Circled Heart (36 page)

“Jennie,” I called again, “come back. This won’t solve anything. Stop and come back.” She did pause then, turning to face me across the expanse of snow-covered ice but too far away for me to read her expression. I stopped, too, and called her name once more. I thought she shook her head. Then, her posture suddenly regal, head high and back straight, Jennie began to back away from me, her arms wrapped around her stomach, an unconsciously protective gesture for the child she carried. I started to move forward and as the folds of her heavy velvet dress flapped in the lake wind, Jennie simply disappeared from sight. One moment she was there and the next not. At the last, all I really saw were her two arms extended above her head as she dropped into the icy water, then just her hands showing briefly, and then nothing. Nothing but a gaping dark hole in the ice.

I screamed her name and jerked forward but slipped on the ice and fell to my knees. As I rose, I was conscious of a roaring behind me, a loud and furious voice roaring my name like thunder, like the voice of God that cannot be disobeyed.

“Johanna, stop! Stop! Johanna, stop where you are!” The words an order, the voice demanding, Drew’s voice calling my name in a powerful rage over and over. “Johanna, stop where you are right now!” The potent command of his voice halted me immediately. I stood perfectly still, listening, then turned away from the terrible place where Jennie had disappeared into the dark lake and faced Drew where he stood along the shoreline.

In a voice that shook just a little, I called, “Don’t try to come any closer, Drew. I can hear the ice cracking. There’s no use both of us going in.” I heard the sibilant hum of the ice, dangerous and teasing, its gentle cracking racing toward me with every step, every movement I made. In the background I was vaguely conscious of a stream of people rushing down the steps of the clubhouse, but I didn’t take my eyes from Drew. He stopped moving and stood very still.

“Listen to me, Johanna. In a minute I’m going to ask you to walk toward me.”

“I can’t move. I’ll fall in. Jennie fell in. Did you see?” For a moment I wasn’t myself. Something foreign and hysterical crept into my voice. I could hear it and I knew Drew did, too.

“Yes, I saw. Now listen to me. Can you take off that overskirt and your jacket?”

“Yes.”

“Do it now, slowly and carefully. Toss it all very gently to the side and don’t move your feet.”

With stiff, ungainly fingers I fumbled with the hooks and fasteners without asking why, unaware of the chill of wind and ice, my gaze fixed on Drew. I had slowly grown calmer, could feel the panic gradually dissolving and my heartbeat slowing, all because I trusted him. I trusted him. The sound of Drew’s voice was steady and conversational in tone with not a touch of rush or panic in it—we could have been enjoying a cup of tea at the kitchen table.

“Listen now,” he went on easily. “When you start walking, walk straight toward me. Don’t look right or left, just look at me. If you go into the water—” he repeated the words more slowly for emphasis “—remember to grab for the edge of the ice. No matter what, no matter how cold the water is or how frightened you are, keep your head, reach for the broken edge of the ice, and hold on. You’ll bob back up and I’ll be there. I’ll get you. I promise. I’m not going to lose you, Johanna. I promise. Do you trust me?”

I will not die in water, I thought fiercely, with Drew’s confidence seeping into my bones. I did not escape the Titanic to drown in an icy lake with the man I love only a few hundred feet away. I intend to live a long time with him and I don’t care if we fight like cat and dog and he stops loving me and brings dancing girls home every night. I don’t care. I’m the one he’ll see every morning at the breakfast table.

“Yes,” I said. “I do trust you. May I move now? I’m cold.”

He took off his jacket, tossed it behind him, and held out both arms toward me. “You bet, my darling. Come here.”

At first I thought I’d make it. The ice groaned but held, and each step brought me closer to Drew standing at the shore’s edge, arms outstretched and waiting. The reverberations from Jennie’s fall were all around me, the ice cracking in a dreadful kind of race, a relay race, each snap of the ice connecting with another and rushing ever closer toward me. I felt the surface under my feet begin to shift and tremble and resisted the overwhelming impulse to break into a run. Instead, I carefully put one foot in front of the other and with my eyes focused on Drew’s face stepped methodically, purposefully forward.

