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Let go, Lydia.
I let my fingers float out in front of me. The water softens everything. My vision blurs, my need for air replaced with my need to be with her. I’m so close. Only a little farther, a little longer, and everything will be all right.
* * *
A jolt. Something grabbing around my arms, hard. The silence gives way to a deafening roar as the force pulls me backward, upward, water rushing around me. I was so close. Just a little farther and I could have reached out and touched her, her auburn hair swirling around her pale face like a halo.
I gasp, water and slime choking out of me as my body betrays me and fights for air. Darkness explodes with light. Arms tighten around me, lifting me despite my wet dress weighing me down.
My body is lead and my lungs ache, but I’m not ready to come back. Blind panic takes over and I thrash out. My only thought is that I must get free. I must get free and find Emeline at any cost.
“Lydia! For Christ’s sake, stop!”
Mr. Barrett. My ears are clogged but his voice comes through sharp and familiar. I stop struggling, hoping that I still might be able to slip from his grasp and into the depths of the pond.
But he locks his arms tighter around my waist, pulling me back to the shore, half swimming, half trudging in the thick water. Pondweeds wind around my ankles, loath to let me go. Every step back to shore is like a broken promise to Emeline.
When we reach solid ground we collapse in a heaving tangle of limbs. As soon as I feel the damp earth beneath me, all my strength, all my fight, dissolves from my body. I’m deflated, empty. I failed in the one thing I thought I could control.
The willow holds its tongue, and the night becomes ordinary again. Mr. Barrett lets go, rolling over onto his back, his breathing heavy and ragged, a limp arm draped over my stomach. To think of all the times I imagined his closeness, his touch, and this is how it has happened. I could almost laugh. I turn my head, the dirt cool against my cheek as I struggle to bring the world back into focus. Moonlight streaks pale and fleeting through breaks in the clouds, softening the edges of Mr. Barrett’s profile in the darkness. There’s a dark stain under his nose—blood?—and his hair is matted down to his cheeks. A pang of guilt runs through me.
My throat is burning and I don’t think I’ll ever get the taste of slime out of my mouth. Rolling over, I retch. It’s not just the taste I am frantic to rid myself of, but the failure, the realization that I’m still here.
When he’s regained his breath, Mr. Barrett sits up and rakes his hair back with shaking hands. “Christ,” he says, softly. He turns to me, peering through the dark, and I’m sure the moonlight is betraying the shame written all over my face. Why did he have to come? Why do I have to suffer this embarrassment on top of everything else? It could have all been over by now. I turn my face away, wishing the pond was an ocean like the day when I screamed and screamed, that it would lap up the small bank and pull me back in its receding tide. But the placid water just shimmers, dark and still.
“You’re shaking,” he says, more to himself than me. I can’t feel anything, but there’s a warm, metallic taste in my mouth. I must have bitten my tongue from chattering. His coat lays crumpled on a rock, as if thrown off in a hurry and forgotten. He slowly hefts himself up, grunting at some injury, and stumbles over to retrieve it.
He steps over my shoes and stockings, arranged so neatly, smug that they would never be worn again. Seeing them like that, empty and still needed, cracks open something deep inside of me. Despite my hoarse throat and lingering breathlessness, a broken wail cracks out of me, followed by a torrent of tears. It’s nothing like the scream the evening Emeline died; this wail is mine and mine alone. It doesn’t churn the water or send clouds scudding across the sky. It is my misery and grief distilled into a single, plaintive note.
Mr. Barrett doesn’t say anything as my sobs gradually subside into miserable hiccups, he simply sits me up and wraps the coat around my shoulders. When I’m snugged tighter than a mummy, he stays crouched beside me, cupping my face in his hands and brushing a stray tear away with his thumb.
“I know, I know. There now, you’ll be all right,” he says with unbearable tenderness. “Everything will be all right.”
How I wish I could believe him. How I wish I could lean into his warm, capable hands and let all my problems fall away from me. But he can’t know that everything will be all right, and his words promising otherwise are the kind that a parent offers to a child with a scraped knee—meant to comfort, but without any real meaning behind them. If only he hadn’t come.
Crying has left me hoarse and it’s hard to form my words, but I can’t stop myself. He leans down to hear me, so close that my lips nearly graze his ear.
“You saved the wrong sister.”
Slowly, he pulls back. His face contorts in something like pain, a spreading realization of betrayal as if he were Caesar and I Brutus. I want him to reproach me for saying such a terrible thing, or to rush to assure me otherwise even if it’s not true. Anything. But he just levels a long, unreadable look at me. When he does speak it’s softly, with words so heavy with pity and disappointment that I think I will die of shame.
“Oh, Lydia.”
He stands up, and I suppose he’s finally had enough of me. It must be time to go home. I close my eyes, curling my fingers into the loamy dirt. At home there will be questions, more hurt looks.
He doesn’t say anything else as he scoops me up, draping my arm behind his neck, his trembling hands digging into my flesh. His shirt is cold and wet, but underneath his chest is warm. I’m exhausted, my body inside out and spent, but still he clutches me as if I might try to escape back into the pond.
The breeze sighs with regret. I crane my neck back, watching as the water recedes into the night, indistinct and black. It might not have claimed my life in the end, but as I let my head fall against Mr. Barrett’s chest, his heartbeat strong and fast against my ear, I know that nothing will ever be the same again.
My eyes are heavy and tired, but just before they close, I catch a glimmer of movement. Emeline.
She stands beside the water, still as a little statue. This isn’t the mirage of a desperate mind, or imaginings, delusions, visions. She’s there, as real as anything. The whispered promises that drew me to the pond were not hollow.
I open my mouth to call out to her, to beg her to give me some sign that she sees me, but my throat is too hoarse, too dry. When Mr. Barrett feels me renewing my struggles, he tightens his grip, his fingers curling into my wet clothes. It’s no use. I’m spent of energy, and so I watch Emeline grow smaller and smaller until the night swallows her whole.
16
EMELINE. EMELINE ISDEAD, but she is not gone. It was her, I know in my heart of hearts that it was. The pale lady, the writing in the mirror, the voices on the wind...if they are all real, then why not the vision of my dear sister? My mind swirls with questions, my heart swells with hope. Will I see her again? Why has she come back?