Because as I’d fallen, she’d showed me everything.
The last night in the mansion. The confrontation with Beth. The ashtray. The bathtub.
How long had I fallen? Three seconds? Five? I’d seen all of it, the way you can dream a year’s worth of dreams in a twenty-minute nap. Instead of seeing the rocks and the ocean rushing up at me, I’d seen Lily die.
The waves pushed harder at me as the tide continued to come in, and I tried to move myself toward the rocky shore. My knee and my arm screamed at me, even though both were under icy water. I glanced down and saw that my left arm was hanging at a crazy angle below the elbow, the elbow itself the wrong shape. I forced myself to look away as my teeth chattered. I must have hit the rocks at the bottom of the water when I landed, though I didn’t remember it. I was probably lucky the tide was coming in, because if I’d hit the rocks without any water to break my fall, I’d be dead.
I moved my good leg and my good arm, pulling myself forward. I slipped and fell, then got purchase again. The pain was so bad I screamed, over and over, as I inched another step, and then another.
Did something touch the back of my neck?
I crawled faster, letting the pain wash over me. This is it, I thought grimly. Drowning or hypothermia—that’s how I’m going to go. Or maybe Lily will just grab me and finish me off. She could push my head under the water, kill me the way Beth had killed her. If she bothered, I wouldn’t be able to put up much resistance.
My body was shaking—adrenaline, fear, pain, shock, and cold taking over. My vision was blurred. I thought I saw a shape moving from the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t be sure. I lurched to the left as my damaged knee buckled again, and reached out with my good hand to break my fall. I was emerging slowly out of the water now, into the shallower depths on the rocky shore, beating the incoming tide.
My elbow was broken. I knew it; the pain was too much, and I could feel bone grind against bone as I limped over the rocks. I blinked and realized that there was something red in my eyes. I touched my forehead and found a gash, open and salty and bleeding. I pressed my fingers to it, remembering some long-ago first-aid tip about stanching a wound. My neck was wrenched, and even my teeth hurt. Where was I going to go from here? Where was the nearest house? My bag and my phone were long gone, vanished into the ocean, and, despite my situation, I mourned all of those interviews, all of my notes, drifting away on the current somewhere.
I managed to get into knee-deep water, and then I turned course along the shore, parallel to the cliffs. With the blood slowing its flow into my eyes, I could see that I was heading in the direction of Claire Lake proper, away from Arlen Heights. Far in the distance, the cliffs tapered down, toward the inland lake that gave the town its name. To my right were the cliffs, and to my left was the ocean. The only way to go was forward.
I didn’t know how long it would take me, and I didn’t know if I would make it before the tide came all the way in. My feet had long ago gone numb in their sneakers.
But I sloshed one foot in front of the other, and I started to walk.
* * *
—
I didn’t know how long I walked—it felt like hours. I was limping harder, barely able to put weight on my bad knee, and now that my arms were out of the water my left elbow was starting to swell. The sleeve of my shirt was tight and getting tighter, and the rising tide was up to my thighs.
I realized sluggishly that the wall of cliffs to my right had diminished. There was a path leading up the rise, and then a low wrought iron fence. I could glimpse something bright blue and bright yellow past the fence—a children’s slide, I realized. It was a playground.
The sky was getting dark, though I still had no idea what time it was. I changed course, leaving the water and pulling myself painfully up the path. There was no one on the playground. I limped to the swing set and lowered myself to one of the swings, shaking with cold.