Her Death Was Also Water by Allen C. Jones

Author:Allen C. Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MidnightSun Publishing

CHAPTER 20

Charlotte wakes early in the morning, the sun halved by the horizon at the end of a shimmering carpet of its own making. The air is still brisk, but already the sun feels too hot, caustic as acid upon her face. She sits up, her back stiff from sleeping on the unforgiving foam seat, her throat so parched she can barely unglue her tongue from her palate. She wants water, and finds herself automatically checking to see if Deacon is up. This irks her. They need to stop letting him be in charge, she thinks, though she is relieved he’s still asleep and that confrontation need not come now. She slips quietly to the jug beneath the dash and takes a long cool sip. She has never tasted anything so delicious and refreshing in her life. Her whole body shivers with pleasure.

Trent sees Charlotte taking the water from where he’s lying up front. He sits up and she can’t read the look on his face. She holds up the jug, but he shakes his head. He mouths ‘good morning,’ stretches his arms over his head, pulls off his shirt, and starts fishing from the front of the boat.

The sea is calm and the sky is a white so pale it looks scoured of color. Even the sun seems reduced, nothing but an orange dot accidentally dropped on a bare canvas. Charlotte traces the horizon with her eyes, the curvature of the earth falling away, and yet somehow also remaining flat, like she’s looking through a fishbowl lens. She shades her eyes, considers swimming, rubs her calves and thighs to warm them up, then rests her chin on the gunwale. The water has grown clearer, the visibility at least ten feet, and she sees a school of fish pass under the boat, silver slivers no bigger than a finger, all turning suddenly and at once, as if on command. She gets the other pole from Trent and drops the lure down, eying the fish as they dart away from the flickering spinner that dwarfs the largest of them. Trent moves over next to her.

‘Nice spot you got here,’ he whispers, dropping his lure down and making it dance in front of the uninterested fish.

‘You’re scaring them,’ Charlotte says, by which she means she doesn’t mind that he has come over to sit with her. He nods, understanding, making his lure bounce madly now so it does actually frighten the school away.

In an hour everyone is up, Deacon hands out chocolate bars, and breakfast is taken in an almost prayerful silence. Charlotte sucks her teeth clean after every bite, making sure there is no flavor left before moving on to the next bite. After they eat, she pulls out the pile of DVDs Deacon picked up and reads through them, trying to keep her mind occupied. Tiring of this, she puts her elbows on the gunwale and looks down into the water again, hoping to see more fish.

There beneath the boat, clinging to it like some strange mollusk that has attached itself there, is Rose.

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