His candor surprised her, but since he was being straightforward, she didn’t beat around the bush, either. She took the photos and the placemat from her pocket, her gloved fingers fumbling to unfold it. “Why did you pretend you didn’t know who R. was?” she asked, pointing to the phrase,NR, scribbled on the bottom of the paper. “And that you hardly remembered Nicole—or the other two kids in these photos?”
He glanced sideways to look at the paper and the pictures, and then back at the horizon. “I swear, I don’t remember anything about that guy or the other girl, except that theyweren’t locals. But I lied about remembering Nicole because I was worried you’d somehow figure out… what happened between her and me.”
Even though she hadn’t moved a muscle, Caitlin’s heartrate quickened, and her mouth went dry. She licked her lips, but her voice was still barely a whisper. “What happened?”
Craig blew the air from his cheeks in a heavy sigh before answering, “We had a huge fight a few days before she died, and it got really ugly.”
“So you and Nicolewereseeing each other?”
“Not really. I mean, she’d come to the beach while I was on my lunch break and sometimes we’d go to the arcade or the ice cream shop on the boardwalk. We were just flirting. Nothing physical happened, except that kiss you saw in the photo,” he said. “But yeah, initially, I was interested. I even invited her to a party after hours at the lifeguard station, but she was a no-show.”
That’s because Pam wouldn’t have allowed her to go out in the evening without me.“So you had a fight because she stood you up?”
“No, we had a fight because I found out from a friend who worked at the club where her stepfather golfed that she was only fifteen, not eighteen, like she told me.”
Caitlin didn’t see what the big deal was, although of course older high schoolers sometimes looked down on going out with younger students. “How old were you? Sixteen? Seventeen?”
“I was twenty,” he said, shocking Caitlin. Even now, his baby face made him appear much younger than his age. “Obviously, I was way too old to be interested in Nicole. When I found out how young she was, I felt completely humiliated, completely played. I was scared of losing face in front of my peers and getting in trouble with our parents—or even with the law. So I told her off, big time.”
“How did she react?”
“She said something about how I shouldn’t be embarrassed because plenty of older men have fallen foringenues—I didn’t even know what that word meant! I told her she was lucky I was one of the good guys, because one day her twisted little act was going to get her into a world of trouble. But no matter what I said or how explicit I was, I couldn’t get through to her. Every day, she kept showing up at the beach and doing things to try to get my attention or make me jealous.”
“Like what?”
“You know, doing ballet poses on her towel right in front of my lifeguard chair, or asking my coworkers to put sunscreen on her shoulders. I tried to ignore her, but I was also scared if I was too mean, she’d make up some lie about me and show that photo of us to her parents or something.”
As he was speaking, Caitlin noticed Craig’s features were contorted with disgust. While it was possible he was lying again, she knew enough about Nicole’s behavior to believe his account of their relationship.Oh, Nicole, she thought sadly.You just didn’t know when to give up, did you?
“One afternoon—it was the day before the tropical storm—she showed up just as the guards were getting ready to head home. It was drizzling, so there were hardly any other people on the beach. But Nicole decided to go swimming, and since I was the head guard, and my shift technically hadn’t ended yet, I was required to stay and keep an eye out for her. So she waded into the water, maybe up to her chest, and then she dove in and kept swimming the backstroke parallel to shore, back and forth, for about a hundred yards at a stretch. She knew she had my attention, she knew I couldn’t leave. It was like she was toying with me.”
Craig stared out at the frozen bay, as if he were still watching her, and his resentment was almost palpable. “She wasswimming real slow and easy, but out of the blue, she stopped. At first it looked like she was treading water, and I thought maybe she was taking a break, or she’d gotten a cramp. But then she tipped her head back and started pushing down on the surface with her arms, like this.” He made the motions. “It’s called ‘instinctive drowning response.’”
Caitlin gasped. “She was actually in danger?”
“That’s what I thought, yeah, so I charged in to get her. She seemed very weak when I was carrying her to shore, like she had muscle fatigue,” he said. “But when I laid her down in the sand, she held onto my neck really tight and made some crack about not letting go until I gave her mouth-to-mouth.”
“Pff.” Caitlin didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until she let it out in a huff. “That must’ve been infuriating. What did you do?”
“I completely lost it. I pushed her off me—and I wasn’t gentle about it. I yelled at her, too. I said if she reallydidget into trouble in the water one day, she’d better hope someone else was there to rescue her. I told her I’d let her sink like a stone before I’d even extend a finger to pull her out.” He covered his face with his hands and shook his head. “Can you believe those were the last words I spoke to her?”
Caitlin could hear the anguish in his voice and she knew exactly how he felt. But—unlike in her case—Craig hadn’t done anything wrong in his account so far. “You had every right to be furious at Nicole for pretending to be drowning and for lying about her age. What you said was… unfortunate, considering how she died, but it was just a coincidence.”
“No, it was an inexcusable thing to say. I was alifeguard,” he protested emphatically. “As a public servant, I had a duty to?—”
She cut him off. “You performed your duty by rescuing her, even though she was faking it. And I bet if she repeated the same stunt the next day, you would’ve been just as quick to pull herout again, because you couldn’t have lived with yourself if you didn’t, right?”
“Yeah, probably,” he acknowledged.
“So don’t beat yourself up over something you said in anger.”
“I probably shouldn’t beat upotherpeople over it, either,” he said with another heavy sigh.
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, poor attempt at humor.” He pointed to his eye. “You must have heard that I started a fight in a bar last week?”
“Yes. It was on the news. That’s how I found out your nickname,” admitted Caitlin. “Was the bar fight related to what happened between you and Nicole?”
