The Silent Sister(37)

When her father turned onto the parkway, he put on his headlights and she did the same. The snow was coming down harder and she kicked up the speed of her wipers. They passed only a few other cars. The fewer the better.

They drove for a while. She knew they were headed for the Belle Haven Marina and then some little road she’d never been on. Her father had it all figured out and she had to trust that he knew what he was doing. They reached the turn for the marina, and she followed him into the driveway that led to the parking lot, but instead of continuing to the lot, he turned onto a narrow road that cut through the woods. His car lights blinked off, and she turned hers off as well, and then it was almost impossible to see. The bushes scraped the sides of her car. After a while, her father pulled his car into the woods, nestling it in a narrow space between the trees. She knew she was supposed to stop driving then. He’d explained all of this to her. So she stopped and waited and he got out of his car and into her passenger seat, kicking the snow off his shoes before letting his feet rest on the floor.

“You’re doing great,” he said, patting her shoulder with his gloved hand. “Just great. Keep going now, nice and slow.”

She gave the car a little gas.

“That’s it,” he said. “Perfect. We’re so lucky with this snow. It’s supposed to get a lot heavier before morning and it’ll cover our tracks when we walk back to the car. I wasn’t sure how we were going to handle that.”

She didn’t want to hear that he’d been unsure about anything.

After a while, he told her to turn on her headlights to see where they were. She flipped her lights on and saw the snow falling ahead of her, and beyond that, too close for comfort, the river.

“Perfect,” her father said again. “Stop right here. Turn off your lights.”

Once the lights were off, she couldn’t even see her gloved hand when she held it in front of her face. How was she going to do this without being able to see?

He handed her a flashlight. “Keep it pointed to the ground,” he said. “The woods are thick right here, but we can’t risk too much light. Can you get your kayak down on your own in the dark?”

“Yes,” she said. She got out of the car, closing the door as quietly as he had back in their driveway, and reached up blindly for one of the straps. She’d taken her kayak off her roof herself a hundred times, but never in the dark and never in the cold and certainly never wearing gloves. It took less than a minute for her fingertips to go numb, and she couldn’t get the strap undone. She thought of last summer, before everything happened, when they rented the place in Rehoboth and her mother let her take Riley out in the kayak on the calm water of the Intracoastal Waterway. She remembered Riley’s sense of wonder as she waved to the birds. She remembered bending over to kiss the top of the little girl’s head, how she let her lips linger against the silky dark curls as she breathed in Riley’s scent, still more baby than little girl back then.

Her eyes stung, and her fingers lost their grip on the strap. She pounded her fist against the window. She kicked the door.

“Hey, hey,” her father said, getting out of his side of the car and coming around to hers. He put his arm around her and she leaned against him.

“I can’t do this, Daddy,” she said.

For a long moment, he said nothing, just held her and rubbed her back. “You don’t have to, sweetheart,” he said. “It’s an option, that’s all. It’s your choice.”

She pressed her forehead into his chest, thinking. Her nose ran and she wiped it with the back of her glove. My choice. Her own attorney had told her that her case was unwinnable. She was afraid of prison. She was afraid of those hard women. Those real criminals. She was terrified of being locked up, unable to escape. Unable to breathe. Even when they put the handcuffs on her in her living room that day, she started to scream. How did people stand being locked up with no way, absolutely no way, out? She imagined her mother telling people, “I have three children, but one’s in prison.” The humiliation Riley and Danny would face. It was already bad enough for Danny. He didn’t understand exactly what was going on, but he knew kids were talking about him. He’d always been a happy, bubbly kid, and suddenly no one wanted to be his friend.

“I’m just scared,” she said.

“I know. Me, too.”

“I want to do it,” she said.

“There’s no going back.”

“I know.” She turned away from him and reached up again for the kayak. “I can do it myself.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” The front strap came free and she started to work on the rear strap, ignoring the numbness of her fingers and thinking of nothing other than getting her kayak in the water.

Her father waited in the car while she carried the kayak over her head to the river. He’d picked a good spot for her to put in. The bank eased down to the water. No nasty rocky drop-off. She risked shining the flashlight into the river and saw that it was already starting to freeze along the bank and was choppy and frothy and wind-whipped farther out. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to shove the boat far enough into the water for the current to grab it, but she gave it a great push and the river ripped it from the bank, just like her father had predicted. With the last of her strength, she tossed the paddle as far out in the water as she could. Then she remembered she was supposed to put her jacket in the kayak. Too late now. She took it off and tossed it hard across the water, but the wind blew it against the shrubs along the bank and out of her reach. She stared after it for a moment, shining the beam of her flashlight on it. Nothing she could do about it now. The snow landed on her throat and she pulled up the collar of her sweater, her fingers barely able to grip the fabric.