Winter Tides Read Free Page A

felt the muscle in his left calf tightening up. He couldn’t afford a cramp, not if he couldn’t use his arms to swim with. She didn’t have any kind of Scottish accent, and he had the notion that she was lying to him, although how she could find the energy to make up lies at a time like this …
    He dropped her then. She slipped out of his grasp and went under, and he caught her under the arms as she fought to get her head out of the water. He threw his arm across her chest again, leaned back, and started swimming. “Sorry,” he gasped.
    Now she was breathing hard, again, quick and shallow with fear. “We’re all right,” he told her, but he knew they weren’t. “Haddington’s near the ocean?”
    He felt her nod.
    “Good beaches?”
    She didn’t respond now.
    “I’ve got to switch arms,” Dave said to her, treading water again. “You can just relax. I won’t let you go.” Without waiting for an answer, he rolled beneath her, sliding his right arm across her chest and loosening his left, getting his right hip under her and starting to swim again. His sidestroke was nearly worthless on his left side, but his right arm was done for, at least for a little while. In a minute he would switch back. He looked back over his shoulder toward the shore, watching the backs of the waves form in the distance and listening to the sound of their breaking, which was a continuous roar now. He thought about his wetsuit lying on the beach next to his surfboard, and about not wanting to give the twins’ mother any advice, even though he had known damned well he should have.
    It was almost funny. He had been too gutless to say anything to their mother, and now he was out in the middle of the ocean trying to save her child, and both of them, he and the child, were going to drown.
    If they were my kids …
    “So that was your twin sister?”
    “No.”
    “No?”
    “She’s not my sister.”
    “She looks like your sister.”
    It was work to talk. Too much work to play games, and the girl was obviously lying, which must have taken some effort, some thought. Her matter-of-fact voice was irritating. The tone struck him as weird, almost hateful, as if she was purposefully insulting him.
    His stroke was sloppy, and he was kicking rubber-legged. He concentrated on evening it out, and at the same time he wondered if he should give it up and just tread water. He could tread water for another hour—although not with the girl hanging onto his back….
    They would get a lifeguard boat out to them long before that.
    “She’s my cousin,” the girl said after a moment. She had relaxed a little now, letting him carry her weight, and she stared at the sky, as if watching the moving clouds.
    “She’s always wanted to look like me,” she said. “But she was burned. There was a fire. Her face is ugly, and her hair was burned off.”
    “Her hair?”
    “That’s a wig. She cries at night because she’s ugly. I lie there and listen to her cry. I was trying to drown her to make her stop.”
    She said this almost cheerfully, talking to the sky, chatting away now, and Dave nearly dropped her in surprise. Her words sounded alien, as gray and cold as the ocean, as if she were talking about killing a bug. And now he was certain that she was telling the truth now, about wanting to drown her sister, and Dave remembered her trying to haul the other girl out into the ocean, into the rip. He felt the irrational urge to drop her just to wake her up—let her kick and thrash for a moment, until her attitude adjusted.
    And if he dropped her now he could save himself….
    He drew back from the picture in his mind.
    He could feel the dull ache of the half-relaxed cramp in his calf, and he was careful not to straighten his ankle too far and bring it on, and yet the bent ankle took the power out of his kick. He watched the ocean now for signs of an approaching wave. They’d made some progress, and a big enough swell might pick them up.
    The girl was