Swimming at Night: A Novel (36 page)

Katie realized that she must be standing exactly where the witnesses had paused on the night of Mia’s death. She imagined the shells of Mia’s necklace jangling together as she ran up the cliff path.
Why were you running? Were you scared that if you stopped, you’d change your mind?
Glancing upwards, she could see part of the cliff top.
This is what the witnesses must have seen. You, standing on the edge, about to make a decision that would change everything.

Katie’s limbs felt heavy with exhaustion, but she forced herself to carry on, knowing she wasn’t there yet. The upper section of the cliff path was alive with the hum of insects. Bushes choked
the way and she used her arms to push aside brittle branches. Moisture breathed from the tangled undergrowth, filling the air with an earth-rich scent.

She cried out as something sharp cut into her shin. Lowering the flashlight beam, she saw blood. Specks of dirt peppered the bright red cut that ran an inch below her knee. She’d caught it against the jagged edge of an unseen rock. Straightening, she swung the flashlight beam around her to check for other obstacles, but saw only darkness. She ran the beam westwards again from the path, seeing scrub, then rock, and then nothing—just a sheer drop. The climb was taking her only feet away from the cliff’s edge. A few more steps and she would have fallen.

She took a slow, deep breath, then concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other. Twice she slipped, and twice she recovered herself by digging her nails deep into the earth until she found purchase. Whenever her nerve began to waver, she reminded herself that Mia had climbed this path barefoot and in complete darkness.

She was breathing hard and the terrain was steepening. She wrapped a hand around a branch to help pull herself up. Suddenly the wind became fierce and the ground leveled. She had reached the top.

She had imagined this place so many times that she felt as if the cliff had somehow been expecting her. Granite boulders punctuated a small grassy plateau, which fell away to the sea and rocks. Above, the stars were brilliant golden pinpricks blinking in the sky.

She experienced the odd sensation of not being alone. She spun around, air filling her dress, drawing a circle of light with the flashlight beam. “Mia?”

But only the wind, curling over the cliff face, answered her. She felt foolish. The cut on her shin throbbed, and a deep weariness spread through her body. It felt as if she’d been climbing this
cliff for five lonely months, and now Mia’s past and Katie’s present seemed to converge, twisting around one another.

The truth of what happened to Mia was one she’d stitched together with the threads of information she’d chosen to use. The journal could never tell the full story. There were gaps, things Mia didn’t want to share, perhaps, or emotions she’d rather not admit to. Katie had patched those holes using strands of her imagination. But she realized that it wasn’t just Mia’s story she had created, it was her own, too.

They had both traveled the same route, trailing the coastlines of three continents in the search for answers about each other—and themselves. The separate threads that made up their lives—no matter how frayed, or faded, or worn—would always be woven together. That’s how it was with sisters. And that’s why her feet began to carry her closer to the cliff’s edge now.

She inched forwards until she was standing only a foot from the drop. The breeze stirred her hair and she felt the roar of the waves in her chest.

Here I am, Mia, just like you. Five months too late. How did you feel standing here? Were you so lonely that it felt like a part of you had been carved hollow? Because that’s how I feel without you. I’d always thought that if you were in danger, I would know. I believed that some thread in our DNA would scream out so loudly, that I would hear it in my body. But I didn’t. The night you were here, I was at the office. I interviewed candidates, responded to e-mails, and got up to date with my admin. I worked as you jumped.

She let the flashlight slip through her fingers, watching the light turning through the night. It plummeted downwards for several long seconds. And then went out.

She had reached the end of Mia’s journey.

And what about hers?

She felt her feet pressing down on the edge of the cliff and she closed her eyes.

*   *   *

“Katie?”

The sound of her name cut across the darkness. Something within her tightened as the wind blew cool against her face.

“Katie?”

She couldn’t place the voice; it was male and her name sounded deep and fluid on his lips. Very slowly she turned, stepping back.

