Daughter of Deep Silence (13 page)

I
stay in the shower until the water runs cold and even then I don’t get out until my teeth chatter and I can no longer feel my toes. I take my time brushing my hair, putting on lotion, postponing the inevitable. Finally, I tug yesterday’s clothes from the hamper and dress.

When I open the bathroom door I find Shepherd standing on the balcony, staring out at the bright ocean. A light breeze teases at his hair, tugs at the hem of his shirt. Behind him, the notebooks are scattered across my bed and a few yellowed newspaper articles have drifted to the floor.

I bend, picking one up. It’s a picture of Frances. The one from her yearbook.

I swallow.

From
my
yearbook.

“All this time and she’s been dead.” He doesn’t bother turning to look at me, just continues staring out into the empty horizon. “For years I’d hoped . . .” His voice cracks and he swallows the rest of the sentence.

But I know what he was going to say. He’d hoped that he and Libby could be together again. That maybe he could remind her of their history together, of the way they’d fallen in love.

He’d been holding on to a girl who no longer existed. And now he hadn’t just lost her, but the dream of her. Of them together.

Sometimes I think that’s the hardest part to recover from. Not the loss of someone, but the loss of the possibility of them.

“And this . . .” He turns and stalks to the bed where he grabs one of the notebooks at random and flings it at me. I flinch, throwing up my hands to catch it as it smacks against my chest. I don’t have to look at it to know the pages are filled with details about Grey. Just thinking his name causes a heat to swell inside me, battling against the terrified numbness of having been unmasked.

“All these details—so dry and cold.” He reaches for ano-ther one and I recognize it instantly as his. He starts reading. “‘Shepherd’s parents both worked for Cecil—his mother, Mariana, first as a maid and then as a personal assistant. His father, Manuel, as his estate manager. Both Mariana and Manuel were killed in a car accident when Shepherd was six (Luis was sixteen). The only family that could take Shepherd and Luis in lived in Mexico and Cecil offered to act as their guardian so they could continue living in the States.’”

“Stop,” I tell him. He does, tossing the notebook at me so that I fumble to catch it.

He’s already moved on to another. This one is Libby’s. “‘If she wears a watch (which she only does when school is in session), she puts it on her right wrist. She detests anything between her toes and refuses to wear flip-flops. From around ages nine to eleven she had a plant in her room that Shepherd nicknamed the suicide plant because—’”

“Please, stop,” I whisper.

He throws this notebook at me as well, reaching for ano-ther. “‘According to several interviews Martha Wells takes one vial of Refreshergy every morning before her swim. That she drinks it with a smoothie will impact metabolism of the toxin but since it’s stable unless mixed with sodium chloride, the cramps won’t hit until she’s in the ocean.’”

I lunge toward him and rip it out of his hands. “Enough!” I shout at him.

But he surges against me, coming so close that not even air separates us. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouts. “You planned to poison an innocent woman!”

“It’s not a lethal dose,” I counter.

His eyes go wide. “Do you even listen to yourself? ‘Not a lethal dose’? That’s not an acceptable response!”

He’s right. I know he is and I hate it. I hate the condemnation in his voice. Even more than that, I hate the disappointment. Because disappointment only comes when you expect something of someone. And no one has expected anything of me in years.

Except to be Libby. That’s the only thing anyone has wanted from me since the moment I was pulled from the ocean. Even then I knew it was an impossible task. I would always fall short.

Even the fake me is a disappointment.

Cecil never said so directly, but I could see it in his eyes. He tried to love me. He was always kind and generous and I truly believe he cared for me.

But at the end of the day I was not his daughter. I was neither Frances Mace nor Libby O’Martin.

I was simply lost. As adrift in this new life as I’d been in the
Persephone
’s life raft.

The only thing that has ever truly been mine—that belongs to neither Frances nor Libby but to this new hybrid creature I’ve become—is this: my quest for truth and revenge.

And I will not allow Shepherd to take that from me. I will not allow him to condemn me for seeking the truth.

