Page 32 of Bitter Falls

The first police car is pulling around, lights flashing, and there’s an ambulance right behind it. I can’t even feel relieved. I’m too cold.

The two cops who get out of the police car don’t see me swimming toward them. Their backs are to me, and before I can get enough breath to yell, they’re already heading up the path. I wonder if they’re going to thinkIhurt Candy. That’s a new idea. I don’t like it, and I tread water again. Maybe I shouldn’t go up to the shore.

I don’t even realize that I’m slowing down and slipping under the water for a few seconds until the water closes over my nose and I panic. I flail up again, gasping, and I guess the splashing attracts the paramedic’s attention, because he shouts at me to get out of the water.

I swim until I finally feel the bottom again. I feel a hundred pounds heavier coming out, and I’m not at the beach sand part—it’s rocky here and slick—and I slip and crawl up until I’m finally on dry land. I flip over on my back and just...breathe. I cough out water I didn’t know I breathed in. I’m shaking so hard it hurts, and the paramedic runs over with a blanket and puts it around me. He’s yelling questions at me, but I don’t answer. I’m not sure what to say. I just want to gohome.

The paramedic is asking me my name, and I manage to stammer it out. I guess he recognizes it, because the next thing I know he’s dialing a cell phone and hands it to me. “Lanny?” It’s Mom’s voice. It’s like a rush of warm water through my cold veins, and I almost gasp in relief. “What’s going on?”

I burst into tears. I stammer out something, I don’t even know what it is, or if she can understand it through the gasps and chokes and sobs. But she tells me she’s coming for me, so I tell her I’m okay and the second she’s off the call I drop to the ground, shivering and soaking wet and freezing cold, and I cry my heart out.

They pile more blankets on me, but I’m still cold when Sam’s truck slides to a stop on the road. More cops have arrived. They try to intercept my mom as she bails out, but she dodges them and races to me, and the desperation on her face makes me feel safe, finally safe. I struggle up from where I’m sitting, and before I can even get out of the blankets her arms are around me, holding me so tight it ought to hurt. It feels so right. I hug her back.

The relief lasts between us for maybe ten seconds, and then she pushes me back and says, “What the hell were youthinking? Why would you leave the house like that? Without telling me?”

I don’t know what to say to her. I don’t want to lie, but I also don’t want to tell her about Vee. I’m ashamed of myself, and I’m angry that Vee left me, and I have no idea where she’s gone. So after I fumble for a few seconds, I say, “I just—I wanted to go to the party, Mom. I knew you wouldn’t—”

My voice is quavering, voice unsteady, on the verge of tears. My tough-girl persona has melted away, and I feel like I’m a little kid again. I remember being twelve and showing off for Connor; I’d gotten Mom’s gun out of the lockbox and unloaded it and reloaded it, and the expression on her face when she found us was just like this. Angry, terrified, disappointed, soworried. It hurts. I just want to curl up in a ball and cry myself sick.

I’m the only real witness.

If the cops don’t get Bon and the guy with the mullet, I’m going to be in real trouble.

10

GWEN

It’s hard to even fathom the relief I’m feeling right now. Lanny’s cold and soaking wet and shivering, but she’s alive. Uninjured, but terrified. I need to get her home and into dry clothes, but the police officer who stopped Sam’s truck and has directed him to park over by the side is coming at us, with Sam and Connor close behind.

“I’m going to need y’all to wait for the detectives,” he tells us. “They’re on the way right now.”

Lanny says, “Is she okay? Candy, the girl up there?” She’s pale, shaking, but steady enough.

Up where? What girl?I wonder, but it’s not the time to ask. I turn to the paramedic and he says to my daughter, “We’re headed up there right now.” He directs the rest to me. “Lanny’s okay. Get her warmed up and let her rest. Her lungs are going to be sore and irritated for a while, so take her in to see her doctor; he may want to give her some treatments for that.” Then he and his partner are gone, carrying a lightweight stretcher and heading for the cliff the kids call Killing Rock.

I turn to Lanny and say, “Baby, whathappened?”

She doesn’t want to tell me, and I don’t know if that’s shock or her physical misery or something else. I want to press, but Sam puts a hand on my shoulder and says, quietly, “Gwen. She’s okay. Take a breath.”

“I just wanted to go to the party,” she whispers. Her lips are getting a little color back, but she still looks half-drowned. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s dangerous for you to go out like this, you remember what happened with your dad—”

My son’s been silent until now, but he shoots me a look full of resentment and impatience. “Yes, Mom. We remember. She just wants to be normal. Do normal stuff.”

I stop myself from telling him that it’s never going to be normal, because I don’t want that to be true. We need tofindnormal.Workfor normal. Now, more than ever, it hits me that we can’t stay here. Being a teen is hard in any circumstances. The level of difficulty my kids have to navigate now is crushing.

We can’t go on this way.

I just hold Lanny and rub her arms and try to warm her up. The area’s littered with discarded bottles; a huge bonfire is still raging on the shore. Abandoned camp chairs and discarded bottles are a testament to how many were here. There’s absolutely nobody in sight, and there’s an eerie silence to the whole thing.

I can see a light up on top of the cliff: the paramedics, working on the girl Lanny mentioned. They’re not up there long, and they come down carrying a still form on the stretcher. She’s still alive, but her pallor is awful. From the bandages, she’s got a serious head wound. Lanny found her up there, clearly. But then why was my daughter in the lake? I want to pepper her with questions, but before I can, the detectives pull up in their old black sedan. I see Detective Prester climb out first; then my friend Kezia Claremont exits from the passenger side. Prester looks like he doesn’t much relish a climb; he considers the cliff trail, then dispatches Kezia up and instead comes straight for us. As he approaches, his seamed old face blurs history with present; I remember him coming like this at me before, when a body was dragged out of Stillhouse Lake and I was a suspect in her death. I don’t want him interrogating my daughter the same way.

“Hey, Gwen. Sam.” Prester exchanges sober handshakes with the two of us, then looks at Lanny. He’s got the sort of face that can seem kind and supportive right up to the moment he slams the cell door on you. And I’m not reassured by his good manners. “Young lady, I’m going to need to talk to you. Gwen, you can come along.”

“Fine,” I say, as Lanny draws breath to tell me she can do it alone. I’m not about to let her get trapped. Not that I think she’s done anything wrong, but...still. “Maybe in your car?”

“Yeah, that works, I’ll get that heater going. Miss Atlanta, you get into the front seat with me. Gwen, mind sitting in the back?”

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