The Water Keeper(84)

Summer and Ellie stared at me dumbstruck. Jaws resting on the ground.





Chapter 38


I kept going. In the middle of it now.

“It took a minute for the images to register. For the meaning to register. People began quietly leaving the reception. Walking out. When I looked at where Marie had been sitting, her chair was empty. She was gone. I stood, and my best man was standing there with a content and satisfied ‘What are you going to do about it?’ look on his face. I still couldn’t believe it. I tried to run after Marie, but he caught my arm and whispered, ‘I’ll always be her first. And she’ll always be mine.’ For some reason, it struck me then that he’d done this intentionally. Like, to harm me. Get back at me for something. I stared at him as the difference between what was real and what was not blurred inside my head, and then he smiled. Nodded. Laughed. His coup d’état complete.

“While I’d been laid up, he’d moved in and convinced her I wouldn’t make it. That she needed to prepare herself. Psychological warfare. Emotional terrorism. Preying on the weak.”

I paused again. Summer swallowed. Ellie didn’t move.

“Bones pulled me off him as I was doing my best to kill him. Roger was unconscious, several of the bones in his face broken, teeth shattered. He spent the next couple months in the hospital, but as he lay there, crumpled like a broken pretzel, I could still see that smug smile on his face.

“I ran after Marie, but by then she was gone. She’d taken one of the boats and left the island. A tattered white wedding dress floating in her wake. I took a leave of absence from work and started looking. I used every available technology at my disposal, and given my job with the government and the fact that Bones was still shepherding me, I had access to a lot. I chased her for months. Months turned into a year. I’d find a clue, get close, and she’d disappear. I learned how to live out of a backpack and with very little. How to not eat for days. Sometimes a week. I went days and even weeks in the same clothes. Watching. Waiting. Sifting through receipts or video footage or a hotel dumpster where the nastiest stuff on earth is thrown—stuff that would gag a maggot. I was reading every piece. Every scrap.”

“Then one day I got lucky, or she got tired of running, and I caught up to her. Staying at a high-rise hotel. Thing must have been sixty or seventy stories. The porch of each room hung over the water. In the guest book, she’d signed a fake name. I convinced the attendant I was her husband and he gave me a key. Before I walked in, I watched a couple of pigeons fight over some bird seed, and then I unlocked the door and walked in. The room was neat, bed made, her bag and clothes on the floor. There was a letter addressed to me on the bed and the patio door had been swung wide open. I picked up the letter, walked out on the patio, and saw where she’d taken off her shoes and socks before she’d climbed up on the railing. I saw where her feet had stood in the morning dew maybe sixty seconds before. Then I read the letter.”

I stood quietly a long time.

“They never found her body. Deep water and a rip current. Several guests in the rooms below us reported having seen something like a person fly past their window heading to the water below. I returned home, numb, and told Bones to send me somewhere. Anywhere.

“He did. Evil doesn’t care what pain you’re in. We had plenty to do. I thought if I worked hard enough I could forget. Problem was, in chasing her I’d gotten very good at finding people who didn’t want to be found or whom others didn’t want me to find. So I medicated the pain myself, thinking that somehow finding all these other people would make up for not having found her ninety seconds sooner.” A group of pelicans flying in formation flew low across the horizon. “For years, I had this recurring dream. I’d barge in the door. She’d be standing on the railing. Wearing her wedding dress. Holding a bouquet. Smiling down at me. I’d lunge. But I never did reach her. I’d wake up sweating, unable to breathe, my arm cramped from reaching.”

Summer and Ellie looked cold.

“In the years following, I found eighty-one people. Girls. Women. Children. Victims all. In each one, I’d look for Marie’s face but I never saw it. I worked ninety or a hundred and twenty hours a week. I wasn’t human. Wasn’t anything. I didn’t feel cold. Heat. Hunger. Didn’t love. Didn’t sleep. I just was.

“Six years later, I was in West Palm at The Breakers. Studying the movements of this hedge fund guy who liked little girls. Paid handsomely for what he liked. Anyway, they brought in these three Asian girls. Eight, nine, and ten. One wore braces. Other two wore pigtails. So we arrested him. Which he didn’t like. Offered me a lot of money to forget I’d ever seen him. I broke one arm, shattered his jaw, dislocated both elbows, slammed his hand through a sliding-glass door, and told him to enjoy prison.

“While he rode the elevator to the ambulance, I walked back to my room. The seven-year anniversary of my almost wedding. I was tired. My soul was tired. I was sitting there staring out across the water when there was this light knock at my door. I thought maybe they’d come to clean the room. I opened it and Marie was staring at me. I thought I was hallucinating. Then she touched me. Trembling fingers . . .”

Ellie and Summer stared dumbstruck. I just tried to breathe. Gunner sat next to me. My voice softened.

“Seven years prior, Marie had tired of running so she faked her death to throw me off. Which she had. Obviously, I’d stopped looking. The years since had not been kind to her. She was thinner. More tortured. There was a tiredness behind her eyes that sleep wouldn’t cure. Needle scars dotted the inside of her elbows. Over the next several hours, she circled around me. Never crossing a four-foot bubble between us. Four feet might as well have been a million miles. She told me the truth about our wedding, Roger, and how it had started after I’d been shot. How she was afraid I was going to die. How often she’d wanted to tell me. And how she was sorry. I sat in disbelief. Stunned. Sometime around two or three a.m., I cracked and cried like a baby. I let out all the tears and anger that had been seven years in the making. She didn’t say much. She just sat there. A cold breeze. When I woke at daylight, she was gone. Another note.”