Die Before I Wake (35 page)

Death by drowning seemed so much less appealing.

“I’m not going over the side,” I said, the first time I’d argued since she first pointed that lethal-looking little gun at me.

“You heard me,” she said. “Do it!” I glanced down at the rushing water and thought about all the afternoons I’d spent at the Y, learning to swim. If I survived the fall, there was a slight possibility I might survive the river. I’d never survive the gun. Either way, the odds weren’t in my favor. I vac-illated, torn between a quick, painless death and the possibility of survival in those cold, turbulent waters.

Headlights appeared in the distance. We both saw them at the same time. “Shit,” Claudia said. “Say a word, and you’re dead. Not one word!”

“And how do we explain to some passing motorist that we’re just out taking a stroll in the pouring rain on a rickety old bridge in some remote area of the wilderness?”

“Shut up! I’ll deal with it. If I have to shoot him, I will.”

“What’s wrong, Claudia? Aren’t Tom Larkin’s wives enough? Now you’re killing complete strangers?”

She shoved the gun against my kidneys so hard I’d be peeing blood tomorrow, if I survived tonight.

Through her teeth, she ground out, “Not. One.

More. Word.”

We watched the car approach. Instead of driving up onto the bridge, it stopped behind my Toyota. The driver’s door opened, and a dark figure got out, in-distinguishable in the rain and the glare of the headlights. The anonymous figure moved toward us, into the headlight beam, and morphed into my husband.

I had no idea how he’d found us here, but I was inordinately happy to see him. Claudia, needless to say, wasn’t as enthused as I. She muttered a curse and pressed the gun harder against my back.

“I lost one wife because of my stubborn pride,” Tom said, peering into the driving rain. “I don’t intend to lose another one because of the same weakness. You’re wrong about me, Jules, and you’re going to hear me out.” He looked around, seemed for the first time to realize where we were. Hoarsely, he said, “What in God’s name are you doing out here?”

“Surprise,” Claudia said brightly. “Your wife was just about to jump off the bridge. Weren’t you, precious?”

“Death by bullet would be a lot easier,” I said.

“Tom, I’m so sorry. All this time, I thought it was you who killed Beth, but it was really—”

“Shut up!” Claudia raised the gun and cuffed me with it. For an instant, I saw stars. Blood trickled from my ear. What else was new? By now, my body was used to being a human punching bag.

“You hurt her,” Tom said, “and I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”

“That would be hard, wouldn’t it, since I’m the one with the gun?”

“Claudia—”

“I’m sorry, Tom. Truly, I am. But this has gone too far to stop now. And I’m having far too much fun.” She gestured with the gun. “Julie, get up on the bridge railing.”

“No!”

“Fine. Then I’ll just shoot your husband.” And she leveled the gun at Tom.

I didn’t think she was kidding. “No,” I shouted.

“Wait! I’ll do it.” I grasped the cold, wet metal, found a fingerhold, and began climbing.

“Jules! No!”

“Isn’t this touching,” Claudia said. “Just like Romeo and Juliet.”

I climbed higher. Grabbing an upright beam, I hoisted myself onto the narrow railing. I teetered, only too aware of what seemed like miles of dark, empty space between me and eternity. I didn’t dare to glance down. I have a horrific fear of heights. I’m not that impressed by raging rivers, either, just in case anybody was wondering. Was I really going to have to take my chances with that boiling, bubbling, frigid mess below?

“Jump,” Claudia ordered.

“No!” Tom said. “Don’t listen to her, Jules!” I swayed, trying desperately to keep my hold on the beam as the wind whipped around me. I could see that Claudia was getting edgy. She had the flashlight trained on me, but the gun pointed at Tom.

Handling both of us was getting to be too much for her. With the gun wavering back and forth between Tom and me, she shouted, “Jump, damn it!” Tom took advantage of her split second of distraction. In a move that would have made Knute Rockne proud, he rushed Claudia, catching her off guard and knocking her off her feet. They fell to the ground together, and on the rain-slicked bridge grating, while I looked on in horror, they rolled and kicked and punched, grappling for control of the gun.

