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When I heard him call out again—“Delphine? Where are you?”—I turned back and saw nothing but gray.
Beneath me, the ice had turned dangerously dark.
I dropped to my knees and then my belly, spreading my weight as I began to crawl laterally back toward the shore. I took shallow breaths, the damp cold of the frozen surface seeping against my body. I willed my teeth not to chatter.
The fog was disorienting; he had lost track of me, and when he did pass by, it was at a distance, just a shadow stumbling in the direction of the distant island, arms outstretched. He didn’t see me and I didn’t speak, and then the fog closed around him and he was gone.
I waited, listening. A beat passed, and another—and then, below the light whistle of the wind, somewhere in the dark, came another sound, low and sinister.
The ice, not nearly thick enough after all, was beginning to groan and crack.
But I didn’t call after him, and if he called out, I didn’t hear it. It was too late for that now, or perhaps it always had been. We had always been destined to come to this precipice and to take this leap. There was nothing to do now but fall.
I slithered backward until the ice was white again beneath me, climbed to my feet, and walked back to the shore.
I sensed them before I saw them, tracking my movements as I neared the tree line. Two coppery eyes stared at me, unblinking, and then the fox trotted out of the woods, its paws soundless on the snow. It stopped only a few feet from me, looking back to the place it had come from. My breath caught in my throat as a movement flickered in the shadows, and a second fox appeared. Running to stand beside its mate, shoulder to shoulder. They paused there, together, staring straight ahead—and then slowly, one at a time, each head with its black-tipped ears swiveled toward me. I stared at them and they stared back, and nothing moved but the wind. We looked at each other even as the groaning of the ice grew louder, even as there was a second sound that might have been a low cry, a splash, a story ending somewhere out there on the frozen reach.
But in this moment, I stood alone on the shore and knew nothing. Felt nothing. Clung to nothing. I watched the foxes standing with their heads high, ears forward.
I imagined standing in this place, this moment, until the sun rose sparkling over the empty cove.
I watched as they turned away and ran together into the dark.
Epilogue
2015
March
Richard plopped two ice cubes and a thick slice of orange peel into a tumbler and poured out the cocktail shaker, drowning the cubes in red. “Negroni,” he said, handing me the glass. “That’s Italian for ‘I told you so.’”
“You didn’t tell me so,” I said. “If I remember correctly, what you said was mazel tov.”
“Did I?”
“You know you did.” I took a sip. “It’s bitter.”
“It’s a metaphor. The next sip will be sweeter.” Richard winked at me, but then leaned in, putting a hand awkwardly on my forearm. “But let me be serious for a second.”
“Please don’t,” I said, and he laughed.
“I’m impressed, you know. You’ve put on a hell of a brave face about this. What I want you to know is, you don’t need to. If you want tohave a nervous breakdown or do a bunch of peyote or spend three weeks in Sedona writing angry man-hating poetry, you’ve earned it.”
“Why do I have to go to Sedona for the poetry writing but not the peyote?”
“Because even I have limits to the depravity I’ll allow in my pool house,” he deadpanned. His hand was still on my arm, warm and heavy. I was starting to sweat. “Look, just tell me honestly. Should I not have shown this to you? Would you rather not have known?”
I looked at the table in front of us, where a manila file folder lay open, the papers inside stacked neatly. The page on top held the name of a private investigator. The rest held the life story of the man I’d been planning to marry.
I shook my head. “No. I’m glad you showed me. It makes this easier.”
He grimaced. “I hope so. I’ll tell you, I’m furious. That son of a bitch pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes, including mine. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay gone.”
I nodded. I hoped he would stay gone, too.
I tried not to think about the cove or the coming spring.
I wondered where the tide had taken him—back to the shore or out to sea.
