“Well, he wasn’t blind.”
“So there was something between you two.”
“Yes,” I say. “There was something.”
I don’t know how to continue. Of course, I was at Meredith’s mercy. Like Aphrodite, she demanded exaltation and idolatry. But what was her weakness for me, tame and inconsequential as I was? A thing of mystery.
As I tell the story to Colborne, guilt wriggles, wormlike, in the pit of my stomach. Our relationship was a point of significant interest, but Meredith refused to testify at my trial, stubbornly insisting that she didn’t remember what everyone wanted to know. She spent a few weeks being hounded by press people, which proved to be too much attention even for her. After I was convicted she went back to the Manhattan apartment and, for a month or so, didn’t come out. (Her brother Caleb made the news before she did, when he broke a paparazzo’s jaw with his briefcase. After that, the vultures lost interest, and I thought of Caleb more fondly.)
Meredith did eventually make her way to TV—she stars now in some legal drama loosely based on the Henry VI cycle. It was popular in prison, not because of its Shakespearean source material, but because she spends a lot of time on the show lounging around in slinky nightgowns that show off her figure. She came to visit me—only once—and when the rumor that I’d had some sort of affair with her surfaced, it won me unprecedented respect among the other inmates. If pressed for details I told them only what could be found on the Internet or was obvious: that she was a natural redhead, had a small birthmark on her hip, wasn’t shy about sex. The more intimate truths I kept to myself: that our lovemaking was as sweet as it was savage; that despite her normally foul mouth the only noise she ever made in bed was to murmur “Oh God, Oliver” in my ear; that we might have even loved each other, for a minute or two.
I give Colborne only the trivial details.
“You know, she came to see me one night,” he says, digging his heels into the sand. “Rang the bell until it woke us up, and when I opened the door she was standing there on the porch in this ridiculous dress, glittering like a Christmas tree.” He almost laughs. “I thought I was dreaming. She barged in and said she needed to talk to me, said it couldn’t wait, that there was a party on and it was the only time you all wouldn’t miss her.”
“When was this?”
“The same week we arrested you. Friday, I think.”
“So that’s where she went.” He glances at me and I shrug. “I did miss her.”
We lapse into silence—or as close to silence as we can get with the distant cries of birds, the murmur of the wind between the pine needles, the tiny wash of waves licking at the shore. The story has changed; we both feel it. It happens just like it did ten years ago: we find Richard in the water and we know nothing will ever be the same.
SCENE 1
Richard had reached toward us and wrenched the world right out of orbit. Everything tilted, hurtled forward. As soon as those three words—He’s still alive—were out of James’s mouth, he was running headlong to the end of the dock.
“Richard!” Wren croaked, the sound involuntary and compulsive, like a cough. Her cousin lay convulsing in the water, blood bubbling vivid red on his lips as one hand groped toward us.
“James!” Alexander’s voice, shrill and frantic, pierced through the gloom. “Oliver, grab him!”
I stumbled into a sprint, feet pounding on the wet planks, seized by the senseless fear that James would throw himself into the water and let Richard drag him under.
“James!” My fingers scraped off the back of his jacket, closed on nothing. “Stop!” I made one more reckless grab and caught him clumsily around the waist. He lost his balance and pitched forward with a cry of surprise. For one terrible moment the water rushed up to meet us, but just as I gasped to go under, James slammed into the dock chest-first and I crashed down on top of him. Pain went howling through my limbs but I didn’t let go, hoping that my weight would be enough to hold him down.
Wren tried to call out again but gagged and swallowed her voice.
“Can he hear us?” Alexander said. “Jesus, can he even hear us?”
My head hung over the edge of the dock, pulse pounding between my temples, eyes open wide. Richard, just out of reach, gulped against the thick slime of blood in his mouth. His limbs were twisted and bent around him like the broken wings of a bird—pushed too soon from the nest, unready for flight. Hamlet stirred in my memory. There’s a special providence, he says, in the fall of a sparrow.
“He’s not dead!” James writhed underneath me. “He’s not dead, get off!”
“No!” Alexander said, sharply. “Wait—”
Filippa’s voice broke through, closer than Alexander’s. “Oliver!” I felt her hands on my shoulders, dragging me away from the edge. “Get up,” she said, “get him away from there—”
“James, come on!” I hauled him backward, pulled him to his feet. He strained feebly against my arms, and I worried for a moment that I might have broken his ribs. Behind us, Wren was on her knees, moaning, and Meredith crouched beside her, face livid—her expression less like terror than rage.
“Let go of me!” James said, half trying to push me off. “Let go—”
“Not if you’re going to do something crazy,” Alexander said. “Just wait a minute—”
“We can’t wait, he’s dying—”
“And we’re going to what, leap in and save him? All the king’s horses and all the king’s men? Shut up and think, for one fucking minute!”
“Think about what?” I asked, still holding James but not sure why.
“I mean, how did this even happen?” Alexander asked, of nobody in particular.
“Well, he fell,” Filippa said, immediately. “He must have—”
“He just fell?” I said. “Pip, look at his face—”