Night Swimming Read Online Free PDF Page A

green.”
    “It must be the turbulence,” Lily mumbled. She shut her eyes again, refusing to look down at the paper clenched between her fingers. From her side of the armrest, she felt as well as heard Karen’s snort of disbelief.
    “Yeah, right. There’s been hardly a bump since take-off. But maybe it’s because you’ve been reading—that sometimes makes people really queasy.”
    Truer words had never been spoken. “Yes, that must be it.” She swallowed. “But I’m feeling better now.”
    “Oh,” she said, then added, “Glad to hear it.” Resettling the earphones over her head, she went back to her magazine.
    A pathetic hope consumed Lily. It was possible she’d been hallucinating, the delusions brought on by her imminent return to Coral Beach. Screwing up her courage, she peeked at the printed list of committee members one more time.
    No, fate was definitely not smiling upon her. There it was, Sean McDermott, mayor.
    And he was heading the advisory panel.
    Mayor. How and when had that happened? Why hadn’t anyone mentioned it to her? True, her mother had hit the social jackpot with husband number four and was now living in Palm Beach, spending her days at the tennis club, her evenings at whatever charity ball was written on her social calendar. But that didn’t mean her mother was out of the loop. She and Dana McDermott, Sean’s mother, still called each other daily; Kaye would definitely know that Sean was mayor of Coral Beach.
    But Lily communicated with her mother as little as possible, never asking questions or volunteering any information, rarely venturing beyond monosyllabic responses. Lily’s calls were made strictly from a sense of duty, to let her mother know where she could be reached in case of emergency. Given the brevity of their long-distance conversations, it would have been difficult for Kaye Alcott to introduce that particularly newsworthy bit of information.
    But what about the rest of her family? Her half brothers, Ned and Mike, lived outside Orlando. They’d always idolized Sean. And Granny May was, as ever, best friends with Sean’s own grandmother. They certainly might have mentioned something, at least in passing.
    In spite of the fact that Lily had turned her back on her hometown, the news that Sean was mayor made her feel vastly out of touch, disoriented. She could hardly have been more shocked if she’d learned that Sean had been elected president of the United States. Actually, that’d be preferable, far easier to swallow. Because then he wouldn’t be chairing the committee to which she was supposed to report.
    With sudden longing, Lily looked at the long red handle of the emergency exit.
    If only they provided parachutes on these flights.
    Sean pressed the power button on his cell phone the instant the airline steward informed the passengers that it was safe once more to operate their cell phones. It rang immediately.
    “McDermott,” he answered.
    “Sean, it’s me.” Though tinny, Evelyn’s voice conveyed an extra urgency this morning. “Where have you been?”
    “Circling. There was a storm front we had to bypass, then every plane in the region wanted to land simultaneously. Sky traffic’s become as bad as Route One. What’s up, Evelyn?”
    “It’s a zoo here, been like this the entire morning. The press meeting’s canceled, of course . . . which is about the best news I can give you right now.”
    “That bad, huh?”
    “Yes. For starters, there was a head-on collision on the western curve approaching the bridge into town. The car that sustained the most damage had a mother and three kids in it. They’re alive, but one of the children was pinned for about an hour. Rescue workers had to saw through the metal to get him out.”
    “ Jesus. Which hospital?” Sean fished a pen from the inside pocket of his suit.
    “Saint Francis. Family’s name is Ritter, mother is Sue, children are Tabitha, Hank, and Jake. Hank’s the one who was trapped.” Evelyn