The Night Swim(96)
Hannah ran her fingers over the engraving on the plaque as tears wet her face. It was a small step but an important one. It corrected the record of what had happened to her sister on that beach twenty-five years earlier.
Rachel and Alkins slowly walked back to his car. It was too loud for them to talk over the roar of wind until they were in the Jeep and the doors were shut.
“Do you regret coming back to live here?” Rachel asked as he drove her back to the hotel.
“Almost every day,” he admitted.
“So why come back?” Rachel asked.
“It’s a long story that I can’t go into without violating attorney-client privilege. Let’s just say that I had a case that left me questioning everything I ever believed in.” His voice was low and pensive.
When they reached the hotel, Rachel leaned forward and impulsively kissed Mitch on the cheek before climbing out of the car. He sat behind the wheel with the engine still running, watching her go through the revolving door before he slowly drove off.
Rachel collected her luggage from the bellboy and headed toward the basement parking lot elevator. She stopped abruptly as she noticed a tourist standing at the gilded nightingale cage, snapping his fingers as he tried to get the terrified bird to sing. When that didn’t work, the man tapped the cage until it rocked and the bird fluttered about in confusion.
The hotel manager was on the phone when Rachel stormed into his office. She helped herself to a chair by his desk while he hastily finished his call, and then she told him in no uncertain terms what she wanted.
Thirty minutes later, Rachel was in her car, driving down the congested main street, heading out of town. She turned up the radio to hear a news update. The newscaster announced that if the storm maintained its current trajectory, it would hit landfall along the coastline within forty-eight hours. “Residents of Neapolis and nearby towns are being told to prepare for the worst and to implement their hurricane-disaster plans,” the announcer said. “If you can get out of town, then go. There’s still time.”
The traffic was heavy on the way out of Neapolis. Rachel stopped at a red light next to a strip mall and watched a tradesman on a ladder hammer a plywood sheet to protect a shopwindow. Rachel put her foot on the accelerator when the light changed and drove through.
She checked her voice mail messages as she merged onto the state highway. “Rachel!” It was Pete. He sounded excited. “I’ve found a case for Season 4. I’ve started researching it. I think we’re onto something incredible. This will be the best season ever. Call me and I’ll tell you about it.” Rachel hit delete. There was a long beep before the next message.
“Rachel, this is Cynthia Blair here,” said the crisp voice. “I just want to say that I hope you are very satisfied with yourself. You told us when we met that you were covering the trial to get to the truth. Clearly, you don’t care about truth. All you care about is fame, and money,” she said. “You got your ratings. Didn’t you, Rachel? That’s what it’s all about. You did it by demonizing my son and depriving him of a fair trial. I don’t understand how you can live with yourself. I really don’t.”
Rachel sped up as the message ended abruptly with a click. She drove for a while in silence as she shifted lanes, navigating through the congestion on the highway. She pressed hard on the accelerator until the other cars were well behind her and the charcoal asphalt of the highway stretched so far in front of her that it looked as if it might reach the sky.
Rachel’s eyes flicked to her rearview mirror as she heard a flutter from the back seat. The nightingale was rocking contentedly on the perch in the birdcage.
Acknowledgments
I sometimes joke that writing a novel is the writing equivalent of running a marathon. It’s exhausting and solitary work, requires extreme discipline, and there’s no assurance of making it to the finish line. The similarity extends beyond the writing because, just as with marathons, there are many people behind the scenes who play critical and often unsung roles. I wish to extend my deepest appreciation to Charles Spicer, for his invaluable advice as I worked on this novel. I am most grateful to Jennifer Enderlin, Sarah Grill, and the rest of the talented team at St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan. It is an enormous privilege to have you all in my corner. Thank you to my agent, David Gernert, and Ellen Coughtrey, as well as to Rebecca Gardner and the rest of the team at The Gernert Company. To Ali Watts and the “random penguins” at Penguin Random House Australia, as well as to all my other international publishers and translators, I am most grateful for your support. After my novel The Escape Room was published, I was inundated with messages from booksellers and book lovers. Every message touched me. Thank you so much to everyone who wrote to me.
To my husband and sons, who put up with my lengthy absences and constant distraction while I wrote this novel, thank you for your loving support and endless patience. You make it all worthwhile. Thank you also to my parents, brother and sister, and my aunt, who lives oceans away but is always in our hearts. Any mistakes in this novel are my own, either deliberate or otherwise, because fiction is, after all, fiction. The town of Neapolis is a fictional town. Its name is drawn from the Roman name for the town of Shechem, where the biblical account of the rape of Dinah took place.