I lift my chin, squaring my jaw. Ready to face anything he throws my way.

He shakes his head, horrified. “Everything—all of this. Is it some sort of messed-up game to you?”

“You don’t understand,” I scoff.

“There’s nothing to understand!” He waves his hands at me, as if I were some sort of specimen he’s afraid to even come into contact with. “This—you—it’s out of control!”

I raise a finger, pointing it at him. “I am
not
out of control. If you’ve learned anything from reading through my notebooks, it’s how meticulously I’ve planned it all out.”

He turns and starts pacing, his fingers laced behind his head. I can’t hear the words he’s mumbling, but it’s pretty obvious it’s about me being crazy.

I begin gathering the notebooks that dropped to the floor, setting them on the bed with the others and arranging them in order. Every sense is trained on Shepherd—listening to the stuttering shuffle of his feet, the harsh way he inhales and holds it.

“You can’t mess with people’s lives like this,
Frances
,” he finally says.

Hearing my name—the real one—sends my pulse racing. Half in fear, half in thrill. I clench my fists, nails digging into my skin. “They messed with mine.” I hate how petulant that sounds, but it’s the truth.

He lets out a long breath, moving close enough that the heat of him radiates against my back. “You have to let that go.” His words are a gentle plea. And it makes me wonder what stake he has in all of this. Why he even cares.

I close my eyes, thinking how easy it would be to sway back against Shepherd and let his arms circle around me, bearing me up. It wouldn’t be that difficult to let it all go—I could take Libby’s money and run. Disappear and let the Wells family live out their lives in whatever peace they’ve been able to find.

But then I think of Libby. Not how she’d been when I met her—vibrant and full of life. Mischievous and brilliant. But how she was at the end, as she gave up.

And how desperately I wanted to give up as well.

That’s why I can’t just walk away.

I
turn and walk out on the balcony. The wind from the ocean plays through the damp ends of my hair, flinging tiny drops of water down my back. Out on the life raft I’d sworn to myself that if I survived I’d never take water for granted again. It’s amazing how little time passed before I broke that promise. How quickly I’d grown accustomed to turning on a faucet without second thought.

“Do you know what happens to a person’s body when they’re cast adrift without food or water?” I glance over my shoulder to where Shepherd leans against the balcony door. He says nothing, his jaw rigid.

“The rule of thumb is that a body can only go three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food.” I explain. “Libby and I were adrift for
seven
days
.”

I let that hang in the air a moment before continuing. “It’s not the hunger that’s the problem—not really. I mean, it’s there, feeling like your body’s eating you from the inside out. But the thirst.” I shake my head, wetting my lips just because I can. Such a simple gesture, one I’d have cut off a limb to be able to do when out on that ocean.

“At first, your tongue starts sticking to the roof of your mouth. To your teeth. It’s like there isn’t enough room in your mouth for it anymore. And the taste.” I tighten my grip on the iron railing. “It’s foul—sticky and thick and wrong. It feels like there’s something solid stuck in your throat and all you can do is swallow incessantly but it makes no difference.”

Shepherd is still silent, but I can tell from the tension in the air that he’s listening. “Everything hurts—your head, your neck. Your ears. The inside of your nose. It’s unbearable and all you want to do is scream but you can’t because your voice cracks and it feels like your throat bleeds from the effort.” I’m on a roll now, half my mind standing here on the balcony with Shepherd and the other half back on that raft.

“Eventually, your lips split from the dryness. Your skin no longer sweats, and through it all the sun is relentless. Burning you so bad you start to blister. That’s when you start hearing things. Seeing things.”

I glance back at Shepherd. His eyes betray his mixture of revulsion and curiosity. It’s obvious he knows he shouldn’t want to hear this, that the horror is too great, yet he can’t stop himself from listening.

These are the kind of details that never made it to the papers. That aren’t even in the notebooks piled on my bed. These are the things I’ve kept only to myself, the memory of them sealed into my veins like blood.

