The Wave by Kristen Crusoe (ebook reader online txt) 📗

older car was no match for his machine. He stayed with me. I slowed down through the village of Seven Devils. Then rushed to the turn off where I parked to walk down to the beach. I felt sure I had lost him. He must have died again on the way, crashed his car. I hurried down the trail. It was getting dark now, but I could still see the path. Each root, remembering how Devon had skipped and leaped over them on that day, before. I made it to the cove. I felt so safe now. I had made it. Then I heard a car door slam. Sound carries, you know, close to the water. I froze.’

Clair sat rooted in the memory, her hands tight fists. She felt her nails pressing into her soft palms, bringing her back to the present.

‘When nothing happened, when his ghost didn’t come, I sat down on a rock, at the far end of the cove. I could see a fisherman making his way across the rocks on the other end, but he wasn’t looking my way. At least I didn’t think so.’ She sighed, letting her hands release, rubbing them briskly against her upper arms.

‘I had brought a bottle of vodka with me, and the pills. I sat there on the beach, waiting for the tide to come in. I waited, waited, then noticed it wasn’t coming in, it was going out. I remember feeling woozy and nauseous. The sound of waves pulling me forward was irresistible. I knew it was now or never. I began walking into the water. Cold, so cold. My breath caught. All I could think about was Devon, what he must have felt, that shock.’ She looked up at Jet, her eyes reddened, wet.

‘I was told he would have lost consciousness at once, that the shock, the hypothermia would have been like a salve. That he wouldn’t have had time to be afraid.’ Tears flowed down her face. A gasp, and she crumbled into herself, hugging her arms around her middle.

‘I just wanted to be with him,’ Clair explained. ‘It had been six months since he left. He left in March, such an unkind month. The great whites come through then. The orcas. It was too dangerous for him. I had to find him. And I was so close, I knew it. A water spirit had come to take me to him. I could feel him there, drawing me in. I could hear the song of the sea, hear the voices. Don’t you believe me?’

Clair broke down, sobbing. Her head hung on her chest, too weak to lift her hands to support herself. Slowly, she melted, head resting on the edge of the desk, back and shoulders heaving.

Through her tears she heard Santiago speaking, saying something about the interview ending. Jet had walked around the table, sat beside her. Clair could feel her presence. She could hear Jet and the man talking, voices coming from far away. A door shut. She couldn’t, wouldn’t open her eyes. Her failures, as a mother, a wife, even as a teacher, a role she couldn’t find her way back to after Devon, all came crashing down, an avalanche of feeling. She had held back the dam for so long.

She began to hear soft music, a drumming sound, muffled, like the first time she had heard Devon’s heartbeat on the ultrasound monitor. Like when she’d been in the water. Will that sound be a part of her for ever, she wondered? The swish, swish of fluid moving through her body, their connection. She realized she was lying on the floor, curled into a pile of bolsters and cushions Jet placed around her office. Hugging one of the cushions to her chest, she allowed visions to come. She could sense Jet in the room, could hear paper crinkling, computer keys tapping. She felt a warm breath from the ventilation fan, heard its rumble. Sinking deeper and deeper into the carpet, the cushions, she drifted. Back, and further back. To another beginning, the one that cracked open the fragile mold that had been her life.

Chapter 5

Clair

She knew right away, noticing a hunger unlike any she had ever felt, gnawing at her insides. Her breasts tingled, nipples dimpled and erect. Then the morning nausea, which only strong black coffee seemed to help. They hadn’t seen each other since the party. Since their night of sex. Not up close. She had seen him across campus, as usual, surrounded by a cluster of students. He had called, left messages. Written her poems sent to her college email. He was taken, he had said. Is it possible to fall in love after only a few hours? She was his Sylvia. His altar. Would she meet him for a drink? Dinner? They must go see the new play at the Theater on the Bay. She hadn’t responded yet. She wasn’t sure how she felt.

The proof was sitting there, on the vanity counter. The urine test kit. No guessing with Xs or Os. Just the word ‘pregnant’ in bold black letters.

It couldn’t be, she thought. Forty-one-year-old single women do not get pregnant after just one time. That is for teenagers. But there it was, staring her in the face. She stood up, walked into her bedroom. She looked around. Her world, so carefully arranged, so dear to her after the chaos that had been her life growing up. Nothing here was uncertain, unpredictable. Except for this speck of life growing inside her.

Clair sat on the side of her bed, the rich blue duvet yielding to her weight. She rubbed her hand against its silk. Sighing, she dialed a number into her phone. She hadn’t talked to her brother Ben in weeks, maybe longer. It was really his wife, Jodie, she wanted to talk to. They were on service in Yemen. She wasn’t sure what time it was there, but she called anyway. A moment of hesitancy hit her. Her problem, although