“Merci.” She sipped.
“Your friend Marti told me you cannot swim.”
“I don’t think I can. But I know water safety.”
“Then why did you risk your life?” His voice was a whisper.
“I didn’t want Luca to experience what happened to me.” She tightened the belt of the robe.
“You almost drowned?”
“I think I may have. I can’t remember. Marti told me I won’t be free of this fear until I remember what caused it.”
He sat next to her and rested his arm on the back of the couch. “I noticed you seemed a bit anxious before we boarded the boat and when it embarked. And then again, when we walked along the river.”
“I was. I felt like I was in a place from long ago. Darkness dropped over me, and I was petrified with fright.”
“What do you remember about the past?”
She gulped some wine. “A muddy scent. The roaring of rushing water.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“I’m here for you. You’re safe.” Gilbert took her wine glass from her. “What else do you recall?”
“Everything is cold and dark.”
He put his arm around her and pulled her to him. “I’m here.”
His gentle voice broke open a barrier she was too weary to hold. The sensation of water sluiced over her, drenched her, swamped her.
Pressure built around her, and the desire to let go pulled at her. She moaned, pitched forward, covered her head with her arms, and abandoned herself to the darkness.
“Tell me what’s happening.” Gilbert’s voice was far away.
She pulled her legs out from under her and tried to stand, struggling against his strong arms. As if caught in a whirlpool, water and debris and mud swirled around her, sucking her away from him.
She hunched over watching that day play in her mind. “I’m at a park, with trees and picnic tables, and a beach on the side of a river. I’m playing tag with a little girl, about my age, in the river. We’re laughing and splashing each other.”
Her heartbeat quickened, and her arms stiffened. “My foot slips on a slimy rock, and I fall. The water pulls my head under and tears me away from the little girl into deeper water. I’m kicking and flailing my arms, but the water won’t let me go, and it drags me against the rocky river bottom. It’s getting darker, and I don’t have any more air. I push my legs down, and kick with all my might, but my feet don’t reach the bottom. The water speeds up, whirling me around, scraping me against a fallen tree, its branches claw me. I clutch at the leaves, but they slide through my fingers, I’m trying to pull myself away, but the current slams me against a rock.” Her head snapped back like it must have when she hit the rock.
She wrapped her hands around her head. “Everything is black…and silent.”
Gilbert brought her firmly against him and pulled her back onto the couch. “What happened then? It’s okay, I won’t let anything hurt you. Take a deep breath.”
She inhaled and tried to focus through the ocean of darkness. The image of the park brightened, and she watched her child-self like she was watching a movie. “People were standing on the shore, shouting. A dark haired and bearded man carried me from the river onto the sand and wrapped his arm around my waist and was pounding my back. I vomited buckets of muddy water. I was choking and crying. My head throbbed. Blood was running down my arms and legs. “The man wrapped me in a towel and picked me up, shouting at my mother.”
“Where is your mother?”
“Standing under a willow tree, holding a book.” Claire’s voice sounded strangely calm and far away. “Mother walked toward him. He yelled at her, calling her—it must have been the word negligent—because I didn’t know what it meant, and I thought he said, negligee, and I remember thinking my mother would never wear such a thing. He said something about the hospital, and she crossed her arms and said, ‘No.’”
Gilbert held her tighter.
She squirmed to turn and look at him. “How could shenottake me to the hospital? I nearly drowned.”
Gilbert’s eyes flooded with the alarm and concern she thought her mother should have felt.
Claire got up and paced with fury, causing another memory to break through the fog like water bursting through a dam. “The man carried me to his car and laid me on the backseat, with my head in his daughter’s lap. She was the little girl I’d been playing tag with, and she held my hand, all the time telling me I would be okay, and patting my cuts with a wet towel.”
Claire stood still, silent, letting the heavy pain of truth settle in her. “That child was more nurturing to me than my own mother.”
