Page 102 of Hired Help

I stand, eyes scanning in all directions, looking for a sign, a symbol, something to let me know where he’s gone. A dull pain grips my left arm and I flip through the neat stack of clothes again, this time searching for a note. There’s nothing but I can’t be relieved. Not when he could just as easily have sent a message from his phone, telling us goodbye. When he could have opted to leave without explaining.

In the water. He must be in the water.

My eyes restlessly scan the surface for any splashes, ears cocked for the slightest out-of-place noise.

Seconds pass like hours until I can’t stand it a moment longer. I strip my jumper and t-shirt off, becoming frantic as I nudge off my sneakers, shuck my jeans, then plunge into the bitter cold of the small lake.

When I break the surface, I hear a splash and head in that direction. My breaths are short and fast, not giving me enough air. Something heavy settles onto my chest and I struggle to push through, push on regardless. I don’t have time for anything to go wrong. Not until I find Harrison. Not until I can hold on to my son.

His head bobs above the surface and the initial rush of relief is swamped by new concerns. Is he trying to swim? Has he changed his mind? Has whatever madness drove him to this icy lake in the early morning hours retreated or is he still held fast in its grip?

I strike out for him, closing quickly now I know exactly where to head. He sinks farther in the water, but I grab hold, manoeuvring behind him, fear cutting like a blade as I wrap my arms around him, and he tries to push me away. To get free of me long enough to sink into the water and drown.

“Let me go,” he blurts, gasping for air as he renews his struggles. “I’m right on top of it. Just one more dive.”

“On top of what?”

I’m so grateful to hear him speak, I let go, swimming back a stroke to have a better view of his face. “We need to get you back to shore. Please, I promise you, things aren’t as bad as they might seem.”

“What?” His face creases with a frown, then he exhales, bobbing lower, then he’s gone.

“No!”

I duck into the water, following him, my eyes not adjusting to the opacity, the gloom, the murk.

Then I see the shape of him near the bottom. I reach for his shoulder, grab his upper arm, and start hauling him to the surface.

At first, he fights me, I see a long limb stretch out to grab a handful of mud or weeds orsomething, then he capitulates, and we float up together, me gasping for air the moment my head breaks from the water.

“Harrison, please come back with me. Whatever’s troubling you we can sort it out, but please, please don’t end it this way.”

“End what?”

His lips are dull white, skin turning grey with cold. Instead of talking, I slip my arms around his chest, pulling him back against me, then strike out for the jetty. He fights me again, struggling free, but this time heads in the same direction, relief giving me another impetus to make the swim back to safety.

“What were you thinking?” I scold him, directing him up the ladder first, teeth chattering so my words take different shapes than I mean. “I could have lost you.”

“Lost me how?” He clutches a small box close to his chest. “Do you have a rug or something in your car? I’m freezing.”

“No, shit. Next time you throw yourself into a lake to die, please choose one in summer.”

Harrison goes still. “You thought I was…” he shakes his head, opening the box and tilting it towards me. “It’s the engagement ring I had made for Brooke. I thought… I can’t buy her anything she can’t already buy herself, but I hoped she’d see the effort and…”

And another jolt of relief hits my bloodstream. “You went diving in a cold lake at the crack of dawn to find a ring?”

He shifts from foot to foot, hugging himself for warmth. “Well, yeah.”

“Without telling anyone where you were going or what you were doing?”

He rubs a hand through his hair, flicking out water. “No one needed to know. I was diving into a poxy little lake to find something I threw away, not wading into the ocean with rocks in my pockets.”

The simultaneous urge to smack him and hug him leaves me doing neither. I head to the car, pulling the rug from the back seat and shaking five years’ worth of crumbs to the ground before handing it to him.

“One day, you’ll have a kid, and I hope they put you through the most torturous shit ever devised by an offspring in the world ever.”

“Wow. Thanks, Dad. Really selling me on parenthood.” He narrows his eyes at me. “Does that mean I get to go first?”

I yank the rug away from him, drying myself while he whimpers, then getting dressed, even that layer of protection not enough to drive out the cold. “I’m not the one to ask,” I say once I’ve let the query settle and tossed the rug back his way. “And if you taking off on daft excursions, telling no one, is anything to judge by, you’ve missed the point about communication.”

---