A man was standing in front of a granite boulder fifteen feet from her. In the moonlight the solid shape of his frame was dark against the rock. She regretted the loss of the flashlight, wanting to trail light across this stranger’s face and find something readable in his expression.

“You’re Katie, aren’t you?”

He spoke with an accent. Australian, she realized. “Noah?”

“Yes.”

She blinked. Shook her head.

He pushed away from the rock. Stones crunched beneath his feet as he took several paces forwards. When they were standing side by side she could see that shadows ringed his eyes and there was a hollowness to his cheeks. His gaze settled on her. “I thought you would come here eventually.”

“Why?”

“She was your sister.”

Above them the sky glistened with stars, the only witnesses to their conversation. She studied him, trying to match him to Mia’s description. In her journal she’d described him as beautiful—an
unusual adjective for a man—but she understood it now, because there was a lonely beauty in his face. Moonlight bleached his features of warmth and she reminded herself,
You do not know this man.

“Did you follow me?” she asked.

“No.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I come here, sometimes, to think.”

She recalled entries about the long hours Noah spent on the cliff, watching waves roll in. “I’ve been reading about you. Mia kept a travel journal.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You were the reason she came to Bali,” she said coolly, unable to keep the bitterness from her tone.

His head lowered a fraction. “Yes.”

“She loved you. But you hurt her.”

He shifted and she thought of how close they both stood to the edge. The wind coiled up from the cliff, pinning the bottom of her dress against her thighs.

Katie said, “Mia must have stood here.” She stared straight ahead and felt the emptiness stretching in front of her. She remembered skydiving, the terrifying feeling of just leaning forwards and there being nothing but air to fall through. “She must have been so scared.”

She thought about their last conversation. Sometimes it felt as though each word weighed so heavily on her that they had become the paving stones that built Mia’s path here. “I hate knowing she was alone.”

His voice was low: “She wasn’t.”

Every inch of her skin cooled.

“I was here.”

Deep in her chest, her heart began to pound. “What?”

His gaze locked on the black horizon. “There are some things about Mia’s death I need to tell you.” He took a step towards her and she felt a surge of adrenaline fire through her body. “It’s important that you know how sorry I am.”

“For what?” she asked, feeling the ground beginning to tilt.

(Bali, March)

M
ia moved unsteadily along the shoreline, the vodka still whirling in her system. She wished she’d brought the bottle so she could finish it, drink until she blanked out. A deep sadness that had been hovering close by for weeks settled in her chest.

She dragged her feet through the damp sand, thinking about the night in Maui when Noah pulled her from the water. He’d needed to rescue her because he hadn’t been able to save his brother. His guilt was as dark and cavernous as hers.

Jez and Noah had thrown punches.

She and Katie, words.

She could still hear the voice of someone who’d crowded in to watch the fight, saying, “Aren’t they brothers?” as if being siblings could make a difference to the amount you could hate.

She felt exhausted, depleted by all that’d happened. She turned from the beach and made her way back to the hostel. When she reached her room, she found the door ajar, as if someone had recently been inside. She nudged it wider and quietly stepped in.

A mosquito net hung like a ghostly shadow over the bed and, beside it, a wicker lamp was glowing. Had she left it on? She moved cautiously inside, surveying the room: her backpack was still there, yet she could sense that something was different.

Then it clicked: her travel journal. It rested on the low bamboo desk where she had left it open, except now her pen was lying across it, the lid off. She stepped closer and could see there was writing—not hers—slurred across a previously blank page. The words weren’t neat and precise; these were scrawled and slanting forwards.

She leaned nearer still and saw a dark smudge across the bottom of the page.

Blood.

It took several seconds for the words to come into focus. Then they rushed at her, knocking her off balance so she had to reach a hand towards the edge of the desk to steady herself. Panic rose in her chest, its hot bloom reaching towards her throat. “Please, God,” she mumbled. “Please, no.”

With one swipe she tore the page from her journal. Holding it close to her, she fled the room barefoot and vanished into the night.

