Siren (3 page)

Evan watched the water fill in the indentations left by his bare feet in the sand. The waves were constant, lulling, in their predictable low roar inward and whoosh of instant retreat, and yet at the same time unpredictable. During his stroll up the beach his feet hadn’t gotten wet more than once, and yet now, his footprints suddenly glimmered with the wash of a strong surge of surf. Every few waves surged closer to his path.

After dinner, he’d walked the long stretch up Safe Harbor and now sat on a cold, blackened boulder that marked the beginning of Gull’s Point. He looked back toward the twinkling lights of Delilah. The glimmer of his hometown barely registered against the brilliance of the night sky; the stars were out in full tonight, and the beach flickered with secret reflections.

Evan leaned back and stared at the sky, as he absently fingered the half charm chained around his neck. Josh had worn the other half, after presenting it to him one Father’s Day, just a couple years before. A show of their solidarity, to wear two halves of a medal.

He looked down the empty stretch of beach and wondered, how many days and nights had he and Josh crisscrossed this sand? How many times had Josh tried to lure him into the water? How many times had he refused to go?

Josh had been a Pisces, and lived his sign; he’d always been in the water. As close as they’d been, that was one thing that father and son had never shared. Because while Evan loved the look and smell of the ocean, ironically, he was also an aquaphobe. Afraid of the water. More than afraid. Phobic. It was a crazy phobia for someone who lived near the ocean and worked at a port. But Evan had never been able to shake the paralyzing fear. He’d had it since he was a kid. It was more than that he couldn’t swim; while he could walk along the beach and admire the view, if you asked him to take a swim, his heart began to pound, and sweat leaked from his pores like rain. His legs grew palpably weak at the slightest suggestion of walking into the ocean to let the waves carry him. Even at home, his bathing consisted solely of a shower…he would never relinquish his body to a bathtub. Friends never understood why he refused invitations to their hot tub parties, and he could never have admitted that it was because he was afraid of immersing himself fully in water. At least, he couldn’t have explained before last year.

Evan had lived with the phobia all of his life without needing to explain it to virtually anyone…until the day that Josh had died.

He shook the water from his eyes and tried to think of something else. Something that had been good with him and Josh, something that had nothing to do with water. Some last thought he could console himself with, before he put his plan in action. Because he’d decided before kissing Sarah good night that he was actually kissing Sarah good-bye.

Evan looked out at the place in the bay where Josh had gone under for his last time and considered the distance between there and where he stood. At the same time, the
happy memory of him, Josh and an acoustic guitar took shape, and he blinked back saltwater as he remembered the day that he and his son had sat alone on the deck behind their house, singing “Daydream Believer” and whatever other simple songs Evan could figure out on the acoustic guitar.

He began to sing “Forever Now,” remembering one of his favorite songs from Psychedelic Furs. Josh was into more modern stuff, but he had always liked how Richard Butler’s voice had rasped and twisted in time to the fuzz guitars and wild saxophones of that ’80s band. Oddly enough, Evan had been able to both play and sing some of the band’s signature songs without too much embarrassment on guitar.

Evan stared up now at the night sky and sang. The song’s bitterly hopeful lyric—a wish to hold one moment in time forever—rang true in his heart, and he felt himself choking up. At the same time, in a bit of a mental “bait and switch” maneuver, he steeled his legs and courage and prepared to run—for as long and as far as he could—straight into the ocean. Evan had considered drowning himself in the place where Josh had died so many times; it had become as normal of a thought to him as breathing. And he didn’t want to wait any longer.

He wiped a tear from his cheek, and let the song and the moment go, and let the rhythm of the surf take over the night again as he started to run down the sand, a kamikaze to the ocean. If he could only get far enough into the water before his legs refused to work, the gentle surf would make short work of him. It would be an appropriate way for Evan to die.

Only, there was something more now.

As his struggling melody ended, another voice colored the night air. A beautiful, sensually fluid voice. Evan peered
down the empty beach and then back to the jumble of rocks that made up Gull’s Point. She was close, he could tell that much, but he couldn’t see her. The sound she made though…it melted his heart. And his body. Evan paused his run to the water almost the instant it began and walked back to the boulder he’d been singing on. As if in some distant dream, he felt himself relax again into the questionable comfort of the boulder’s seat, even as he yearned to move closer and find the source. It embarrassed him to know that she had probably heard his feeble attempts at song—maybe even felt the need to sing to blot out the amateur attack of his singing. Still, embarrassment aside, he had to meet the owner of that voice! After enjoying the music pulsing in the air all around, Evan pushed himself out of his reverie and threaded his way around the rocks, hugging to the sharp side of the point so that he didn’t end up in the waves. There wasn’t much of a path to the point’s tip, but it was walkable if you were careful. Once there, something of a lookout space existed; a flat oval spot on the rock that protruded into the ocean where you could stand dozens of yards out into the water, and watch the far horizon. Lovers came there to watch the sun rise and set. And to do
other
things, he supposed.

