Local Girl Swept Away (19 page)

• • •

It was chilly out that morning. Fall was hurrying toward us. I walked to my usual spots, only this time as I approached the pier where I'd made that disastrous pass at Finn, I thought instead of Cooper, the way he welcomed my arms, my mouth, my body. I'd felt like such a naïve dope when Finn pushed me away—but I didn't feel that way anymore. Cooper appreciated me, told me I was beautiful and talented. Someday he might even love me. Wasn't that where we were headed? I said the word out loud—
love
—to test the feel of it in my mouth. It sounded like a foreign language and I was proud of myself for learning to speak it.

As I approached Dugan's Cottages, I thought of the first time Cooper kissed me, on the dusty old couch where I'd played as a child. It was funny how my life kept circling back here to Cabin 5.

But there was something different about the cottage this morning. At first I couldn't spot the problem, but then, looking closely, I saw that the boards from the rear window were lying in the sand, as if someone had removed them and crawled inside the way we used to years before. Kids, I figured. And I envied them. I wished I could go back to a time when life and death were only games, before I was familiar with the realities of either one.

I walked up to the open window, but I didn't hear any noise. The kids must have left without putting the boards back, which annoyed me. Now the place would be open to the weather unless Mrs. Dugan realized the problem and sent someone to fix it. I decided to take care of it myself. Tomorrow morning I'd come back with one of my dad's hammers and—

Wait. There was a noise. Somebody
was
inside the cabin. I backed away from the window, as if I'd been caught snooping. But then, on second thought, if it was kids, I thought I ought to remind them to put the boards back when they left. And maybe I should check to be sure that they weren't causing any damage. This was my special place. I was willing to take responsibility for protecting it.

I went around to the front door and tried the handle, but the door was locked from inside. So I knocked, long and loud.

“Is someone in there?” I called.

Slowly, the door began to creak open and then it swung wide. A girl with long red hair falling over her shoulders tilted her head, a wry grin on her lightly freckled face. She leaned one arm against the doorjamb while the other rested across her belly.

“Hi Jackie,” Lorna said. “I was hoping it was you.”

I didn't scream, but some kind of bewildered yelp came out of my mouth, and for a minute I doubted everything. Was I awake? Dreaming? Hallucinating? Losing my mind? My hands flew up and covered my eyes, just briefly, but when I looked again, she was still there.

Lorna cleared her throat and gave a slightly embarrassed laugh. “Seen a ghost?” Then she took me by the arm and pulled me into the dark cottage.

I couldn't put together words that made the slightest bit of sense, but I gripped Lorna's forearms and held on tight. My body trembled as if some inner earthquake was shaking me to pieces.

“You better sit down,” she said, prying my fingers off her arms. She pointed to a kitchen chair and I collapsed onto it. My eyes mapped her body, the same, but different. Her long red hair, always a full mane, hung stringy and lifeless around her face. A scattering of small pimples decorated her forehead on skin that had always been flawless. And she was heavier too, as if she were tied to the earth now, grounded. We stared at each other for a full minute before Lorna broke the connection.

“So, here I am, not dead, not drowned, not even wet.” She gave a rusty laugh. “I guess you want to know what happened.”

But I couldn't speak, couldn't even imagine what to say.

“First of all, let me just tell you, the water in the bay in the spring is
frigid
. You know I always liked distance swimming, and I'd practiced my swim—from the breakwater, around the point and into the harbor—several times on sunny afternoons, but doing it in the dark, without a wetsuit, in the middle of a storm, was totally different. It was so damn cold that night and the waves were wild. I wasn't even sure I was swimming in the right direction. There was a point where I thought I really
was
going to drown.”

Lorna wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and sank onto the couch. It was the same ancient blanket Cooper and I had lain on, side by side, three times now. She continued, “The thing I hadn't counted on was . . . being afraid. I never was before, at least not physically afraid. My body always did what I expected it to do. But when I jumped into that cold water—”

“You
jumped
?” My voice leapt from my throat. “I knew you didn't fall!”

