Page 13 of 28 Summers
“Why didn’t you try to stop him?”
“I didn’t know he was going swimming,” Mallory says. “He told us he was taking a walk. I thought he wanted to be alone.” She drops her face into her hands. Why did Fray goswimmingin the middle of the night? Why did he drink so much? Why did Leland go to town with her friends from New York? She could have seen them Sunday when she got home for her friend Harrison’s rooftop thing or whatever. Why did Cooper leave? His best friends were here! The weekend was for him!
JD is looking at Mallory sympathetically, but she knows what he’s thinking: She shouldn’t have let Frazier wander off by himself. Whatever the consequences are, she deserves them. “I watched him leave. I should have gone after him.”
JD sighs. “I’ve seen situations like this go both ways.”
This doesn’t make her feel any better.
“Let’s start with his name and date of birth. Just tell me what you can.”
The divers search the water for ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. When Mallory is finished with JD, she goes down to the scene. JD has lent Mallory his jacket, but still, she’s freezing. Jake is in his wet boxers and T-shirt; they won’t let him go back in the water because the risk of losing him is too great.
“He’s not out there,” Jake says to Mallory. “They would have found him by now.”
“They have to keep looking,” Mallory says. To stop looking is to…what? Give up? Switch from a rescue mission to a recovery mission? It’s too heinous to even contemplate. If something bad has happened to Fray, Mallory will never forgive herself. She wants to blame Cooper or Leland, but she was the last person to see Fray. She watched him head into the dark mouth of the night holding the bottle of Jim Beam by the neck. She knew his volatile history, the shadow of tragedy that followed him everywhere because of the gaping hole where his parents should have been.
Fray!she thinks.
There’s shouting. The ATV is barreling down the beach toward them. They found Fray. Mallory hears the officer on the beach calling in the divers.
Alive?she thinks.Or dead?
Alive. The officer on the ATV found Fray all the way down at Fat Ladies Beach, passed out in the sand. He was unresponsive at first, the officer said, but just as they were moving him onto the backboard, he came to and puked in the sand.
The rescue mission takes some time to reel in and pack up. Once the paramedic checks Fray’s vitals, asks him a few questions, and determines he doesn’t need a trip to the hospital, Jake helps Fray into the cottage. Mallory thanks JD and the beach officer and the ATV officer and the two divers a hundred times apiece. She pulls twenty dollars out of her shorts pocket and tries to press it into JD’s hands.
He laughs. “Keep it. This was your tax dollars at work.”
“Well, then, I’ll bake you some cookies and drop them at the station.”
“Cookies work,” JD says. He smiles at Mallory and she shuffles back through her mind to last week at the Summer House. Yes! This guy had come in with a white-haired gentleman, his father, who had engaged in some harmless flirting with Mallory and then left her a huge tip.
“I remember you,” Mallory says. “Your dad was terrific.”
“He told me I should ask you out,” JD says. “Are you here year-round or just the season?”
“Year-round,” Mallory says. “I’m hoping to be working at the high school this fall.”
“Cool,” Officer JD says. “Would you want to…or is that guy, or the other guy…I mean, do you have a boyfriend?”
“I don’t,” she says. “But…” She shakes her head. “I think I’ll need a few days before I can think straight. You have the number here. Maybe give me a call next week?”
“Yeah, I will, I’ll do that. Hey, I’m glad things turned out okay.”
“I’m sorry,” Mallory says. “Thank you, sorry, thank you.”
JD waves as he climbs into the cruiser. “That’s why we’re here.”
Mallory and Jake fall asleep in her bed on top of the covers and with their clothes on, but when Mallory wakes up, Jake’s arm is draped over her waist and his breath is warm on her neck. She opens her eyes, and before everything comes flooding back, she savors the weight of his arm, the steadiness of his breathing.
Is he her boyfriend?
No. But lying beside him feels incredible. She doesn’t want to move. She could die right here, she thinks, with no regrets.
When Fray rises, he drinks a quart of orange juice, then sets the empty carton on the table and says, “I’m going home.”
While Frazier is in the shower, Jake cracks eggs and drops slices of Portuguese bread in the toaster. Mallory looks out the window and sees a cloud of dust heading for the cottage. A boxy white Jeep Cherokee with a rainbow stripe of Great Point beach stickers across the bumper pulls up out front. Leland hops out and runs inside.