As he rounded the last obstacle in his path, his heart stopped.

And started.

And stopped again.

Evan forced himself to breathe, slowly. Quietly. The moonlight illuminated the woman’s back and Evan found himself yearning desperately to caress the creamy skin that lay there, naked to the night, just steps away. The woman rested her head on an elbow. The slope of her ribs leading to her waist to the sumptuous rise of her
hip was as perfect as any artist’s rendering of a nude in the moonlight that Evan had ever seen. He struggled not to be gauche and stare at her ass, but…Jesus…there was a naked woman lying on the ground here, singing! And the globes of her ass were absolutely kissable. How could he not stare at her? Especially when most men’s magazines would have paid top price for the opportunity to photograph her. If the front side of this girl was anything like the back, she could demand any fee for voyeuristic entrée.

She had more than a perfect ass though. She had a pitch-perfect voice. And
that
may have been more attractive to Evan than her body. With the gentle rush of the surf around them, she sang a plaintive and unidentifiable melody that chilled and warmed Evan to the bone at the same time. He felt feverish with the sound, aching to run to her, to hold her in his arms and not because of the attraction of her body. Her music drew emotions in torrents from his heart. Her song, quite simply, played him.

The sound reached high into the night and then dipped, and Evan gasped at the impact of that melody.

And with the interruption of his gasp, the music abruptly ceased. The woman rose to her feet in a heartbeat, glanced around behind her. Her eyes narrowed as they focused on the spot where Evan stood on the beach. Without a second look, she suddenly stepped up on a jagged rock and dove off into the water a few feet below.

Evan was left with an impression of darkly luminous eyes and pouty lips framed by a long tangle of dark curls; her hair fell halfway down her back when she stood. He’d also caught a hint of softly curved breasts, and his belt easily felt tighter in the five seconds it took for her to turn, look and leap.

The moment was broken then and Evan darted across the open lookout area himself. It wasn’t safe to swim in the bay alone; certainly not at night. He looked out across the gently chopping whitecaps and didn’t see her anywhere.

“Miss?” he called after a moment. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he continued. When she didn’t surface, he called, “Come back to shore, it’s dangerous out here at night.”

His voice was answered only by the rush of water that surrounded Gull’s Point, washing in and away from the beach. He stayed there, calling out to the mysterious woman, but she never answered. As the minutes ticked by, he realized that she might never be coming back. Why had she jumped like that? He asked himself over and over. What if her head had struck a rock below the surface? Or what if she couldn’t swim, like him? Maybe that’s why she wasn’t resurfacing. Evan began to think that he might have inadvertently helped send a woman to her death.

The surface of the water betrayed no woman, only whitecaps.

Eventually, Evan threaded his way back to the beach from the edge of the point, his own attempt at suicide forgotten. Or, at least, put temporarily on hold. Planning your own death was one thing, but seeing someone else take their life—because she had never come back to the shore—that made Evan’s stomach turn over. He walked back across his own footprints in the sand, the image of the woman disappearing into the waves playing over and over again in his head.

He prayed that she were all right, but he didn’t believe she could be.

The sign on the old wooden door read
VICKY BLANCHARD
,
MD
, but to Evan, it said something else entirely. He read it as “Dr. Blanchard, Head Case Doc.”

He thumbed down the latch on the front door handle and entered the small waiting room in the converted Victorian. Once, the room had probably served as the formal “sitting” room, where lovers sat and conversed in stilted dialogue as matriarchs and chaperones looked on. Evan could only imagine the conflict between the flirtatious words that the couples had
wanted
to say and the formal dialogue they’d been
forced
to masquerade behind. Talk about a torture chamber…Now, it acted as a waiting room for Delilah’s only psychiatrist. It hadn’t been built for that purpose, and was definitely “cozier” than your average waiting room. But, Evan generally found himself waiting alone, thumbing through an issue of
Cosmo
. Dr. Blanchard was pretty good about not double-booking. So he never waited long. Or, perhaps, he was just one of the only ones in the small town crazy enough to subject himself to a head doctor.