Suddenly, the gun went off, with a boom that seemed to echo off both riverbanks and ricochet on down the valley. A splotch of red appeared on the front of Tom’s dress shirt. “No!” I screamed as his lifeblood began to trickle out of him. He turned his gaze on me, and I expected to see reproach on his face. After all, I’d done this to him. If only I’d listened. If only I’d trusted him the way he trusted me. But all I saw on Tom’s face was tenderness. No anger, no blame, even though this was all my fault.

Just love.

Then he closed his eyes, and I felt myself go dead inside.

Claudia scrambled to her feet and pointed the gun at me. “Goddamn it,” she said, “I told you to jump! Why didn’t you listen to me?” Her hands were shaking violently, and I saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes. But despite her grief over what she’d just done, I had no doubts about what would happen next. I’d just seen her shoot the man we both loved; she wouldn’t hesitate to shoot me.

Behind her, Tom moaned. He wasn’t dead yet. If I took my chances with the river, there might be a sliver of hope that I could save him. If not, at least I’d die trying.

So I did the only thing I could do.

I let go of the beam and stepped off the railing.

The fall seemed to take forever. It’s true what they say; your life really does flash in front of your eyes. But not the way I always imagined it would, thirty years of life playing out in fast-forward, beginning to end. It was only the highlights I viewed as I moved through the air in slow motion. I saw my mother, the long-haired hippie girl, younger then than I was now, reading a Dr. Seuss story to me as I lay in bed. And I saw Dave, not as the frightened, dis-sipated man he became before he died, but as the young rock god he’d started out to be. There was Lucky, the puppy I’d had when I was eight, and Troy, the first boy who’d kissed me when I was twelve. I saw Jeffrey on our wedding day, and Angel as I held her in my arms on the day she was born, every inch of her perfect despite the fact that she’d never drawn breath. I saw Tom, the love of my life, standing on a moonlit beach, dressed entirely in white, looking at me through eyes of love, vowing to make that love last a lifetime. I saw the girls, little moments we’d spent together: Sadie, her hair tangled with twigs and leaves as she helped her daddy pick apples. Taylor, slipping her hand in mine at the fair-grounds, touching my heart with this first tentative foray into love. I saw their smiles and their tears, saw the disappointment on their faces when I walked out the door.

I saw it all. And then I hit the water.

I knew if I did a belly flop, it would be all over, so I deliberately hit feet first, toes poised like a balle-rina, hoping to slice through the surface like a knife.

Even so, I still landed with the force of a Greyhound bus slamming into a concrete wall. It was like diving into a vat of ice. The cold was needle-sharp, stunning.

The water slowed my fall, but still I kept plunging, deeper and deeper into the swirling, muddy mess, until I felt the soft, squishy river bottom on my feet.

I had only one chance at survival, and that was to get back to the surface and out of the water before hypothermia set in. Once my limbs stopped working, I could kiss this mortal coil goodbye.

I kicked off my shoes, braced my feet against the muddy river bottom, and pushed off with every ounce of my rapidly waning strength. Upward, up-ward I swam, my arms and legs barely functioning, they were so numb from the cold. The water swirled around me as I struggled with the current. Because the night was so black, I had no idea how far I was from the surface. It could be two feet, or twenty. My lungs started to burn. I was running out of air. If I didn’t reach the surface soon, it would be too late.

One lungful of that muddy river water and I was as good as dead.

I was starting to weaken. My lungs were screaming for oxygen. I wasn’t going to make it. I would die here, at the age of thirty, in this frigid water, in the same place Beth had died, while on the bridge above me my husband slowly bled to death.

No.
I’d come this far. I couldn’t quit now. Not while there was a chance of survival. Not while there was even a glimmer of hope that I might save Tom.

With a burst of strength I hadn’t known I possessed, I kicked through the icy water. I broke the surface and, treading water, took a huge gulp of air. I drew it, moist and life-affirming, into my tortured lungs.

And then I took a look around.

The current had carried me a short distance downstream. I could see the hulking frame of the bridge, could see the car headlights shining in the mist. What I couldn’t see was Tom. Or Claudia. The water around me was turbulent, the current powerful. I’d always been a strong swimmer, but my recent illness, combined with the time I’d spent fighting for my life in the river’s frigid depths, had weakened me. The battle wasn’t over yet. I struck out for the shore, not thirty feet away. But the rushing current kept sweep-ing me downstream.

