“You stole my bracelet, you freak?” Camilla shrieked. “It’s been missing and I nearly fired our caretaker’s wife because I thought she took it. You crazy stalker. I should’ve known.”
Evelyn couldn’t catch her breath, and she was going faster and faster, and then her starboard oar was sucked down into the water and the oar handle kicked straight into her stomach, and as the phrase “catching a crab” sprang to the front of Evelyn’s brain and she realized that was what was happening, the water threw the oar handle over Evelyn’s head and she plunged into the water. It was a jolt of cold and she was in the lake, which was freezing, how was a lake this cold in summer, and then there was her boat upside down with its pink rudder sticking up obscenely. Her clothes were clinging and dragging and she bobbed around, trying to get her breath and her balance back, treading water, then dunking underneath to get a break from the motorboat’s surveillance. She looked toward the island’s shore, but it was too far to drag the boat there, and she couldn’t remember how to flip a scull. She clutched on to an oar, still fastened to her boat, that was floating innocently in the water like it had done nothing wrong when in fact it had ejected her. She had no idea what to do. She was just yards from the motorboat now, and Phoebe’s sneering face was hovering over her. Brooke looked like she was about to cry. Evelyn coughed out water and moved to the upside-down hull, her legs kicking on the surface of the freezing lake.
Camilla brought the motorboat to the edge of the capsized boat, looking over its carcass to where Evelyn was trying to stay afloat. Phoebe started to say something else, and Camilla cut her off. “Be quiet, Phoebe,” Camilla said. She looked at Evelyn, eyes glazed with fury. “My bracelet?” she asked.
Evelyn put her forehead down on the boat.
“Give it back,” Camilla said.
Evelyn fumbled for the bracelet, then Camilla said, “No, stop. Stop. You’re going to drop it in the water. Stop. Why did you lie about everything?”
“For me—” Evelyn looked up, her eyes stinging with lake water, one arm draped with a piece of lake grass, her other wrist bearing what was quite clearly Camilla’s bracelet, her socks heavy in the water, her grand plans upturned. “I wouldn’t have gotten here otherwise,” she said finally, and quietly. She wasn’t sure if Camilla had heard.
After what seemed like several minutes, she heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie. “Yes, it’s Camilla Rutherford. I’m watching the Fruit Stripe. There’s a capsized rower just off Turtle,” Camilla said. Evelyn kicked her legs. “The racer? Yes, she looks fine. No one I know. I can’t see a bib number, no.”
Starting to shiver, Evelyn pulled herself up so she was draped over the flipped boat and partly out of the water. As she did, she saw Camilla raise a hand in a combination of a salute and a wave, and the motorboat moved backward with a kick. Camilla twirled the wheel with one hand, and made the boat skip off toward other racers, other friends, other lives. Evelyn put her cheek on the cold fiberglass hull and waited for someone to come and pull her in to shore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Remaining Balance
Evelyn sat hunched in the train station, trying to work up the energy to buy her ticket on the 12:19. She had used up the little that remained of her willpower just now, as she’d forced herself to walk back to the Lodge at Lake James and pay the bill, which to her horror included a two-night minimum and came out to $3,936 after taxes. Once she’d withdrawn another $50 from the lobby ATM to pay for the lodge’s car service to take her to the train station, the ATM had spit out a receipt whose numbers were seared into Evelyn’s head: “Remaining Balance: $15.07.”
She observed her feet, toes still polished a peppy magenta but dulled by the lake water and ashy from yesterday’s long walk. It was so hot in the waiting room.
The door from the parking lot opened and shut, and she heard the wheels of a suitcase and the brisk rhythm of heels on the floor. “If you want to do the Hampton Classic next year, Geraldine, you have to take better care of your horse and not just depend on the stable to do it. Hold on for a minute. I just need to arrange my ticket. Fine. Fine. Good-bye.” In a different tone, one that sounded reserved for the working class, Evelyn heard “One to Croton-on-Hudson, on the next train, please. What time will that be?”
“That’s the twelve-nineteen,” the female attendant said.
“Very well.” Evelyn heard some beeps and papers shuffling, and then the woman was back on the phone, this time complaining about her assistant. Evelyn was trying to manage the uneasy feeling that this woman must be a friend of Evelyn’s friends, but the feeling was growing. Evelyn peered up, but the woman was facing away from her, and she could only see blond waves. The woman hung up on that call, and then was on another one, a very loud one. Someone across the aisle gave the woman a dirty look, but it didn’t have a quieting effect.