Page 4 of The House Across the Lake

There’s nothing.

No twitch of her arms or kick of her feet or slow turn of her head.

One thought echoes through my skull as I reach her. Part plea, part prayer.

Please don’t be dead. Please, please be alive.

But when I hook the life vest around her neck and flip her over, she doesn’t look alive. Hugged by the life vest and with her head tilted toward the sky, she resembles a corpse. Closed eyes. Blue lips. Frigid skin. I connect the straps at the bottom of the life vest, tightening it around her, and slap a hand to her chest.

No trace of a heartbeat.

Fuck.

I want to shout for help again, but I’m too winded to get the words out. Even strong swimmers have their limits, and I’ve reached mine. Exhaustion pulls at me like a tide, and I know a few more minutes of paddling in place while clinging to a maybe/probably dead woman might leave me just like her.

I put one arm around her waist and use the other to start paddling back to the boat. I have no idea what to do when I reach it. Cling to the side, I guess. Hold on tight while also holding on to the likely/definitely dead woman and hope I regain enough lung power to scream again.

And that this time someone will hear me.

Right now, though, my main concern is getting back to the boat at all. I didn’t think to grab a life vest for myself, and now my strokes are slowing and my heart is pounding and I can no longer feel my legs kicking, even though I think they still are. The water’s so cold and I’m so tired. So scarily, unbearably exhausted that for a moment I consider taking the woman’s life vest for myself and letting her drift into the depths.

Self-preservation kicking in.

I can’t save her without saving myself first, and she might already be beyond rescue. But then I think again about Len, dead for more than a year now, his body found crumpled on the shore of this very lake. I can’t let the same thing happen to this woman.

So I continue my one-armed paddling and numb kicking and tuggingof what I’m now certain is a corpse. I keep at it until the boat is ten feet away.

Then nine.

Then eight.

Beside me, the woman’s body suddenly spasms. A shocking jolt. This time, Idolet go, my arm recoiling in surprise.

The woman’s eyes snap open.

She coughs—a series of long, loud, gurgling hacks. A spout of water flies from her mouth and trickles down her chin while a line of snot runs from her left nostril to her cheek. She wipes it all away and stares at me, confused, breathless, and terrified.

“What just happened?”

“Don’t freak out,” I say, recalling her blue lips, her ice-cold skin, her utter, unnerving stillness. “But I think you almost drowned.”

Neither one of us speaks again until we’re both safely in the boat. There wasn’t time for words as I clawed, kicked, and climbed my way up the side until I was able to flop onto the boat floor like a recently caught fish. Getting the woman on board was even harder, seeing how her near-death experience had sapped all her energy. It took so much tugging and lifting on my part that, once she was in the boat, I was too exhausted to move, let alone speak.

But now, after a few minutes of panting, we’ve pulled ourselves into seats. The woman and I face each other, shell-shocked by the whole situation and all too happy to rest a few minutes while we regroup.

“You said Ialmostdrowned,” the woman says.

She’s wrapped in a plaid blanket I found stowed under one of the boat’s seats, which gives her the look of a kitten rescued from a storm drain. Battered and vulnerable and grateful.

“Yes,” I say as I wring water from my flannel shirt. Because there’s only one blanket on board, I remain soaked and chilly. I don’t mind. I’m not the one who needed rescue.

“Definealmost.”

“Honestly? I thought you were dead.”

Beneath the blanket, the woman shudders. “Jesus.”

“But I was wrong,” I add, trying to soothe her obvious shock. “Clearly. You came back on your own. I did nothing.”

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