She let out a sigh, then smiled when she saw Harper pacing the landing. “We’ve all got so much more than she did. We’re fine.” She left the other women to go to him. “I guess we didn’t get what we were after, but we’re fine.”
“What happened?”
“I saw her die, and I felt her in the dark. Awful. Dark and cold and alone. Lost.” She leaned against him, let him lead her downstairs. “I don’t know what happened to her, what they did with her. She was going down in the dark, in the dark and cold.”
“Buried?”
“I don’t know. It was more . . . floating away in the dark, drifting down where she couldn’t see or hear, or find her way out.” Unconsciously, she rubbed a hand over her throat, remembering the sensation of the rope biting in. “Maybe it was a soul thing—you know the opposite of the tunnel of light.”
“Floating, drifting?” Harper’s eyes went sharp. “How about sinking?”
“Ah . . . yeah. I guess.”
“The pond,” he said and looked at her. “We never thought of the pond.”
“THIS IS CRAZY.” In the hazy light of dawn, Hayley stood on the bank of the pond. “It could take hours, more. He should have help. We could get other people. Search-and-rescue people.”
Roz slid an arm over her shoulders. “He wants to do this. He needs to.” She watched while Harper pulled on flippers. “It’s time for us to step back, let them do.”
The pond looked so dark and deep with the skim of fog rising over its surface. The floating lilies, the spears of cattails and iris greens that had always seemed so charming to her were ominous now, fairy-tale foreign and frightening.
But she remembered how he’d paced the landing while she’d gone up the stairs into the nursery.
“He trusted me,” Hayley said quietly. “Now I have to trust him.”
Mitch crouched beside Harper, handed him an underwater lamp. “Got everything you need?”
“Yeah. Been a while since I scuba’d.” He took deep, steady breaths to expand his lungs. “But it’s like sex, you don’t forget the moves.”
“I can get some students, some friends of my son’s who know the moves, too.” Like Hayley, Mitch studied the wide, misty surface of the water. “It’s a big pond for one man to cover.”
“Whatever else she was, she was mine, so it’s for me to do. What Hayley said last night about maybe she’d been meant to help find her. I’m feeling the same about this.”
Mitch braced a hand on his shoulder. “You keep an eye on your watch, surface every thirty minutes. Otherwise, your mama’s going to toss me in after you.”
“Got it.” He looked over at Hayley, shot her a grin.
“Hey.” She stepped to him, crouched down. With a hand on his cheek she touched her mouth to his. “For luck.”
“Take all I can get. Don’t worry. I’ve been swimming in this pond . . .” He glanced up at his mother, and vague memories of his own tiny hands slapping at the water while she held him flashed into his mind. “Well, longer than I can remember.”
“I’m not worried.”
He kissed her again, tested his mouthpiece. Then, adjusting his mask, slid into the pond.
He’d swum here countless times, he thought as he dived, following the beam of the light through the water. Cooling off on hot summer afternoons, or taking an impulsive dip before work in the morning.
Or bringing a girl back after a date and talking her into a moonlight skinny dip.
He’d splashed with his brothers in this pond, he remembered, playing his light over the muddy bottom before he checked his watch, his compass. His mother had taught them each how to swim here, and he remembered the laughter, the shrieks, and the cool, quiet moments.
Had all that happened over the grave of Amelia?
Mentally, he cut the pond into wedges, like a pie, and methodically began to search each slice.
At thirty minutes, then an hour, he surfaced.
He sat on the edge, feet dangling in while Logan helped him change his tank. “I’ve covered nearly half. Found some beer cans, soft drink bottles.” He tilted his face toward his mother. “And don’t look at me, I got more respect.”