“We were lucky—it rained on the second day. We were able to drink fresh water.” I lift a shoulder. “But the process just began all over again. The cotton mouth, the pain. Your head feels like it’s too big because your skin starts to shrink. We snapped at each other—argued. Because of the pain and because our brains weren’t working right and nothing made much sense.

“By the sixth morning, our tongues were rocks—practically solid, like they were some kind of foreign object in our mouths. We were mummifying in front of each other’s eyes.”

“Frances—” Shepherd steps beside me, a hand held up, asking me to stop.

But I’m in no mood to show mercy.

I turn toward Shepherd, hands balled to fists at my sides as the familiar comfort of rage billows over me like a blanket. “You wanted to know why I need revenge against Senator Wells and Grey? Why I can’t let this go?” I jab a finger against his chest. “Well, this is the reason.

“There was always salt water in the boat and at first we could bail it out but eventually we were too weak. Both of us had sores everywhere and the salt was like acid. Libby had a rash up her arms and at night she’d scratch at it, like she wanted to tear her skin from her bones.

“You start to see things. You think you hear ships and planes. But it’s always just your brain playing tricks. And, God, you want to believe
so badly
.” My voice cracks and I cross my arms over my chest, hands gripping my shoulders as I fold in on myself under the weight of memory.

“The blood sweats started on the seventh morning.” Shepherd winces, but stays silent. “There was a storm out on the horizon and I kept thinking that if it would just come closer . . .”

When I blink my eyes I’m back on the raft, watching the clouds boil into the sky. So close. So close. Sheets of rain fell in the distance, gray curtains of water just out of reach. “I thought for sure that eventually the rain would hit us.”

I pause, listening to the ocean crashing against the sand just beyond the dunes. And I think about the sound the waves made against the walls of the lifeboat. A hushing sort of whisper that I’d eventually found comforting.

It had become, for me, the reckoning of death.

“I couldn’t take it. I started drinking seawater several days in.” Shepherd lifts his eyebrows in surprise. “I know. Libby begged me not to but . . .” I shrug. The pain had been too much for me and I was so envious of Libby’s ability to endure it.

I’d felt so weak willed. As if
I
were the one giving up.

“Because of that, it was always worse for Libby. She was more dehydrated and at every stage, she was worse off than me. But that seventh afternoon I woke up and she was lying against the other side of the raft. There were red streaks down her cheeks and at first I didn’t understand. I thought she was dead but then . . .” My voice cracks. This is something I’ve never told anyone before. Not written down. It’s a memory that’s belonged only to me.

To both Frances and Libby.

It seems almost cruel to be sharing it. To push these images into another person’s mind. The weight of them is crippling.

“As I watched, a drop of blood welled in the corner of her eye and spilled over. It looked like she was crying. And I knew. Right then, I knew.”

Shepherd inhales sharp, his fingers gripping at the railing so tight that the skin strains across his knuckles.

“She couldn’t speak at that point. It was too much of an effort.” Her lips had become almost nonexistent, eyelids split, skin leather tight, and cheekbones impaling her from the inside out. “But she mouthed the words and I understood.

“She said, ‘I’m sorry.’ By the time I got to her, by the time I grabbed her hand, she’d given up.” I swallow. “And I was so jealous because I wanted to be the one to die. And I was mad she was going to give up and leave me alone. So I turned my back on her. Even as she was dying.”

My memory of the moment is so vivid, so bright and colorized. “I don’t know how much time passed before I turned to check on her. That’s when I saw the boat—it was headed right for us. I grabbed Libby—told her we were saved. She was still breathing—just barely—and I told her to hold on. Just a little while longer.”

I shake my head, the next bit coming out in a whisper. “But it was too late. I tried, but I couldn’t keep her alive long enough. And I’ve always wondered . . .” I have to pause, and Shepherd waits, silent, for me to continue.

“If I hadn’t turned my back on her. If I hadn’t been so mad at her, I would have seen the boat earlier. Libby might have lived.” My voice cracks. “I let her die.”