Her words stir a memory in me, or maybe it was just a dream. I returned home to say goodbye to my children before I left this world. I floated through the front door, but no one saw me except for Oscar.
“Where’s Connor?” I ask.
“He went home to walk Oscar,” Amanda explains. “Becky picked him up about an hour ago.”
I scrape the soup bowl clean. Then I reach for the Jell-O and feel good about the return of my appetite.
“Can we talk about Dad?” Amanda asks. “I want to tell you what it was like having him at home.”
I push the rolling table off to the side. “I’m listening.”
“It was different,” she says. “He was just ... trying harder, I guess. He made cinnamon toast for me.”
I draw back slightly with surprise. “It’s been a long time since either of us made that for you.”
“Yeah, I’d kind of forgotten about it,” she replies, “but obviously Dad didn’t. And we talked in the kitchen. It was nice. It reminded me of how he used to be.”
I don’t want to pry or push her to reveal every detail of their conversation. Sometimes my motherly inquisitiveness makes her shut the open door between us. “I’m glad you had that time together,” I simply reply.
“Me too. Although it wasn’t all warm fuzzies. I woke up because I heard him crying.”
The weight of those words cuts at my heart. “Really?”
“Oscar heard it too. Dad sounded really upset. I never heard anything like that before. He was always so together, you know? Those pictures of him on the website in his chef’s uniform ... he looks so tough and determined, but that’s not who he is.” She stares at me, sending a piercing challenge, daring me to disagree.
I nod, and she relaxes slightly.
“You’ve talked to me about his father,” she continues, “and I think, deep down, he’s just lost. Even more so, now that he’s in jail and might lose us.”
A quiet pain spreads through me, slow and deep. I can’t bear to think of Nate all alone, coping with this ordeal.
Amanda picks up her phone and starts swiping. Our conversation has come to a dead halt, but I understand that she needs to tune out for a moment, so I wait patiently. She swipes again, reads something, and taps a few buttons. “Oh, my God.”
“What is it?”
“Connor just texted.” Her cheeks flush with color, and she squints as she studies her screen.
“What’s he saying?” I ask.
“Someone just posted a video on Facebook. Apparently, someone was filming when you were swept off the rocks. It’s all there.” She gets up and moves closer to show me her screen.
My pulse races, wild and uncontrollable, because I don’t want to relive that ordeal, yet I need to know what Nate was doing when I fell in the water. I need that question answered. Unequivocally.
The video starts with an older man standing on the rocks, smiling and pointing, but then I enter the frame in the background.
“That’s Dad behind you,” Amanda says as we watch. “But he’s not even close.”
Then I disappear.
“Play it again.” I watch the whole scene, from the first second I enter the frame. I’m hopping down the sloping rocks. Then a gigantic explosion of water crashes over me, and I vanish. Only then does Nate enter the frame. He runs desperately to the spot where the wave had taken me.
“Does the RCMP know about this?” I ask, dumbfounded.
Amanda starts to thumb a message. “They will in about two minutes, as soon as I text Uncle Arthur. And whatever evidence the cops think they have, I’m pretty sure this’ll crush it.”
With a surge of relief, mixed with nausea from watching how I’d vanished into that frothy white surf, I rest my head against the pillows and shut my eyes. All I can see, over and over, is Nate running to the edge of the rocks, coming to an abrupt halt, placing his hands on his head in despair, and then desperately pacing back and forth, scanning the churning water below.
Chapter Thirty-Two
