Wreckage (7 page)

Blinking rapidly, Genevieve twittered innocently, “I’m sorry; I wasn’t trying to imply anything. Pure curiosity, David.”

She lingered on the name in a way that made something unsettling stir in Dave’s gut, a premonition, a sense that Genevieve Randall knew more than he’d ever expected and that she wanted to share her secrets with the world.

At this point he had no choice but to continue the charade. He’d buy his and Lillian’s freedom by answering Randall’s apparently incomplete list of questions. Or was it actually full of questions he wasn’t ready to be asked?

CHAPTER 8

DAVID-DAY 1

Somewhere in the South Pacific

The waves keep shoving me underwater, like bullies in a pool. This will go down as my final mistake—I know it will—but it was the only way. Every time I think through it, I come to the same conclusion. It had to be me.

Lillian crawled into the inflated octagonal lifeboat first, arms extended, ready to pull Mrs. Linden over the slick yellow plastic. Stinging rain pounded down as she pulled and I pushed until the unconscious woman tumbled into the boat. The force of her rescue left me standing in the arch of the plane’s doorway as the boat drifted away, attached only by a long rope. I yanked hard at the nylon braid, urging the raft back to the shrinking doorway. Then Lillian started to climb over the rounded edge of the boat.

“Margaret doesn’t have a life jacket,” she shouted from one of the inflated benches, bouncing up and down with each wave. “Trade places with me. I have to get it.”

“NO. Not enough time . . .”

“Too bad.” She cut me off.

“Would you let me finish? I meant you going would take too much time. I’ll go back. It’ll take five minutes, tops.”

She hesitated and then flipped into the boat. “Fine, but if the plane starts to go under, you get out . . . Okay? Promise.”

“And you cut the rope using one of those knives in the pouch by the tie-off so you don’t get dragged under.”

Her hands fumbled around the inside of the plastic pouch attached to the side of the boat and held something orange and silver. “I’ve got it! But you’ll be back, right?”

“Right,” I yelled to her as I disappeared into the dark fuselage, still lit by the fading emergency flares.

Sloshing through the rising water, avoiding Theresa’s floating body, I yanked the life jacket from under Margaret’s seat. High-stepping through the water, I stubbed my toe on Lillian’s waterlogged backpack. Without thinking, I tossed the heavy bag onto my back, slipping my arms through the straps. By then the water was up to my armpits and I was swimming more than walking. I brushed past Theresa one last time. She was a good woman. No one should have to die like that.

The arched doorway of the plane was filling with rushing water. I pulled on the string hanging down from my life jacket to fill it, took a deep breath, and dove through the exit, eyes and mouth closed tight against the rushing salt water. Pumping my arms and legs desperately, I knew I had to get far enough away from the plane so it didn’t suck me under with it.

When my head finally broke through the water, I squinted through the rain, trying to find Lillian, to find the life raft. It was gone. Spinning around in circles I watched, helpless, as the plane nosedived toward the ocean floor.

Now I float. Lillian’s backpack is weighing me down, almost canceling out the lift from my life jacket. I’d drop the bag but wrestling it off my shoulders seems overwhelmingly complicated. I’m way too focused on breathing and scanning the waves for the raft.

A crash of thunder pounds across the blackness and vibrates through my whole body. Lightning splashes on the stormy waters in front of me and, for a moment, the sketchy outline of something floating in the water reflects the millisecond of light. It could be nothing, or it could be the raft.

I set my aim by the brief flashes and kick through the water. Panic adds clumsiness, and I can’t seem to make my arms and legs move at the same time. Forget swimming, breathing is more important. I can barely get a deep enough breath in between waves to calm the ache in my lungs. Waves slap my face, salt water seeping through the corners of my sealed lips. The quiet darkness beneath me pulls at my feet, each wave holding me under a fraction of a second longer than the one before.

Another wave towers over me like a giant playing with his toys. I duck under the water before the wave hits. As it rolls above me, I float suspended in the ocean. The life jacket tugs me upward before I’m ready to leave the stillness, refusing to let me give up. Breaking through the foamy skin of the water, my cheek grazes the slick wet plastic of the lifeboat.

“HELP!” I scream, trying to outshout the storm. “Lillian! Help me up.”

A hand grabs the back of my shirt and pulls me over the edge.

“Here,” my voice scratches out, “I got it.” I hold up the yellow jacket, then lie breathless on the bottom of the bobbing boat.

“What, did you get lost on your way out?” Kent’s gruff voice is almost a comfort. If I had more energy, I’d hug him.

“No, Mrs. Linden needed a life jacket. Thought it was going to be a short trip, till you decided to set sail on me,” I mutter, jerking my face out of the inch and a half of water in the bottom of the boat. “I nearly drowned out there, not that I’m complaining or anything,” I mumble sarcastically.

Squinting through the rain, I can see Margaret Linden slumped against Lillian on the other side of the boat. She’s still unconscious and Lillian looks like she’s close to joining her mother-in-law. Kent tosses the life jacket across the boat, hitting Lillian in the chest. Her eyes flutter open.

“You, you’re alive!” she yells. “When you didn’t come back, I thought . . . I thought we’d never see you again. I thought . . .” Her voice cracks.

I’m alive. The words sink into my saturated skin. I survived a plane crash. I helped save a life, and I got the bag.

“I have something for you,” I yell back, scooting carefully across the slick yellow plastic toward Lillian, propelled by the need to show her what I found. Kent plops down on a bench in front of me.

“Where’s Theresa?” Water pours down his face and into his mouth. Something like human emotion chips at Kent’s granite exterior. “Did you see her in the water? I didn’t see you till you slammed into the boat so maybe I can’t see her.” He scans the water.

