Perfect Family (26 page)

Suddenly, as though hooked from beneath and thrust forward, the kayak picked up speed. “Left turn,” Keith shouted behind him, and William dug in his paddle on the right side of the kayak, using all his strength. The water fought back hard, pushing them downriver, toward the rush of water that was the hole. “Harder,” Keith screamed. William felt a sharp, stabbing pain at the center of his back, between his shoulder blades. The kayak spun. He was looking upriver. It came again, the stab in his back. He felt himself lifted as if in slow motion, airborne from the kayak. And then, smooth as a knife, he was underwater in a rush of gray bubbles, sucked down.

He shot to the surface, too stunned to take in air, and was pulled
under immediately, down where everything was black, and then the quick wash of gray at the surface, and this time, yes, the gasp for breath, but right down under again. The next time he saw the kayak nearby in calm water. Keith was watching. Doing nothing. William was pulled under again and knew. Keith wasn't going to help. The stab in his back had been Keith's paddle. Keith had done it on purpose, and now William was in a hole. They called them Maytags for a reason. He let himself be pulled under again, was shot to the surface. It had a rhythm, like a washing machine. You had to let it take you and not fight it. Like a riptide. Like everything.
Don't panic. Think.
He remembered a diagram he'd seen of a hole. A stick-figure swimmer was angled downward, toward the river bottom, not the top. William let himself be taken up and shot down a few more times. He caught brief glimpses of Keith, arms folded, grinning. William took a breath and, at the bottom of the cycle, using all the strength he had, stroked downward toward the river bottom. Immediately, he was in calmer water. He tucked and turned feetfirst downriver. He wanted to scream, to whoop at how he had outsmarted Keith, but he kept his mouth shut. He sculled left until he could feel the riverbed under his feet. Once secure, he crept toward shore. He was psyched. He was alive. He was on dry land. And he was going to get that son of a bitch if it was the last thing he did. He understood now what Keith must have meant. For Keith Brink to be “in,” William would have to be out, because only William knew who Keith really was. It was possible that not even Mim knew he'd gone under the name of Keith Brink or that he'd been back east.

Upriver, he saw light on the water. A beam swept the far side and the near, tracing the river's banks. The water was calm through that stretch, allowing Keith to pull over on one side and then the other, flashing his light about. It was a powerful beam, one of those big-battery halogen jobs. Keith was taking his sweet time looking for William. Looking for William's body. Keith knelt in the bow of the kayak, leaned forward, shone his light into eddies and inlets.

William crouched in the water, not daring to move. He didn't
trust himself to win a fight with Keith. His only way out was to hope Keith would pass by him. The light approached as Keith let the kayak slip downriver, closer and closer. William crouched lower in the icy water as Keith swung into an eddy, just a few feet away. He found William with his light. “Damn,” Keith said.

William tore from the water and up the bank, counting on his speed and on the time it would take Keith to get out of the kayak. When he was far enough up the bank, hidden behind some trees, he risked a quick look back. Keith was still taking his sweet time, tying the kayak to a tree. William felt along the rising slope. He scrambled up on his hands and knees. He counted on Keith's lousy cardio to slow him down. Keith called out his name, and William turned to see how close he was. All he saw was the light.

The ground underfoot was soft with pine needles, and William scrambled while Keith's light panned from behind; it found him just as he reached a place where he could go no farther. A rock face rose straight up. He tried to head back down toward the river, but Keith was below him now, moving up and across, ever closer. The light approached, blinding him. William covered his face. Keith dropped the beam but kept coming. William had only one option: He bolted. He scrambled down the slope but fell and rolled, and the next thing he knew, he'd come to a stop, and Keith's foot was pressed hard into his neck. William grabbed Keith's leg to throw him off, but Keith was too heavy. A rock dug into William's shoulder blade, causing breathtaking pain. Keith flicked off the light. “You keep asking me what I want. First off.” His foot pressed more deeply, causing William to gag and cough. Keith let up a bit. “I'm the kid's father. Andrew's father.”

“Aw, come on, man.” William tried to twist away. “No way.”

