Page 3 of Lies He Told Me

Jump in,I silently pleaded.Jump in and rescue him.

But I could see nobody in the helicopter save the pilot. The police hadn’t had time to scramble a rescue team — just the copter itself, from wherever it had been nearby.

He’ll grab the ladder,I told myself.They’ll fly him to safety. He’ll wave to the crowd a hero, and we will live happily ever after.

Believe it will happen. Believe it with all your will.

It will happen. Believe it will happen.

Grab the ladder, David. Please. Please, David, grab theladder and come back to us. Don’t leave us on your forty-second birthday, not when the kids are so young and need you, not when we have so much time left together.

Grab the ladder, David. Do it. Now.

A hand popped out of the water and grabbed a rung of the ladder.

THREE

DAVID DID THE SMART thing: he didn’t try to swim with the unconscious man to the river shore. He stayed right where he was, his left arm wrapped around the ladder’s rung, his right arm around the chest of the man he’d pulled from the SUV, bracing himself against the current of the river.

I stood by the riverbank, still in shock, wilting with relief, feeling like a miracle had just been bestowed on me. But he wasn’t safe yet. That water was cold, and freezing water saps strength. How long could he hold both himself and a grown man out of the water?

I watched him, never took my eyes off him, while I hit Redial for 911. “A marine unit is on its way, ma’am,” I was told.

“Hold on — a boat is coming!” I shouted, but I was certain David couldn’t hear me, focusing his energy on staying above water, the harsh splashes from the river’s current, which seemed to be picking up, tossing him about while heclung to the ladder. Somehow, he managed to turn his head in my direction and find me. I waved to him and shouted, “I love you!” but he couldn’t possibly hear me or read my lips.

I saw it first from the reaction of the people on the bridge, pointing and jumping and shouting — the police rescue boat coming from the east, siren flashing, nearly flying over the water, racing to the scene.

“Get there, get there,” I whispered. “Hang on, David. Hang on just a little longer; they’re coming.”

The boat slowed and pulled up right alongside the ladder. Rescuers opened a side door on the boat and dropped some kind of wide, flat platform onto the water. Two officers crawled out onto it, as if carefully navigating an ice floe. One rescuer grabbed the man and pulled him onto the platform. The other rescuer dragged David onto the boat.

I exhaled the largest breath ever.

The boat sped off, presumably to some meeting point with an ambulance, while rescue workers looked to be performing CPR on the other man.

I ran back to our car, parked by the pub David owns, and drove quickly to the hospital. I called our daughter, Grace, who at age twelve had a phone. Hemingway Grove was a small town in most respects, and I wanted her to hear the news from me first. When I heard her voice, emotion clogged my throat. But I had to minimize the drama, the danger — I just told her that we’d had some excitement and Daddy had rescued a man who fell in the river.Everybody’s fine,I assured her.

Was I right?

FOUR

BY THE TIME I arrived at St. Benedict’s Hospital, several reporters from the local news stations had already gathered. I pushed through them, found the receptionist in the emergency department, and before long was ushered inside.

I pushed open the curtain enough to see David, wrapped in several blankets, an IV in his right forearm. A doctor was examining him. David’s eyes began to tear up when they found mine. I rushed over, careful not to mess with anything, and put my hands on his face. “You’re okay. Are you? Are you —”

I managed that much before I choked up, bursting into tears.

“I’m okay, Marce,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “God, am I glad to see you.”

“Is he okay?” I said to the nurse, a young woman.

“He’s being treated for mild hypothermia,” she said. “He should be fine. We’re keeping him in blankets and giving him a warmed salt-water solution in his veins.”

“Hey,” David said. “I’m fine.”

I pressed my lips against his forehead. I couldn’t embrace him, couldn’t hold him, swaddled as he was like an infant, other than to gently place an arm around his shoulder. The usual warmth that radiated off him was not there. His skin was discolored and cool to the touch.

“All I could think about … was you,” he said, his voice shaky and weak. “You and … the kids … the whole time.”

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