Treading Water Read Free

see.”
    Fifteen minutes later, Jack opened the door
to the tall, blond cop, and they shook hands.
    “ What’ve you got there?” He
nodded at the disk in Curtis’s hand.
    “ I was finally able to get
a copy of the security video from the mall parking lot. I think you
need to see it, but I have to warn you, it’s tough to
watch.”
    Jack swallowed hard and gestured for Curtis
to follow him into the family room. He fed the disk into the DVD
player, turned on the television, and watched in stunned silence as
his daughters jumped out of the way of the speeding car and then
turned to scream at their mother to do the same. They’d had time to
turn and scream. Clare had time to move, but she didn’t. She stood
there and let the car hit her as her horrified daughters looked
on.
    “ I just don’t understand,”
Jack whispered as he watched it a second time. “Why in the world
would she do that?”
    “ Can you, um, think of any
reason why she’d want to end her life?”
    “ Of course not,” he said,
but after his conversation with Jill he wasn’t so sure anymore.
“She’d never do that, especially in front of her children. They
were her whole world.”
    “ I’m sorry. I don’t mean to
imply—”
    “ That my wife was
suicidal?”
    “ It’s just, well… Why
didn’t she move?”
    Crushed by yet another wave of helpless
despair, Jack shook his head. “I don’t know.”
     

Chapter 2
    The video of Clare’s accident haunted Jack
for months. He’d wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in
sweat and breathing hard because he had once again relived the
horror of it in a dream. It was the same thing every time—he saw
the car coming toward her but couldn’t get to her in time to push
her out of the way. He was equally plagued by the questions of why
she hadn’t moved and what she’d been thinking in that final
life-changing instant before the car hit her.
    After more than a year of waiting and hoping
for some change in Clare’s condition, Frannie clued him in that the
girls never brought their friends home anymore because their house
had become a hospital staffed by round-the-clock nurses. In light
of this revelation, he’d made the unbearable decision to move Clare
into a nearby place of her own, her care overseen by the same team
of nurses.
    Jack had taken the day after the move to
wallow in his grief, but now he had no choice but to pull himself
together. Jamie had been running the architectural firm they owned
for more than a year on his own, the girls needed their father, and
he had to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. While
he’d much prefer to ignore all these pressing issues, he couldn’t
do that any longer.
    Standing in front of the mirror, he dragged
a razor over his face for the first time in several days. He went
through the rote motions the way he did everything lately—out of
necessity. His face seemed a little thinner than it had been the
last time he’d looked closely. On the inside, he was totally numb.
Would it always be this way? From now on, would he go through life
without feeling anything? Without experiencing joy? Was that his
fate?
    As he started the water in the shower, his
thoughts turned once again to Clare. Since memories were all he had
left of her, he allowed himself to revisit them often. He vividly
remembered the first time he ever saw her. She’d been tending bar
at the National Hotel on Block Island. In constant motion, she’d
been a whirling dervish of activity and banter and wit as she made
drinks, washed glasses, talked to customers, rang up sales, and
carried on a good-natured sparring match with the other two
bartenders.
    She’d looked then much as she did twenty
years later: petite with unruly blonde hair and the most amazing
blue eyes he’d ever seen.
    From across the bar, she’d glared at him.
“You got a problem, buddy?”
    “ I’m sorry. I didn’t mean
to stare. I’ve just never seen anyone get so much done in as little
time as you