Swim Deep

by BETH KERY

  “I spoke with the doctor back then, Anna. About Elizabeth’s medical tests, I know she couldn’t have children.”

  “Then why did you ask me if I was adopted?” I asked bitterly. “Evan?” I asked again when he didn’t immediately respond. “Did Madaster tell you who he believed my father was?”

  His face became that death mask I hated with all my soul. His shook his head once, as if to clear it.

  “Noah Madaster is a liar. He’s trying to get to you. To us. We have to try to resist it. This is all my fault. I should never have brought you here. I should have known how dangerous it would be, for you to speak with Noah.”

  My head dipped and wavered. My neck didn’t feel strong enough to support it anymore. My throat felt raw from being sick. I felt so sore. All the certain truths, and the possible truths, battered at me from every direction.

  “I’m the one who went to meet him, even though I promised you I wouldn’t.”

  “What’s done is done. You’ve been sick, and you’re weak,” he said, gently cradling my head. “You need to lie down. Can you stand?”

  He helped me get to my feet and escorted me to the bed. I lay there, appreciating how hollow I felt. How empty. Evan came out of the bathroom carrying a glass of water. He sat down on the bed next to me.

  “You’ve remembered other things, haven’t you? About your meeting with Madaster?” he asked me reluctantly.

  I experienced a sharp pain in my thumb, and winced. Tears sprang to my eyes, as if Madaster was there, cruelly pinching it all over again.

  “Noah lies easier than breathing,” Evan said. “You’re safe now. And you’re never going to have to see Noah Madaster again. Or listen to his lies. He wanted to poison you. Not just with a drug. With ideas. Delusions.” Evan’s gaze drifted over me, anger hardening his jaw. “And he’s succeeded, Anna. Partially. Don’t continue absorbing the poison by believing him.”

  “He’s been doing his research. He knew about me. About us. He said you launched an attack on him by bringing me to Les Jumeaux, and he had no choice but to launch a counterattack.”

  His expression darkened. “I know. I got that, from when he was ranting at me.”

  Did he tell you what he told me? Do you loathe me now, Evan? Are you forcing yourself to touch and comfort me? Is that why I see that new wariness in your eyes?

  Because I’m unnatural.

  The thoughts were too heinous to dwell upon for long. Instead, I landed on a memory—a suspicion— that was nearly as terrible.

  “Do you know when I first fell in love with you?” I asked him.

  His head jerked up. I saw his surprise at my question. His vulnerability.

  “No,” he replied gruffly.

  “When you took me, with so much confidence, to my favorite painting in the museum. It was the most incredible moment of my life,” I said with stark honesty. “I felt seen by you, Evan.”

  His mouth fell open. His eyes shone with emotion.

  I leaned up on my elbow and took the water glass from him. I swallowed some of the cool liquid, trying to steady myself against a truth I didn’t want to hear, but knew I must.

  “One of the things that Madaster told me yesterday was that he’d been in contact with Tommy Higoshi,” I said. “That part of his research into us was getting information from Tommy about how we met… how you put your plan into place.”

  “Tommy talked to Noah? Why wouldn’t Tommy tell me that Noah had contacted him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, handing the water glass back to him. “Madaster said he forced Tommy to talk to him. You said that Madaster either manipulates or blackmails everyone he meets. Maybe he had something on Tommy. Something business-wise. They’re both in the medical research field, and Tommy had met him before at a conference, remember? You’d have to call Tommy, to know for sure. That’s not what I’m trying to find out,” I said. I saw Evan’s puzzlement, and got to the point.

  “Did you enlist Tommy’s help in bringing me into your life? Did you ask him things about me, things to give you an inside track? Things to make me fall in love with you? More specifically, was Tommy the one who told you what my favorite painting in the museum was?”

  “No,” he roared. I was so empty, so exhausted that I didn’t even jump at his furious response.

  “Dammit, Anna, this is precisely why I didn’t want you to see that devil. Don’t let Noah do this. Don’t let him poison you against me. You see he’s already got his hooks into Tommy somehow, in order to give him another weapon to fight me? Us? I swear to you, Tommy never told me anything, or did anything, to give me an ‘in’ with you. The only thing he did was show me some of your paintings, at my request, before I ever contacted you on that dating site.”

  “You asked to see my paintings, after you’d gotten my name and information from that detective agency you used.”

  “Yes. But I didn’t need to pretend amazement when it came to your work. You’re brilliant. I was mystified, and half in love with you, just by looking at your paintings. I don’t believe I’m being hyperbolic by saying that, either. And as for your favorite painting at the museum, Tommy never told me anything about it. What I told you was one hundred percent true. I just knew somehow it would be a favorite, because I knew you.”

  Maybe it was odd for me to be so preoccupied on this aspect, out of all Madaster’s claims. But somehow, if I didn’t clear up this incident in my head—if I couldn’t believe in that one thing in my life I’d held so dear—I wondered if I could ever untangle anything.

  I wondered if I could ever believe in anything again.

  Evan saw my doubt.

  “Think about it, Anna. Did you ever even tell Tommy what your favorite painting at the museum was?”

