“Give her to me! Please, Ivy-Rose!”
Mom clings to me and won’t let go even when I start kicking and screaming. It’s as if she has superhuman strength.
“Mom! Let me go to Dad! I want to go to Dad!” Black smoke is everywhere. My lungs hurt. “Mom!”
At that moment, the yacht is rocked again by a loud bang. The deck rips open as if it was melting beneath us. Mom jumps to her feet. “Oh God!” With me in her arms, she staggers to the railing.
Dad stretches out his arms to me. “I’ll save you both, Ivy-Rose. I can do it,” he calls over the roar of the fire.
A gigantic flame shoots up from somewhere. Mom stares at Dad with her fear-filled eyes and then pushes me into his arms.
“Jump!” Dad yells—and Mom jumps.
I scream like crazy. I don’t want to go into the water, which now looks dark and rough. The waves are much too high, but we have to get to Mom. She thrashes in the water, desperately flailing her arms to avoid drowning. Dad has to help her.
“Nicholas!” she screams at the top of her lungs, her dress billowing in the water like a balloon. “Jump!”
Dad steps forward and looks down. “I’ll take good care of her! I promise!” he calls down.
Mom goes under but comes back up again because she’s paddling so frantically with her arms. Her hair is sticking to her head and her eyes are full of sheer panic. “Nic!” she screams. “Please!”
I want Dad to finally jump and help her, but he just stands there, looking down and holding me tightly.
“Mommy!” She’s so scared. Sobbing, I stretch out my arms to her, but Dad suddenly turns and runs with me to the other side of the yacht.
There he jumps off.
My heart is pounding so hard that I’m afraid my chest will explode.
Dad is abandoning Mom! He is letting her drown!
Even as the fear of the water overwhelms me, I hear her calling out faintly, like a call from the bottom of the deep ocean. Nicholas. Nicholas. Nicholas.
Maybe I’m merely imagining it. Dad is swimming away with me, far away from the yacht.
I cry the whole time, swallowing tears and water. This is my fault. If I hadn’t betrayed Mom, we would never have come out here.
“She would have taken us down with her,” I hear Dad say over and over, but I don’t understand what he means.
It’s my fault. The words circle inside me like a whirlpool that pulls me down, further and further down to a place of oblivion.
Chapter 17
When I came to, I was lying on a bed with a white blanket. I was drenched in sweat. For a moment, I thought I was six years old again at Mount Sinai Hospital, but after a few seconds, the realization dripped into me like bitter, sharp moonshine. I was in my Southern room.
Dad had said Isaac was still alive and that had knocked me out or done something to me. Maybe I had a panic attack and fell into an exhausted sleep. But I had dreamed or remembered… I remembered…I awoke with a start.
“Mom!” I shouted. “Oh God, Mom!” Tears welled up in my eyes. I felt sick and barely made it to my bathroom to throw up in the toilet. I gagged until I was spitting up not Danny’s Burger but green bile and bright stars.
You did that on purpose!
I saw the four large pans, brimming with oil. My stomach clenched again.Dad…no-no-no…
I braced myself on the toilet seat, straightened up, and staggered past the gray pillars to the sink.Dad, what did you do?
Then it hit me. Dad wasn’t my dad! I repeated it several times in my head.Dad isn’t my father!But that didn’t make it any more real.
I thought of the copy that was under my mattress.STR analysis, mother’s DNA sample…Dad must have ordered a paternity test not long after Mom’s death. And even without reading the letter, I knew the result.
