Barefoot Girls (54 page)

The woman kept coming at her, pushing them into deeper water, slowed only slightly by the beating she was receiving from Keeley, her hands in claws, reaching for Keeley’s throat.

Hip deep in the cold water, the woman’s face, despite the distortion of her rage, became a familiar one. The shock immobilized Keeley. She stared.  “Rose?”

“Youuuu!” Rose howled and launched at her, pushing her under the water’s surface. It was at that moment that Keeley made the connection. It had been nagging at her, who Brooke Somerset – she of bared-teeth smiles and a preternaturally cruel nature – reminded her of. It was Rose Griffin.

Down, down, underwater the darkness was complete. Keeley felt Rose’s hands feeling around, connecting with her shoulder, her head. She’s trying to find my neck. Keeley opened her eyes in the water and could see the dim ghostly outline of Rose’s submerged khaki-covered legs. Rose’s knee was right about…there! She kicked Rose squarely in the knee and the hands that were now on her head retracted. Keeley pushed at the sandy bottom, pushing farther out into the water and away from Rose, and broke the surface, gasping.

“Damn it!” Rose screamed.

Keeley glanced over at their burning house. The stairs were gone. Just gone. No, there they were, floating and smoldering in pieces on the water below. Hannah and Zo were still standing staring at each other. Do something, Zo! Don’t just stand there! Oh, Hannah! The words lumped in her throat.

“Aigh!” Rose screamed, leaping on Keeley where she was treading water, distracted by the burning tableau, and pushed her back down under the water, their two bodies falling into the depths, locked together by Rose’s hands which were around Keeley’s neck, her grip viselike and sure.

Chapter 59

Zooey waited, her arms outstretched, looking up at Hannah. The fire had crept up the walls of the little house and the roof was starting to catch. There was a pinging nearby from one of their wind chimes breaking as the heat melted it, individual chimes falling into the water and making little plopping noises near the pieces of smoldering stairs floating there. They had to hurry.

“Hannah, jump to me. I’ll catch you.”

Hannah shook her head. “I’ll hurt you.”

“No, you won’t. It’s not that far. The water’s too shallow here for you to jump in it. You’ll break your legs. Jump to me, come on.”

Hannah wavered. Zo held her breath. Please, come to me.

Hannah nodded and then bent her knees, preparing. Then she glanced over at the boardwalk where Keeley and Rose had been. After a moment, Zo glanced over her shoulder, too. The boardwalk and nearby docks were empty.

Hannah straightened her legs, peering around. “Where are they?”

Zo looked back at her. No, don’t get distracted. “I’m sure she’s fine, sweetie. Come on. The house is going up. It’s not safe. Come on!”

Hannah was squinting at the water. “Oh, no!”

Zo turned again. She could dimly see two forms wrestling in the water, white froth around them. Oh, God. Keeley! Who was that woman? How could this be happening now? She had to decide. Hannah first. Then Keeley. Just get Hannah out of the burning house.

“We’ll help her once you’re down,” Zo said, looking up again at Hannah and putting her arms out further. “Come on.”

Hannah was staring at the water, her mouth moving but no sound coming out.

There was a loud crack, and a piece of the burning ceiling fell behind Hannah with a soft thump. Hannah jerked and let out a yelp.

Zo forced herself to slow her breathing. They could do this. Just get Hannah out. “Hannah. Come on. I’m here. You’re going to be okay.”

Looking ridiculously young, her lower lip wobbling, Hannah nodded. She bent her knees and then leapt awkwardly, legs flailing.

Zo stretched her arms to catch her, bending her legs to prepare for the impact. Hannah’s weight smacked into her arms, and she felt her right wrist snap, a sharp bright blast. Both of them falling now, Zo’s legs buckled and her right ankle twisted painfully before her back hit the boardwalk and Hannah landed on top of her, forcing the air out of her lungs in one rush.

“Oof!” Zo said involuntarily.

Then, as soon as the numbing shock of the fall faded, pains shouted out from Zo’s wrist, ankle and thigh, demanding attention. Zo ignored the pain, wrapping her arms around Hannah in relief, not caring about anything but her baby in her arms, safe.

