Out Of The Deep I Cry

“Don’t say you’re sorry.”

“God, no.” In the pause, she could hear him trying to catch his breath. “Are you?”

She ought to be. She knew that. “No,” she said.

Another sharp breath. She thought she could feel him, leaning toward her. Then he said, “This isn’t the time. Or the place.” His voice was thick and harsh.

There isn’t any time or place, she wanted to cry, but she kept it to herself. Instead she said, “Hold my coat. I’m going to try the other door.” A jolly wade through icy shin-deep water should cool her ardor. She thrust the coat at him and went down the stairs by hand and foot. They weren’t as far above the water as she had thought, and when she stepped off the stairs into the icy murk she knew why.

“The water’s rising.” She tried to keep her voice calm. “It’s up past my knees now.”

He swore. “The river,” he said. “It’s rising.”

“What?”

“Every year, we get some flooding with the snowmelt. Add in a few hard rains, and presto. Flash flood. Goddamnit.”

His muffled swearing followed her as she sloshed across the floor, hands outstretched. She cast about for the other stairs, and had a moment of disoriented panic before whacking into a semisubmerged step. She crawled out of the water to the top and pushed against the trapdoor. She shoved and rattled it for form’s sake, but she knew she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Any luck?” he called. His voice spread through the darkness, lapped against the outermost walls. She realized the cellar was bigger than she had thought, probably encompassing the entire footprint of the building.

“It’s not budging.” She gritted her teeth and descended into the water again. “Any idea how deep it’s likely to get?”

“Deep. The Millers Kill has been known to rise ten feet above normal, and we’re well below water level right now. There must be a weak spot in the foundation.”

“It’d have to be more than a weak spot. It’s got to be coming in by the gallon to rise this quickly.” She waved her hands in front of her and struck a brick column. She paused. “I don’t hear any water rushing.”

“Probably a chunk missing near the cellar floor. Could be this place is partially underwater most of the year, except maybe midsummer when the river is at its lowest. The good news is, the ceiling is definitely above water level, even when the river’s high, like it is today.” His voice was much closer. She sloshed forward, gritting her teeth against the cold slicing into her legs.

“And the bad news?”

“It’s not much higher. If the water rises to level with the Millers Kill, we’ll be sitting in it up to our necks.”

In water a few degrees above freezing. He didn’t have to spell it out for her. As the heat leached from their limbs, they would go numb. Then, as their bodies started to shut down, they would get sleepy. Finally, when their core temperatures cooled to seventy degrees, they would die. She had seen a special on the Discovery Channel that had said fishermen in the North Atlantic could survive ten minutes in the water without survival gear. She and Russ wouldn’t last much longer.

She collided with the stairs. “I think there may be a way out,” Russ said as she hauled herself, dripping, up the steps. “I think there may be a bulkhead here somewhere.”

“You mean a door in the cellar? With steps coming down from the street?” She sat on the rung below him.

“C’mere,” he said, wrapping his hands around her arms and lifting her into the cradle of his legs. He drew her close and tossed her coat over her. “There’s nothing on the street side. But I’m pretty sure I remember seeing one facing the river. I used to fish all along the kill back when I was a kid. It was a long time ago, but it’ll still be here. Somewhere.”

“But if it’s facing the river, wouldn’t it be underwater, too?”

“Maybe. But even so, we’d be out of here. At the worst, we’d be carried down-river some until we could swim for the shore.”

“No, at the worst, we’d be swept away in the freezing water and drown.”

“Yeah. Well.” He tightened his hold on her. “I’m going to try it. I want you to sit tight on these stairs.”

“So I can be the girl from Titanic who stays high and dry while you, the guy, vanish beneath the icy waves? I don’t think so.”

“Didn’t we just agree you should have stayed in the car?”

“I was joking.”

“Clare.” Maybe it was the total darkness that made his voice so intimate. “If anything were to happen to you, I’d…”

“You’d what?”

The darkness, and the sense that they were the only inhabitants of a world bound by the unseen walls stretching out around them.

“I’d walk into my brother-in-law’s field and lie down and let the corn grow up around me.”

No one else in their world. No costs, no considerations, only two voices in the dark. And honesty.

“Okay. Same here.” She twined her arms over his, hugging him closer. “Remember the helicopter?” She had taken him for a disastrous ride last summer.

“I promise you, I will never, ever forget the helicopter. So long as we both shall live.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “You told me to hold on.”

“So now we’re both holding on. No you going and me staying behind. We sink or swim together.”

He pressed a kiss into her hair. “Even if I said please?”

“No.”

He made a noise deep in his throat.

They sat in silence for a while. Clare was damp where she wasn’t wet, aching with the chill, and both of them reeked. She felt as if she could stay right where she was forever. But the realization of it roused her. They didn’t have forever.

“I may as well get down there and see if I can find this bulkhead before it gets any deeper.” She leaned forward, folding her coat and draping it over one of the steps. She climbed down the stairs and waded into the water.

“Hang on.” She could hear a bumping sound as Russ went down the steps on his rear. He gasped when he hit the water. “I’m coming with you.” He jostled her arm, trailed down and took her hand. “Let’s see. The stairs are parallel to the river side of the building, so the wall should be right-” They struck an uneven patch of stone. “Here,” Russ said. “You go left, I’ll go right.” He gave her hand a squeeze before letting go.

She spread her hands over the dank stone and began her search. Step, sweep. Step, sweep. Cobwebs stroked her face and clung to her hair. She tried not to think of the creepy-crawlies that might be living there. At least nothing was squeaking. The only sounds were the lapping of water against stone, Russ’s periodic huffs of pain as he bore down on his broken leg, and her own chattering teeth. She reached the corner of the building.

“I’m at a corner. Do you want me to continue? This wall runs away from the river, parallel to the street.”

“No, come on back toward me.”

He didn’t have to ask twice. She waded through the water, trailing one hand over the stone to keep her bearings. “Where are you?”

“Right here.”

“How’s your leg?”

“Better. Of course, that’s because it’s gone numb.”

“Mine, too.” Touching his back to orient herself, she moved past him and pressed both hands against the foundation wall. The moldy, old, something-died-in-here smell was worse. She tried not to breathe too deeply. Step, sweep. Step, sweep. “Is it my imagination, or do you feel the water rising?”

“It’s your imagination.”

Imagination or no, the faster they found the bulkhead-if there was one-the sooner they’d be out of this death trap. She increased her pace. So she had no one to blame but herself when she tripped over a knee-high obstacle and tumbled into the water. The shock of the cold took her breath away, and she flailed and scrambled her way back onto her feet.

“Clare? What is it? What happened?”

She forced words from her tightly clenched jaw. “There’s something here. I tripped.”