Free B0092XNA2Q EBOK by Charles Martin Page B

through the moment I appeared in his church after her confession.
    In front of me, nearly a mile in the distance, she turned hard to port ninety degrees left—and continued her scream across the gulf. At this rate, she’d be in Cuban waters in about forty-five minutes. Maybe thirty. I cut the angle and soon came in behind her, aquarter mile back. She slowed, then turned hard to starboard and gunned it. We were now fifteen miles out into the gulf, where the depth was rolling between nine and fifteen feet. Another half mile and she turned hard again, followed by another. This erratic serpentine course continued for a mile. Then another. I couldn’t figure out what she was doing until my eyes landed on the depth finder.
    She was looking for deeper water. One of the reasons the gulf makes for such great fishing is the grass flats—a shelf of water that extends miles offshore that never grows deeper than about fifteen feet. The caveat to this is the occasional “hole.”
    I throttled back, idled, and watched her frantically searching for a watery grave. Didn’t take her long to find it.
    The candle disappeared.
    I killed the engine and watched her disappear into her cabin only to reappear moments later. She was hunched over, moving slowly. Like she was carrying something heavy. While she fiddled with something below her, I coasted within a hundred feet, lowered the anchor, and slipped into the water—breaststroking to her stern.
    I could hear her dragging something heavy across the floor of her boat. Then she lifted it onto the platform at the rear, balancing it next to the edge. I swam faster.
    I reached her boat and hung silently from the stern while she stood on the ledge above me and muttered to herself. She busied her hands with something small. The heavy thing she’d brought up from the cabin was a white bucket, which now sat next to her. She had undressed again and stood naked save the rope that ran from her neck to the bucket. Obviously, she intended to finish what she’d started. Her boat was equipped with a sun pad—a padded platform directly above the engines.
    Her hands were cupped in front of her, nervously moving. The mumbling continued. It sounded like she was saying the same thing over and over again. Or parts of the same thing. She stepped up on the edge of the boat, her toes dangling over the water. I listened, catching the last of a sentence. Her voice was breaking. I caught bitsand pieces. “… mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.” Then the moonlight lit the strand of beads in her hands.
    The rosary.
    Her prayer was growing louder. I knew that if she was hell-bent on killing herself, sooner or later she’d succeed and no power on earth, and certainly not me, would ever be able to stop her. She needed a choice, but she also needed to know what was at stake. Her legs tensed, knees bent. She sucked in a deep breath. Then let it out. All of it.
    I said the only thing I could think of. “That won’t stop the pain.”
    The sound of my voice was not what she expected. Nor was any sound. She screamed at the top of her lungs and fell backward into the boat—which was better than falling forward. She landed with a thud on the padded seats and began frantically crab-crawling backward into the cabin. Tethered to the bucket, she looked like a dog pulling against its own chain. Covered in darkness and her screaming, I pulled myself out of the water looking like the creature from the black lagoon.
    I touched a button on the dash, turning on the interior lights, so she could see me through eyes that were now the size of Oreo cookies. She’d pulled her knees into her chest and sat saying nothing. I pulled out my pocket knife, opened the blade, and was about to cut the rope that led to the bucket, but then thought better of it so I left it alone.
    Neither of us said a word for several minutes. Finally, I waved my hand across the bucket and asked the question that was bugging me. “Why this way? Why