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“I want you to cast your mind back to that day.”
Lucy’s voice came from behind her. She must still be under the lee of the cliff. Alexia had been dragged forward into the surf and positioned on her knees, like a prisoner about to be executed.
“It was a hot summer in Maine. You were there on the beach—you, Billy, and the children. It was right after lunch.”
Horror stole slowly into Alexia’s heart as it dawned on her what was happening.
She’s re-creating her brother’s death.
She’s not going to shoot me.
She’s going to drown me.
She tried to move, to roll over, anything, but she was stuck fast. Lucy had clipped some sort of weights to her handcuffs, anchoring her to the spot.
“Think about the children now,” Lucy was saying. “Try to picture their faces. Can you see my brother? Can you remember him?”
Remember him? His face has haunted me all my life. Every day. Every night. I tried to kid myself that I’d moved on, that I’d outrun my past. But Nicholas was always there. Always.
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s playing.” Tears rolled down Alexia’s cheeks.
“Playing what?”
“I don’t know.”
“TELL ME!”
“Tag, I think. I’m not sure. He was running around on the sand. He was happy.”
“Good! Very good,” Lucy encouraged. “Go on. What happened then?”
“I don’t know,” Alexia sobbed. The water was rising. It was up to her waist now and as cold as the grave.
“Of course you know! Don’t lie to me. I’ll shoot off your fucking fingers one by one, just like I did with Jenny Hamlin. What happened?”
Alexia closed her eyes. “I lost sight of him. Billy was playing the fool, diving for pearls. He went under and he didn’t come up again and I thought—”
“I don’t care about Billy Hamlin!” Lucy screamed. “Tell me about Nicko. What happened to my brother?”
“I don’t know what happened!” Alexia shouted back. “He was in the water, in the shallows, playing. He was with the others. When I looked back he was gone.”
“NO! That’s not good enough. You must have seen something.”
“Jesus, Lucy, if I’d seen, don’t you think I’d have done something? Don’t you think I’d have tried to save him?”
Alexia was frightened by the desperation in her own voice. She wasn’t afraid of death. But drowning had always been her worst nightmare. To sit helplessly as the water rose around her, sucking her in, to gasp for breath as it filled her lungs, choking her, slowly starving her brain of oxygen . . . She’d lived the terror so many times in her dreams, Alexia thought she had understood Nicholas Handemeyer’s suffering. That she’d atoned for it somehow. But she realized now she knew nothing. The reality, here in the waves, pinned down like a trapped animal, was far, far worse than even her most fevered imaginings.
“You? Try to save him?” Lucy laughed. “All you cared about was yourself. You didn’t have an unselfish bone in your body. Not then, when you were plain old Toni Gilletti. And not now, as Mrs. High-and-Mighty De Vere. You, you and Hamlin, you let Nicko die!”
The water was almost at Alexia’s shoulders now.
“That isn’t true. You weren’t there, Lucy. You don’t know what happened. I loved your brother. He was a lovely little boy.”
Lucy let out a howl, more animal than human. She put her hands over her ears. “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare say you loved him.”
“It’s the truth!” Alexia spluttered. “He was always my favorite. He used to make me little cards.”