Hannah extricated herself from Zo’s embrace, getting up on one knee. “Thank you, Aunt Zo. Thank you so much. Are you okay?”

Zo propped herself up on her left elbow and reached for her right wrist. Pain bolted through it again as she touched it. It hung limp at her side. “I’ll be okay. I’m just so happy you’re safe. I had a feeling-“

But Hannah wasn’t paying attention. She was up on her knees and then on her feet, peering out at the water, her figure fully lit by the burning Barefooter House which was like a huge torch now, fire solidly through it. Nothing would be saved.

“Where are they? Oh, no. Where are they?”

Zo managed to get up on her good left knee, her whole right side engulfed in a fire of its own, and looked. The water was black and quiet, rolling gently with the tide. There was no sign of either Keeley or the woman, who had come out of the darkness screaming like a bird of prey, attacking senselessly and wildly, a stranger Hannah called Mrs. McGrath.

Chapter 60

Hannah had always thought that emergency rooms were exciting places where life-or-death dramas were constantly unfolding. There would be bloody stabbing victims with staring eyes being wheeled by and doctors running around in scrubs and desperate men with their strained-looking pregnant wives in tow, screaming that someone had to help them quick, that the baby was coming. Maybe she watched too much television.

Instead, the waiting room at Southside Hospital in Bay Shore, the closest hospital to Captain’s Island, was orderly and eerily hushed on this Tuesday night. Theirs was the only drama unfolding. Those television shows and movies missed something, though. Even without the screaming and blood and gore, being here was terrifying – in some ways the cold sterility and quiet made it worse.

Hannah wanted to scream herself. The nurses and doctors weren’t paying attention, sauntering around behind the desk, chatting and reading files. This was her
mom
. Didn’t they understand?  Aunt Amy sat beside her, arms crossed, staring off into the air. She had been the last to know what had happened, awakened at her house by Aunt Pam after everything was over, the fire out, the police on the scene, the injured about to be transported to the emergency room by ambulance and car. Even now, Amy looked irritable, as if she had been left out on purpose. The only thing that broke that impression was that she reached over intermittently to pat Hannah’s arm before going back to brooding.

Aunt Pam had woken from a dead sleep to see her room brightly lit. At first, she’d thought her own house was on fire and leapt from the bed before she saw where the light was coming from. From Jacob's bedroom she had a clear view of the Barefooter house engulfed in flames and shouted to Zo and Keeley before grabbing her iPhone to call the Coast Guard. After she got off the phone, she raced downstairs to find that she was alone in the house, the makeshift beds in the living room abandoned.

“That’s when I knew you were okay,” Aunt Pam told Hannah once they were all reunited, sitting with Aunt Zo and watching the Coast Guard firemen in their red uniforms putting out the flaming section of the boardwalk that connected to the rest of the island’s homes, the house itself now a smoldering ruin. “I knew good-old mother-instinct had kicked in, and they’d gone to save you.”

But it had been Aunt Zo who had saved her, not her mother. Zo, who was now being fitted with a cast for her broken wrist and who would be in a wheelchair for a while as she also had a sprained ankle and torn thigh muscle. Aunt Pam was in with her now, keeping her company. No one was allowed in with her mother yet.

Aunt Zo told her that Keeley had been missing for only minutes, but each one dragged on as Hannah ran down the boardwalk, feeling as if she was running though something thick, her heavy limbs not cooperating. Then she saw her mother, face down on the beach. She jumped off of the boardwalk, ran to where her mother lay and crouched beside her, shivering with both fear and cold. That’s when she heard Keeley’s ragged breathing through her wet tangled hair which was covering her face, harsh rattling gasps that were pitiful and terrifying. 

It was after the Coast Guard found Mrs. McGrath’s body floating face down in the marsh grasses, after the police had arrived and sealed off the scene and interviewed them, after they had taken the body away and her mother was gone, too, the ambulance heading out of the parking lot and taking its frantic flashing red lights with it, that the word “lucky” was mentioned for the first time. Aunt Zo said it, Aunt Pam having practically carried her to her car and placed her in the front passenger seat. “We’re so lucky. This could have been so different,” Aunt Zo said, her narrow face drawn and old looking, her voice weak.