And then, just like that, as suddenly as I saw Jennie disappear, the ice gave way beneath me. I knew I was going in, heard Drew shout, “Hold on,” had time to quickly inhale, and then experienced the inhuman, frigid shock of the water. I felt one moment of sheer terror, was briefly immobilized by the cold, and almost opened my mouth to gasp or cry out. I’ll never find the hole in the ice again, I thought. I’ll be imprisoned beneath, tapping, tapping against it but unable ever to escape, searching endlessly and aimlessly for the opening. Then, so clearly that Drew might have been swimming beside me, I heard his words, “Keep your head, reach for the broken edge of ice, and hold on,” so that’s what I did. I clamped my mouth shut firmly and without the heavy jacket and overskirt that would have dragged me down too far, I bobbed back up to the surface, gasped another quick breath as my chin rose above the water and reached with numb fingers to find the edge of the ice. My stiffening hands scrabbled along the ice as I sobbed for breath, trying to grasp the slick, glassy surface and drag myself out of that painfully cold water, all the while absolutely sure that Drew was there somewhere reaching for me, too.

With relief and no surprise, I felt Drew’s hands clamp onto my wrists and heard him shout, “I have you, Johanna! I have you! Stop struggling!” He grasped my wrists relentlessly, then moved to clasp my forearms. My hands took hold of his arms; it seemed we had suddenly fused together. “Hold onto me the best you can, love. I won’t let you go.” In an even louder voice directed to someone else, he shouted, “Pull now but slow.” When my shoulders heaved out of the water, Drew was able to get one arm and then the other under my arms and around my back. “Pull again,” he shouted, and I realized, dead weight that I was from the cold and completely incapable of helping at all, that Drew was stretched out on his stomach across the ice. Two figures held his feet and pulled him back toward the shore as he continued to hold on to me. When my knees came out of the water, they buckled onto the ice and I longed to rest for a moment, at least long enough to catch my breath and stop the terrible gasping sounds emanating from my throat, but Drew would have none of it. Still lying on the ice with our arms around each other, he turned slightly, trying to make us both a little more comfortable.

“We’re almost on solid ground, Johanna. Hang on to me if you can. I won’t lose you.” And then, somehow ignoring the fact that we were both being pulled along the ice like two frozen carcasses of meat, wrapped around each other in an awkward and ungainly embrace, he whispered in my ear, “It took me a lifetime to find you, Johanna. I have no intention of losing you anytime soon.”

And although my teeth chattered involuntarily and with enough force to give me a headache, I replied, “You’re confused. I found you. Remember?” By then we were both lying on the solid ground of the shore. As people rushed forward, Drew pushed himself to his knees and gathered me against his chest.

“Like it was yesterday,” he said and stood, wobbling a moment before he tightened his arms around me and headed for the steps that led to the Yacht Club. When someone offered to take me from him, he never slowed.

“I have her. Maybe you can help with the other one.”

The other one, I thought. Jennie. And began to tremble so violently I was afraid I would cause Drew bodily harm. “I’m sorry. I can’t stop shaking. I’m sorry.”

In answer Drew pulled me even closer, willing his own warmth into me, and moved more quickly up the steps. Someone must have stepped into his path because Drew, in a voice so savage I didn’t recognize it, snarled, “Get out of the way,” and shouldered inside. I believe people separated before us, but by then every part of me shook and my hands and feet tingled painfully, so I don’t really remember much of our entrance. I recall that it was silent except for a disquieting sound in the distance I could not quite place.

Once we reached the women’s lounge, Drew placed me onto the nearest couch and without a word stripped off the sopping red dress and every stitch of clothing I was wearing. I was past caring about anything except the cold. The shock of the air on my skin made the sensation of cold even worse, and when I tried to help Drew unfasten and unbutton, my fingers twitched and trembled so badly I had to stop. He rubbed me down with a handful of small finger towels from the lounge and then wrapped me tightly in my own cape that someone handed him. Grandmother. She stood just behind Drew, looking pale and very old. I met her eyes and felt tears suddenly well in mine, spill over, and run down my cheeks.

“I couldn’t save Jennie,” I cried. “I tried but I couldn’t. It was my fault. I’m so sorry.”

Tears filled her eyes, too, and coursed down the parchment skin of her face. She made no attempt to stop them so that they fell as small dark spots onto the light gray of her dress.

“No one could save her, Johanna, not even you.” I thought that in her usual way, Grandmother was right in more ways than either of us really understood, but I was dumb with horror and cold and unable to say anything more.