“You want to hear this or not?” Keith's foot bore down hard again. William thought his jaw would break. “I went back there a few times, and two years ago I hooked up with Pony at a bar. She was drunk. What can I say? I came back this year, and damn if she doesn't have a kid.” Keith leaned into William's face. “And damn if the kid isn't
mine.” William tried to twist away, but Keith's sneaker pressed his face sideways and into the dirt. It was true about Pony's drinking. Pieces of information began to click into place. Her e-mails to Katherine. The timing. “It was you up at the lake that day,” William said.

“Of course it was me. You people are slow on the draw. I go with our sister's theory about Pony, by the way. The fat sister. She had it right.”

“Her name's Tinker,” William said.

“What's that?” Keith blinded William with the light, laughed, and turned it off again. “Pony could have done a lot to help herself. She could have seen it my way. I gave her a chance. Call me old-fashioned, but when people have a baby, they get married, right? But hey, I'm getting ahead of myself.

“May twentieth this year I went back east to see you people again. I parked out front of Pony's place in Manchester. I was just checking things out. I liked her. But she saw me parked out there and came slamming out the door with that baby on one hip and said, ‘What the bloody hell are you looking at?' She threatened to call the cops on me. She didn't know who I was. You believe that? She had no memory of me. I was pissed. I mean, how would you like it if that girlfriend of yours forgot your face? Bad. So I told her who I was, the guy from two years ago? And she got this look on her face. Oh, man. She went white—and I knew right then it was about the kid. That it might be mine and she knew it. I knew I had her. I had leverage.” Keith's foot relaxed a little. William pulled in a breath quietly. “Here's the thing, William. I thought all I wanted when I went back east that first time was a look at you people, maybe get to know you. But now it's different. Now I have a son. I want to be part of it all. Hell, I deserve to be part of it. That Fond du Lac place. I love it there. I deserve that. Not as just a friend of the family but as one of the heirs.”

It felt to William as though Keith had let his weight sag against something, a tree maybe, because of another change in pressure. “I can understand that,” William managed to say.

“Yeah? You can? I thought you would. Pony didn't.” Keith's foot slipped again, enough that William could take one deeper breath. Keith explained to William, his voice more thoughtful now, that he had given Pony proof of who he was. He had shown her the same letter he'd shown William, and his birth certificate, which listed Olivia Murphy as his mother. He'd shown her the picture. He laughed. “She had a very big problem all of a sudden. She'd fucked her half brother. She had to throw up. I know she did. She swallowed it. She wouldn't leave me alone in the room with the kid. She kept saying, ‘What am I going to do?' like it was all up to her, and I said, ‘Excuse me, but I think you mean ‘we.'”

“Your baby, too,” William said.

“Fucking A, William. People get married. I was in. It was easy.”

William thought he might be sick himself. “How did Pony react to that?”

“She said fine.”

“Doesn't sound like her, Keith.”

“Okay, she needed time to think it over. A few days later, I called. She was on top of her game. Everything was cool. She said I should go up to Fond du Lac.” Keith's foot slipped lower on William's neck. “I go all the way up there, William, and what does she do? She freaks out. She won't get out of the water because she's naked. She wants her clothes. What kind of a reception is that? Long story short, I picked up the kid. My kid. And she stands right up in the water and says come on in.”

“Was that you who called her?”

“You bet. I thought I was going to be late, but then I wasn't. But anyway, like I said, she stood up in the water, and I said, ‘ That's more like it.'”

William understood now. If Pony had known there was danger, and she must have, she had no chance with Keith on land; her advantage was in the water. If he was going to threaten Andrew, she'd done the only thing she could.

“So I swim out to the raft after her. I don't know where the hell
she is. There one minute, gone the next. I go up on the raft, and then I hear her under it. She starts going back and forth. Under the raft and then out. I mean, what the fuck? She's explaining to me how it's going to go down whether I liked it or not. She wasn't going to lie about anything. She's going to tell the whole thing about what happened and about who I am. The whole nine yards. She's going to start with you and then tell Daddy and the fat sister and Mira. I couldn't let her do that. I'd be crucified.”

“What did you do?”

“She's just treading water out there, calm as a cucumber, saying that crazy shit. What else could I do? I went in after her.”

