trunk, like a suspicious coward.”
“I knew it would upset you. I didn’t want you to see—”
“You didn’t want me to see, because you hide, and you sneak, like a little—”
He grabs a handful of her robe. The satin is in his fist and he is shaking it, and he hates her then, she sees that clearly in his eyes and in his clenched teeth. And then he does it. He shoves. That fist with the robe in it—he pushes her, hard. She stumbles backward, clutches for the doorframe. She is outside, on that deck, and suddenly she is down, one leg falling and cracking through the decaying lumber. There’s a pain as wood rips skin, slashes up her calf, and the splinter and crash of chunks of things dropping, something sliding, some tool, which rolls and tumbles.
She’s down on the deck with one leg dangling where it’s only down, down, down below and it’s raining hard now, drenching her hair and her satin-clad shoulders, and when she looks up, she sees him, the man who shoved Virginia down that cliff.
“Oh, shit,” he says. “Goddamn it. Oh, Isabelle. Sweet Izzy…”
“Get out,” she says.
“I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m sorry.” He reaches his hand out to help her up, but she only grapples for bearings, gets on her knees. She struggles to her feet.
“Get out.”
He turns. There’s the fierce whistle of his exhale as he storms off. She hears his keys, swiped from the counter. The door slams and the house shudders.
Inside, Isabelle shudders, too, when her mother’s car spits gravel and screams down the street. She slides the door shut, locks it. The room is cold from the night and the storm and the anger. The will and the tarp are tossed on the ground, and her leg is bleeding. Her leg is a mess.
She limps to the front door and locks that, too.
She dab-dabs the blood with a washcloth, but it keeps coming. She cleans out the splinters, runs water over her leg as the slash in her skin gushes. She’s made a trek of blood drops like breadcrumbs to the bathroom. The cut is right there on the shin, where the skin is thin. The washcloth looks like a leopard pelt with spots of blood, so she gets a towel, holds it there until it soaks and finally stops.
The washcloth, the towel, they are disturbing to look at. Without them, and without the will and the tarp and trek of drops, it could almost be any other night. Look, there are the glasses of amaretto with their milky residue, and the chocolates on a plate. She could trick herself into thinking he’s in the other room, looking at home-repair videos, or deciding which movie to watch. But she can’t trick herself anymore. She can’t unsee what she saw so clearly.
She knows. She knows without question. There could be some mysterious watch and a photo and his own petty jealousies and God, even that shove—but then there was his face. And his face changes everything.
The hatred in his eyes. A jury could never see that, could they? But she did. She did, and the regret pours in, and the remorse, and the knowing, and the fear. Jesus, she has been so stupid, and careless, and she is so sorry, to everyone, to herself, to Virginia and Sarah. She is so, so sorry, and, now, so afraid.
She shoves the towel and the washcloth in the back of her closet, into her zippered-open suitcase. She can’t bear to look at them. There. Gone.
She peeks out the front door. She takes the will and the tarp out into the rain. She opens the garbage can lid, and drops them in. Not good enough. She covers them with the last bag of kitchen garbage. She is scared out there—she looks up and down the street, which is empty, shiny black with rain. The dark, dewy trees loom overhead. They tell her what a fool she’s been. They tell her she’s in much, much trouble now. She hurries back inside.
She locks the door again. Her phone is vibrating. Buzz, buzz. Buzz, buzz. A text. God, she doesn’t even want to touch that phone.
Staying at Bayshore Inn for the night. Talk tomorrow.
Bayshore Inn—just above the restaurant where she and Henry and Dr. Mark and Jerry had dinner. It could have all been over then.
For the night.
Talk tomorrow.
The beast she must manage is much larger than she ever thought, and much more dangerous. But she’ll never spend another night with him under the same roof again.
She calculates. She doesn’t want to respond at all, but if she doesn’t answer, he might return. If she says too much or too little the beast might pace and stomp and drive her mother’s car back into the night and come into this house.
