Learning to Swim (42 page)

Jameson took a long breath and launched into the longest speech I’d heard from him. “She fooled everyone, Troy. Her friends, Philippe, Vince, even her brother. She was a pro—a professional psychopath, a professional liar, a professional actor, a professional killer. Don’t be egotistical enough to think you could possibly have recognized or comprehended that.” He turned my face toward him. I blinked tears back. “And, Troy, you stopped her. You won. You saved Paul. You saved yourself. You gave all these people the chance to begin to put their lives back together. Even Claude. You did a good thing.” Without seeming
to realize he was doing it, he reached forward and tucked a strand of loose hair behind my ear.

And then my tears did fall. I felt shaky afterward, but better.

I stayed in Ottawa six weeks. We hiked in the Gatineaus. We saw every new movie suitable for Paul, and occasionally left him with Elise and went to some on our own. We tried out restaurants, and laughed when Paul made faces at foods he didn’t like. We sorted through his clothes again. We selected an iMac for him, one with games even better than the one with the little round men—and let him know that when I recovered, Tiger and I would be returning to my house in Lake Placid. Baker and family came up for a weekend, and all the boys insisted on staying in Paul’s room, cramming two to a bed and giggling much of the night.

Eventually we told Paul, casually, that his mother hadn’t died last year as he had thought, but had died not long ago, in Burlington.

“When you were there?” he asked.

I nodded. He thought a moment and then said, “Well, I am glad you are here now,” and went off to play.

His psychologist told us this wasn’t an unusual reaction at his age, especially since Paul hadn’t been close to his mother and she had been absent from his life so long. She advised us to answer other questions as they arose, as honestly as we could without being brutal. I privately wondered how much Paul would ask, and how much he had already figured out. I hoped he hadn’t seen the face of the person who had dropped him into Lake Champlain.

Eventually while we were walking around the neighborhood after dusk, I told Philippe the details of what had happened on the boat—I didn’t want to talk about Madeleine in the house and I didn’t want to see his face as I told him. He listened, and when I finished, he pulled me toward him and held me tightly. And then we walked on, and never mentioned it again.

We did have several talks about us, late in the evening after Paul had gone to bed. We’d been through too much to be coy with each
other, but we both had things to work through. I wasn’t the person I’d been at the start of all this, but I wasn’t quite who I wanted to be yet either. Philippe had spent years living with a wife who had turned out to be a murderer, and I suspected he was having bad dreams of his own.

Maybe someday I would transplant myself into a new life, but it would have to happen when I was ready, and I wasn’t yet. And I wasn’t going to leap into Paul’s life full-time and let him consider me a permanent fixture, then have him lose me because Philippe and I had jumped into something too soon.

I didn’t know if I belonged in Lake Placid any longer, but it was my home for now.

It was time to go.

I hugged Elise, and then Philippe. “Come back when you can,” Philippe said, and folded me in his arms. I hugged back, hard. Then I knelt and gathered in Paul and held tight, and shushed him as he sobbed.

“I’ll see you soon,” I whispered to him, but he wouldn’t look at me.

I was having trouble getting enough air. I felt dizzy, as if at high altitude, and had to concentrate to move my body into the car. I put a half smile on my face and waved goodbye. I knew this was what I had to do; I knew this was right for me, for all of us.

I drove away, seeing Paul in his father’s arms in my rearview mirror until I turned the corner. A mile or two away I stopped the car and cried, great gasping sobs, until my breathing evened out and I could drive. Tears trailed down my cheeks until I reached Cornwall and started across the bridge into New York.

Sometimes you know you’ve made the right decision, simply because of how hard it is.

T
HANKS TO:

Meg Waite Clayton and Mac Clayton for their help and encouragement; early readers Dee Dee O’Connor, L. K. Browning, Kimberly McCall, and the now-defunct Nashville Writers Group; Mike Modrak and Linda Yoder for their support; Linda Allen for telling me to rewrite the middle.

Michael Carlisle, Ann Close, Leslie Daniels, Sands Hall, Sue Miller, and others from the Squaw Valley Writers Conference; readers Sandy Ebner, Carole Firstman, Cat Connor, Bevan Quinn, Amanda McGrath Anderson, Robert Smolka, Persia Walker, Steph Bowe, and Reed Farrel Coleman.

Jamie Ford, whose quiet assurance that I would do this was more help than he knew; Michael Robotham, who had me change the title; Persia Walker, who helped give me insight into the mind of a small child; Reed Farrel Coleman, who saved me from my worst writing instincts.

The RCMP, Ottawa Police Service, and Québec Police Service; Celine Temps, Gisele Grignon, Gaël Reinaudi, and Inga Murawski for translation help; Luke Ringrose, who breathed life into Paul simply by existing; Patti Gallagher, for being there; SFC, who titled this book and believed in it.

And my wonderful agent, Barney Karpfinger, and editor, John Glusman.

S
ARA
J. H
ENRY
has been a columnist, soil scientist, book and magazine editor, website designer, writing instructor, and bicycle mechanic.
Learning to Swim
is her first novel.