  I saw his point. I didn’t think I had mentioned it to him. Tommy would have known that particular painting, it’s true. He was an art expert and a huge donor to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

  But I don’t think I’d ever discussed my partiality to that painting with Tommy.

  “I don’t think I did,” I said slowly. “No, I’m sure I didn’t,” I said with more confidence.

  Evan exhaled, clearly relieved. He’d seemed to guess how important the whole issue was to me. It seemed to me that it was just as crucial to him.

  “You can’t let Noah insert himself between us,” he said.

  It’s not just Noah Madaster who has done that.

  I wanted to ask him what other things Madaster had told him yesterday. But I was afraid of his possible answers. It overwhelmed me. As if Evan had sensed that, he reached into his pocket and took out a white pill.

  “The doctor prescribed you a sedative. He said that one of the side effects of the ketamine can be insomnia. I know how restless you were last night. This will help you to sleep easily, so you can recover more quickly. Are you okay to take one?”

  I nodded, more than willing to surrender to forgetfulness for a period of time.

  I swallowed the pill.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I woke up at around two that afternoon, feeling groggy. A nasty fuzz had grown inside of my mouth. Evan was there, sitting on one of the chairs in the small lounge area. He wore his glasses and was reading a page in a thick binder. When I rustled beneath the sheets, he looked over the top of his glass frames and met my stare.

  “The merger,” I murmured, glancing down at the binder he read. “You must have fallen behind on it all.”

  “I haven’t fallen behind on anything,” he said, taking off his glasses and setting the binder on the coffee table. “And if I had, it wouldn’t matter.” He walked toward me. “How do you feel?”

  I stretched, considering his question.

  “Not bad, I guess.”

  It was kind of true. Some of that glorious mental insulation had been erected while I’d slept. I’d never consider denial
a bad thing again in my life. It saved me, during those dangerous days.

  “I’m hungry,” I said.

  “That’s a good sign,” Evan said, a small, wonderful smile shaping his mouth. It kicked me, that smile. I looked away, anxiety rising in me like a flash fire.

  I showered and dressed, and we went downstairs to the hotel restaurant for a meal. I started out ravenous. I’d been nauseated on and off since awakening in the hospital, and hadn’t eaten solid food in two days. Now, I was lightheaded with hunger. I asked the waiter if he could bring me bread before my entrée arrived.

  After three quarters of a roll and butter, the nausea returned.

  Nevertheless, I forced down a portion of my meal when it arrived. I worried I might throw up at any moment, but was highly aware of Evan’s concerned gaze on me. Aside from trying not to worry him, I needed the strength food would give me.

  I sensed this whole catastrophe wasn’t over yet.

  “How long were you planning on staying here?” I asked Evan after we left the restaurant and returned to the hotel room.

  “Just until you can recover a little. I’ll get someone to go to Les Jumeaux and have our things forwarded, including your paintings,” he said, locking the door and walking toward me. He stopped in front of me. “Have you thought about where you’d like to go?”

  I shook my head, avoiding his stare.

  “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. I’ll make sure you have whatever you need. I’ll do whatever you want, even leave you, if that’s what you decide. But not yet. Not until you’re stronger.”

  I studied the design on the carpet, holding my breath.

  “But please know this,” he continued, his deep voice washing over me. “I love you. And I will never leave you willingly.”

  My lungs burned. I exhaled in a lurching gasp.

  “I don’t understand how you can walk away from this whole thing with Madaster.”

  “Don’t you?” he asked. I saw his hand rise, as though he were about to touch me. I took a step back, instinctively avoiding him. His hand fell to his side. I saw the desolation on his face.

  Madaster had plunged a knife into both Evan and me in that tower yesterday. He’d wounded us both, and triumphed in our pain.

  He’d abused and neglected Lorraine for her entire adult life.

  He’d peeled back the very skin of my existence and scooped out my identity.

  (He murdered me, choked off my life like he’d snuff out a candle. Light from my darkness, please help me.)

  I trembled, recognizing the speaker in my head, and yet denying it, at once. Believing, and all the while knowing it was ridiculous to believe a smidgeon of Madaster’s ravings.

  “You have heard her, haven’t you? You’ve seen her.”

  I silenced the charged memory with effort. Evan had said that Elizabeth was barren, after all. It made no sense for me to be so overwhelmed by Madaster’s claims.

  I focused on Evan’s face. It made no sense that this man could be my biological father.

  “Of course I understand that you want to leave,” I told him.

  But it was a lie. I didn’t understand how Evan could walk away from Les Jumeaux. Because somehow, in the past few days, Evan’s obsession with seeing justice served in the case of Noah Madaster, Evan’s hunger for revenge, had transferred to me.

  (You will be the wielder, darling. And you will be the weapon.)

  I smiled to reassure Evan.

  “I think it’s time I called my parents, don’t you?” I asked.

  Evan seemed very uneasy about the idea of me speaking to my parents. But he didn’t try to postpone the call, for which I was thankful. In fact, he offered to take a short walk, to give me some privacy. When he went to leave the hotel suite, he hesitated with his hand on the door.

  “Are you going to tell them everything?” he asked me quietly.