Drew, a man on a mission and not to be caught up in sentiment or grief, ordered, “Stay with her while I get my coat. She could use another layer of warmth.” After he left, Grandmother sat next to the couch where I lay and placed a hand to my shoulder. I reached up a shaking hand from the folds of my wrap and placed my fingertips over hers. We stayed like that, wordlessly, until Drew returned.

This time he stopped in front of Grandmother and said gently, “I’m sorry about your granddaughter. It’s a terrible loss for you and your family.”

“Thank you.” She sounded old and ill, the words whispered because courtesy demanded it but with a quaver I had never heard from her before, not even when Grandfather died.

The moment passed and Drew was all business again. He took his own coat and wrapped it around me.

“You need it,” I protested, trying to push it away. “You were out there, too, and you’re soaked. I can’t take your coat.”

“Be quiet, Johanna.” Even if I hadn’t run out of the energy to argue, his perfunctory tone would have quieted me. Anyway, clearly he wasn’t the one trembling furiously enough to shake the sofa on which I lay. I was responsible for that phenomenon, and the extra layer of coat did feel marvelously warm and comforting. It smelled like Drew besides, which was even better. I gave up the fight easily and completely.

Drew picked me up, stopping before Grandmother long enough to say, “She’ll be at my house. I’ll take care of her.”

“I know you will,” Grandmother answered quietly. “I’ll have Levi drive Crea over to help you. I won’t need Crea’s assistance for a while.”

The three of us moved out of the lounge and into the hallway. By then, I’d thrown one arm loosely around Drew’s neck and leaned my head against his chest, the steady thump of his heart in my ear as beautiful as any sonata. My shaking slowly subsided to be replaced by the oddest lethargy, every limb of my body suddenly lead and so heavy I couldn’t lift as much as a finger. Even my mouth refused to work at normal speed. My lips felt swollen and numb and I thought if I tried to speak, the words would come out thick and unintelligible. All I could do was lie in Drew’s arms with the steady drum of his heart beating against me. Unaccustomed to being so powerless and with the image of Jennie disappearing into the water lurking behind my closed eyes, I was more frightened than I had ever been. Only the even rhythm of Drew’s heartbeat comforted and reassured.

Grandmother still spoke. “I’ll be staying with Kitty and Hal. I don’t know for how long. Kitty will need someone—perhaps not me but she’ll need someone.”

We went down the hallway, past the doors to the ballroom and toward the entrance. The unfamiliar, vaguely alarming background sound I remembered hearing when Drew first carried me inside seemed clearer and louder. I stirred enough to lift my head.

“Oh, God,” I whispered, the words more moan than prayer. “Oh, God, poor woman.” Drew pulled me against him to block out the sound on my behalf, but that was impossible. The raw and terrible noise followed us and cut to the heart, a keening, high, and constant wail. A woman’s grief-stricken, wordless howl of unbearable pain and disbelief. Aunt Kitty, raging uncontrollably for Jennie.

I sat cocooned and quiet next to Drew in the motorcar, swathed in my cape and his coat but still frozen to the bone even with the hood pulled over my wet head for warmth. For a long while I was content neither to move nor speak. Then, in a voice that sounded remarkably calm and normal, I asked, “Do you think there’s a chance Jennie didn’t die? That someone got to her as you got to me and saved her, too?”

Watching the street as he drove and in a voice as calm as mine, Drew replied, “No, Johanna. No one could get to her. She was out too far and she went in before you. Some of the club members scrambled to find a small boat to push across the ice toward her, but to my knowledge they were unsuccessful.”

“But Jennie’s young and strong. Maybe she was able to hang on to the edge until they got to her.”

“A human being can’t survive very long in water that temperature, Johanna.” Drew hesitated before adding, “And from where I stood, I wouldn’t have guessed she wanted to be rescued. Her actions seemed quite deliberate.” Hearing his words made me remember Jennie’s and my last conversation.

“Do you care very much that she’s dead?” I asked him. I recalled the odd tone of Jennie’s voice when she refused to reveal her baby’s father: “I won’t tell you. You especially don’t need to know; it would only make matters worse.” I’d heard defiance and a touch of guilt there, and something else she wanted to hide from me. I couldn’t help my thoughts.