Filed To Story: Wild Dark Shore Book PDF Free by Charlotte McConaghy
I meet her dark-brown eyes. “No you don’t, darling,” I say.
Because she is seventeen and he is forty-seven. Whatever happened, she is not responsible for it.
Fen lets her head drop onto her knees and she cries hard and long. I stroke her shaved hair gently, letting her get it out. There is trauma here, I can hear it, and I can hear relief, too, maybe that it’s over, maybe also that I finally know.
When she is spent, when all the tangles within her have unspooled into the porcelain tub beneath her, she rests her head wearily against the wall. I sit crammed in between the sink and the bath, watching her. She says, “I’m so sorry.”
I just shake my head. “You don’t need to be.”
He is the one who will be sorry. I could kill him for it. For hurting her. For the affair too, I suppose, but far more for choosing to have it with a child. I could watch him drown. Maybe I will. It is clear, now, why he’s in a cell.
“Have I ever told you about my husband?” I ask her.
Fen frowns, searching my face, unsure what I’m doing.
“Hank is a narcissist,” I tell her. “He is very good at convincing people he cares about them. But in reality his whole world is just-himself. He can’t think beyond that. He can’t
feel beyond that. He’s charismatic and clever and this allows him to collect people. A lot of people have fallen under his spell and there’s no shame in it.”
“Is that why you married him?” Fen asks. There is recognition in her eyes, as though this is all making sense to her.
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
“Why didn’t you leave, when you realized it?”
I think about this. “I think it suited me to be with someone I knew would never look directly at me.”
She breathes out. Then says, “But you’re so nice to look at.”
It makes us both smile. I lean over the bath to hug her. All I can hope is that having some understanding of who Hank is will help her process this.
I tell Dom and Orly that Fen has bad period pain and won’t be joining us today. Dom says she can just take some Advil and be right, I tell him to shut up. Orly moans about us being down
another set of hands-three is not nearly enough-but his dad replies that three is what we are, so we’d better get moving.
Dom drives the Frog, while Orly and I follow behind in a Zodiac. The rain is heavy and fat, it falls hard, and from the look of the black sky it doesn’t plan on going anywhere soon.
From the mouth of the tunnel we can see water rushing like white water rapids. Dom says simply, “This is our last trip. And you’re waiting out here.”
Orly doesn’t argue. “Better make it count then, guys.”
As Dom and I wade down through the freezing water I think of Hank. I wonder if Dom means to drown my husband; I wonder if I might let him. I have never been so angry.
All the ice on the walls of the vault has melted away. It takes a lot
of effort for Dom and me to move through the freezing water; we are slow, and it feels pointless if you stop to think, so we don’t think, we keep on. We carry our containers to the floating pallet we’ve tied with a rope to the chamber door so it doesn’t float away. We don’t look at labels, we just take from the pile Orly instructed us to focus on. With every container I carry, I contemplate a plant species that may survive because I forced myself to keep going, to keep moving through this freezing water. I can’t feel my feet. We don’t think about what’s getting left behind; there will be time for that later, a lifetime for it.
When a second crack opens in the wall, letting a deluge pour free, Dominic shouts that it’s time to go. That entire wall is about to give way and the cave we are in will crumble.
We steer the floating pallet out through the chamber doors and up the tunnel. The water is around our waists now, already higher than when we entered this morning.
“Dom,” I say as we wade through the dark. Because maybe there won’t be many more chances.
“Yeah?”
“You need to talk to Raff and Fen.”
“About what?”
“Whatever it is that they want to talk about.”
He looks at me, understanding. This is a very weird time to have this conversation and I think he understands the why of that too. “I don’t know what to say to them,” he admits.
“Then just listen.” I let go of the barge for a moment so I can reach for him, reach for his cheek. “Okay?”
Dominic nods. “Okay.”
At the mouth of the tunnel I think of the man we’ve left behind, waiting and alone. I make a decision, I make several. I can’t let my husband drown. No matter what he’s done, that’s not a thing I can do. I will come back for him.
We load the boats, heads ducked against the battering rain and wind. Orly hunkers down in the back of the Frog, trying to take shelter,
while his dad and I run back and forth like mad things. “Get going!” I shout to Dom when we’ve finished.
He nods. And then he pulls me against him and kisses me.
I can feel in it a farewell. He knows something. He might be planning something. He has done bad things. It doesn’t matter. I put all of myself into this kiss, I cling to him. If this is our last, I hope he feels within it the days, hours, minutes left in my life, I hope he knows I am giving them to him, every one of them.
He says, “Get in the boat. Please.”
I pull back from his lips. My heart is a wild thing.
“I can’t leave him to die,” I say.
There is no surprise in his face. He has already worked it out. “You don’t have to,” he says, so calm. “You just have to get in the boat.”
“Why did you do it?” I ask. “He and Fen-“
“He tried to kill her,” Dominic says. “He held her head under the water.”