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The waves rolled in endlessly to shore, and Mark let his mind wander once more to that dark place. Why wait until his trip around the world to get closer to Timothy? He could just get up on his feet and walk right into the ocean. Then all of this pain, all of this grief and loss, would end.
He pulled himself to his feet, not bothering to dust the sand from his shorts. Why bother? He whipped off his shirt and dropped it listlessly to the sand. Would someone find it? Would anyone even notice he was gone? Who would come looking for him?
Edward?
Laura?
The thought of Laura’s bright green eyes stopped him a second. He didn’t know why. He’d just met the woman. Yet something made him pause.
Her loud laugh? The way she’d run, drunk, down the beach away from him, her white, pale legs pumping hard as she sprinted away from her troubles?
But even she wasn’t enough. No boat. No race. No Timothy. It all felt so overwhelming and hopeless.
This time, he’d do it, he thought as he took a step forward into the warm Caribbean, the water lapping at his tanned toes. He took another step and he found himself ankle deep. Another two steps and the water lapped above his knees, warm, inviting. The solution to all his problems. If he couldn’t sail on the ocean to be closer to Timothy, then he’d get closer this way.
Did his boy walk out from this very spot? he wondered. He could have, midway between the condo and the natural, sloping dunes ahead of him.
Mark heard the seagulls calling and looked up, seeing the birds circling above him in the clear blue sky. Had that been the last thing Timothy had seen before he’d gotten swept under the waves?
Another step and he was waist deep. He could feel the sandy bottom with his toes, knew the drop off was coming soon, where it went from three feet to eight in a matter of inches. Tiny little silver fish swam around him in the ocean, glinting in the sun. Had Timothy gone after one of them? Delighted by their shine? Completely unaware of how dangerous the ocean could be, the water that would keep coming. The boy was too young to float. His life jacket had been abandoned on the beach, on the towel where his mother lay, eyes closed, drifting off to sleep.
Mark was about twenty feet out now. He took another step and the sandy bottom of the ocean floor fell away from him, and he sank, his head dipping below the water, his body buoyed by the cool salty waves. Water rushed into his ears and his nose, though he clamped his mouth shut on reflex, holding his breath. He slipped downward, below the sparkling surface, below the sunlight that beamed through the top of the water.
He reached the sandy bottom, still holding his breath, the surface just a few feet above his head. He held his breath until his lungs ached, and then he released it, the bubbles floating upward to the surface and the sunlight. He looked up, his lungs burning, as each second increased his need to draw air, his lungs angrily protesting the lack of oxygen.
He tried to keep himself still, but his arms and legs defied him, and eventually he kicked frantically to the surface, exploding upward and drawing in a huge breath.
He was alive.
And he was a coward.
I can’t even do this, he thought. Even his own body defied him. He simply wasn’t able to keep himself below the surface. How unfair, when Timothy would’ve fought against the waves uselessly, his arms not strong enough to keep himself afloat without his life preserver. Mark turned back to the shore.
He saw Laura standing there, waving. This day she wore a gauzy, flowered sundress that just hit her knees. Her legs were still pale, almost as white as the small white flowers in the print.
Was she shouting something at him? Impossible to tell with the waves in his ears, the sound of water rushing all around him. He swam away from the deep, and eventually hit soft sand again as he walked toward her. What did she want?
Had she seen him try to kill himself? Had she seen him fail?
“Are you all right?” she asked him, green eyes concerned as she looked him up and down.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he snapped, defensive.
“I saw you walk out there, and then you just…disappeared.” She pointed to the roiling waves. “It’s like you…I don’t know…like you sank on purpose.” She shook her head, her dark bob shaking back and forth. She bit her lip, clearly not ready to call him suicidal. Did she suspect?
“Just cooling off,” he lied, not wanting to get into it, not wanting to burden Laura, or to open up the door to a million questions he couldn’t answer. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you,” she said, meeting his gaze with determination. She looked like she was about to give him a lecture. What had he done now?
“You found me.” He grabbed his shirt from the sand and shook it off, then he used it as a makeshift towel, wiping the stinging salt water from his face.
