One Summer

66

Jack Armstrong ran that night like he had never run before. Not on the football field, and not even on the battlefield when his very life depended on sheer speed. He high-stepped through four-foot waves that were nearly up to the rocks the lighthouse was perched on. A towering breaker ripped out of the darkness and knocked him down. He struck his head on a piece of timber thrown up on the sand by the storm. Dazed, he struggled to his feet and kept slogging on. He saw the light, a pinpoint beam. But he couldn’t see Mikki. Frantic, he ran toward the illumination.

“Mikki! Mikki!”

Another wave crushed him. He got back up, vomiting salt-water driven deeply down his throat. He ran on, fighting rain driven so hard by turbocharged wind that it felt like the sting of a million yellow jackets.

“Mikki!”

“Daddy!”

It was faint, but Jack saw the light shift to the left. And then he saw it: a head bobbing in even deeper water. Mikki was being pulled inexorably out to sea.

“Daddy. Help me.”

Like a charging rhino, Jack ran headlong toward the brunt of the storm. An oncoming wave rose up far taller than he was, but he avoided most of its energy by diving under it at the last possible second. He emerged in water over his head. The normal riptide was multiplied tenfold by the power of the storm, but Jack fought through it, going under and coming up and yelling, “Mikki.” Each time she called back, and Jack swam with all his might toward the sound of her voice.

The lightning and thunder blasted and boomed above them. A spear of lightning hit so close that Jack felt the hairs on his arms and neck stand. He snatched a breath and went under again as another foaming wave crashed down on him. He came up. “Mikki!”

This time there was no answer.

“Mikki!”

Nothing.

“Michelle!”

A second later he heard a faint “Daddy.”

Jack redoubled his efforts. She was getting weak. It was a miracle she was still alive. If that piece of driftwood got ripped from her, it would all be over. And then he saw her. The sturdy beam of light was tethered to the teenager like a golden string. Mikki was managing to stay afloat by using the driftwood she’d snagged somehow, but there was no way she could keep that up much longer. Jack swam as hard as he could, fighting through wave after wave and cursing when one threw him off course, costing him precious seconds. But the whole time he kept his eyes on his daughter.

And yet he realized that as each second passed, she was moving farther from him. It was the storm, the riptide, the wind, everything. He swam harder. But now he was fifty feet away instead of forty. He took a deep breath and slid under the water to see if he could make better time. But it was pitch-dark even just below the surface, and the current was just as strong.

When he came back up, he couldn’t see her and cursed himself for taking his eyes off his daughter. His limbs and lungs were so heavy. Jack looked to the shore and then at the angry sky. He was being pulled out too now. And he wasn’t sure he had the strength to get back in. It didn’t matter.

I’m not going back without her.

Jack treaded water, looking in all directions as the storm bore down with all its weight on the South Carolina coast.

He shook with anger and fear and... loss.

I’m sorry, Lizzie. I’m so sorry.

What if I just stop swimming? What if I just stop?

He would sink to the bottom. He looked at the shore. He could see the lights. His family — what was left of it — was there. Bonnie would raise the boys. He and Mikki would go to join Lizzie.

He looked to the sky again. When a bolt of lightning speared down and lighted the sky, he thought he could see Lizzie’s face, her hand reaching out, beckoning to him. He could just stop swimming right now. Right now.

“Daddy!”

Jack turned in the water.

Mikki was barely twenty feet from him. This time the movement of the water had carried him toward her.

Finding a reserve of strength he didn’t think he had, Jack exploded through the water. The ocean pushed back at him, throwing up wall after wall of frothing sea to keep him from her. He swam harder and harder, his arms slicing through the water as he fought every counterattack the storm threw at him.

A yard. A foot. Six inches. Every muscle Jack had was screaming in exhaustion, but he fought through the pain.

“Daddy!” She reached out to him.

“Mikki!”

He lunged so hard he nearly came fully out of the water. His hand closed like a vise around her wrist, and he pulled his daughter to him.

