Page 99 of Lies He Told Me

Light. Light above. The water’s surface. So beautiful.

My arms. I move them, flap them, try to wiggle my legs, any movement to propel me upward, but I can’t make them work, can’t make them move enough, but I see you, the light, I see the light and I want to kick, I want to flap my arms and then yes, I’m moving upward but I’m fading, too, fading in this foggy water, and I want so badly to swim to see Grace to see Lincoln because I have so much love left to give them so many things to teach them so many hugs and kisses and tears to wipe from their faces but the one thing I don’t have is breath and I’m fading, I know it now, and I am in your hands, I am in your hands to do what you will with me —

Light coloring my eyelids, then a blast of cold air, sweet, pure, delicious oxygen, and I let out a gasp and I’m thrown against a person, a man gripping me in a bear hug as we swing from a ladder —

“I got you! I got you, Marcie!”

— the water rising and crashing against us, the helicopter hovering above me.

“Hold on to me, Marcie! Hold on tight —”

Kyle.

“— they’re bringing the raft over! Hold on tight, and we’ll get you to safety!”

I hold on to him as best I can, my right wrist weighed down by the duffel bags full of life jackets handcuffed to me — an impediment now but probably the reason I made it back up. The wind blowing us in every direction, the ladder twisting and turning, the cold, the bitter cold so numbing and stinging —

“You’re crazy, you know that?” he shouts. “You could’ve died!”

I may be crazy, but I’m alive. I could’ve died, but I didn’t. I made it through.

Just like I promised you, David.

ONE HUNDRED SIX

“MARCIE … DIETRICH … BOWERS,” I say, my teeth chattering, my body in an uncontrollable shiver as I sit on the cot in the ambulance, swaddled in a heavy blanket.

The paramedic shines a light in my eyes. “And what day is it?”

“Fri — Friday. Don’t … know the date.” A vicious coughing spasm follows.

She clicks off the light. “We’re putting in an IV of warm saltwater solution. Keep coughing. It’s good to cough.”

Well, that’s good, because I’ve already regurgitated around half the contents of the Cotton River. Now my lungs, my abdomen just ache. But however stinging the cold, however beaten I feel, I can’t deny an overwhelming feeling of relief, even euphoria.

Kyle, sitting in the corner of the ambulance, covered in a blanket of his own, punches out his phone, shaking his head. He looks over at me. “How’s the patient?”

I try to smile.

“It was a stupid idea, Marcie. It was way too risky. If you’d given me more than ten minutes’ notice of what you were doing, I never would’ve let you do it.”

I cough again. I glance at him but don’t respond.

“Which is why you didn’t give me more than ten minutes’ notice,” he says. “I know, I know.” He lets out a hard shiver. He’s soaking wet, too. He was in the river, with one hand on the ladder, pulling me up to the surface one floating duffel bag at a time. They used something to cut the handcuffs, freeing my wrist from the bags.

“Anyway, he’s dead.”

“Si —” I try to finish his name but can’t, overtaken by another coughing spell.

“No — well, yes, Silas is dead. But I was talking about Blair. You were wrong about him. He didn’t try to talk his way out of it.”

So when push came to shove, he realized he couldn’t bullshit his way past that audio recording. “Su — sui — suicide?”

Kyle shakes his head. “No, but close enough. Suicide by cop. He drew his firearm. He had a dozen officers training their weapons on him, ordering him to raise his hands. He was never gonna shoot his way off that bridge. The sergeant on the scene said Blair made no real effort to fire. He just wanted the return fire from us.”

Both Silas and Blair, dead. A tremor of cold slices through me.

“What did they want from you?” he asks. “What were they after?”

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