“Cheers, Lib.” I tapped my paper cup against her own. The champagne was fizzy and cold down my throat.
“Cheers, beautiful birthday girl. May all your dreams come true. Hey, Pete! How about a glass of bubbly, love?”
Peter stood and walked over to the blanket. He placed one hand on the back of Libby’s head. “I’m actually going to take a little stroll, if you girls don’t mind. I want to get some different shots of the lake.”
“Of course. Have a nice stroll. Heather and I will hold down the fort.”
Peter leaned down to kiss his wife, and the image of Burke outside the A&P rushed into my mind.
Libby refilled our cups and we sat basking in the sunshine, chatting into the afternoon while the boys continued to wade. The lake was beautiful, and not as crowded as I remembered it from years past. The sun sat high in the sky, warming us despite the wind and casting a shimmery glow over the velvety-blue water. At one end of the beach a couple of rowboats were tied to a floating dock, their hulls bobbing in the waves. At the other end was a water trampoline with blue-and-yellow-striped sides, about thirty meters out from shore.
“Oooh, Mom!” Nate exclaimed. “I wanna go jump on that trampoline! Can I?”
“Not now, sweetie,” Libby told her son. “You can’t swim there by yourself. When Daddy gets back from his walk, he can take you.”
All of a sudden, the baby let out a sharp cry. Libby and I whipped our heads around as her eyes filled with tears, a couple of yellow jackets circling her tiny body. Her face grew red and scrunched, her little mouth gaped open, and I heard the wails in my head before they escaped her lungs.
“Oh, my baby girl!” Libby snatched her daughter up and hurried her away from the yellow jackets. “Shoot, Heather. I think she got stung.” Libby pointed to the baby’s upper arm, a small crimson dot surrounded by a circle of puffy white skin, as she continued to scream. “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard her cry like this, Heather! She’s never gotten stung before. What if she’s allergic?” Libby’s voice was panicked, hollow with fear.
“I—I don’t know. It looks like a normal beesting to me. Wouldn’t it look different if she was allergic?”
“I have no idea! I’ve just never heard her scream like this. I don’t know what to do. Shit! Where’s Peter? Can you find Peter?”
I resisted the urge to tell Libby that I had heard her daughter scream like this—I knew Libby had, too. But I understood the way she was as a mother—nothing like my own had been—and that my attempts to calm her down would be futile. The most productive thing I could do would be to look for her husband.
“I’ll go find Peter.” I scrambled to stand.
“Thank you. Hurry!” Libby called behind me.
I ran to the end of the beach, shouting Peter’s name, the wind deafening the pitch of my voice. He was nowhere to be seen. I clambered back up toward the grass and continued along the shoreline. How long had Peter been gone? How far could he have gotten? Burke had once told me that Chazy Lake’s circumference was eleven miles—his knowledge of random facts like that was one of things I’d loved about him.
But eleven miles—that was a significant distance. And I didn’t even know which direction Peter had headed. I continued on for another five minutes, shuffling through the tall grass around the lake’s edge as I called for Peter.
An older couple sitting in fold-up chairs noticed me.
“Everything okay, honey?” the man asked.
“I’m looking for someone.” I paused, catching my breath. “He’s my—my friend’s husband, he’s thirty … something. Six feet or so, light brown hair. He would’ve had a camera around his neck. Have you seen him?”
The couple shook their heads. “Sorry.” The woman’s voice was slow and raspy. “We haven’t seen anyone out here today. It’s so darn peaceful. Good luck.”
I was suddenly racked with a sick, wrenching feeling in my gut that something horrible had happened or was on the verge of happening. An overwhelming sense of doom clobbered my chest.
I thanked the couple and turned back the way I’d come, my legs heedlessly breaking into a sprint. Perhaps Libby’s instinct had been right; maybe the baby was having an allergic reaction to the beesting, and locating Peter within eleven miles of shoreline suddenly seemed impossible. If the baby was allergic, we needed to get to a hospital and we needed to get to one fast.
My heart thrashed against my rib cage as I ran back toward our beach. I finally spotted our blue picnic blanket, and my blood froze when I saw the baby sitting there alone. I heard Libby’s scream first—a violent, barbaric noise—and when my eyes found her, she was in the lake, about five meters out, Nate’s arms around her neck as they swam toward the shore.
“Heather!” Libby yelled, the panic in her voice guttural. “GUS!” She flung her arm out of the lake, pointing toward the water trampoline. My heart dropped to my stomach. I scanned my eyes for Gus in his yellow floaties, two pops of color against the deep blue, but they were nowhere. Then suddenly I saw them, six feet from where I stood, discarded on the beach.
“GUS!” Libby screamed again, her arm thrashing out toward the water behind her.
Immediately I felt as if I were being choked, as though someone were squeezing my neck with all his or her might, cutting off my air supply. Adrenaline surged through me and I ripped off my shorts and T-shirt, sprinting into the water, a primal force taking over.
“GUS!” I wailed; the noise that came out of me was bloodcurdling, something from an animal.
Suddenly I saw his little fingers scraping at the surface of the water, halfway out toward the water trampoline, where the waves were choppy and the wind was blowing offshore. I was screaming, tears blurring my vision. I glanced over at Libby, who was closer to the beach. Nate was still clutching her, but now, just a couple of meters from the beach, they could both stand.
“Libby!” I called, but she didn’t answer. “Libby, HELP!”
I waded out farther, until everything but my head was submerged. I couldn’t swim. If I tried to save Gus, we would both drown. But I would try anyway—I was running out of time, and Libby was distracted. I sprang forward and dunked into the lake, thrashing my arms in front of me underwater. Terror seized me; I couldn’t breathe. I gasped for air, choking on water as I fought my way back toward a place where I could stand. Finally, miraculously, my feet touched the bottom, and I gulped air hungrily into my lungs. I used the grip of my toes against the sand to pull myself back toward the shore.
Once I could fully stand, I ran out of the lake, my chest heaving as I fought to catch my breath. I couldn’t swim. I would die in that water before I ever reached Gus.
“LIBBY!” I howled, clambering toward her as she wrapped Nate in a towel. He was crying, but he’d made it safely out of the water. The baby had started wailing again.
“LIBBY!” My voice was shrill and shaking with hysteria. “Please! Gus! I can’t swim! You know I can’t swim!”
Just as Libby turned toward me, her eyes pooling with fresh panic, I heard Peter’s voice from the other end of the beach. “Libby! Heather! What the hell is going on?”