“How?”

“How do you think? I jumped her from the raft.”

“And she got away.” William knew exactly what Pony had done. She'd wanted him to go for her. She had tucked her chin before Keith had her in a hold. She was out of his grasp before he even knew it.

“She didn't get away. I let her go,” Keith said.

Bullshit
, William thought. Just as she'd done with William, she would have approached Keith underwater. She'd had the upper hand. She'd had all the cards right then. It was the drowning game in spades, the martial arts of swimming. But something had gone wrong. She should have won.

“Bitch grabs my feet,” Keith said. “She's trying to drown me. I'm going down like a stone.”

“She wouldn't have hurt you,” William said.

Keith jabbed William's neck with his boot. “You weren't there, William. She was trying to hurt me, all right. She was trying to drown me, but God was with me that day. I think I'm going to die, and then I feel that chain and I reach out for it and latch onto it and I don't really know how it happened. I was trying to shake her loose, and all of a sudden she lets go. I'm free. I got up on the raft so I could see down. I could see her. She was caught on that chain, all right.”

“You killed her,” William said.

Keith flicked on the light and into William's eyes. The glare was inches away. William had to turn his head. Keith turned off the light. William concentrated on exactly where it had been. “Whatever,” Keith said.

The flashlight came on again, exploding in William's eyes, but this time he was ready. He rolled away, jumped to his feet, swung with his left hand, and knocked the light from Keith's hands. It bounced and spun down the slope toward the river. William groped for Keith in the darkness, found him, and pulled him to his feet. Keith swung and cocked William's shoulder. William felt his fist connect with Keith's soft belly, a satisfying hit. He did it again. He felt Keith's body fall away. He waited, breathing hard. He heard Keith retch. Then he felt himself being tackled. He was thrown down, and he rolled toward the river and to the light where it had come to rest, its beam illuminating grasses along the bank.

William scrambled, crawling as fast as he could on all fours to reach the light before Keith did. He grabbed it in both hands, turned, shone it in Keith's face. Keith's shirt was ripped, and he was staggering toward William but had to shield his eyes against the assault of the light. William had the advantage now. Oh yes. He had the light. He kept it trained on Keith, who dropped to his knees, groped for a stone, and flung it. The stone hit the light but missed William. William turned off the light. Everything went black. The only sounds were the rush of the river and Keith's harsh breathing.

William worked his way up the riverbank, then turned on the light again. Keith turned, stupidly openmouthed. William was almost enjoying this. With the light out again, he climbed partway up the slope, flashed the light again, and again took Keith by surprise. He had to get to the kayak before Keith did. He needed to get out of there, cross the river, and find his car. He spotted the kayak maybe twenty feet downriver. He climbed higher and flashed the light on and off to draw Keith toward him. Then he moved through the darkness, heading down, letting gravity take him at an angle back to the
water. He didn't shine the light again. Now he didn't want Keith knowing where he was.

But he wasn't quick enough. Keith had found the kayak, pulled it from its mooring, and was already out on the river. William trained the light on it. Something wasn't right. The kayak was going in a loose circle. Keith had no paddles. That was it. He was lying across the bow and stroking with his hands, but something else was wrong. The thing looked deflated. When they'd shoved off earlier in the day, it had been gorged on air. Now it sagged. Keith's weight at the front tipped the rear up. It looked like a child's toy spinning along as the river built speed.

William expected to feel satisfaction but felt none. He scrambled up the bank. A trail ran along the Salmon, little used but good enough. He ran alongside the river, keeping his light now on the path ahead, now on the kayak, which angled and spun from one side of the river to the other. It stalled in eddies, caught on rocks, and shot out. All the time, Keith lay across the bow, frantically trying to guide it, aiming one way and then another. The thing kept losing air. William could hear the roar of another rapid coming up. He waded into the river as far as he dared, to the edge of a swifter current, and waited until Keith was closer. “Throw the line,” he yelled to Keith, shining his light. “Over here.” But Keith lurched and tipped as the kayak spun quickly downriver and farther away. William was trained to help people, not to kill them, not to let them die. Keith Brink. His enemy. His brother. He couldn't let it happen.