I Will Come for You (4 page)

Natalie left her mother in charge of the Inn. She’d packed a single suitcase while her mother watched from the door, twisting her hands beneath the sleeves of her wool sweater. She’d sensed then that her mother had wanted to tell her something but she didn’t push for it. Natalie wasn’t ready to take on the responsibility of her mother’s anxiety.

"What would be easier?" she asked, and leaned heavily against the railing. 

"You came because you have questions about your brother," he said. "I'm going to help you."

"How?
What can you do?"

"I know some about the case, more about how the human mind stores information."

"My mother told you I..." She broke eye contact, turned her face into the wind, wished he'd disappear.

"See more than most? Yes." He shifted, turned and rested his arm on the railing. Natalie felt his eyes probe her profile. "It's possible you've developed the insight. More probable it's
a coping mechanism your mind is using until it can fully process the traumatic events you've experienced."

"You're a psychiatrist." He sounded like one.

"No, a social psychologist, as your father was. We worked together for a few years. He was here that summer at my invitation."

"The project at King’s Hospital," Natalie said. Her father
helped rehabilitate those with mental illnesses. He’d spent more time with his patients, and in the classroom, than he had with his family. But that had been life as usual.

"Yes. Do you blame your father?"

"For Steven's death?"

He nodded. "It would be a natural progression of a child's mind."

"No. I blamed myself." She’d never admitted it before, but this trip was all about finding truth.

"That's too bad. I hoped your father wouldn’t let that happen. He was very good."

"At some things," she agreed. The strongest emotion Natalie felt for her father was yearning. It’d always been that way. She’d wanted his approval but when she’d finally earned it, she’d realized love and acceptance weren’t always packaged together.

Natalie turned and let her eyes dwell on his face. He had sharp bone structure, a nose that flared slightly, and skin the color of red clay. She didn't think she ever knew his name.

"Who are you?"

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a business card.

"My address and phone number are on there," he said. "I don't have a cell phone--not much reception out here--but I have an answering machine."

Natalie took the card and glanced at it. Saul Doss.
King’s Ferry. The name didn't bring memory charging into her consciousness. She tucked the card in her pocket and waited for him to speak.

"You call me when you're ready," he said and pushed off the railing. "I'm always around."

He walked off, his gait loose, his balance steady despite the rolling water beneath them. Saul Doss and her father worked together, for years, and yet her father turned him away that last day. She wondered why.

She let her gaze fall on the water. Whitecaps were forming. They rushed towards the ferry and slapped against the sides, rising in spouts in front of her. The weather was changing, growing colder, the wind stronger. The images began again, people thrashing about in the water; maritime police speeding through the strait; sirens; screaming; clutching hands. She felt the frigid water against her skin as though she were immersed in it. The chill shook her body.

"You see anything else?”

Natalie's heart slammed against her chest. She glanced down. The boy again, his face turned up to her, solemn eyes.

"No."

"I have to go inside now," he said. "My mom doesn't want me out in this."

"The weather's turning," Natalie agreed.

"My father says the fish jump when the weather's at it
s worst."

She’d heard that, too.

"I'm going to be watching from that window." He pointed to the cabin behind them. "Wave your arms if you see anything, OK?"

An onslaught of wind, in gusts, pushed them back from the railing. Water spouted against the boat and splashed on deck and the ferry tipped almost too far to one side. It hesitated a long, breathless moment before righting itself. The momentum pasted Natalie and the boy against the starboard cabin. He placed his hand in one of hers and tugged until she was glancing down at him.

He spoke in tongues. Natalie thought it was fear, her own or his, until she realized she understood the gibberish.

"You were called," he told her. "You have to believe."

Natalie stared at him, her heart suspended between breathes.

"Believe," he said again. "That's the only way."

"Believe what?"

"You may not save yourself," he said.

He took his hand from hers, stuffed it into his pocket, and backed away from her. He stepped into the cabin and a moment later Natalie watched his face appear in the window. The startled, glazed look was gone from his eyes. He smiled and looked beyond her, to the churning water.

Natalie turned away. She stumbled toward the railing. She
was willing to believe that she was losing her mind. It was the only thing that made sense. And if she was rational enough to understand that reality was slipping away from her, then she wasn’t totally gone. Not yet. Returning to King’s Ferry, breaking the hold of her brother’s death, could be her salvation.

The surface of the water was almost entirely white now. It rolled toward them in burgeoning haystacks.
She should go inside. Most people have.
When she turned again, the boy was no longer in the window. She looked up, to the deck above. Saul Doss stood at the railing, his eyes heavy upon her.

A wall of water hit the ferry, drenching Natalie. She stepped back, heard the whine of metal as it gave. The boat tipped, a sickening lurch that didn't stop, didn't right
itself. It paused at a seventy degree angle and then rushed toward the water in one smooth motion. The fascination of it caught her before the terror. A sense of disbelief. High-pitched screams broke the spell. Bodies slipped across the deck, caught on the railing, then tumbled over into the icy water.

