Beyond her, something flickers in the trees, and I straighten with attention.
“Okay,” she says. She must not have seen it. I feel her lean away from me, weight gathering on the balls of her feet, her dress blowing backward. Hesitation bleats inside me, and I want to reach for her, to tell her to wait, but I cannot interfere, not if she has chosen now to jump.
From behind, there is a scuffle of leaves and twigs. A ray of light sweeps the bank, and I realize the flicker I saw earlier wasn’t something moving over here but weak light catching on the boughs of trees lining the opposite bank.
We’ve been discovered.
Ama drops to a crouch, and her face appears over her shoulder. I move to shield her from view, but with the distraction and sudden pressure of a closing window, she may need more—she may need me to jump first.
Two flashlights glare at us through the dark, and I recognize the shape of one man: Eddie Stevens’s stilted gait as he jogs up the crest of the hill, wheezing and puffing. Hazel sent them; that jealous little bitch sent them.
“Michael, stop! Hands up! Ama, stay down!” another man’s voice shouts. I look down at Ama. Tears streak her face. She nods up at me. “Michael, step away from Ama, or I will shoot you! Michael!”
“The river will set us free,” I say, preparing to push off. Maybe this is the way it was meant to be—I was always meant to jump a third time. Maybe my mother was wrong—pushing me into the water didn’t count.
One last time, one last jump, and we can begin.
HAZEL Chapter 83 | 7:51 PM, December 9, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
I RACE ALONG THE BANK of the river, my gaze trained upward on the beam of light swinging across the ledge above, and I hear a man shout. Ama is kneeling on the bank. Michael looks down at the river, leaning out. He’s going to jump. If he hits the water, they’ll never catch him.
He lurches forward a step. I lift the gun, bend my knees, and keep my arms bent, too, and peer over the barrel of the gun.
I’ll keep both eyes open, Bill, I promise.
Suddenly I am grateful I used the dark of that hole to imagine shooting Michael one hundred million times.
His arms fly up, his body completely exposed. I train the sight on him dead center. Ama’s hand claws at a pant leg, but she won’t stop him.
Exhale.
Steady.
Trigger.
MICHAEL Chapter 84 | 7:52 PM, December 9, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
BANG.
A bullet tears through my back, and pain crashes through me, a wave across a beach, and nausea floods behind it.
BANG.
I hit the water, and the cold snatches the pain and my breath and my doubt, and I relax. The river will carry me. I can only hope Ama jumped, that she chose this path and that I won’t need to come back and show her the way.
EDDIE Chapter 85 | 7:52 PM, December 9, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
THE BLAST OF GUNFIRE ROOTED Eddie to where he stood, and in his mind’s eye, he relived the night he shot Ama. In front of him, Ama covered her head and neck with her arms. She pressed her forehead to the damp earth and screamed. Martin hustled to her side. He crouched beside her, wrapping one hand around her back and training his flashlight down on the water with the other.
“Eddie!”
Martin’s voice snapped Eddie out of his daze and propelled him forward, his gun trained ahead, ready to fire at whoever was shooting at them from the other side. He wondered if it was Michael’s mother, if she’d come to the river first to protect her son one last time.
His feet were lead-heavy as he reached the edge and shone his light down.
“Hazel! It’s Hazel!” Martin said, but Eddie barely heard him. All his senses converged on the tender face peering up at him from the river, at her wrists shackled at her front, age in her eyes and a gun in her hands. Tears poured from his eyes, and his heart pounded in his chest. Eddie heard Martin radio for help.
“Hazel!” Eddie said her name over and over and over, praying she wouldn’t vanish, that she wasn’t a ghost in these woods or a figment of fatigue and darkness.
“Daddy,” she whimpered as she tried to climb up the bank. She slid down, her limbs folding like the legs of a newborn fawn.
“Wait!” Eddie cried. “You wait right there. I know the way, Hazel. I’m coming to you, baby. I’m coming.”
MICHAEL Chapter 86 | 7:55 PM, December 9, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
I ALLOW THE RIVER TO tumble me, knowing the cold will slow the bleeding and my heart and will reduce inflammation. Fate always brings me here when I need to heal.
I surface when my lungs demand oxygen, only allowing my nose and mouth to emerge, and then slide under again, riding the current down. It will become shallow a ways ahead for just a stretch, and then it plunges to an unknown depth, the water ten degrees colder in that section of the river, how Cold River came to have its name. I close my eyes and sail, listening to the underwater percussion.
The current accelerates, announcing the shallows. Weakness sets in. If not for the river, I would probably be dead. My head pounds with pressure, and the sensation of static on a TV screen marbles my vision. I allow my whole body to surface and float, embracing Fate, trusting her method, her timing. Ama was ready, I decide. She jumped. I know she did. She’ll meet me in the river.
The water turns cold again, and I know the deep is coming, then after it the bend near my childhood backyard and into a desolate stretch of forest between towns, and I will be free. Isn’t your life supposed to flash in front of your eyes when Fate shines her light?
I bump into something too soft to be a stone, too warm to be a tree, and my eyes open. A woman’s silhouette peers down, backlit by the moon. Her hands touch my face; then she threads her fingers through mine. The skin is not smooth like Ama’s, the knuckles knobby, fingers longer and spindly. A pianist’s hands.
Mother’s face comes into focus for just a moment. Her lips move, but I can’t hear her. I wonder if she’s jealous, if she’s proud. For the first time in a long time, she doesn’t look angry. She squeezes her eyes shut, and I think she might cry. In the light of the moon, I see silver glint on her wrist. It’s the bracelet my father bought her with the first paycheck from the factory. I remember how pink and angry she became upon seeing it, calling it a waste. Later that night I caught her admiring the way it looked on her wrist, smiling down at it, cradling my father’s face in her hands and kissing him on the mouth.
Her hand releases mine, moves to my throat, cups my face, and I am eight years old again, basking in the glow of a mother who does not hate me. Then she pushes me under.
I try to stand and slap at her, but my feet can’t gain a hold. My legs buckle each time I try to bear weight, and my arms are weak with cold and blood loss. Something bites into my neck. She’s fastened a metal cord around my throat and now she’s towing me downstream, to the deep where she cannot stand.
MARTIN Chapter 87 | 9:30 AM, December 10, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
MARTIN STOOD ON THE LEDGE overlooking Cold River. Above him, morning sunlight filtered weak and pale through naked branches. Below, divers disappeared under the surface of the black water. He breathed out hard, his breath a puff of vapor in front of his face.