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“I can’t!” he screamed. “I just want to be left alone. Leave me to drown in this misery, and get the hell out of my life.”
Connie’s eyes hardened, and at last the frustration in her burst over the walls that had dammed it. Her face twisted into an angry snarl and she planted her hands in the middle of Blake’s chest and pushed him backwards with all of her might.
The surf was churning along the shore, waves hissing and tugging at their feet as they were sucked back into the ocean so that the sand beneath them seemed to melt away. Blake staggered off balance and his arms flailed wildly for a handhold that was not there. He fell back into the surf and the sea came crashing down upon him, so that he rolled, helpless, out into deeper water.
He came to his knees, water streaming from his head and chest, his face a mask of fear and panic. The next wave was larger than the first. It erupted over his back, pushed him forward and then dragged him away again so that he went down below the churning surface, gasping and heaving for breath.
Salt water filled his mouth and scalded the back of his throat. He clawed his way, lost, until at last his head broke the surface. He could feel the sand beneath his feet, the beach shoaling quickly away into deep water. He swung his arms, flailed and thrashed, gulping huge lungsful of air before the next wave dashed over him and he was pounded back below the surging maelstrom.
He was fifty feet offshore, carried by the rip of the current until he could not feel the bottom and his terror became white and blinding.
“Help!” he screamed, his head bobbing like a cork for a moment before another rolling swell washed over him. “Connie! Help me!”
“No!” Connie stood on the shore, creeping out into the surf until it was washing around her hips, but refusing to go further. She could feel the relentless tug of the ocean like tentacles clawing at her. “Come to me!” she cried out, screaming and crying at the same time so that the words were tortured and desperate.
“Help me!’ Blake retched. He could feel himself being drawn out to sea. “Please!”
“No!” Connie sobbed. “Find your way back to me, Blake! Listen to my voice and come to me.”
“Connie!”
“Find me, Blake! Listen to my voice, and come back to me!”
The pain in Connie’s chest was deep and as sharp as a piercing knife, so that she could feel herself bleeding with the terror and fear that clutched at her. She was trembling with panic, and the horror of all she had risked. She hovered in the waist-deep water, torn to pieces by the desperation of his pleas and fretted whether she should go to him – if she should swim out to Blake and help him back to shore. But she knew too that if she did, they would be doomed.
“Listen to my voice, and come back to me!” she called again with rising dread.
And then she whispered, “Please!”
Blake struggled to the surface and heard the cry of Connie’s voice. He had time just to fill his lungs once more before another wave crashed over his head and sent him tumbling and disoriented back into the darkened churning depths. He felt himself falling, felt the icy embrace of the water, and then the burning pain in his lungs began slowly to go as numb as a fatal wound. A sense of creeping tranquility draped itself over him. The water clawed and tugged at him, the unseen current like strong fingers, until he stopped struggling and finally allowed himself to surrender. He let his last breath trickle from the corner of his mouth in a shimmering hiss of bubbles, and then the energy-sapping desperation melted from his body, and he began to float and drift.
Behind his blind eyes, visions started to swirl, vaporous as the mist but slowly filling with detail until they were so real he reached out a torpid hand, as if to grasp at them. He saw Chloe, his beautiful daughter. She was running along the sand with her ponytails bobbing at the back of her head, a shrill childish squeal of delight in her voice as he chased after her. She was laughing, her eyes enormous and filled with a child’s adoration and trust. He scooped her up into his arms and kissed her, and the vision was so real he could smell the scent of her, the blossom of her breath as she nuzzled against his chest.
Then the vision vanished, replaced by other moments, each one a delight or a dread – a life played out before his eyes that ended abruptly, back in the darkness, back in the shivering embrace of the ocean.
He seemed to come alert again – cast off the shackles of creeping lethargy and his mind became urgent, his instincts for survival suddenly drumming like an insistent beat. He didn’t want to die. He wasn’t ready to give up. Blake thrashed in the ocean with the desperation of a man who had peered into the precipice of death – and it was there at last that he found his will to live.
