But we were by the door.
We scrambled out into sweet, beautiful mud, and pulled ourselves through the grasses. The snap of a spark behind us became a tremendous sucking whump and the night blazed orange and gold. We stumbled to a hummock and knelt behind it, the heat pressing our wet faces. The interior of the old shrimper's cabin burned like a torch, but the rain-soaked wood outside was slower to ignite. Light blazed through the doors, the ports, the pilot house. For a few minutes the old boat resembled a magic lantern dropped from the stars to the earth, and we crouched golden beneath its light.
Then it simply fell to pieces and consumed itself.
EPILOGUE
'… last thing I heard was Carson yelling about floating. So I took a deep breath and relaxed. Ever try and relax when you think you're gonna drown?'
'I'll pass,' Ava said. A gull keened overhead and she studied its wheeling flight. Harry plucked another boiled peanut from the bowl on my deck table. He was eating them Harry style: bite off the tip of the shell, dribble a few drops of hot sauce into the opening, pop the whole affair in his mouth. He chewed and reflected.
'But I found I could just kinda bob along. When I went under I'd flap my arms like wings, float up to the surface, grab a breath, and then the water'd cover me again.'
Harry flapped his arms to demonstrate. For a moment I heard the sound of rain and saw him spinning away in the brown river. I caught my tumble into the past and fought back to the present. There needed to be time to reflect on the past, I figured, but not today.
Today would be dedicated to This Moment Only, unencumbered by chains or ghosts or lines converging in the muddy dark.
'How far'd you go?' Ava asked.
Harry narrowed an eye, calculated. 'Guess about a quarter mile. Then my feet hit bottom and damned if I wasn't crawling up a sandbar on the other side.'
We were sitting on my deck. This was our first chance to talk in any detail among just the three of us. We'd spent the day following the event in the hospital, surrounded by doctors and inquisitive cops.
Yesterday was more cops and the media. We answered the reporters' haphazard questions vaguely, downplaying our roles.
Ava leaned toward Harry. 'You thought Carson was' she paused; the word was hard for her to say, and wasn't that easy for me to hear 'gone?'
Harry looked at me and winked. 'Boy can't do a whole helluva lot, but he can swim. I knew if anyone was gonna pop up on the far shore, it'd been Carson. I just kept moving upriver, knowing that's what he'd do.
Then I heard a crashing sound up ahead.'
I said, 'Me going through that rotten door.'
For a split second I was tumbling through the boat, sliding in mud and blood and coming to rest with a 12- gauge at my eyes. I shook the scene from my head.
Harry said, 'Thought I'd go see who was disturbing my pleasant little nature hike. Then I see that damn boat up in the air…'
Two full days behind us and the event was settling into a blur. My hands weren't too bad, or wouldn't be when the fingernails returned.
The knife slit in the meat of my hip felt like someone had sewn bees in there. They gave me a crutch at the hospital but I'd left it in the car, more trouble than it was worth. I pushed myself up from the table.
Ava's hand reached for mine. 'You OK?'
'I'm gonna go lean on the rail. My ass is stiffening up.'
Her hand squeezed mine and I looked into her eyes. They looked good, clear and sharp and green as the sunshiny sea. She winked one at me and my heart skipped a beat. I patted her hand and gimped toward the deck rail. My idiot cell phone chirped from the table. I should have never let it out of the cooler bag.
'Grab that, would you, Harry?'
He said, 'Probably another damn reporter. Or Squill trying to make nice again.'
Though I didn't circulate the cassette, Squill picked up heavy tarnish.
He'd been booted from investigations and assigned the title 'media liason'; the press probably deserved him. He was again reinventing history and had called earlier confessing he had been completely duped by Burlew, so sorry. It was pathetic, but that was Squill.
'Ryder's place,' Harry said. 'Hello?' He stared at the cell, then looked at me and shrugged.
'Nothing. Wrong number, I guess.'
Harry flipped the phone on the table and lumbered into the house to refill the peanut bowl. I leaned my back against the rail. Ava joined me, putting her elbows on the wood, staring quietly out into the Gulf.
The sky was cloudless blue and a tight chain of pelicans moved low across the waves.
I said, 'The first time you stood there, the wind blew your clothes tight against you and I had lascivious thoughts.'
She slid a breeze-blown strand of hair from her eyes. 'It seems so long ago.'
'That I had lascivious thoughts? Odd, I thought I recalled several from this very morning.'
'I had every intention of showing up sober. But fear got the best of me. Fear of myself.'
'You were full of ghosts, some you invented, most were real.'
She nodded, took a sip of ginger ale. 'I've talked with Dr. Peltier.
It's going to be different. Very different.'
Clair was making peace with her own demons, no longer brandishing them at others. I'd spoken with her last evening, and knew today she was meeting with an attorney specializing in divorce. I was anxious to see how she looked when she looked free of Zane. Might her eyes turn even bluer?
I said, 'You're going to the meeting tonight?'
'And tomorrow, and the day after that. Whatever Bear says to do, I'm doing. I like going; when I leave I feel lighter, like dancing on air.' She she set down her glass and stood on tiptoe to put her lips lightly over mine. I heard Harry slide the door open, return to the deck.
'What's this stuff I'm seeing?' he said.
I paused, ran several combinations of words through my head.
'Kissing and blissing?' I ventured.
'Damn,' he said, eyes wide in feigned shock. 'The boy finally got one right.'
I started to launch some grief his way but the phone twittered again.
Harry set the peanuts on the table and lifted the phone. 'Ryder's.
Uh-huh. He's right here. Yes, ma'am, hang on just a second.' Harry looked at me.
'It's a Dr. Prowse, Evangeline Prowse.'
I nodded. Harry brought me the cell. I turned to face the waves and brought the phone to my ear.
'Carson? Carson, this is Evangeline Prowse.' Her voice dropped low.
'I'm sorry, Carson. I'm afraid I have some bad news? Terrible news.'
'My God, what?'
The voice trembled. 'It's Jeremy, Carson. He's dead… a suicide. He hanged himself.'
I heard the words but couldn't make sense of them. 'Jeremy? No, there's no way he'd '
'Last night. Or early this morning. He left a note? It's addressed to you.'
'I can't believe this, it can't be true. My brother would never '
'Do you want me to read the note, Carson? I don't have to, it's personal. I can send it.'
I took a deep breath, let it drift from my chest.
'Yes, go ahead. Please read.'
The sound of paper unfolding. Then Evangeline's hushed voice.
'Dear Carson, I apologize. I did not know it was your womb-man he was after. My translation of the materials was wrong in that area. I was sure he wanted the other one, the one in charge, Peltier. I don't know if that would