“Of course I didn't fall—you should know me better than that.” She smiled easily as if this story were no different than the other reports of her adventures I'd listened to over the years. “But once I hit the water, I thought my heart might stop. I might have even turned around and gone back except the tide was already pulling me out, and that awful wind—there was no choice. I had to swim for my life or be swept out to sea.”

I sat there staring at her, frozen. The most amazing, wonderful thing had happened, but I still couldn't quite believe it. For a minute, I almost didn't
want
to believe it, because if it was true, wasn't I a fool for spending the past four months agonizing over my best friend's death? But, no, no. That didn't matter. I shook my head to clear it. Lorna was
back
!

“The tide pulled me as far as the point,” she went on. “I expected that. The idea was to let the ocean take me that far and save my energy for the last part, when I had to swim against the tide to get around the point and back into the harbor, to the beach. I could barely catch a breath between the waves, and I knew it was too dark for anyone to see me out there. No one would save me. No one could. The only way to get back to where I left my stuff was to swim like hell.”

I thought of Lorna stumbling onto the beach in the dark, half-drowned, chattering with cold. And then one mystery became clear. “You left things here in Cabin 5, didn't you?” I asked.

“A towel, some clothes, my backpack. So they'd stay dry.”

The dots were connected. “Which is why I found your white jacket here in the closet.”

Lorna beamed. “You found it? That's great! I hated leaving it behind, but I had all these wet, heavy clothes to stuff in my backpack and the jacket was one thing too many. I figured some tourist took it. Do you still have it?”

“Of course I do.”

She grinned happily. “Will you bring it to me? I always thought it was lucky. That's why I wore it that night.”

“I'll bring it. I tried to clean it up, but I couldn't get all the stains out.”

“Thanks, Jackie.”

“Do you want your sneakers too?”

The question seemed to puzzle her. “My sneakers? That old rotten pair? Why would you keep those?”

I couldn't answer that. It required more language ability than I had just then.

Lorna sighed. “Anyway, once I dried off, I knew I had to get out of town quickly without anybody seeing me. I wanted to hitchhike up-Cape, but if somebody from town picked me up, my whole plan would be ruined. I walked to the East End on the beach wearing this big slicker I got at Marine Specialties—I figured nobody would be able to recognize me in that, but there was nobody out but me in that weather anyway. I saw these guys loading up their car in front of the Bayside Inn, and I figured they were tourists leaving town, so I asked them if I could have a ride. They were going to New York City, which was perfect. Even if they eventually heard the news that some girl from Provincetown had drowned, they'd never connect it to me. They took me to Hyannis and from there I got a bus to Boston and then I went on up to Maine to find my dad.”

By then I was beginning to trust my voice and my ability to reason. “You did all this so you could run away and find your dad? Couldn't you have just told us where you were going and taken the bus from here?”

She grinned. “What fun would that have been? Anyway, I wanted my mother to think I was dead. She deserved that.” She stood up and opened the blanket to reveal her stomach, solid and round under her shirt. “Also, there were certain things I didn't want people to know. At the time, I wasn't planning to come back.”

I stared at her body, trying to make sense of all this information, received too quickly. Lorna wasn't just heavier, she was pregnant. Lucas had not lied about that. Still, still,
still
, I couldn't understand. “You were never coming back?”

“That was the plan.” She wrapped herself up again and paced around the room. “Don't look so shocked, Jackie. You know I like doing things I'm not supposed to. Just let somebody say, ‘You better not' and whatever it is, I'll do it. I can't
wait
to do it. It's like an itch in my brain and the only way to scratch it is to go rogue.”

Even though I hadn't really digested what I'd heard so far, I wanted more information. I wanted the whole story. “So, did you find your dad?”

“I had an old address for him, and it turned out he was still in the same place. Even if he'd moved, I'd have found him. He has family around there.”

“And that's where you've been? For four months?”

“Pretty much.”

