Winter Tides Read Free

beach. The mother and sister stood on the sand watching, already a good distance north. Dave was nearly dead even with the smoke from the burning surfboard, so the rip was broad as hell, and the current seemed to be moving them hard to the south even as the rip was dragging them out.
    He felt the hostility of the ocean then, the cold water, the chop that splashed him so constantly in the face that he could hardly get a breath. A wave hammered down over a sandbar ahead and to the right, a dark wall of cloud-shadowed ocean that broke in a roaring avalanche of windblown Whitewater. For the first time the thought came to him that he might be in trouble, and he felt a sudden hollow fear in his chest that he mentally backed away from. Panic could drown him, and it would certainly drown the girl, if she hadn’t already gone down. Ahead of him loomed another mountain of moving water, and he swam toward it, the wave passing beneath him, and as he rose over the swell he saw her again, surprisingly close, lying on her back, sculling with her arms and kicking her feet frantically.
    He swam toward her, dog-paddling as much as swimming, angling around behind her and trying to stay out of sight. The last thing he needed was for her to go nuts when she saw him and try to climb up onto his head. Coming up behind her, he slipped his left hand across her shoulder and under her right arm, tightening his grip and levering his hip under her before she had a chance to move.
    Instantly wild with surprise, she tried to heave herself upright, throwing both arms out and beating the water with her fists.
    “It’s all right,” Dave shouted, hanging onto her and holding her steady. “You’re okay now.” She fought for another moment, out of a panicked excitement, and he treaded water hard, keeping them both well up out of the chop. The sound of the breaking waves seemed weirdly distant to him now, as if the backs of the swells blocked the noise of the breaking surf. The rip, which had slowed down in the deeper water, was dissipating, and Dave started sidestroking south. If he could get entirely free of the rip, he could haul her back inside the surf line, where the waves would push them into shore. The surf would kick the hell out of them, but what other choice did he have? They rose over a swell, and he scanned the beach for a lifeguard Jeep. There was nothing—just the smoke from the fire well to the north, dwindled down almost to nothing now. A couple of tiny dark figures, the mother and sister, kept pace with them on the beach.
    Get help
, he thought. There was a phone by the concession stands. The mother wasn’t thinking. It wasn’t her day to think. And she trusted him, too. She had faith in him.
    “What’s your name?” he asked the girl. That was the longest sentence he could phrase right now. He didn’t have the breath for anything more.
    She didn’t answer, but held up her wrist. He saw that she wore a bracelet of white beads with red letters on them, spelling out the name Elinor. There were two extra beads, a red diamond on one side, a red heart on the other.
    “Where you from?” He continued with the sidestroke. They didn’t seem to be moving out to sea any longer, but it was hard to tell if the rip had dropped them or was still holding on. He didn’t seem to be making any progress, though, just swimming in place.
    “Haddington,” she said after a moment, as if she had finally made the decision to speak to him.
    “Haddington to Huntington,” he said. “That’s kind of funny.” He swallowed a mouthful of water and coughed it back out. “Where’s that?” he asked after he got his voice back. He changed course, stroking straight in toward shore now. He had to try to get in again, rip or no rip, before he wore out.
    “Scotland.”
    “Scotland?” His right arm felt like rubber, and he was suddenly aware that he was cold, really cold. He scissored his legs, pushing the two of them forward another couple of feet, and