Okay, she types. It’s such a strange little word. So small. What word would be big enough for what she knows now?
She sits wide awake on their bed. She is sure she hears things. Cars driving up, doorknobs rattling. She remembers the key hidden under a flowerpot, set there in case they got locked out. Oh, God! She runs outside in her nightgown, retrieves it. So many ways we aren’t safe! She goes back to her bed. Gets up again. She shoves the entry table against the front door like they do in bad movies. The kind of movies where women get punished with violence for stupid decisions like staying in a creepy house with a monster in it, or leaving a creepy house with a monster in it. Either way, she’s stupid, because the monster is waiting, and either way it’s her fault because she doesn’t keep him away.
Her thoughts replay: He grips her robe, he shoves; she’s down. He grips Virginia’s T-shirt, the one with the winged heart, and he shoves, and then Virginia’s body smacks and bumps against rocks, and her arms flail, and her hands grab. Virginia, Sarah, Virginia, Sarah, her mind urges. It is trying to speak to her, to give her answers, but fear makes it too loud to hear anything else.
Isabelle doesn’t know what will happen next. So she just sits there in the dark with her eyes wide open until she finally sleeps.
What happens next is a phone call. Just after she finally dozes, sometime after five in the morning, her phone rings. Oh, it’s awful, that moment when you wake and the reality of your life rushes in. Is it true? Is this what’s happened? Is this her life? It is, it is. The whole disastrous mess, because it’s him calling, and it’s her calculating again.
She answers. There’s his voice, and he’s crying. She can almost imagine the smell of bacon coming up into Henry’s room from the Bayshore restaurant.
“I’m sorry, Isabelle. I’m so sorry I lost my temper. That will—I mean, wow. You didn’t tell me you got this thing in the mail…You hid it…You kept secrets from me. I mean, I thought you trusted me. We love each other! Don’t we? I love you. I mean, you’re going to be my wife! It’s understandable I lost my temper, isn’t it?”
She doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing.
“Don’t you think it’s understandable?” he cries. “You can’t just hide something like that…”
“I need some time, Henry. To sort this through…”
He starts to sob.
She’s buying time.
“You can stay in the house,” he says. “I’ll stay here for a while. Until we can figure this out. Whatever you need. I’ll come by in the morning and get some things while you’re at work. Don’t give up on us. Please, Iz.”
“Henry, maybe it’s best if I went to a hotel. It’s your house…”
“No! It’s our house. And if you leave, you might never come back. You stay there. Please, Izzy.”
“All right.”
“I’m sorry, Iz. I’m sorry for losing my temper. Try to understand. Don’t leave me. I don’t know if I could go on if you leave me. Just stay there, at home. Our home. Until we sort this out. We can get counseling or something. Couples counseling.”
“All right.”
“Just don’t leave. Take your time. We’ll figure this out.”
This is the plan for now. At least, this is what he thinks is the plan.
Maggie is silent. Maybe from fear or shock, or because Isabelle is finally seeing clearly. Or maybe Maggie’s just holding her breath.
Joe is back on Parrish, but he can’t fly with those ribs. Things are a mess minus him and one plane, and Jane’s going nuts with schedule changes and calls to contract pilots. Tourist season is starting to pick up. Still, Isabelle calls in sick.
“It’s fine, Isabelle. It’s fine,” Jane says. Jane just wants her off the phone. At this point, Isabelle is more hindrance than help.
Isabelle heads into town, but it’s all sneaking and spy moves. When she drives down these familiar streets, she’s looking left and right, left and right, fearing she’ll glimpse her mother’s old car. There’s a creepy city park in the center of town—at least, it’s dark from the shade of its large evergreens, and there are park bathrooms with wet floors and the lingering smell of cigarettes. In high school, they had end-of-the-year parties here, and the moss-thick lawn would fill up with parents and food on picnic tables, columns of smoke rolling up from the small grills set into concrete squares. Kids would sneak beer, and some band that would break up two weeks later would play on the top of the hill. But now Isabelle drives into the lot, parks near the volleyball pit, empty save for a drooping net and a rectangle of damp sand. No one will see her car here.
