to the cold, her stomach knotted with nausea, and even the vomit that
kept rising into her throat was icy; each time she choked it down, she
felt as if she had swallowed a vile slush of dirty snow.
Hatch is dead Hatch is dead….
“No,” she said in a harsh, angry whisper. “No. No.” denial raged
through her with the fury of a storm: Hatch could not be dead.
Unthinkable. Not Hatch, who never forgot a birthday or an anniversary,
who bought her flowers for no reason at all, who never lost his temper
and rarely raised his voice. Not Hatch, who always had time to listen
to the troubles of others and sympathize with them, who never failed to
have an open wallet for a friend in need, whose greatest fault was that
he was too damn much of a soft touch. He could not be, must not be,
would not be dead. He ran five miles a day, ate a low-fat diet with
plenty of fruits and vegetables, avoided caffeine and decaffeinated
beverages.
dn’t that count for something, damn it? He lathered on sunscreen in the
summer, did not smoke, never drank more than two beers or two glasses of
wine in a single evening, and was too easy-going ever to develop heart
disease due to stress. Didn’t self-denial and self-control count for a
Was creation so screwed ere was no justice any more?
Okay, all right, they said the good died young, which sure had been true
of Jimmy, and Hatch was not yet forty, young by any standard, okay,
agreed, but they also said that virtue was its own reward, and there was
plenty of virtue here, damn it, a whole shitload of virtue, which ought
to count for something, unless God wasn’t listening, unless He didn’t
care, unless the world was an even crueler place than she had believed.
She refused to accept it.
Hatch. Was. Not. Dead.
She drew as deep a breath as she could manage. Just as the last of the
light faded, plunging her into blindness again, she sank into the water,
pushed across the dashboard, and went through the missing windshield
onto the hood of the car.
Now she was not merely blind but deprived of virtually all five senses.
She could hear nothing but the wild thumping of her own heart, for the
water effectively muffled sound. She could smell and speak only at the
penalty of death by drowning. The anesthetizing effect of the glacial
river left her with a fraction of her sense of touch, so she felt as if
she were a disembodied spirit suspended in whatever medium composed
Purgatory, awaiting final judgment.
Assuming that the river was not much deeper than the car and that she
would not need to hold her breath long before she reached the surface,
she made another attempt to free Hatch. Lying on the hood of the car,
holding fast to the edge of the windshield frame with one numb hand,
straining against her body’s natural buoyancy, she reached back inside,
groped in the blackness until she located the steering wheel and then
her husband.
Heat rose in her again, at last, but it was not a sustaining warmth.
Her lungs were beginning to burn with the need for air.
Gripping a fistful of Hatch’s jacket, she pulled with all her might-and
to her surprise he floated out of his seat, no longer immovable,
suddenly buoyant and unfettered. He caught on the steering wheel, but
only briefly, then bobbled out through the windshield as Lindsey slid
backward across the hood to make way for him.
A hot, pulsing pain filled her chest. The urge to breathe grew
overpowering, but she resisted it.
When Hatch was out of the car, Lindsey embraced him and kicked for the
surface. He was surely drowned, and she was clinging to a corpse, but
she was not repulsed by that macabre thought. If she could get him
ashore, she would be able to administer artificial respiration.
Although the chance of reviving him was slim, at least some hope
remained. He was not truly dead, not really a corpse, until all hope
had been exhausted.
She burst through the surface into a howling wind that made the