feel it at all, and she turned back and saw Caroline climbing up through the car toward her and she reached for her hand again and grabbed it, but then the car began to roll over and the door closed on her own arm like a shark and twisted and she had to let go of Caroline, she had to let go, and the car rolled and it took her under with it, and it held her. It held her underwater and it began to wheel slowly around, upside down, in the current, and the tires or something must have been caught on the ice because it didn’t go under the ice, and there was nothing to see under there but the beams of light in the yellow water, nothing in the water but water and bubbles until, all at once, there was Caroline—she’d gotten out of the car on the driver’s side, or had been swept out of it by the water, and she was in the lights and she was in the current and she was trying to swim back, she was trying to swim back to the car, her sweatshirt rippling in the current, the hood gaping behind her head like the mouth of a fish, like the bell of a jellyfish, and the current had her and she was growing smaller, smaller, and then she passed out of the reach of the headlights—and she was gone, Daddy, she was gone.
Her father held her good hand in both of his. Squeezing so hard it hurt. Something private, secret, burning behind his eyes.
“Daddy—?”
“What hand?”
“What?”
“What hand did that—boy put over your mouth.”
“Tom,” said the deputy. The sheriff.
She did not look away from her father’s eyes. “He was holding my right arm with his . . . his left, so it must’ve been his right hand over my mouth.”
“His right hand,” he said.
Moran standing there looking hard at her father, and her father finally relaxing his grip.
He took a breath and sat back. “Go on, Sheriff,” he said.
Moran shifted his weight. He adjusted his black, gadgety belt. “So you were underwater, Audrey, but then you got out.”
The water so powerful and so deep and yellow in the lights. She saw hair, golden hair, sweeping in the current, or was it grasses from the floor of the river? The current pulled at her, wanted her too, but the car would not let her go.
“How did you do it, Audrey? How did you get out of the water?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The car was stuck on the ice and I was stuck on the car. I guess I must have climbed up. I must have gotten the door open far enough to get my arm out and I must’ve used the door to climb up on top of the car—on top of the underside of the car—and I must’ve climbed from the car to the ice. But I don’t remember that. All I remember is lying on the ice, on my stomach, and looking at the lights through the ice, the headlights, the way they were shining on the underside of the ice just as steady and clear as anything. Like I was underwater looking up at them from below. Like everything was upside down. The sky, the water. Everything.”
13
Holly Burke is dead, her mind kept repeating. Gordon’s daughter is dead. Rachel saw his face again . . . his shut-down eyes. Still breathing!
She wanted to see her boys. Craved the weight of them in her arms as she had when they were babies. The smell of them. Her breasts aching for them once again.
Momma guess what, Marky said when she returned to the Plumbing & Supply that afternoon. He was at the glass door, spritzing away smears and fingerprints.
What, sweetie, she said, fitting her hand to the back of his neck.
He shrugged off the hand and said, The sheriff was here Momma the sheriff and the deputies and they were all asking questions and all wanting to find Danny.
Jeff Goss sat behind the counter, unsmiling, listening.
Did the men talk to you, Marky? she said. Did they ask you questions?
Yes Momma they asked me where is Danny and I told them he didn’t take me with him he went up to Uncle Rudy’s cabin him and Wyatt but he never woke me up he never told me anything he just went.
She turned to Jeff Goss and he said, his eyes on Marky, or perhaps on the half-cleaned glass beyond him, They’re