And then I heard her. Sounding as though she were a million miles away, her voice floated over the water. “Julie,” she called in an eerie, singsongy voice. “Julie, Julie, Julie…where are you?” She played her flashlight beam—or, more accurately,
my
flashlight beam—over the river’s riotous surface, over the jagged rocks at the water’s edge. Hoping to find a body washed up there. My body.

She turned the beam in my direction, but it wasn’t powerful enough to reach me. I’d floated too far downstream. Unless she wandered down the riverbank, she wouldn’t find me. Let her think I was dead. That way, I might have a chance of making it.

I tried to figure out where I was, but it was impossible to get my bearings in the dark, especially being tossed and turned in the billowing current.

Downriver, I saw lights, faint and twinkling. A house, perhaps? Or a dam? Was there another road somewhere nearby? Or was I about to be washed over some massive waterfall and crushed to death on the rocks below?

In the distance, Claudia was still calling my name.

Nearby, from the riverbank, came a soft whistle.

Somebody was out there. Still treading water, I narrowed my eyes. “Who’s there?” I said, in a voice I hoped was loud enough to be heard, but too soft to carry upstream. “Help me!”

“I’m throwing you a rope. Try to catch it.” I knew that voice. “Roger?” I said, dumbfounded.

“Roger Levasseur?”

“Here it comes. Grab it!”

The coiled loop of rope landed five feet away from me. I tried to swim toward it, but the current moved me away too quickly.

“I missed it,” I said. “Try again.” The rope disappeared. My hands were starting to go numb. It felt as though I’d been in the water for months, but in actuality, it probably hadn’t been more than five minutes. It’s odd how, when life and death hang in the balance, time ceases to have meaning. Minutes become hours, hours become days, days become years. I’d come here six weeks ago as a young bride, overeager, naïve, and brimming with optimism and hope for the future. I wasn’t the same person now; in those six weeks, I’d aged twenty years. Most of them in the past twenty-four hours.

“Here it comes again,” Roger said. “Ready?”

“Ready!” This time, I was prepared. When the noose landed, I looped it around my wrist. “I have it!” I said.

“Hold on. I’ll haul you in.”

My fingers had gone so numb the knuckles didn’t want to bend. So I wrapped the noose of dirty yellow rope around my waist instead, cinched it tight, and let the batshit crazy former MIT professor haul me in to shore like a fish on a line.

I landed facedown on the rocky shore, too tired to care that I was lying on a pile of rocks, and too grateful I was alive to care about the stench that hung over my rescuer, so thick he might have sprayed it on with an atomizer. I was alive, and for a moment, that was the only thought that filled my mind. And then I remembered. I moved my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I tried again. My lips were stiff. Rigid with the cold. I probably looked like Leo DiCaprio in
Titanic.

Blue all over, except where I was bone-white. “My husband,” I said. “He’s been shot. Is he alive?”

“I don’t know.” As lucid as the day he was born, Roger added, “Wrap this around you,” taking off his jacket and handing it to me.

I shrugged into it and tried to absorb the heat from his body. “How’d you know?” I said. “How’d you happen to be out here?”

“I saw the headlights from my trailer, and I figured that anybody who sat on the bridge in this kind of storm was either in trouble or up to no good.

So I came out to see what was going on. I was hiding in my fishing shack under the bridge when I heard the shot. I saw you go into the water, and I grabbed my rope and went after you.”

Thank God for curiosity. It might have landed me in a heap of trouble, but it had also saved my life.

In the distance, Claudia continued her search.

“I’ll take care of her,” Roger said.

I clutched his sleeve. “She has a gun. She shot Tom. She’s—” Not quite right in the head, I almost added, until I remembered who I was talking to.

Instead, I said, “I’m going with you.”

“You’re half-dead. Your shoes are gone. It’s thirty-seven degrees outside, and you’re wet to the bone.”

“And I’m going with you.”

“Fine. Slow me down, and I’ll leave you behind.” Like a good little soldier, I fell in behind. My bare feet were so numb that I couldn’t feel the roots and rocks ripping my skin. It was probably just as well. I held the jacket tight around me and stuck to Roger in the darkness. Through bushes and over logs, slogging through the mud and the crud, the grass and the brambles, like a couple of navy SEALS

on a secret mission, we circled around behind Claudia, who was still fanning her flashlight beam over the riverbank in search of my dead, bloated body.