  “Do you mean am I going to tell them about how you married me to get back at Noah Madaster? And Madaster’s claim that I’m somehow Elizabeth’s daughter?”

  I saw his regret at my blunt questions. Would there ever be a time when I didn’t see guilt and wariness and pain in his eyes? I used to see heat, desire, and love. Or at least I thought I did. Now, the memory of his hunger cuts at me even more than his regret.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to tell them exactly, to be honest,” I admitted. “But I have to find a way to ask them if there’s any chance what Madaster claimed was true.”

  “And you’re sure you’ll be okay if I go?”

  He saw my impatient expression and put up a hand, as if to surrender. He left the suite, closing the door quietly behind him.

  In the end, broaching the complicated topic of possible adoption wasn’t as difficult as I’d imagined. My father wasn’t home yet from work when I called, so I had my mother all to myself. We talked about my painting and what was going on in Jessica’s life. She told me that she and dad had joined a gym. But after ten minutes or so of idle chitchat, my mother was the one who cut to the chase.

  “Okay, tell me what’s going on,” she said. I could hear pans clanging in the background, and pictured her in our bright kitchen, with the blue barstools pulled up to the oak countertop island. My mom ritualistically had a cup of tea and unloaded the dishwasher when she got home from work. I imagined her favorite pink mug steaming as it sat on the counter. A sharp feeling of homesickness went through me.

  “What do you mean, get to the point?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know. Something in your voice. Call it a mother’s intuition. You didn’t call to hear about your dad’s and my ab workout, did you? Is something wrong, honey?”

  “I wouldn’t say wrong, necessarily, no. But something happened to me recently,” I began carefully. “I was at a local library, and there was a photo on the wall of someone who helped build the library. Anyway, this woman looked almost exactly like me.”

  The pans stopped rattling.

  “That’s odd.”

  “I mean, she was almost my double, Mom. And it got me wondering… Do we have any relatives out here? I know you and Dad went to school in Northern California and lived there for a few years. But we don’t have family here, right?”

  “No family that I know of. We’re all scattered around the Midwest.”

  I heard the caution in her tone, though.

  “Mom?” I asked softly. “I know it may seem strange for me to ask this… but is there any chance I was adopted?”

  I heard a scraping sound and knew she’d just pulled out one of the blue barstools and was sitting down. I, too, suddenly felt a need to sit. I sank down heavily onto one of the chairs in the seating area.

  “I don’t know who that woman in the picture you saw was, Anna,” my mom said. “But… Jesus, I wasn’t expecting this,” she continued under her breath. “I wish your father was here.”

  “Mom?” I asked, because she’d faded off.

  “I’ve imagined telling you before, but never like this. I never thought you’d be the one to bring it up. To ask me point blank.” She sighed. “We never wanted you to feel less than… never wanted you to feel that you weren’t one hundred percent one of us, our beautiful, treasured little girl—”

  Her voice broke. I just sat there, clutching my phone to my ear, my heart fluttering like it wanted to escape from my ribcage.

  “You know that your father met me when he was in law school and I was an undergrad at Berkeley. We eloped before I even graduated, and lived in this grubby little apartment in Oakland while your dad clerked for a local judge. Hardly a similar scenario to your marriage and living situation, but it was wonderful. Some of the best days of my life.” Her laugh sounded wistful. “Then I graduated and got a job as an art teacher at a local high school, and your dad got a good job as a human resources attorney at Kaiser. And we saved up enough to buy ou
rselves a little house in Emeryville.”

  I’d heard this story a hundred times before—the little dive apartment in Oakland with the heater that always gave out on the coldest nights, and the rickety winding stairwell that was such a pain for carrying up groceries. And how after a few years of marriage, they’d bought their first home. They’d felt like royalty in their new little house.

  Their thoughts had turned to starting a family.

  “You said that’s where I was conceived,” I inserted at this point. “At the new house you’d bought. That’s where I was born. In Emeryville. It’s on my birth certificate. Then Dad was offered a new job in Chicago. When I was a few months old, we moved.”

  “I know that’s what we’ve told you, honey. But the truth is, we had trouble conceiving a baby. We tried for almost a year before we went to a specialist. And we were told that we’d probably never successfully have a biological baby that was both of ours.”

  “So I am adopted.”

  “Yes.” She made a sound of frustration. “I wish your father was here. He’ll be so upset, knowing I told you like this, on the phone. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, now that you’ve finished school. Now that you’re a married woman. I’ve been thinking about telling you the truth… and now, this call. I hope you’re not angry, Anna. Maybe you think it was selfish of us, not to tell you, but I truly believe we didn’t do it for us. Not entirely, anyway. You were ours, from the moment we laid eyes on you. And we were yours. Forever. I never wanted you to believe anything different.”

  Her small sob cut through my stunned state. In the suspension I’d existed in between belief and disbelief, I’d half expected she might confirm my suspicion.

  But at the same time, you can never really prepare for being told that your entire past wasn’t at all what you thought it was.

  “I’m not mad, Mom. I’m not. You and Dad will always be my parents, no matter what. I’m just trying to understand. Is Jessica adopted, too?”