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  She didn’t see the boat and since she could no longer hold her breath, she began to fight him. She wanted to go to the surface and breathe, but Ty was pulling her down. It went through her mind that if he couldn’t have her he was going to make sure that no one else did. He intended it to be a murder-suicide, Faith thought as she tried to push away from him, but he held her tight. She hit his chest with her fists, kicked against him. Her nails clawed at his neck and she felt his skin tear. But Ty wouldn’t let go of her. His arms around her were a steel grip as he kept going down.

  When they were nearly at the bottom of the lake and Faith was about to pass out from lack of oxygen, she saw the bottom of the boat go over their heads. It was a big boat and sat deeply in the water. If Ty hadn’t moved them, they’d be dead now.

  When he saw that she knew what he was doing, he let her go and at last she went up. When she hit the surface, she took air into her burning lungs. She didn’t know how long they’d been under, but she was sure it was the longest time she’d ever held her breath.

  Two seconds later, Ty came up beside her. He gave her one hard look, then he swam to shore, Faith behind him.

  He grabbed towels from the trunk of his car and, without looking at her, tossed her one.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to his back as he dried himself off. “Ty, look at me. I’m sorry that I fought you. I thought—”

  He turned to her, his face showing his rage. “Yeah? Exactly what did you think? That I was trying to kill you?” He put his hand to his neck and it came away bloody from the scratches she’d made.

  When she didn’t say anything, he looked at her again. “By all of heaven,” he said softly, “you thought that if I couldn’t have you nobody would, so I was killing the two of us.”

  It was exactly what she’d thought and her face turned the color of her hair. “No, of course I didn’t think that,” she whispered.

  “Like hell you didn’t,” he said as he tossed his wet towel in the back of the car, then pulled his jeans on over his wet trunks. “So you and Eddie went away to some ritzy college way up North and you come back here to look down on us in the South. Never mind that you and I practically lived in each other’s pockets all our lives. Never mind that you and I used to screw like rabbits. Now you’ve elevated yourself—and, yes, I do know what that word means—and you think you’re better than us hillbillies.”

  He paused for a moment, then looked back at her. “You know something, Faith, I was wrong about you. You have changed. You’re selling your entire future. But for what? To live with a guy who you think will please your mother? Do you think that if you marry rich Eddie that you’ll rise up into another class of people?” He didn’t wait for her to answer or explain. “But you know what you’re going to get, Faith? You’re going to marry Eddie’s mother. She rules him. Always has, always will. And you will always see yourself through her eyes. And that means that no matter what you achieve in life you’ll never be good enough.”

  He opened the car door, got in and sat there, staring straight ahead, saying nothing. Faith quickly pulled her clothes on over the wet suit, picked the blanket off the ground, and got into the passenger side of the car.

  Ty didn’t look at her as he grabbed the blanket and threw it out of the car onto the ground. “I never want to see that thing again. Too many bad memories.” He started the car and they drove home in silence.

  Six

  “What happened after that?” Amy asked when Faith didn’t say anything more. “You can’t leave us dangling. I know you married Eddie, but what happened to Tyler?”

  “I don’t know,” Faith said, finishing her glass of wine and pouring herself another one. “I honestly don’t know what happened.”

  For a moment, Amy and Zoë were quiet.

  “What did you do after the fight?” Zoë asked.

  “Ty let me off at my house and I went inside. My mother was waiting for me with her sharp tongue to bawl me out. She said I was no better than a streetwalker, and that I looked like one with my wet clothes and my hair in a tangle. But for once in my life I didn’t defend myself. I went to my room, changed my clothes, and went to bed. I was so depressed I think I would have stayed there for the rest of my life if Eddie hadn’t come to rescue me the next day. My mother was so glad to see him that she let him into my bedroom.”

  “Go away,” Faith said, pulling the covers over her head. “I don’t want to see anyone.”

  “I’m not anyone,” Eddie said as he gently pulled at the covers.

  But Faith kept her face covered. “Leave me alone. I look horrible.”

  “Like I’ve never seen you look bad,” he said. “I’ve seen you with mud all over you. And what about the time you and Ty rolled in the poison ivy? You were more than ugly then.”

  “Don’t mention his name to me.”

  “Ah,” Eddie said as he sat down on a pink-upholstered chair across from her. “Tyler. I thought as much.” His voice lost its humor and became dull, dispirited. “So what happened between you two this time?”

  Faith pushed the covers away, sat up in bed, looked at Eddie and almost smiled. He was pleasingly familiar to her and he fit well in her childish room. She had an idea of what he’d look like when he was an old man. He’d be bald, of course, because his father had been, and his mother’s hair was quite thin in places. And he’d have a little paunch and he’d wear glasses.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I was just imagining you as an old man.”

  Eddie didn’t smile like she thought he would. “I want to know what happened between you and Tyler.”

  “The same ol’ thing,” she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She hadn’t taken a shower since she’d been out with Ty the day before and she could smell the lake water on her body. Her hair was frizzy and greasy at the same time.

  “Meaning that you two got along perfectly until one of you said something that the other took the wrong way, then you started fighting.”

  “More or less,” Faith said, not wanting to look in his eyes. She couldn’t tell him the circumstances of the fight because that would involve telling Eddie about the underwater kiss.

  He got up, went to the window, and looked out. “I thought that it was all over with him,” he said softly. “I thought that the years you and I spent together would have wiped Ty out of your mind. But I can see that it didn’t.”

  “Nothing was wiped out of my mind except that I can’t be around Ty for very long at a time.”

  Eddie looked back at her, his face in an unpleasant scowl. “I seem to remember when you two spent a lot of time together.”

  Faith looked away and tried to keep her face from turning red. After a moment she looked back at him. “All right, so we did, but I didn’t stay here with him, did I? I left with you.”

  “Only because your mother filled out your college application and paid someone to write your entrance essay for you.”

  “Okay, so maybe I was reluctant to go to a college a thousand miles away from everyone I knew.”

  “Away from Ty. He’s the only one here who matters to you. You would have applied to go to school on the moon to get away from your mother.”

  Faith ran her hands over her eyes. “You’re not making this any easier for me. It’s true that back then I didn’t want to leave Ty, but I did want to get an education so I wouldn’t be stuck in a house changing diapers for the next twenty years.”

  “And for me.”

  “What?” she asked. “Oh right. I wanted to go to be near you. Eddie, you have always been my friend as much as Ty has.”

  “Yes, I have, but certainly not in the same way as he has.”

  At that Faith narrowed her eyes at him. “If you’re referring to sex, that was not my fault.” In her third year at school, when she and Eddie were talking about marriage as if they’d already said their vows, one night when her roommate was away, Faith had planned a candlelit dinner for the two of them. Her idea was that he’d spe