Zachary glanced at Kenzie, trying to get some idea from her as to when help would arrive. She made a wry face and gave a slight shrug with one shoulder. Who knows?
“I get it,” Zachary said. “I know you think no one else can understand, but I get it.”
“How could you?”
“I have… thoughts… too. I have had since I was ten years old.” Zachary swallowed hard. “I’ve never told anyone.”
Spencer stopped chopping the ice and looked across the pond at him. “What thoughts do you have?” he asked. In the failing light, his eyes were just hollows. He looked skeletal.
“I think that people are going to leave me. My wife. Anyone I’m dating. My wife did leave me… and I still think about her all the time. I want to know who she’s seeing, what she’s doing. I put a tracking device on her car so that I could know where she was all the time.”
Spencer was standing there looking at him. He had stopped digging the hole and moving around, for the moment.
“I put trackers on other people too,” Zachary said, glancing at Kenzie and grimacing. “Sometimes… people I hardly even know. It started with work, with people I was surveilling, but I couldn’t stop with that. I had to know where everyone was. Everyone in my life. I stalk them by GPS. I check social media to see what they’re doing all day long. I profile anyone they might be dating or spending too much time with…”
“That makes sense,” Spencer said. “But the thoughts I have…” He looked at his wife and shook his head. “You can’t imagine how horrible they are.”
“You need to get help. There are things they can do to help. There are other ways.”
“No… the only way to stop the thoughts is to remove the trigger. That’s the only thing that has ever worked for me.” Spencer looked down at Isabella with a groan. He grabbed her leg and tugged her toward the hole in the ice.
“Until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand,” Isabella repeated.
Zachary stepped out onto the ice.
“Zachary, no,” Kenzie protested in a whisper.
“I have to do something.”
As he started to slide his feet across the ice, gingerly feeling his way along and listening for the sounds of cracking, he saw red flashing lights coming through the trees. The police were finally there, but Spencer was tugging Isabella those last few inches toward the hole, and the ice he was standing on could break and dump them both into the water at any time.
“Did you ever go ice skating as a kid?” Zachary asked, trying to distract Spencer and fill the silence. “I never had skates, but we used to go out on the pond, like this, sliding across it in our shoes.” He was almost within reach of Isabella, which was both bad and good. He was now adding his own weight to the sheet of ice. “I used to love winter then. Sliding on the ice, building snowmen, Christmas…”
He’d almost forgotten that. Almost forgotten that he had ever loved Christmas. Like any other child. It had been a magical time of year. Not because of presents, because they rarely got anything worth mentioning. Not like some of his friends who got new toys, the latest games, the most popular movies, even new clothes, but because it was the season of peace and love. He could remember sitting in the living room with his mother, drowsy, staring up into the fully-decorated, lit-up Christmas tree. She told him stories and sang parts of Christmas hymns, and he felt the magic of the season.
“Come on, Spencer. Let’s get you help.”
Isabella started to slide into the hole in the ice feet-first. Peacefully, without a sound, just like Spencer had planned. Zachary threw himself down on the ice, sliding the rest of the way on his belly. He grabbed her coat and her arm and kept her from sliding the rest of the way in. The ice crackled under his body.
“Until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.” Her voice was drowsy and far away.
“Not yet, Isabella,” Zachary growled. While she might be ready to meet her maker, he was not ready to let her go.
“Let go!” Spencer protested, his voice rising from despair to anger for the first time. “You’re ruining it! Let her go in! It’s the only way the thoughts are going to stop!”
“You can’t get rid of thoughts of doing something terrible by doing something equally bad or worse.” Zachary clenched his teeth with the effort of holding Isabella up. He could hear the police arriving, yelling to one another, coordinating their actions, but he was locked into the moment with Spencer, unable to move his eyes to the right or the left.
“You have no idea. You have no idea of how horrible the thoughts are. You wouldn’t believe that I could think things that are so… so depraved. This is a mercy. For her to go peacefully and be with Declan again. It’s what she wants.”
“They’ll help you, Spencer. They’re going to get you help.”
Spencer seemed to become aware of the police for the first time. He looked around in horror, his eyes getting bigger. He looked once more at Isabella, then finally abandoned his mission, making a run for it.
He didn’t get far.
Zachary was relieved to have Spencer’s extra weight off the shelf of ice. He breathed out slowly, tightening his grip on Isabella.
“Now it’s time to get you out of here to where you’re safe.”
Hands grabbed Zachary’s ankles. Two strong hands on each leg.
“You got a good grip on her?” a voice demanded.
“Yes.”
“Hold tight. We’re going to pull you back from the hole.”
He tightened his grip. “I’m ready.”
The voice gave a three-count, and then they pulled. Zachary kept ahold of Isabella.
They both slid easily across the ice, her body completely out of the water.
“That’s it,” Zachary breathed. “You’re safe.