Suddenly parched, I open my mouth wide, trying to get some of the fresh water falling from the sky. Why is it so easy to get wet in the rain but so hard to get a drink? As I let a few sweet drops slide down my salt-swollen throat, Kent leans over and gets in my face.

“What’s going on? Where is she, Dave?” I don’t know what to say. I look to Lillian for help but she’s not paying attention. She’s covered in blood and holding a bloody cloth against Mrs. Linden’s head, and the elderly woman’s white suit coat has a dramatic trail of red cascading down its left side.

“Why are you looking at her like that?” Kent growls. “Tell me.”

Grappling for the right words, I stare at my wrinkled white fingers so I don’t have to see his face. I’ll do it quickly, like pulling off a Band-Aid. I think about how the doctor told me my dad was dead after the heart attack. I’ll say it like that. “Kent, I don’t know how to tell you this but—I’m sorry . . . Theresa is dead.”

After a brief pause, Kent snorts. “Okay, asshole, you don’t know what you’re talking about. She’s a better swimmer than any of us. She’s gonna be fine.” He digs a thick finger into my shoulder.

“She’s not out there, Kent!”

“You don’t know that.” He glares down at me, lips turned up in disgust.

“Yeah, unfortunately I do.” I climb onto the bench next to him and speak carefully. “When the plane was going through all the turbulence she didn’t have a chance to get seated, and when we were hit by that bolt of lightning and the plane jumped she . . .” My mouth goes dry again. I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to remember it. “When the lights came on she was on the floor and her eyes were open. She wasn’t breathing.”

“Are you telling me you left her in there?”

“Kent—she was
dead
,” I insist. “We barely carried Mrs. Linden out; we would’ve died trying to get Theresa’s body out too. There was no time.”

“No time? You had time to save those two.” He pointed at Lillian and Mrs. Linden, huddled together against the rain. “You had plenty of time to get that life jacket and retrieve the soccer mom’s backpack but you left Theresa in the plane to drown?” he screams, red-hot fury replacing stubborn confusion. He twists his fingers into my shirt until the collar presses into my windpipe.

“She was already
dead
. There was nothing I could do. Honest, man, nothing.”

Kent stands in the tilting raft, faces me, and attempts to lift me into the air. He’s a good head shorter than me and at least twenty pounds overweight, but under the potbelly he’s strong. I try to break his grasp but I’m weak from swimming; there’s no escape as he tilts me toward the foamy abyss. How long will my life jacket keep me afloat? Will sharks find me before or after my heart stops beating?

Then, for no reason, he drops me in the boat. Scrambling onto the bench, I curl into myself, watching his every move. He steps away from me, collapsing on the bench adjacent to mine.

“I’m going in,” he says, resolved. “I can’t leave her there. I gotta go back.”

“You can’t get her, Kent. The plane is underwater.” He can’t leave us. I don’t know how to turn on the rescue beacon and the only first aid training I’ve had is how to open a Band-Aid. He knows this ocean, he flies it every day. I never liked Kent, but we need him.

He rips off his life jacket and pilot’s shirt so he’s down to his soaked white undershirt, and he hands the pilot’s shirt to me. “Give this to my mom if I don’t make it,” he mumbles.

The shirt sags in my palm. I should get her address right now because Kent is going to die.

“Please, stay in the boat and put your life jacket back on. When the rescue workers come, they’ll get her out. I promise. Here, take it. Take your shirt.”

“No,” he shakes his head, “I can’t leave her. I’d rather die.”

“Then you
will
die,” Lillian yells across the boat, leaning forward. “Just like Theresa, just like Margaret.”

The older woman is slouched across Lillian’s lap. Dead.

“Whatever, lady. I’m going in and nothing you say is going to stop me.”

“It was my fault, you know,” Lillian ventures, “Theresa dying. If I hadn’t been on that flight she’d probably still be alive.” The rain picks up, slowly rinsing off the blood that covers her like paint.

Kent turns away from his search for the invisible plane and glares at Lillian. “What are you talking about?”

“I was in her seat when the turbulence hit. She tried to make it to another open seat, but when the plane jumped, she hit the ceiling. She was dead when the lights came back on. If it wasn’t for me, she would’ve been safely buckled. She’d be here right now.” She points to where she sits across from us. I hope she knows what she’s doing.

“Why are you telling me this now, huh? What’s in it for you? You feel guilty about flirting with Dave here? Want to clear your conscience before we all die?” A snarky smile creeps up, curling his lips, baring his teeth. “Yeah, Theresa told me about how you two were acting like a buncha teenagers.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I interject, attempting some damage control. “We were just chatting. Anyway, she’s married.”

“Yeah, last time I checked you’re married too, Romeo.”

I open my mouth to argue but I stop short. Instead of fighting with Kent about minutiae, I need to talk a little sense into Lillian.

“Theresa’s death was an accident. You didn’t know what was going to happen, none of us did. You can’t blame yourself.”

Lillian shakes her head. “It’s not just Theresa. There’s Margaret.” She chokes on the name. “I killed her too.”

Her words are confident and unwavering. I’m surprised at the hypnotizing effect they have on Kent. He turns away from the ocean, suddenly looking like an old man, and sits on the inflated bench, silent.

“Remember, Dave, when Theresa told me to put my laptop away?” she continues. “When we crashed, somehow it . . .” She stares down at the lifeless form on her lap, fingers tenderly drawing back some stray hairs that had fallen across Margaret’s face. She tucks them behind Margaret’s ear, revealing a gaping wound, still oozing crimson. “It hit her head. I found it on her lap when we were helping her out of the plane. If I hadn’t been so careless, if I’d stayed put, if I’d cared more about my husband’s mother than . . . ”