“I could never stay, though. Something…” he echoes, as though I’ve spoken aloud.
“We Antipovas have restless feet,” I say, trying to let him off the hook. I’ve been furious with him for so long, have wanted to hear him excuse himself for disappearing and leaving us with Nadine, but suddenly, I don’t want the burden of absolving him. Let him seek his own redemption, from someone else in a better mood. I drink down my glass of wine and stand up. “I’m going to go swim,” I announce. “Hot day.” I shuck off my sarong and stick a toe into the cold, deep water. I glance toward the dock; we used to launch ourselves into the water from its edge, and it is a much easier point of entry to the lake, but I’m reluctant to venture out onto the decayed structure. I imagine that I can see it swaying in concert with the slight stirrings of the lake’s surface.
“Have you started swimming again?” he asks.
“No thanks to you,” I snap, filled with fury at the amused tone of his voice.
I don’t turn around. I plow farther into the water. The bottom is sharp and rocky, and my feet protest, but I move as quickly as I can without tumbling over. Making inelegant progress, I proceed unsteadily. The water is fucking freezing. When I’m waist-deep, I reluctantly lower myself all the way in, submerging my head. I’m instantly sobered by the chill. I kick underwater, stroking along without surfacing as long as I can. I pop up only when I start to panic, when my brain is begging for oxygen and it is all I can think about. I gasp, sucking in air and blinking water out of my eyes. I can no longer touch the bottom, and there is a thick skein of seaweed wrapped around my ankle. I flap around nervously, trying to shake loose from it. A thick barrier of subaquatic foliage separates the shore from the darker blue waters farther out into the lake, even this early in the summer, and I paddle hard to escape the waving tendrils that seek my belly and thighs. Mostly, I try not to think about huge, prehistoric fish sucking through the silt of the lake beneath me. I breaststroke out into the lake, breathing hard and forcing myself to be rational, to let the cold numb me to old terrors. The shore grows smaller behind me, and I stretch out muscles that haven’t been used in years. When I finally look back at the shore, I can see my father dozing on the bank, seeming far away and abstract, as ever. I roll onto my back and float and stare up at the pinkening sky and let myself dissolve into the freezing calm of the lake.
16
Patiently picking my way through the jagged zebra-mussel minefield of the shallow water, I emerge from the lake as clumsily as I entered it, quivering and exceptionally waterlogged. Marlon is still propped up on the bank, and he looks in my direction only when I stumble across the rough gravel. I flop down next to him, just close enough that I can feel how warm his skin is, and how chilled mine is. I drip-dry on the warmed stones, wringing out my hair like it’s a dishrag. Marlon has cracked open a second bottle, and I pour a solid slug into my plastic cup. We are companionably silent. I stretch out on the rocks, replicating the pose of submission to the sun that I had taken in the water, arms over my head, belly stretched, chin upturned. Soon the sun will begin to set in earnest, but now it is still early, just days after the solstice.
I lie back and consider my options. What if I just left? Maybe I could simply go back to Paris, book a flight tomorrow afternoon and leave here. Marlon and Opal could deal with the funeral. Or not. I’m not sure I feel like indulging Zelda with a festive celebration. The morning after next I could be taking a taxi from the airport and sliding into bed next to Nico. The memory of Nico makes me cringe in sudden guilt, and I jettison the feeling immediately, shying away from it.
I can’t just leave, though. Zelda has sucked me in, and I want to get to the end of her alphabet. I have to know what she’s been up to, and why. I need to know the ending. Have I solved P already? Police, Paris, passport. Promiscuity, I think with a vaguely contemptuous snort. Prude. Are we moving on to Q? What on earth will she dredge up for Q? Beneath my questions is the sinister reminder of the body; someone died in that fire, and it’s only a matter of time before someone else realizes it wasn’t Zelda. Why would she risk that? And, perhaps most important: Whose bones are in the ashes of our barn?
I flop over onto my belly and slurp a mouthful of warm white wine, nestling the plastic cup into the rocks. I let my eyes close, feeling the sun on my back. I remember long days on this beach, all four of us. If I squint into the sun, I can almost see me and Zelda there on the dock, tawny-limbed and ten. Our eyes are bloodshot and our shoulders a dangerous russet-pink, our black hair snarled and matted and curled moistly around our necks, plastered to the swath of freckles that erupt like rashes across the bridge of our noses whenever we spend time in the sun.
—
“Daddy, come play with us!” I watch as my ten-year-old self moans plaintively, fending off a new assault from Zelda as she shoves at my shoulder. “Daddy, please!” I beg—begged—as Marlon cracks open his eyes and sits up in his lounge chair, the muscles of his abdomen neatly folded. He’s wearing sunglasses, a panama hat, and his bathing suit. He looks at home in the sunlight, his Florida childhood glistening in the reflection of sweat on his temples. He sets down his drink. Nadine, ever the pale-skinned aristocrat, is shielded by an umbrella and a redundant sun hat.