Chương 1
""“Don’t try the door, Rosalind,” Garrett said as river water rushed around my shoes.
He had already unfastened his seat belt.
For one stupid second, I thought he meant he was going to help me.
Then he lowered his window and said, “It’s too late for you.”
The SUV tilted nose-first into Savannah Creek, and Garrett pulled himself through the open window without looking back.
“Garrett!”
My seat belt locked across my ribs when I lunged after him.
Cold brown water poured through the front footwell and climbed over my calves.
Behind me, Tobias made a sound that was almost lost beneath the groaning metal.
“Ros.”
I twisted toward my brother.
His wheelchair had been secured behind the passenger seat for the drive, and the impact had thrown him sideways against its harness.
Water swirled around his waist.
“Hold on.”
It was a ridiculous thing to say.
Tobias had been holding on for fifteen years.
I stabbed the release button on my belt.
Nothing happened.
Again.
Nothing.
I shoved my fingers beneath the buckle and found something thin and hard wrapped around the mechanism.
Wire.
Not debris.
Not something knocked loose in the crash.
Wire wound deliberately around the buckle and anchored beneath the seat frame.
My hands stopped moving.
Outside the windshield, sunlight fractured across the water in pale strips.
Garrett’s shape rose toward the surface.
He had left his wife and a man he believed could not walk inside a sinking vehicle, and he had prepared my seat belt so I could not escape.
The realization was strangely quiet.
There was no thunderclap inside my head.
There was only the pressure of the belt against my chest and a memory of Garrett kneeling beside this same seat two days earlier, complaining that one of the power controls was sticking.
He had spent twenty minutes underneath it.
“Rosalind.”
Tobias sounded sharper this time.
I looked through the side window.
Garrett had reached shore.
Someone stood waiting for him beyond the reeds.
At first I saw only a dark umbrella and bare legs beneath a cream-colored coat.
Then the woman stepped forward.
Penelope.
My half sister dropped the umbrella.
Garrett came out of the water, and she ran to him.
He caught her around the waist.
The coat opened between them.
Her stomach was unmistakably rounded.
I stopped fighting my seat belt.
Penelope was pregnant.
Garrett pressed his forehead against hers.
She touched both sides of his face as though he were the one who had nearly died.
Then they looked toward the river.
Toward us.
Garrett smiled.
The water reached my sternum.
Something inside me finally broke loose.
Not grief.
Not yet.
Rage came first.
I clawed at the wire until one fingernail bent backward.
“Ros, stop.”
“I can get it.”
“You can’t.”
“I can.”
“Rosalind.”
“I said I can.”
My voice cracked on the last word.
Tobias went silent.
For three years Garrett had brought warm milk to my desk whenever I worked past midnight.
He knew I hated the skin that formed on top, so he always stirred it before handing me the mug.
He remembered which side of the bed made my shoulder ache.
He called me from grocery stores because he could never remember whether I liked smooth or crunchy peanut butter.
He kissed the scar beneath my chin every anniversary because I had gotten it the night we met.
Apparently a man could memorize the architecture of your tenderness while planning where to bury you.
Water touched my collarbone.
“Toby.”
“I’m here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For bringing him into our family.”
Behind me came the metallic click of a buckle releasing.
I turned.
Tobias pushed himself upright.
My mind rejected what my eyes gave it.
He planted one foot on the flooded floor.
Then the other.
His knees trembled.
His shoulders struck the ceiling as the SUV settled lower, but he was standing.
Standing.
My brother had been twelve when doctors told us the spinal damage from our parents’ crash was catastrophic.
I had pushed his wheelchair through airports, hospitals, graduation ceremonies, bad restaurants, funerals, and one disastrous beach wedding where the supposedly accessible ramp ended in sand.
I had watched him curse stairs.
I had watched him fall transferring into bathtubs.
I had watched him refuse help until pride and gravity settled their argument.
Now he reached beneath his soaked jacket, produced a compact rescue cutter, and leaned over my seat.
“What are you doing?”
“Saving your life.”
“Your legs.”
“Later.”
“You’re standing.”
“Ros.”
“You’re standing.”
“Yes.”
He sliced through the wire.
The belt snapped free.
My body lurched forward.
The water was at my throat.
Tobias shoved the cutter into his pocket and moved toward the rear door with an awkwardness that somehow made the impossible sight worse.
He could walk, but not well.
His left leg dragged slightly.
He braced himself against the seat and waited while water continued filling the cabin.
“What are you waiting for?”
“Pressure.”
“We’re drowning.”
“I know.”
“That isn’t comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
That sounded like Tobias.
That, absurdly, helped.
The water covered my mouth.
I lifted my face into the shrinking pocket of air beneath the roof.
Tobias inhaled once, disappeared underwater, and drove his heel against the rear door.
Nothing.
He kicked again.
The door shifted.
On the third strike it opened.
The river swallowed the last air in the SUV.
Tobias caught my wrist and pulled.
We came out sideways into mud-colored darkness.
Every instinct screamed upward.
I kicked toward the light.
Tobias yanked me back.
I almost struck him.
He pressed something rubber into my palm.
A small emergency breathing device hung from a waterproof pouch strapped beneath his shirt.
I put the mouthpiece between my lips because there was no time to understand anything anymore.
Tobias pointed beneath an old service pier downstream.
We swam toward it.
My lungs hurt despite the emergency air.
My clothes dragged at me.
May you like
Once I turned toward shore.
Through the wavering water, I could make out two figures standing near the reeds.