“But why? I mean,
why
?” My voice suddenly careened into a wail. My shoulders buckled, and in seconds I was sobbing. “Oh, my God, Lorna, we thought you were
dead
!”

She came over to me and put her arms around my quivering shoulders. Her touch made my nerves jump under my skin, as though I still wasn't convinced she wasn't some supernatural spook. I grabbed onto her arms again and held on tight enough to leave red marks. I thought I might never let go, but Lorna was strong enough to disentangle herself.

“I'm sorry Jackie,” she said, backing away. “I had to. I didn't see any other way out.”

“I would have helped you! Finn would too!” But even as I volunteered Finn, I wondered what his reaction would be if this baby really was Lucas's. Would that make him stop loving Lorna, or would nothing, no betrayal of any kind, halt his devotion?

I sucked up my tears. “Whose baby is it? Lucas says you told him—”

“That was an idea I had at the time, but . . .” She shook her head.

“So, Lucas is
not
the father?”

She frowned, maybe annoyed by the question. “I'm not 100 percent sure at the moment.”

“But you think that Finn is . . . ?” Was that a better option? Better for whom?

“I'm so thirsty these days,” she said, grabbing a bottle of water from the kitchen counter. She took a long drink and then announced, “The baby's a girl, by the way. Due middle of January.”

“Oh.” I had no idea how to react. What I felt like saying was, “What difference does that make? That's the least important piece of information you've given me.” Instead, I just said, “A girl. That's nice.”

“I want to name her Lucy. That's a good name, isn't it?” When I didn't answer, she said, “You want to know who the father is, but I can't tell you right now. It
could
be Finn.”

“You don't
know
?”

She tipped her head to the side like a puppy who knows he'll be forgiven. “Could be somebody else altogether.”

“Somebody
else
?
Who
?”

“I can't tell you right now.” She smiled at me. “I'm sorry. Am I shocking you?”

I stood up, holding on to the lip of the table. It felt as if my eyes were bouncing out of my head like those joke glasses with plastic eyeballs on metal springs. “Are you kidding me? I'm so far beyond shocked, there's not even a word for it! You didn't drown. You jumped in the water on purpose. You're pregnant. And the baby's father is either your boyfriend or some unnamed stranger. I feel like I've wandered into an alternate universe!”

I almost never got angry at anyone, and here I was yelling at Lorna who was not, after all, dead, but standing right in front of me. I knew I should be so relieved that I didn't care about any of the rest of it. But apparently I did care.

“I thought you'd be happy to see me,” Lorna said, pouting a little. She flopped back onto the couch, her knees pulled up to her chin, the blanket anchored tightly by her stocking feet.

I massaged my forehead, as if I could knead Lorna's revelations into my brain. “I
am
happy to see you. Of course I am. But I thought you were
dead
! We all did! Do you get that? There was a memorial service. We cried for days! For weeks! We still do!”

She looked surprised. “Really? There was a memorial service? Whose idea was that? I'm guessing not Carla's.”

“Ms. Waller organized it, but your mom was there.”

Lorna suddenly sat forward. “Did she cry? My mom. Did she?”

“I . . . I'm not sure. I mean, I couldn't see her very well.” I thought of Carla, sitting in the front row in her black pajamas, rustling through her purse, looking distracted.

Lorna gave a snort. “I bet she didn't. I'm surprised she even showed up. Do you know that crazy bitch didn't even get in touch with my dad? She thought I was dead and she didn't even tell my father! Of course, I figured she wouldn't—they haven't spoken since he left us. If she'd contacted him, the cat would have been out of the bag right away. So, who else came to the memorial?”

“A lot of people. Kids, parents, teachers. The auditorium was full.”

“Really?” Her cheeks glowed.

“Of course!”

“Are you glad I'm not dead, Jackie?” There was no self-pity in the question. She really wasn't sure.

I sank down onto the couch next to her and grabbed her hands. “Of course I am. Are you kidding? I just can't quite believe it yet—it's like a dream come true.”