Tighter (Page 36)

In acknowledging Peter Quint, I’d let him in. He’d used Milo to communicate because he’d sensed an impressionable contact in me. Same as Uncle Jim and Hank. I knew this in capital letters. But now what? Did that mean he would follow me everywhere, always? Did I have to add his restless soul to the burdens I already carried?

I needed to medicate—badly—but I was down to my last handful, a little more than a dozen. Some painkillers, possibly another sleeping pill, some of Mom’s button-cute muscle relaxers and four wimpy blue antihistamines. I popped a couple of the antihistamines anyway, to take the edge off, but they weren’t much help.

Sleepless, I flipped and kicked for hours, and in the sleep-hushed hour before dawn, I finally crept downstairs for a bowl of cereal. Exhaustion unsteadied me, but it was still too dark to go outside, to run or bike or do anything to get out of my head.

Instead, I stole into the den and switched on the computer, fishing up Peter’s Facebook, staring again at his wall and his photos, rereading his mail and looking for another way in. If I could unlock the secret of Peter, maybe then I’d have the key that might release us both from our obsession.

Pendleton. I’d searched for it before. Lots of things were called Pendleton. A men’s discount clothing store in Warwick, Rhode Island. A breeder of King Charles spaniels in Los Angeles. But. The thought sparked. Peter Quint’s Pendleton would likely be in Massachusetts.

My fingers raced to specify PENDLETON, MA, and soon I’d hit a home page of sunny skies and gentle faces and testimonials that promised a healthful stay at the Pendleton Mental Health Facility. Was this his Pendleton? Was it worth checking out? It wasn’t a bad wager, and it was only thirty miles away, once I got off the ferry.

Peter had visited someplace called Pendleton one day before the crash. Had he been there to see someone specific? His mother fit this category—the She who was near but not visible, alive but not active in Peter’s life. Or that’s what Sebastian had said.

Morning light was creeping through the cracks. As day transformed the sky, I stole back upstairs and fell into bed. My bones were granite—if my bed had been an ocean, I’d have dropped straight to the bottom. Connie would be exasperated if I woke up too late. This was my last thought before sleep rescued me.

When I came to, noon was high and hot, and I was thinly bathed in sweat, the sheet sticking to my body, and when I got up, my hair lay damp on my neck and cheeks. Outside my bathroom window, I spied Isa in her bathing suit, lolling on a deck chair by the pool. She’d even brought out a pitcher plus two glasses of lemonade. As I watched, there was a rippling in the water, and then I saw Sebastian pull himself up to land, swipe a towel off the back of a chair, dry off, then flop down on his stomach on the chair next to Isa.

Sebastian to the rescue. I couldn’t have wished for better.

“ ‘She walks in beauty, like the night,’ ” he said, rolling over, his amber eyes bright with welcome when I came down in my bikini and cutoffs to join them a few minutes later. “That’s what I was planning to quote if you slept all day long.”

“Are you off today? You usually come over after work. I didn’t expect you.”

“Yeah, it’s usually the result of someone dropping by unexpectedly. I’m doing deliveries today, but it got so hot I decided I had to jump in a pool before noon. But dang, I should have been an au pair this summer. I could definitely handle the diva hours.”

In his tease, he’d deliberately put me on the hook. “I don’t usually sleep in,” I said, embarrassed. “Tell him, Isa.”

“Hmmm,” she said, “you do kinda, though, Jamie.”

Sebastian unbuckled his watch. “There’s an alarm built into it,” he said. “And it’s waterproof. You’re all set. I’ll take it back at the end of the summer.” He strapped it to my wrist.

“Oh.” The watch had heft, a cobalt face. I’d noticed and liked it before; it looked kind of manly fashionable. “Okay, then. Thanks.” I touched my fingers to Sebastian’s shoulder. He sprang to reaction as if he’d been waiting for it, folding his hand over mine, jumping up and using it as a lever to twist me against his body as he began moving us in locked, mechanical steps toward the pool’s deep end.

“See, we’ll test it. One hundred percent waterproof, promise.”

“Noooo … !” But it was such a delicious thrill, the backs of my legs against the fronts of his legs. I was struggling and laughing, with Isa shyly chiming in as she watched us—until I gave up and Sebastian and I went smashing into the shock of water. By the time I’d pushed and sputtered to surface, he was in a crawl halfway down the length.

I caught up with him in the next lap, and for a few more we kept pace, sinking to turn identical flips against the wall, two, three, four … over and over until I stopped, my lungs burning, to hold the wall, exhausted. I’d really lost ground from my former athletic days. Swimming, that’s what I should have been doing all along, the whole time I was here. I should have been keeping up with my physical-therapy exercises. Taking care of myself in these simple, sensible and obvious ways—why wasn’t it ever a clear choice?

“Are you gonna pull down her top now?”

I blinked the water out of my eyes to see that Isa had come to the edge of the pool. Where she was inspecting us.

“Isa!” I heard my mother’s voice in mine, all puritanical outrage.

“What? That’s what Pete did with Jessie.”

I was mortified, caught off guard, but Sebastian let out a playful growl as he reached one hand up out of the pool to clamp it around Isa’s ankle. Then he pretended to bite it as he launched himself out of the pool, and the whole awkwardness of Isa’s comment melted away into a game of tag.

“You’re not a bad swimmer,” he said to me later, after an exhausted Isa had trotted up to the house for a lemonade refill.

“I was into some sports—I ran track.”

“Why’d you give it up?”

“It gave me up,” I answered, a nonanswer. My coach had thought the injury shouldn’t have stopped me from quitting the team. It seemed so far away, running track. The discipline, the energy, the urge to compete. Like I’d been this whole other person. “I threw out my back,” I added quietly. “It’s an old injury, but it still bothers me.”

“They say swimming’s good for that, right?” Sebastian readjusted the lounge chair so he was parallel to the sun, as he dropped on a pair of sunglasses. “I take pool over beach any day, probably on account of almost drowning in the ocean.”