Free Finding North by Claudia Hall Christian

funny?” she
asked.
    “ You,” he said.
    He reached over to turn on
the lamp on his bedside table. He sat up with his back against the
headboard.
    “ Why am I funny?”
Indignant, she sat up. “I’m not trying to be funny.”
    He patted his lap. When
she didn’t put her head on his lap, he grabbed her shoulder and
pulled. Her head fell onto his lap.
    “ What’s going on?” John
asked.
    “ I . . .”
Alex started.
    “ You don’t want to go,”
John said.
    “ I don’t want to go,” Alex
said.
    “ I don’t want you to go,”
John said. “Joey and Máire don’t want you to go. But go you
will.”
    Alex didn’t say
anything.
    “ What happened this
morning?” John asked.
    “ What do you mean?” Alex
asked.
    “ In the pool,” John said.
“I could see it in your eyes when you came home. I wanted to talk
to you then, but your mother arrived, and you needed meds, and it
was a party and work and . . .”
    He stroked her
military-shorn hair, and Alex snuggled into his lap.
    “ What happened?” His voice
was low and intimate. She looked up at him.
    “ I’m not sure,” Alex said.
“That’s the problem. I don’t know if I fell asleep or passed out
or . . .”
    Alex swallowed
hard.
    “ I was feeling sorry for
myself,” Alex said. “And hating the lap-swimming man.”
    She sighed. He was so
silent that she looked up to see if he was asleep. He gave her a
soft smile.
    “ What . . .” he started.
    “ I hit my hand on the
wall,” Alex raised the offending hand. There was a scrape across
her knuckles. “And I hit my head. One-two. Scrape, bam, and then I
was falling to the bottom of the pool.”
    John’s fingers found the
bump on her head from the wall. He lightly stroked the
injury.
    “ I tried to breathe,” Alex
said. She put her hand to her throat. “But my
throat . . . The surface seemed like it was too far,
just way too far to go. I . . .”
    “ Sounds horrible,” he
said.
    “ Like waterboarding,” Alex
said.
    John sucked in a quick
breath. She looked at him.
    “ S.E.R.E.,” John
said.
    “ Only worse,
because . . .” Alex said.
    “ Because?” John
asked.
    “ There was no hope of
surviving,” Alex said. “With waterboarding, you always think that
somehow, some way, you’ll survive. You negotiate with yourself: ‘If
only I endure long enough . . .’ ‘Surely I can make
it through this to see my family one more time. Just to look at
them one more time . . .’ Or ‘maybe I’ll figure out
what they want, and they’ll stop. Of course, they’ll stop. What is
it that they want?’ You always think you’ll survive. Always. Your
mind can’t tolerate any other thought. If you give up, you’ll
surely die. But this morning . . .”
    “ You thought you had
died,” John said.
    “ Everyone was there,”
Alex’s voice became heavy. “Charlie and Paul
and . . . Jax and Y and Mike
and . . . even Larry and Dwight . . .
Dahlia, too. They were all there.”
    “ Where?” he
asked.
    “ Standing there,” Alex
said. “Along the wall of the pool, and
the . . .”
    “ The cricket,” John
finished her sentence. His voice rose with concern. “You saw the
cricket this morning?”
    “ He was sitting on the
bottom of the pool, waiting for me,” Alex said. “He reached out his
hand and told me to take the hand. I thought he meant his hand, but my
dad . . .”
    Alex sighed.
    “ Then it was light and
sound and everyone yelling and water and cold . . .
And my father,” Alex whispered.
“But . . .”
    “ But?” John
asked.
    “ Are they waiting for me
in the pool?” Alex’s voice filled with sorrow. Tears slipped out of
her guarded eyes. His hands went around her shoulders, and his
fingers held on tight. “Did I fail them
by . . .?”
    “ Not a chance. No,” John
said. “I knew every single one of them. They would have wanted you
to be here, right here, with me.”
    Alex sniffed.
    “ Are you
feeling . . .?” John