*   *   *

Mia stuffed the torn page into her back pocket to free her hands as she scrambled along the cliff path. The soles of her feet were bruised from unseen stones and tough tree roots, but she raced on, knowing every moment counted.

“Hey! You okay?”

Startled, she spun around.

A couple was standing at the lookout point several feet off the path. They were staring at her.

She was out of breath and her face felt too hot. She imagined how she must look: a lone woman running barefoot at night.

The man stepped forwards, asking, “Do you need help?”

“No,” Mia said. She ducked her head and ran on, disappearing through the dense foliage that shrouded the upper cliff path. She had to push her way through twisted, gnarled branches that scratched her bare arms and legs.

It was minutes before Mia saw moonlight spilling in between a gap in the trees, and then she knew she was almost there. She hauled herself up a final incline and reached the top, drenched in sweat.

Noah was standing near the cliff edge like a sentinel of the ocean, his feet shoulder width apart, his back straight. She had found his note written hurriedly on a page of her open journal, a few sparse words of despair, and beneath a smear of blood—his? Jez’s?—staining the page like an omen.

“Noah,” she said, quietly announcing herself.

His head turned only a fraction.

“Don’t do this.” She thought of her father, the young man with the intense gaze in the photo of the band. What if someone had found him in time—a neighbor, a landlord collecting rent—with a kind, carefully placed word that could have changed everything?

How many thousands of people must consider a moment such as this—a cliff edge, a rope from a ceiling, the roof of a tall building, a loaded gun—desperate to stop the rushing sense of despair that fills your ears and your mouth with the bitter taste of hopelessness? Mia had. She’d pictured the exquisite point of blankness when all the rushing, speeding guilt and hurt just stopped dead. Dead. She began moving forwards . . .

“Don’t!”

She froze. She was ten feet from him now, close enough to see the flower of blood on his dark T-shirt blooming from his wound.

“Go away,” he commanded without turning. She understood his guilt; she’d always been able to, it was part of what bound them together. She’d walked away from the people she’d loved—from her mother’s bedside, from her life with Katie, from Finn—because walking away was easier than sticking right there where the people she cared about could look into her eyes and see her fear. But she wasn’t going to walk away from Noah. “I’m not leaving you.”

“I don’t want you here.”

“Why did you come to the beach tonight?” Mia asked him.

“What?”

“You said you were leaving Bali, but you didn’t. Why?”

His fingers clenched into fists at his sides. “I . . . I couldn’t leave.”

“Because of Jez?”

“Yes,” Noah admitted. “And because of you.”

“I meant it when I told you I loved you.”

He dropped his head. “It doesn’t make any difference . . . ”

Mia began to tell him that it did, but then realized he was still speaking.

“He drowned because of me. I shouldn’t have let him go out . . . he wasn’t ready.”

Johnny.

“The waves were too big. I didn’t even see him get knocked down.”

“You tried to save him.”

“No. Not hard enough.” She could see his shoulders shaking and she thought he might be crying. “He was facedown when I got to him. Already dead. I swam back with his body.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

But he didn’t hear her. “Jez was right. And I hit him for it. I wanted to kill him,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’m my father . . . ”

“You’re a good person, Noah,” she told him because she believed it, and she needed him to believe it, too. “You’re not your father.”
Just like I’m not mine.
She understood that now. She wasn’t defined by Harley’s dark legacy, but by her own actions.

“I can’t live like this . . . ”

The despair in his voice frightened her. She was breathing hard and could feel the vodka still swirling in her system, numbing the edges of her thoughts. It was important that she was lucid—that she said everything right.

“Johnny’s death was tragic—a tragic, terrible accident. But do you think he would want this for you?”

She waited, but Noah didn’t respond.

“What would he say to you right now, if he could see you?”

Noah grabbed the base of his head. She caught a flash of his tattoo; she’d once thought it beautiful, but now felt as if the black ink was seeping into his bloodstream and poisoning him.