She hugged him. “I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, baby. I’ve got you. Just lie on your back.”

She did so, and he put his arms under hers and kicked off toward land.

Now all I’ve got to do is get us back, thought Jack.

The problem was that when Jack tried to ride a wave in, the undertow snatched him back before he could gain traction on the shore. Then a huge wave forced them both underwater, before Jack brought them back, coughing and half-strangled. Jack was very strong, and as a ranger he’d swum miles in all sorts of awful conditions. But not in the middle of what was now likely a category 1 hurricane with someone else hanging on to him. He was caught in a pendulum, and he couldn’t keep it up much longer. He might be able to get to shore by himself, but he was prepared to die with his daughter.

“Jack!”

He looked toward the beach. Liam and Sammy were standing there with a long coil of rope and screaming at him. Tied to the end of the rope was a red buoy. He nodded to show he understood. Sammy wound up and tossed the rope. It fell far short. He pulled it back and tried again. Closer, but still not close enough.

“Sammy,” he screamed. “Wait until the waves push us toward the beach, and then toss it.”

Sammy nodded, timed it, and threw the rope. Just a few feet short now. One more time. Jack lunged for the buoy and snagged it. But a monster wave crashed down on them, and Mikki was ripped from him.

He caught a mouthful of water and spit it out. As he looked down, he felt Mikki sliding past him and away from shore, out to sea. Everything was moving in slow motion, reduced to milliseconds of passing time.

“No!” screamed Jack.

He shot his hand down and grabbed his daughter’s hair an instant before she was past him and gone forever. Sammy and Liam pulled with all their strength on the rope. Slowly, father and daughter were pulled to shore.

As soon as he hit solid earth, Jack carried Mikki well away from the pounding waves. His daughter was completely limp, her eyes closed.

As Jack bent down, he could see that Mikki was also not breathing. He immediately began to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He pinched Mikki’s nose and blew air into her lungs. He flipped her over and pushed against her back, trying to expand her lungs, forcing the water out.

Sammy called 911 while Jack continued to frantically work on his daughter and was now doing CPR.

A minute later, Jack sat up, his breaths coming in jerks. He looked down at Mikki. She wasn’t moving; her skin was instead turning blue. His daughter was dead.

He’d lost her. Failed her.

A crack of lightning pierced the night sky, and Jack looked up, perhaps to that solitary spot his wife had tried to find all those years ago. With a sob he screamed, “Help me, Lizzie, help me. Please.”

He looked down. No more miracles left. He’d used the only one he would ever have on himself.

Liam knelt next to Mikki, tears streaming down his face. He touched Mikki’s hair and then put his face in his hands and sobbed.

Suddenly Jack felt a force at the back of his neck. At first he thought that Sammy was trying to pull him away from his dead child. But the force wasn’t pulling; it was pushing him back to her. Jack bent down, took an enormous breath, held it, put his mouth over Mikki’s, and blew with all the strength he had left in his body.

As the air fell away from him and into Mikki, everything for Jack stopped, and the storm was gone. It was like he had envisioned dying to be. Quiet, peaceful, isolated, alone. As that breath rushed from him, the events of the last year also raced through his mind.

And now, this; Mikki. Gone.

Jack felt himself drifting away, as though over calm water, propelled to another place, he had no idea where. But he was alone. Lizzie and now Mikki were gone. He no longer wanted to live. It didn’t matter anymore. There was peace. But there was also nothing else because he was alone.

The water hitting him in his face brought him back. The thoughts of the past retreated, and he was once more in the present. It was still raining. But that’s not what had struck him.

He looked down as Mikki gave another shudder and coughed up the water that had been buried deeply in her lungs. Her eyes opened, fluttered, opened again, and stayed that way. Her pupils focused, and she saw her dad hovering above her. Mikki put out her arms, gripped her father’s neck tightly.

“Daddy?” she said in a tiny voice.

Jack sank down and held her. “I’m here, baby. I’m here.”