She makes a lurking rush for it, the police station. She’s been here only once before when she was maybe ten years old. Then, she was with her mother after they’d had a break-in at Island Air, back in the day when they had an actual cash register with actual money in it.
Inside the station, there’s a water cooler set next to two chairs, and one of those machines with old weird candy from the late 1970s. Rosemary Milligan, Jed Milligan’s mom, is at the front desk.
“Isabelle! How great to see you! What can I do for you?”
Rosemary Milligan, with her big cushy breasts and her blunt gray hair—she stares Isabelle right in the eyes. She knows.
“I was wondering if I could speak with Officer Beaker.”
“You’re in luck. He’ll be here any minute.”
Isabelle waits beside his desk. On it, there’s only a single file folder, and a neat stack of paper napkins, and a photo of a cat under a Christmas tree. In the trash is a burger box from Pirate’s Plunder and a soda cup with a plastic lid and a straw, fiercely crushed. Ricky Beaker actually hitches his waistband when he sees her, as if he’s the sheriff in an old western. He smells like he’s just come from a shower. There’s the tart waft of that green Irish soap. She stands a good three inches above him.
“Well, look who’s here,” he says.
She tells him about the shove. She tells him about the will and the jealousy. She shows him the watch and the photo.
It’s nothing they don’t already know. He looks at her as if she’d gone to a party and was somehow shocked to find that people were drunk. He taps a pen, waiting for something significant.
“Well, I’ll tell the Boston folks, but I doubt it’ll change anything.”
“He shoved me, Officer. Like he shoved her.”
“You should get a restraining order,” he says. “Want me to take those?” He’s referring to the watch and the photo.
“Will they help?”
“You got them from some stranger in the mail.”
“Never mind, then. I’ll keep them.” He shrugs. Virginia’s life seems to have come to that: a shrug.
“What’s going to happen?” she asks.
“He’ll get away with it. He already has.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“He’ll get away with it, unless he does it again.”
Henry said he’d come by in the morning when she wouldn’t be there, but she’s nervous going back to the house. It’s late afternoon, and there’s no car in the drive, but still. She unlocks the door, looks for signs that he’s been home. The kitchen’s been cleaned. The counter is shiny, and the coffee cup that she left in the sink that morning has been put away. The bed has been made.
It’s a silly thought, but there regardless: If she wanted to put her dirty cup away, she would have put her dirty cup away. Okay? Thank you.
She opens his closet. She can’t tell what’s missing, so not much is. In the office, his laptop is gone.
With the precious poems! Little ego glories! Florid eulogies for dead lovers!
Her anger is stretching out, like it’s suddenly gotten more closet space. God, she’s pissed. That shrug…She wants to only use the word murderer when she thinks of Henry, but his humanity makes the truth more complicated than that, makes his wrongdoings both larger and smaller. He is a coward and a bully, a soul thief, a spirit robber. But Ricky Beaker’s shrug says Henry has won, that he’s bigger than everyone. That he’s a murderer who has gotten away with it. Henry has diminished and destroyed in order to feel larger, and he is larger. She’s here, still scared of him. She is terrified. And the law shrugs.
This isn’t her house. It’s Henry’s. No, it’s Remy’s, and before that, it was Clyde Belle’s. Powerless Clyde Belle—how these walls must have closed in on him, too. How tormented he must have been by that gray sea, forever stretching outside these windows. Waves going in, waves going out, paying his misery no mind.
She can’t stay in here. It’s only late afternoon, and the long evening is ahead of her. She puts on her swimsuit, takes her wetsuit out of the closet. She hikes the steep trail down to the cove, with the rubber suit a soulless body over her arm. Down at the beach, she puts it on.