His head burst through the ice-green surface of the ocean and he gasped and sobbed for breath. He flailed his arms, struck out once, and then the next wave came up behind him and he could feel the pressure of the swell as it rolled in from the ocean. He kicked his legs, his ears filled with the hissing seethe of the ocean and his face slapped by the punch of the breeze. The wave swept up and he rose above it, the pain in his lungs burning like a fire as he sucked in agonizing gulps of air.
Connie’s voice came at first like a whisper, like a lover’s call in the middle of a dream. He turned his face toward it, strained to concentrate. Another wave came up beneath him, but it was smaller than the first. Blake swung his arms, stayed above the surface and then Connie’s voice was a little louder, a little more to his left, a little more pleading and urgent.
“Come to me. Blake!” she cried.
He began to swim, fighting to move, struggling against the clinging anchor-like weight of his jeans, his legs weary with fatigue, his body aching with exhaustion. He caught the momentum of the next wave and it carried him closer to the shore. He felt his foot scrape sand. He groped for the beach, his arms now too heavy to move and his legs like lead. Another wave picked him up and sent him tumbling and swirling towards the sand.
He came to his feet like a castaway who had survived disaster at sea. He dragged himself to his feet, stumbled on legs that would no longer move. He felt himself swaying, his arms useless by his sides. Another, smaller wave washed around him and he teetered, but held himself upright.
He took a step, then another. Connie’s voice was close, rising with hope and relief.
“Come to me Blake!” she called to him. “I’m here, and I’m waiting for you.” She held out her hand. He was just a few feet away yet still she resisted the agonizing urge to rescue him – to lead him to the shore. “Come to me and leave the tragedy and the past behind, Blake. Remember Chloe, but come to me free of the debilitating sadness.”
He turned his face to her voice, heard the hope and desperation in her words, and wanted her with the same yearning need – the need to begin again and to be rid of the sadness but not his memories.
His fingers touched hers and she wrapped her hand in his and then went gasping and crying to him, entangled in his arms and sobbing with relief and joy. He felt her warm against him, squirming with energy and vitality and he realized at last, that her love was everything he wanted, and more than he ever deserved.
“How did you get to be so tough?” he croaked, for his throat was raw and the rasp of salt water was still heavy in his lungs and on his chest.
Connie clung to him, weeping uncontrollably. She looked up into his face, touched the sallow, ravaged hollows of his cheeks with a tender finger.
“I didn’t know I was,” she cried and laughed, “Until I found you and knew that you were worth fighting for.”
“I love you,” Blake said softly.
“I know,” Connie wrapped him in her arms and held him like she might never let him go. “And I love you too, Blake. With all of my heart.”
They clung to each other for a very long time, the waves lapping around them, the ocean unable to tear them apart. Over their shoulder the sun rose like a renewed promise, burning through the cloud and lighting the morning with warmth.
At last Connie leaned back i
n Blake’s arms and gazed into his face seeking some reassurance. “Are we going to be okay?” she asked in a whisper of hope.
“Yes,” Blake said. “I just need to say the one thing to Chloe that I could never bring myself to say,” he husked. “I just need to tell her goodbye.”
48.
At the going down of the sun, Blake and Ned walked forlorn to the beach. Clutched in Blake’s hand was the last red rose. He walked stiffly, the big dog at his side, nudging him with his shoulder when he veered, until they were standing alone on the edge of the ocean.
For a long time Blake stood still, did not move. The last fading warmth of the sun spread across his back, and the cold wind that would come with the darkness was still just a soft breath.
He listened to the rhythm of the surf – the ebbing sounds of the lonely sea – and it seemed to Blake as though his heartbeat began to slow until he and the ocean were in harmony.
He kissed the rose, pouring all of his love and lament into the brush of his lips. He inhaled the fragrance of it as though to sear the scent into his memory forever.
And then he threw the flower into the foaming waves.
“Goodbye my darling girl,” he said softly, feeling awkward and self-conscious until the emotion overcame him and the halting words began to spill from his soul. “Always know that daddy loves you. Always know that you are beautiful, and I have loved you deeply – loved you with all my heart.”
