“You know I don’t,” Alice said.
Mrs. Bergeron sighed, then coughed, four sharp, dry hacks that didn’t sound healthy. Alice knew she was dying from bronchial cancer, because Mrs. Bergeron had come by and visited her shortly after Bill had died. She’d confronted her about Bill’s death, telling Alice she knew she had something to do with it, just as she’d had something to do with her daughter Gina’s death twenty years earlier. It was disconcerting, the visit, but not surprising. Over the years, Vivienne Bergeron had accused Alice of being with Gina the night she had drowned many times. But for the previous ten years Alice had barely heard from her, and she had almost begun to believe that she’d never hear from her again. But Mrs. Bergeron had come to Grey Lady, wrapped in a too-big raincoat, the yellow skin of her face barely concealing the skull underneath. Alice had invited her in, listened to her rant, and, as she always did, attempted to be civil. She’d asked after her health, and Mrs. Bergeron said she had bronchial cancer, and was happy to leave a world where people like Alice Moss got away with murder. Alice wondered if the old woman’s mind was going, as well as her body.
“You can tell the truth now, Alice,” Mrs. Bergeron said from the other side of the boat. “It’s just you and me.” The wind off the ocean snatched at the faint words, but Alice could still hear them.
“Your husband,” Alice said, remembering him from the condo parking lot. “Where . . . ?”
“He’s a good and loyal man, my husband,” she said, her voice cracking. “I needed him to do one last thing for me, and he did it.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I am a little crazy, you know, I think. That’s on you, too, Alice. I was fine before you took my Gina away. I never beat it.”
“What are you going to do?” Alice said. Her mind was beginning to clear, and she realized that something was cutting into her left wrist. It was a pair of handcuffs, attached to a linked chain. She tugged at it. The chain was snaked through one of those large bodybuilding weights, a disc that looked like it was probably a hundred pounds, sitting on the middle seat of the old boat. The chain passed through the weight, stretching across to Mrs. Bergeron, attached to a handcuff around her wrist.
“I’ve already done it,” she said, holding up her arm, showing it to Alice, rattling the chain. “There’s no getting out of these. The keys to the handcuffs are already on the bottom of the ocean. It’s over, Alice. It’s just you and me.” With her free hand, Mrs. Bergeron raised what looked like half a cigarette to her nose and inhaled deeply. Alice thought: smelling salts. It was what she had used to wake Alice up, and what she was using to keep herself going.
Alice’s body went cold. She shook her head, trying to concentrate on what was happening. The sloshing at the bottom of the boat was getting louder, and water was now licking at her ankles. “The boat’s sinking,” she said.
“It is. You don’t have much time. We have the same time now, the two of us.”
Alice tugged harder at the cuff around her wrist. “You can’t do this.”
Mrs. Bergeron smiled and she looked like a skull, her teeth too big for her face. “I am doing this,” she said. “You took my baby away from me, and this is my last wish.” She laughed weakly at this, then said, “It’s my ‘Make-A-Wish.’”
Alice stood, and took a step toward Mrs. Bergeron. The boat lurched, and her foot crunched through the hull. Water began to rush in.
“It’s no good,” Mrs. Bergeron said. “I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to. We are going to die together. The only thing you can do now is confess. I can’t make you do it, but it might make you feel better. It’s for you, not me. I already know what you did. I just want you to have the opportunity to know it as well.”
“Gina was a drug addict. She was nuts.”
The boat tipped hard to one side, and Alice gripped the edge as the bodybuilding weight slid off the middle seat and into the water. Her mind was rapidly flipping between shock at what was happening and a calculation of her odds. She wrenched at the cuff around her left hand, but it wouldn’t come off. She scanned the boat for anything that would help her float.
“Maybe she was, but that’s not why she died,” Mrs. Bergeron said.
“She was lucky to die when she did,” Alice said.
“That’s it, honey, tell the truth.” Mrs. Bergeron gripped the side of the boat as well. Her eyes were huge in her head. “There’s no way out.”
“I couldn’t have saved her. That’s the truth.”
“You were swimming with her, though, right?”
“There was nothing I could do. This isn’t fair.” The boat tipped, and Alice leaned hard the other way. “How did you . . .” she began. “How am I here?”
Mrs. Bergeron laughed. “I have less than a month to live, and I could have died in a hospital bed in pain, or I could take you with me. It was an easy choice, and I have a husband who was willing to help me.”
Alice started to lunge toward Mrs. Bergeron, but the boat turned over, and the two women went into the cold, salty water, the splintered boat drifting out of reach. Alice felt the pull of the weight on her left wrist. She desperately pawed at the water with her free right hand, then grabbed out at Mrs. Bergeron as though she could help her stay afloat. Together, they went under the surface, holding on to each other, almost hugging, as they sank.
I’m dying, Alice thought, and the thought was scary, but it was also so unfair. She had never hurt anyone in her life. Her mother’s face flashed through her mind, not as she was toward the end, but the way she once looked, back when she’d been pretty. She was on a beach, sun and the scratchy sand and a swarm of scary gulls. Alice held on to the air in her lungs as long as she could, the black water roaring in her ears.
And when she could hold out no longer, she opened her mouth and tried to breathe. It was seawater, cold and final, that filled her lungs.