Purgatory Ridge

The stern, riding low in the water, was the easiest place from which to launch. LePere held the raft as steady as he could while Jo and the others got in. The rough seas made it difficult, but finally Grace was settled in back with one of the oars and Jo in front with the other. The two boys huddled in the middle, Scott with his arms around Stevie. LePere shoved them off.

They headed into a wind that threw the lake at them. Jo dug at the water with all her strength. They rode several feet up a swell, then dropped into the trough behind it. The black water broke over them with numbing cold, and it was clear to Jo that they were not much better off in the little yellow raft than they’d been on the foundering Anne Marie. Holding the compass near her face, she checked direction. She allowed herself one look back. She could barely see the lights of the boat. The mouth of darkness was already open, ready to swallow Cork forever. She turned her mind and her will to keeping her final promise to her husband.

For a long time, they battled the lake, using the squat oars as paddles. Jo’s arms had never hurt so much. Moving into the wind was tiring, but it was good in a way. They held their course more easily. Jo couldn’t tell at all if they were making distance. She didn’t speak to Grace, but she could feel the push of the other oar behind her as steady as her own. After three quarters of an hour, the wind slackened and the rain began to let up. In a few minutes, the storm passed. The lake grew calmer. As if a curtain had been pulled away, the moon and stars emerged, turning the water in front of them silver. At the end of the silver, Jo saw the black rise of land several hundred yards away, with lights scattered along the shoreline.

“We made it!” Grace shouted triumphantly at her back.

Not all of us, Jo thought, staring at the dark land ahead. And not all of me.

49

JOHN LEPERE WAS ALMOST HOME. He stood at the stern of the foundering Anne Marie and stared down into the black water of a lake he’d known his whole life, whose vast existence suffused every aspect of his being but whose true spirit had eluded all his attempts at understanding. LePere finally let go of trying to understand and accepted the only thing he knew for sure. Below the raging surface, along the rocky bottom hundreds of feet down, the water was still and silent, and he would soon lie there, where he’d always been meant to come to rest.

After the yellow raft was swallowed by the night and the storm, LePere turned back and appraised the situation. Bridger lay dead in the deckhouse. In the forward cabin below, Lindstrom was dead-or dying. These things were as they should be. But there was one element that had no place in this final drama. Cork O’Connor should never have been a part of it. The man had done nothing to deserve the end that awaited him.

LePere slogged across the cockpit that was swamped with icy water. He sat next to O’Connor and helped brace him against the pitch of the boat. He offered the only bit of comfort he could. “They got away.”

O’Connor lifted his head. “They’ll make it?”

“They’ll make it.” LePere didn’t just say this. He believed it, believed it because he’d seen firsthand what the two women and their boys were capable of. “They’re strong, O’Connor. In all the important ways.”

O’Connor had lowered his head again. John LePere didn’t know if he’d heard, if it made any difference.

“Here.” LePere took the life vest in both hands. “I’m going to put this on you.”

O’Connor looked up and shook his head. LePere moved closer to hear his words. “You wear it. Wasted on me.”

“I promised your wife,” LePere told him. “It’s a promise I’m going to keep.”

O’Connor cried out in pain as LePere maneuvered him into the vest, but he didn’t fight it. LePere didn’t know if the man understood the true reason for his wife’s request. Did it matter?

“There. That’ll keep your head above water. Now if I could just keep you dry, you’d be fine until the Coast Guard comes.”

He kept his words light, but when O’Connor raised his tired eyes, John LePere could see that he understood perfectly the truth of his predicament.

“I’m sorry,” LePere said, because he felt responsible.

O’Connor shook his head slightly. Was it a pardon? John LePere wondered.