She plunges in. Dear God, the water is icy on her face. It is arctic and blasting. It is the elements of survival in remote places, smacking her a good one. She strokes. The waves push and shove and she shoves against them. Here, this is who is boss, the shoves say. She kicks, because this is who can kick back.
She has to stop for air and a rest. She floats there in the sea. She can see the lighthouse at the tip of Deception Point. The light looks small, but it’s large enough to save sailors from drowning.
No more.
Funny, it’s not Maggie’s voice but her own. It’s loud. It comes out of her like a serpent, a hydra, a devil whale. She could rise from that sea and breathe fire. She could wrap herself around evil ships and crush them with her body. No more, you asshole. You bitch. You tyrant.
She bobs there. Bobs—such a friendly word, a little party of a word, but this is not what she feels inside. Oh, finally, the pieces have shifted and shown themselves, recognized each other; connected to form one creature. It’s anger, and more anger. It’s fed-fucking-up. The sun will set soon, and the crows will come home en masse. But, look. There is one now, flying away. He’s going the wrong direction. He’s leaving this place, fighting against the high current with his wings and his will. Maybe no one will ever see him again.
She beats the water currents back to shore with her own will. The cold has brought fury and some mobilizing energy. Henry is more powerful, as all the more powerful people in her life have been. Larger, stronger, more in the ways that make badness win, but fine. Bring me down fighting, at least. At least, I can kick and scream on my own behalf.
What makes the monster finally emerge? What finally gives him life? No idea, but once he’s there, he’s there. He is gloriously, viciously, permanently there.
Take that, you bully, says Isabelle, a long-ago age three. You can’t make me, says Isabelle, a long-ago age six. You don’t scare me, says Isabelle, a long-ago age ten. You’re not the boss of me, says Isabelle, a long-ago age fifteen. Fuck you, says Isabelle, age now.
She almost reaches shore, when a new word appears. Oh, it shines like steel in the heat of the sun.
Hate.
She tries it out. I hate you.
She is on the beach now. She should be breathless, but—surprise—all that swimming has made her strong after all. She screams, yells. Her voice fights the wind but is louder than the wind.
Again: I hate you! And You will not ruin me!
It’s almost beautiful. Frightening, but powerful. Wow, how it shimmers, how it throws bolts.
How it makes her see the picture, stunningly clear all at once.
The watch, the photo, the journal.
The will.
The hate.
Take that, you bully.
Can it be?
Giddiness rises. It can be.
It is, she’s sure of it.
Oh, wow. Oh, beautiful strength and triumph. Beautiful retribution. Yes. Take that, and that!
Dear God, the joy fills her along with the realization, no, the hope does—the hope of the underdog, who might actually pull off the win. Not alone, though. She has to be the one to help. Her will, joining another’s will; her final act joining another’s actions, because she knows who sent those packages, yes she does. Yes! she thinks. Yes! Yes! Yes!
She is flying when she reaches the trail. There are a lot of steps, and it is a long way up after that, but she’s got this. Her muscles pull and remind: A body is a force. Her own is small and it’s been both harmed and ill-used, but just because something was doesn’t mean it always will be.
Back home, she sheds her suit. She changes into dry clothes and gets back into her car. She heads to the Front Street Market, checking over her shoulder. She buys a disposable phone, because she sees the whole story. She has always been good at seeing the whole story—she’s a reader and an English major and an editor. But more than that, she’s smart. She remembers how smart.
At the house again, with the locks clicked shut and the table shoved against the front door, she pours herself a glass of wine for the last of the necessary courage. Maybe soon she won’t need the wine, but not yet. Maybe she’ll always need a little support when she must be this brave, but who cares? Who wouldn’t? She calculates the time difference. She makes a call.
That night, Ricky Beaker is back out on her street, and between him and that swim in the sea and the rise of the underdogs, she sleeps like the dead.