“So women washing up onshore isn’t an everyday occurrence?” I joked, attempting to lighten my troubled thoughts.
“No,” Eddie replied, averting his gaze. His body shifted farther into the chair, though, and I couldn’t help but feel a pang of relief that he wasn’t about to leave.
I guess I could add something else to the list about me. I liked company. Or maybe it’s just Eddie.
“What about your shirt?” I gestured to the blue fabric covering his chest. “What’s Loch General?”
As if to remind himself of what he was wearing, Eddie looked down. “Loch General Store. We don’t have a big chain grocery store or anything for about twenty-five miles. We just have Loch Gen. It’s the town grocery store.” Plucking at the fabric of his shirt, he added, “I work there.”
“What do you do?” I said, curious.
“Bag groceries, run the register, handle payroll, stock shelves, inventory…” He laughed. “I pretty much do it all.”
My cheeks grew warm as I listened to him speak. He had a way of keeping my attention. Everything about him was interesting.
“Do you live nearby?” I blurted out, wanting him to keep talking.
“Yeah, I have a tiny cabin on the lake.”
“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” I murmured, my thoughts turning inward. I didn’t have a place to live. Or a job.
“Actually, it’s not.”
I blinked, surprised. Eddie laughed. “It was half falling down when I bought it. That’s how I could afford it. I’ve been slowly fixing it up.”
“That sounds kinda fun.”
He smirked. “It wouldn’t seem so fun after about eight hours of sanding wood and painting walls.”
“It’s better than this hospital bed.” I sighed.
Eddie sat forward. I thought he was reaching for my hand but changed his mind and pulled back. “Can I bring you anything? Anything at all?”
My life. “I think saving my life was more than enough. I’m the one who owes you.”
“No.” He spoke quickly and emphatically. “You don’t owe me a thing.”
“Did you see anything that night, Eddie?” I whispered. “At the lake? Was anyone else there?”
He didn’t answer at first. Instead, his forearm rested on the side of the bed and on it, his forehead. He stared down at the floor, and I just waited, thinking maybe he needed time to gather his memory. When he lifted his head, the azure shade of his irises was bleak.
“Sometimes I walk along the lake at night. It’s just something I like to do, to think.” I nodded, encouraging him to continue. “It was foggy that night, like it sometimes is. The wind was stronger than usual and the water seemed choppier. You weren’t on the shore.”
“But the doctor said…” I rebutted.
“I know. You would have ended up on the shore if I hadn’t seen you. You were a short distance out, about waist deep for me.” He held his hand up to his waist. “I saw you floating there, and I swam out and dragged you in.”
“Was I breathing?” I asked. It was odd. I knew this story was about me, but it didn’t feel like it. It felt I was being told about someone I didn’t know.
“No,” he murmured. “I did CPR.”
Without thought, I lifted the pads of my fingers to my lips, imagining his there, the breath from his body surging into mine.
“The second you started breathing, I drove you here to the hospital myself. Figured it would be faster than waiting for an ambulance.”
“Dr. Beck said I was in pretty bad shape,” I told him.
Eddie nodded. “Yeah, it was touch and go for a while. But I knew you would make it.”
“How did you know?” How could he know something more about me than I did?
“Because this is where you belong.” The intensity in his gaze was unnerving.
But instead of alienating me, it had the opposite effect. My deepest fear at the moment ripped right out of me as if it were magnetized and he was a giant lodestone. “What if I never remember?”
“Well,” Eddie mused, glancing up at the ceiling while he mulled it over. Our eyes met and held when his lowered and he finished his reply. “You’ll just have more space in that beautiful head of yours for new memories.”
They were hopeful words. Almost a promise of something better in the days ahead. A second ago, I would have clung to that positivity like a lifeline. And maybe I would later, when I lay in bed and tried to sleep.
But right now, I didn’t think about that. Instead, all I could think about was that Eddie just called me beautiful.
The lake was powerful. So formidable it took her away… Maybe the only thing able to bring her back. I asked it to bring her back every day at first. Then as I grew older, less and less. But I still went down there at night. My toes still sank into the pebbly shore. The icy water still pricked at my skin. I stopped asking the lake to give her back to me, but my heart never quit hoping it would.
Then one night, it did.
I was floating, my body completely supported by the buoyancy of the water surrounding me. For a moment, I knew true peace. For a moment, it was just me and no thoughts, just blissful silence as the water muffled everything.
The water felt like silk caressing my skin, moving fluidly, bending around my form, all too willing to do the work and come to me. I didn’t even have to try. Opening my eyes, everything was blurry, as if I suddenly needed glasses, the world around me no longer clear. My eyes followed a small trail of bubbles floating up right in front of my face. Tipping my chin back to follow the rapidly ascending orbs, long strands of flowing hair moved before of me. I watched it for a long moment, waving around like a flag in the wind. The strands appeared soft, the color not as blond as it usually looked, but a deeper shade.
A shadow moved around me, and reality came crushing back.
Adrenaline surged through me, making my body go rigid and struggle against the water I previously thought of as silk. But it wasn’t silk. It was a chain, and it was so malleable it didn’t matter how I moved and fought because it wrapped around me.
My limbs began clawing through the heavy water, pushing so I could get to the surface. It was dark down here, so dark I barely saw anything at all. Glancing around frantically, all I saw was the way my fair skin stood out against the water that now appeared dirty.
This wasn’t peace. This was death.
I fought upward, hoping I was swimming in the right direction. The surface grew lighter. I swam furiously, my lungs burning.
Just as I was about to breach the top, a large, dark figure loomed above, blocking out the light I’d been using as a guide. The figure bent down, staring straight into the waves, looking at me… daring me to rise.
My heart beat so hard it hurt. My chest squeezed from lack of air, and my head grew woozy as the edges of my vision darkened. I couldn’t give in, and with one last defiant shove, my head broke the surface. I gulped down air greedily.
An ominous presence tinged the air as I sucked in the precious oxygen, my eyes working to rid the water from my sight.