Not like he’d done it by choice. In the aftermath of Josh’s death, the company mandated that he keep his biweekly appointment if he wanted to keep his job. After skipping work a dozen times last year because he couldn’t get out of bed, it was head doc or the highway.

Evan wished that he could have forced Sarah to take the same treatment. He hadn’t turned into a raving fan-boy of psychiatry, but he had to admit, his conversations with Vicky had helped him cope when things turned really black.

The inner office door opened, and the head doc in question stuck her head out. “Wanna come on back?” she asked sweetly. Dr. Blanchard couldn’t afford to keep a receptionist on staff full-time just to send her occasional patients back to the “chat” room.

He followed her down a short hallway to a spacious office. The doctor’s desk dominated the room in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, but two couches bordered the walls on either side, and two leather-cushioned chairs perched in front of the dark wood desk. Once, this space had probably been the old house’s family room.

“You know the drill,” she said, slipping behind her desk. Evan felt kind of ridiculous talking to her at times; she could have been his younger sister. Dr. Blanchard stood a not very imposing five foot two, and weighed about as much as a coatrack, he theorized. She talked with the lilt of a high school sophomore; full of happiness and overexuberance.

Still, if you had to pour out your troubles, who better to drown in them than a former cheerleader, Evan had speculated on more than one occasion.

He plopped down in one of the chairs (she offered the couches, but he’d never felt right about lying down while talking to her) and raised an eyebrow as she pulled out her pad of yellow notepaper.

“Do you ever look at any of that stuff you write down after I leave?” he asked.

She raised two deep-blue eyes and stared back at him as if in shock. Then she laughed. “No, not usually.” She
winked, and then shook her head. “But that’s really not the point here.”

“I know.” He smiled. “This is about me, not about you.”

She pointed a long hot pink fingernail at him and smiled. “Right. Now tell me why I shouldn’t have you committed this week.”

“Well, actually, maybe you should,” Evan began.

“Would you like to explain?”

“I think I saw a woman kill herself,” he said.

“Tell me what happened.”

Evan ran through the story of walking on the beach the night before, hearing the strange naked woman singing, and then watching her dive into the water to vanish without a trace.

“How are things with you and Sarah?” Dr. Blanchard asked.

“Apropos of nothing?” Evan laughed.

“I’m just curious…how are things with you two? The last few times you’ve been here you’ve said that her drinking has really increased. I’m just wondering…”

“You’re just wondering if I’m hallucinating because I’ve been sharing the bottle with her, or because I’m desperately wishing she’d come home…or not leave home at all?”

She let a wry wrinkle crease her smile before answering. “Transparent, huh? I don’t get to ask by-the-book questions like that very often. Sorry.”

“You think I’m by the book?”

Dr. Blanchard shook her head quickly. “The book says nothing about men who see naked women diving into the ocean.”

“So am I crazy?”

“I’ll reserve judgment on that for now. Tell me about Sarah.”

“Whose psychiatrist are you anyway?”

“Who is the most important woman in your life?” Dr. Blanchard asked. And then with a wicked smile, she held up one finger. “And don’t say me.”

“Sarah.” He grinned. “And she’s not good.” His smile fell instantly. “I’m pulling her off a stool every other night. And she won’t talk about it.”

“I’d like to talk to her,” Dr. Blanchard said gently.

“I’d like to bring her,” he answered. “But we can’t afford it—my insurance won’t cover it. And she wouldn’t come if we could.”

Dr. Blanchard nodded. “I think you’re under a lot of stress right now…” she began.

“…So I’m imagining naked women on the beach?” he finished.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“No? Did you mean that you totally believe me when I tell you I saw a nude woman last night lying on the rocks who sang in the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard—even though I couldn’t tell you a single word that she sang—and that I watched her jump into the surf to drown in the waves? Is that what you meant?”

“You didn’t see her drown,” Dr. Blanchard said after a moment.

Evan laughed. “No, that’s what makes it all bearable, isn’t it? There’s no evidence that I killed the woman, is there?”

“You didn’t
kill
anyone,” Dr. Blanchard spit back at him. “You couldn’t
save
Josh. That’s all. And if
anything
happened last night…then the fact is, you couldn’t save her either. But you didn’t kill anyone. And you have to admit that it’s entirely possible that if you did see a skinny-dipper last night, that she was embarrassed and swam as far and as fast as she could before she let anyone
see her face again. She’s probably safe at home right now with her husband and kids, and her cheeks are flushing red every time she thinks about that guy last night who spotted her.”

