During the summer, she’d gaze longingly out the window at the kids running around on the shore of that lake. They laughed as they chased each other and splashed in the water. In the winter, she watched them ice skating and playing hockey while their breaths steamed the air. She often wished to be one of them, but she’d never played Marco Polo or strapped on a pair of skates.
When Dylan was one, she decided he wouldn’t stand by and watch while his friends went swimming and that he would be invited to pool parties. She enrolled him in swimming lessons and decided to take them too. Her parents held her back from so much over the years; she was only holding herself back now if she didn’t learn how to swim.
But swimming was not as fun as it looked. The water scared her more than she would ever admit, and she hated putting her face into it. She could swim, stay afloat, and tread water, but the dog paddle was her friend, and she was much more comfortable on land.
She’d disliked swimming in a calm pool with lifeguards and an instructor; she seriously doubted she’d be comfortable in the ocean.
“Charlie,” Jack said, drawing her attention back to him. “Can you do this?”
She opened her mouth to tell him that of course she could, but the words froze in her throat. “I’m not sure.” Shedespisedadmitting it, but she would hate being bashed against the cliffs or swept out to sea more. Neither of those things would do Dylan any good. “I… I’m not a very good swimmer. I didn’t learn until I was eighteen, and I’ve never gone swimming in the ocean. Besides, what about the gun? It can’t get wet.”
She tapped the strap as she kicked herself for not thinking about using the gun as an excuse earlier. She could have blamed it on the rifle and not her inexperience in the water.
Jack glanced at the gun before focusing on Charlie’s pale face again. They couldn’t stay here, and they couldn’t continue forward without taking the risk of being spotted. They couldn’t stay hidden in the cave as someone would eventually find them, and Charlie would never agree to stay there longer. It didn’t look as if they were going to make a swim for it, so that only left climbing.
“Okay,” he said. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” Charlie asked as he headed back toward the cave.
“If we try to climb here, we’re more likely to be spotted. If we try to climb over the ocean, its spray might keep us hidden. We won’t go up; we’ll go sideways across the cliffs blocking the beach and around to the other side of them. We’ll see if some of the other entrances are open.”
Charlie gulped at the prospect of climbing out across those daunting waves, but they didn’t have many options.
They stayed close to the cliffs as Jack led the way back past the cave over the jetty and onto where the cliffs met the sea. The ocean roared as it crashed against the cliffs and sent plumes of water shooting into the air.
The spray dampened Jack’s face, and he tasted salt on his lips. With the force of the current, he could have swum against the current without being battered against the cliffs more than a few times.
“Do you think you can do this?” he asked Charlie.
“I can climb.”
“Do you want me to take the gun?”
She hesitated before pulling it off her shoulder and handing it to him. Jack slung the rifle onto his back and gripped one of the jagged pieces of rock sticking out from the cliffs. Boosting himself up, he climbed hand over hand for a good thirty feet before starting to move sideways across the cliff face and out toward the ocean.
He glanced back at Charlie, clinging to the rocks a few feet behind him. The wind tore at her hair, pulling it free of the knot she’d tied it into and whipping it around her. Releasing the cliff with one hand, she grasped her hair, tucked it inside her shirt, and grabbed the rock again.
Jack rested his hand briefly over hers before releasing her and pulling himself out over the turbulent sea. Water coated the rocks here, and his fingers slipped on the slick surface. A gasp behind him had his head shooting around to Charlie as she flattened herself against the cliffs and closed her eyes.
“Are you okay?” he demanded, raising his voice to carry over the crash of the surf below. He didn’t think the sound would carry beyond the two of them as the ocean was nearly as loud as a train.
Charlie nodded in response, but she couldn’t get her eyes to open, and her fingers ached from their death grip on the rocks. She trembled as she recalled her foot slipping off the cliffs and nearly plummeting into the water below. Opening her eyes, she stared at the turbulent sea and tried not to picture herself tumbling into those ravenous waves. It would swallow her whole.
It’s not alive; she scolded herself. But she couldn’t help seeing the ocean as this living thing when the waves were crashing higher against the rocks and nipping at her heels. She licked her lips and took a deep breath before focusing on the rocks before her again.You can do this. Slow and steady wins the race.
That may be true, but she wasn’t a tortoise whose shell would protect it from the battering her body would endure if she fell into the sea. No, she may be an immortal, but broken bones and repeated drowning didn’t sound like her kind of party.
Still, she compelled herself to let go of the rock and reach for another one. The pads of her fingers were raw, and what little fingernails she had broke off as she clung to the slippery surface. She told herself to stop shaking, but she couldn’t get it under control; her legs felt like rubber, and it took all her courage to keep moving across the slippery surface.
For the first time, she acknowledged what she’d denied ever since she first stuck her face in the pool at her swimming lessons—water terrified her. Being capable of swimming would never rid her of the insecurities plaguing her from a childhood of not knowing how to swim.
She couldn’t do this, but she had no other choice.
Dylan.She kept her son firmly in mind as she edged after Jack. To distract herself from the water churning beneath her, she recalled every detail of Dylan. She remembered the sound of his cry when he was first born, his proud smile after his first steps, and the way he looked when going off to school with his too big backpack strapped to him.
Carefully, she felt each stone before she moved her foot or hands to the next one. She didn’t dare look up, and she didn’t dare look down, but kept her gaze focused on the rocks. Chilled to the bone, her numbed fingers gripped the wall while spray soaked her clothes and plastered her hair to her face.
Jack glanced back at Charlie. Her eyes blazed with determination as she followed him. Without thinking, he clasped her fingers. They were cold as ice, but they turned in his hand, and she gripped it before releasing him to cling to the rocks again.