Chapter Four

Sunday, 7:50 am 

Natalie surfaced and threw herself into a breast-stroke. Her lungs burned from the coldness of the water. In a matter of minutes she’d begin to lose feeling in her toes and fingers. The cold would numb even her will to survive. But for now, her mind was telling her to swim, to keep moving. She did. When she no longer felt the pull of the boat’s descent, she turned and tread water. The scene was horrific. The ferry wallowed in the strait. Passengers clung to the portions of the ship not yet submerged. Many more were in the water, struggling to stay afloat. She heard the cries of children, men and women. She felt them in her blood, calls as primeval as a baby’s first cry. She wanted to go back. To help. But how?

Then she noticed a small head, as much above water as a Labrador’s, heading her way. It was the boy. Michael.  His blue eyes were wide with fear. She swam to him, turned him and clutched his small body to hers in a technique she remembered from her water safety training classes.

Small boats already in the strait approached them at high speed. A freighter heading out to sea stopped and dropped several life boats with men into the water. Natalie’s legs were cramping. She had a death grip around the boy and listened to his soft cries. She wanted to tell him they’d be all right. Help was here. But her teeth were chattering and she wasn’t sure she could keep them afloat long enough to be rescued.

Natalie
was loaded into the ambulance beside Michael. She remembered his name, the open astonishment on his face when the gray whale breached, the violent shuddering of his body as the cold water lapped around them. She remembered the feel of his thin shoulders held under her arm and his legs scissoring, scissoring in the water as he’d tried to swim, to save himself, before he grew tired and let Natalie do the work for him. She lifted her head from the pillow and looked at him on the gurney beside her. He was wrapped in an insulated bag, like her, to restore his body heat. An oxygen mask covered his face and a paramedic was holding his hand, pressing the beds of his nails.

His hands were so small. The nails were blue.
Cyanotic. His lips had been blue when the fishermen pulled him out of the water, but he was breathing. She’d laid her hand on his chest and felt it rise.

Natalie let her head fall back. She was tired and the edges of her vision were blurry, a dense whiteness encroached upon her world so that she seemed to be looking out not through
the lenses of her eyes, but through a frosted window. Weariness pulled at her and she let go, let the world go white, then black.

She spent most of the ambulance ride in and out of consciousness. At one point her eyelids were pushed back and a bright light was flashed into her pupils.

“I’m going to die,” she said.

“No. A few more minutes in that water and it’d be a differ
ent story,” the medic told her.

Strobes of white light hampered her vision and she couldn’t get a good look at him. His voice was soft, though.
Weightless. And so she figured there was no need for concern. He didn’t have any.

“Is he all right, then?” she asked. “Michael?”

“His name is Michael?”

“Yes.”

“Is he your son?”

“No. His mother
died. . .out there.”

“Do you know his last name?”

“No.”

Natalie shook her head, felt an icy lock of hair fall against her neck and
raise her flesh. Her eyes were heavy, the lids refused to open for longer than a second or two. She watched the paramedics sway above her as the ambulance took a turn. She listened to them call Michael by name, their voices steady, pressing but not urgent.

She faded into a gauzy world that was dry and warm, floated
among scarves of white clouds, and though she could hear the paramedics talking, calling to Michael, using his name, encouraging him, the weight of their words did not immediately press upon her. And then the air grew thicker and stopped somewhere in her throat, as though breathing was suddenly a thoughtful action. The voices of the paramedics rose. But not in panic. And though their words grew heavy as they called to the boy to stay with them, as they pointed out that he had so much life left to live that leaving now seemed the wrong time, Natalie believed there was still a chance for the boy.

“
Don’t die, Michael,” Natalie called. She opened her eyes, managed to turn her head and peer at the gurney, but the boy was blocked from view by the medics who were ministering to him.

“You
can wake up now.”

The whisper was accompanied by a small hand patting her arm.

“You’re not dead,” he assured her.

Natalie shifted under the blankets, flexed her hands, one of which was strapped to some kind of board, and opened her eyes enough to admit a sliver of light. She had a headache and her throat felt coated with desert sand.

“They’re going to bring lunch.” The words were offered as a lure and Natalie felt herself smile. Only a child would anticipate hospital food with something like the final hours of Christmas Eve.

Natalie opened her eyes.

“Finally! You slept a long time.”

Michael was sitting beside her. He wore a blue gown with cats and dogs scattered over it and had an IV feed, like hers, inserted in one hand.

“You slept for hours,” he said, as though she needed further clarification.

“I guess I needed it.”

She pushed herself up until she was sitting.

“You look good,” she said.

“As good as new,” he promised and smiled. It warmed his entire face. For a moment, she could see the glow fan out around his head, light up his eyes.

“Glad to hear it. I feel like a boat rolled over on me.”

He laughed. It sounded like water tumbling over river rock. She wondered about near-death experiences and how they heightened you senses. She’d read about it somewhere. She knew it didn’t last, and though she was not a sentimental sort of person, she liked it. She liked seeing Michael warm and smiling.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” he said. “I was worried.”

“I was worried about you, too.”

His face and arms were a smooth alabaster color. No
bruises. No scratches. He could have used a little color, but the way kids bounced back from injury, he’d probably be running around the halls of the hospital by nightfall.

“You knew the ferry was going to sink,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

“No.”

“You saw it.” His words were sure but he wasn’t accusing her.

She looked into his eyes and he nodded. She couldn’t deny her culpability in the face of such certain innocence.

“How do you know?”