Hannah had wanted to laugh. Lucky? What was lucky about this? Mrs. McGrath was dead. Her mother might die, her lungs giving out, too saturated with water. Aunt Zo herself was damaged, unable to walk and her wrist clearly broken.  Their beloved Barefooter house was burned to a charred pile of sticks standing in the water. What was this other than the most horrible unlucky night of their lives?

But then Aunt Pam said it again, as they turned out of the parking lot that was still crowded with police cars, heading toward the hospital. “We’re so lucky our house is over the water and all the way out there. I mean, was. Otherwise, the whole island could have gone up. Imagine if it had been windy!”

“Most important, though, Hannah and Keeley are alive. Thank God,” Aunt Zo whispered.

“Hear, hear,” Aunt Amy had said, sitting next to Hannah in the back seat.

“What?” Hannah said. “There’s nothing lucky about this! Mrs. McGrath died and my-“

Aunt Amy grabbed her arm, her clench hard. “You have no idea how lucky you are, Hannah. No idea at all. That “Mrs. McGrath”, Rose Griffin to us, tried to kill you and then she tried to kill your mother. And she nearly succeeded. You both could be dead.” She cried out the last words, and put her free hand over her mouth, her eyes turning down in sorrow.

They had all been quiet after that, each in their own world of thought. Hannah wouldn’t have believed Mrs. McGrath had anything to do with her mother’s near-drowning if she hadn’t seen the battle between them herself. Why? It didn’t make sense. She still couldn’t imagine that the skinny strange woman had actually tried to set fire to the Barefooter House – had succeeded and burned it down, nearly taking Hannah with it.

What was worse, after all her righteous anger, her resentment, toward her mother, toward the Barefooters that afternoon as they laughed and goofed around in the kitchen, she had no idea she could feel as guilty as she did now. If it wasn’t for her, her mother would be safe, sleeping in her own bed in her apartment on Park Avenue with Ben at her side, cuddling her in his big-bear arms. Aunt Zo would be able-bodied, running around, probably packing for another trip abroad with Uncle Neil. Aunt Pam and Aunt Amy would be happily occupied with their full and busy lives. None of them would be here, in this hospital, now.

Hannah sat and stewed and blamed herself, watching the clock inch, unable to be distracted by the television blaring overhead or any of the magazines and newspapers the hospital provided. She wanted to call Daniel, but knew if she did, he’d drop everything to come. The thought of him pacing and worrying with her in this bleak place didn’t make her feel better, it made her feel worse. She decided to wait until after she was allowed in to see her mother, had some hope for her survival.

An hour passed and Aunt Zo was rolled out in her wheelchair by a nurse, Pam following and carrying both of their purses. Zo waved away any fussing, saying to save it for Keeley.  Ben arrived, looking uncharacteristically sloppy, his usually smooth cheeks rough with black and white stubble, his belt forgotten, the belt loops on his pants standing out naked and forlorn. He brought coffee for all of them and a box of donuts that no one ate. Then another hour passed. Finally, a doctor came out to talk to them.

Keeley had ARDS, Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, from her near-drowning. Her lungs were in danger of pulmonary edema, but she was responding well so far, hooked up on a respirator with oxygen. There was no fever, a good sign that infection hadn’t set in. They were giving her antibiotics preventatively as a safety measure. She was awake and was asking to see them. Ben would go first, and then Aunt Pam and Aunt Amy, and then she wanted to see Hannah and Aunt Zo together.

By the time she was allowed in with Aunt Zo, Hannah was frantic. She pushed her godmother’s wheelchair into the blue-curtained space, and stopped, staring. Her mother had a plastic breathing tube attached to her swollen mouth, deforming its shape.  A black pumping machine went up and down next to her bed, pushing air into her lungs. Steady beeping came from her monitors. A clear IV bag hung beside her bed and a tube hung down and was taped to her arm. Her huge eyes were half-open when they entered, but flew all the way open when she saw them.