How long have I been asleep?

I try to sit up and feel a throbbing pain in my stomach. I look and see white bandages stretched across my abdomen. I notice for the first time that there’s an IV hooked to the bed frame with a wire hanger. It’s feeding fluid into my arm.

I swing my feet off the bed and onto the floor. I’m wearing boxer shorts but nothing else.

My mouth is dry, and I snatch a plastic water cup from the nightstand and drink it down. I yank the IV needle out of my arm. I grab the blanket from the bed and wrap it around my shoulders, stepping out of the room.

My legs are weak.

I round the corner of the hallway and step into a kitchen, and then I recognize where I am. I’m in the cabin of the girl who was drowning. There is the phone by the refrigerator that I used to dial 911.

I walk into a spacious living room with a floor-to-ceiling picture window looking out over the lake. There is a fire crackling in the fireplace. Sitting in a plush leather chair, Hannah is looking out the window, watching snow falling down in fat flakes.

She sees me and gives me a smile so beautiful and so genuine that I can’t believe I ever fell for Claire.

“So this was your idea?” I say, looking around the house.

“I told you to trust me.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Almost twenty-four hours,” she says. “Do you remember anything?”

I take a chair next to her and pull the blanket around me. Out the window, the sun is setting. There is already a layer of snow on the lawn and deck, and it doesn’t look like the storm will let up anytime soon.

“The last thing I remember,” I say, “was going into the water and knowing I was going to die. I remember thinking, I hope Hannah doesn’t blame herself that she wasn’t able to save me.”

Hannah fills me in on the rest. We made it to the shore and then stumbled down the mountain, with her supporting most of my weight and me practically unconscious on my feet. She knocked on the door of the house and asked the father of the girl I’d saved for help. I’d forgotten she’d told me he was a doctor.

He was nervous, afraid he was getting involved in something illegal, but he figured he owed me, she explained. He shot me full of sedative, pulled the bullet out, and sewed me back up. Then he gave Hannah a big bottle of antibiotics and another of painkillers, and he packed up his girls and took off.