“Nice try,” Evan laughed.

“I’m serious.”

“Okay,” Evan said. “So I saw a desperate housewife.”

“Maybe.”

Evan watched her face twitch. For a psychiatrist, she seemed to have no ability to keep her thoughts to herself; her facial muscles telegraphed every emotion she experienced. Inwardly he laughed; maybe that’s why she was practicing a hundred miles from any major city.

“Evan,” she said finally. “I’ve told you this before. But…what happened last night really just underlines it.”

She leaned her elbows on the desk and sought to meet his eyes with her own in a gaze that was both serious and uninterruptible.

“You need to face your fear,” she said. “How long have you been aquaphobic?”

Evan almost laughed as soon as she said it. He still hated that word. It reminded him of Aquaman, and thus seemingly meant something about how he was scared to death of watery superheroes. That’s not what she meant, but the unbidden image made him laugh.

“I’ve never been able to swim,” he said. “You know that.”

She nodded, one faint wisp of blonde hair trailing over her nose. She didn’t move to correct it. “Yes,” she said, “but when did it become a problem? When did you realize that you simply couldn’t ever swim? That you were afraid of water?”

Evan didn’t even pause to think about it. “I’ve always been afraid of the water,” he said.

“But you live by the ocean,” Dr. Blanchard said, for
the umpteenth time poking at the root of his phobia. Only he could decide, ultimately, to uproot and face it.

Evan shrugged. “I just always have been afraid of it. And then I moved here, and it got worse.”

“The woman, unveiled. The water, unprotected…The vanishing…Don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, this is all a sign?” Dr. Blanchard hazarded. It sounded like bad Freud, but it made a certain amount of basic sense too. She continued, “Don’t you think it’s time to face your fears? Don’t you think it’s time to touch the water? You’ve been hiding from this since Josh died. The longer you hide, the longer you can blame yourself for that day. You need to release, forgive, and move past that horrible day. And the only way to do that is to forgive yourself.”

Evan felt the bile rise in his throat. They’d been here before, he and Dr. Blanchard, and he thought he’d gotten past this piece of her paint-by-numbers psych test. Apparently not.

“I didn’t see the woman last night out of guilt,” he said. “But at the end of the day, I
did
kill my son.”

Dr. Blanchard nodded her head. “So. We’ve basically gotten nowhere over the past year.”

Evan didn’t answer at first, and then looked up at her. “A year ago I didn’t see women jumping to their deaths,” he said.

“Nor did I,” she said. “Nor did I. And I’d completely love to keep it that way.”

She looked at him hopefully. “Here’s what I think,” she said. “I think you need to take swimming lessons.”

She shifted behind the desk, and at the end of her fidgeting, she pulled one lone blue-jeaned leg up from beneath and slapped it on the top of the desk.

“Look,” she said. “You’ve been coming here for a year.
There are good reasons that you’ve been upset, but it really is time to move on. Your son is not going to come back to you, and you are
not
responsible for his death. You were afraid of the ocean before you ever blamed it. Now you have to face both of those issues, and there’s not a lot here that I can do for you.” She paused for a minute, and then smiled. “In all honesty, I think you just need to go out and walk in the ocean. I’d recommend that Sarah be there with you. The two of you insist on suffering alone, when you should be together. Seriously, Evan, at this point there is nothing much that I can do for you. I can listen. I can give you some advice on what you need to do to help Sarah. But what do you need to do for you?”

She lowered her head and gave him the widest, most intelligent look of her eyes that she had. He could almost ignore her freckles.

“You need to face your fear. And your fear is the water. You need to go back there.”

“I’m there every night,” he said. “You know that.”

“You’re not
there
,” she said. “You’re
next
to there. You’re just torturing yourself by looking at the scene of the supposed crime.” She looked at him and shook her head. “If you want to put Josh to rest, there’s only one way for you to do so. You have to get
off
the beach. And I don’t mean avoid the beach. You have to follow your naked woman. You have to go into the water. That’s where your answers lie. Not on the sand. And not here.”

She motioned to the sterile confines of the office with its plastic potted plants and white-painted window frames. “I can listen to you for as long as you like, Evan,” she said. “But I don’t think I can help you anymore, if I ever could.”