Keeping Faith Read online

  She turns her head toward him. "Huh?"

  "It's a saying. An old one."

  "It's stupid. You don't fish for men."

  "You ought to ask God about it sometime," Ian suggests, leaning back and covering his eyes with his forearm, just enough that he can peek out and still see her.

  Faith frowns, on the verge of saying something, but then she stops and picks at the wood of the dock again. Ian finds himself straining forward, waiting for a confession, but whatever Faith might have said is lost to the sudden jerk of the rod and her squeal of delight. He shows her how to reel in her catch, a beauty of a fish that's every bit of three pounds. Then he unhooks the bass and rounds open its mouth, so that Faith can grab hold.

  "Oh," she breathes, the tail of the fish snugging against her stomach. She's a picture, Ian thinks, smiling. With her hair caught in the late sun and dirt streaked across her cheek, he looks at her and truly sees her not as a story, but simply as a little girl.

  The fish starts to thrash its tail, fighting for freedom. "Look at how--Oh!" Faith cries, and she drops the bass--the last thing Ian sees before she loses her footing and falls from the dock into the freezing water.

  Mariah awakens to her worst nightmare: Ian Fletcher has disappeared with Faith. Bolting upright on the couch, she screams for her daughter, knowing by the stillness in the small cabin that they are gone. A deck of cards lies scattered across the rug, as if he's taken her in the middle of everything, as if he's taken her by force.

  She will have to call the police, but that seems like an easy sacrifice if it means Faith's safe return. With her heart pounding, Mariah races outside, so distraught that she does not even notice the car still sitting in front of the cabin. She runs toward the manager's office, the nearest phone, cursing herself for putting Faith within reach of Ian Fletcher. When she rounds the corner, two figures are silhouetted against the lake, one tall, one tiny. With intense relief, Mariah stops short, her knees buckling. She cups her hands around her mouth to call out to them, but then before her very eyes, Faith falls into the lake.

  Oh, shit! That's all Ian has time to think before the water swallows Faith, and Mariah's scream echoes. It's freezing in there, and he has no idea if the kid can swim, and the very worst part of it is that he can't just jump in and grab her because there's every chance that he'll land on top of her, push her farther down. He is distantly aware of Mariah scrabbling down the slope, yelling, but with intense focus he stares at the murky water until a pale streak of silver unfurls beneath the surface. He leaps in a few feet to the left of where he's seen Faith's hair, opens his eyes to the gritty underworld, and tangles his fingers in a silky skein.

  He can see her, her eyes wide and terrified, her mouth open, her hands pushing at the underside of the dock that she's trapped beneath. Dragging her by her ponytail, he yanks Faith free and pulls her up. She crawls onto the wood, choking and sputtering, her cheek pressed against the planks as she spits up water.

  Ian hauls himself onto the dock as well, just as Mariah reaches them and folds Faith into her arms, soothing and cuddling. Only now does he let himself breathe, let himself think of what might have happened. He notices that he's soaked and shaking; his clothes must weigh fifty pounds wet, and they're freezing to boot. With a glance in Faith's direction to make sure she is all right, he stands and slowly sets out toward the cabin to change.

  "Don't you move!"

  Mariah's voice, vibrating with anger, stops him. Ian turns and clears his throat to speak. "She'll be fine," he manages. "She wasn't under for more than a few seconds."

  But Mariah isn't ready to give up. "How dare you take her out here without my permission?"

  "Well, I--"

  "Were you waiting for me to fall asleep so that you could sneak her out with a...a candy bar and ask her questions up one side and down the other? Did you get your precious tape? Or did you forget to take it out of your pocket when you jumped in?"

  Ian feels his lips draw away from his teeth, an involuntary snarl. "For your information, the only thing I asked your daughter was if her daddy ever taught her how to cast a fishing line. I didn't tape a frigging word of our conversation. She fell into the lake by accident and got stuck under the dock. All I did was go in after her."

  "She would never have gotten stuck under the dock if she hadn't been standing on it in the first place! For all I know, you might have pushed her."

  Ian's eyes glitter with rage. This is what he gets for saving the child's life? He takes a step back, breathing hard. "For all I know," he sneers, "she might have walked on water."

  Long after Mariah has fed Faith hot soup, bathed her, and tucked her into bed for the night, Ian still has not returned to the cabin. She finds herself pacing, staring blindly at the static on the television. She wants to apologize. Surely now that they've both had time to cool down he realizes that it was the fear talking, not really her, but she'd like to tell him so herself. After all, if Faith had wandered down to the dock by herself, she could have just as easily fallen in--and drowned.

  She waits until her daughter is sleeping deeply, then goes to sit on the edge of the bed. Mariah touches the curve of Faith's cheek, warm as a ripe peach. How do other mothers go about keeping watch? How do they shut their eyes with the certainty that in that moment, something won't go wrong? Being in water that cold could have had far more serious effects, yet Faith seems absolutely fine.

  For whatever it is worth, Faith's God wasn't the one to haul her out of the water; that was done by Ian himself. For this at least, Mariah owes him her gratitude.

  She sees the swinging beam of headlights cut across the small room. Walking out of the bedroom to the front door of the cabin, she waits for Ian to come inside. But a minute passes, and then another, and finally it is five minutes later. She peeks through the window--yes, the car is there--and then opens the door.

  Ian is sitting at her feet. He's been leaning against the door. "I'm sorry," Mariah says, coloring.

  "Nah. It's a stupid place to sit."

  They look at the night sky, the rotting porch, the chipped paint on the door--anywhere but at each other. "I mean that I'm really sorry."

  "Well, so am I. This isn't the first time I've done something involving Faith without getting your permission first." Ian rubs the back of his neck. "She liked fishing, though. Right up till the end there."

  They each imagine a picture of Faith with that bass, and it forms a bridge between them. Then Mariah sits down beside Ian, drawing a circle absently on the dirt of the porch floor. "I'm not used to letting her out of my sight," she admits. "It's hard for me."

  "You're a fine mother."

  Mariah shakes her head. "You might be the only one who thinks so."

  "I doubt that. I bet there's a little girl inside that thinks so." He leans against the side of the cabin. "I figure I owe you an apology, too. You got me riled up, or else I wouldn't have said all that about Faith walking on water."

  Mariah considers his words. "You know," she says finally, "I don't want her to be some...Messiah figure...any more than you do."

  "What do you want?"

  She takes a deep breath. "I want her to be safe. I want her to be mine."

  Neither of them speaks the thought that crosses their minds: that these two wishes might not both be able to come true. "She sleeping now?"

  "Yes." Mariah glances at the cabin door. "Went to bed without a problem." She watches Ian draw up one knee and hook a wrist over it, and lets herself wonder what this moment might be like if she hadn't met Ian over a war of religious convictions, but when she dropped her purse in the grocery store, or when he gave up his seat for her on the bus. Her mind scrambles over territory she's deliberately left untraveled, marking the raven's wing of his hair and the brilliant blue of his eyes, remembering the night in the hospital when he kissed her on the cheek.

  "You know," he says quietly. "Even during the world wars they had a cease-fire on Christmas."

  "What?"

  "A truce, M