Miracle Beach (13 page)

He imagined that hundreds, even thousands of feet of water stretched out below, straight down. Their measly little boat resting precariously above it all, above all the strange and beautiful and sometimes vicious creatures that water held so gently.

“Fish on!” Sophie called out, and Jack wheeled around to see the nose of her rod tipped sharply toward the water. Sophie waited a quick second before setting the hook. The line whirled as the fish zigged across the water, and she let it run for a little while before checking it back to her. The fish rallied hard against the line, the rod, and Sophie’s sinewy arms, and so she let it run a bit again. “It’s a salmon,” she said. “We’re in for it now, Jackie!”

Jack arched an eyebrow.

“Salmon fishing isn’t much like other kinds of fishing. It’s not all hook and reel and muscle. You can’t will these guys into the boat,” she said. “Oh, no. You’ve gotta negotiate with the fish, strike a deal. Or just wait until one of us gets too tired to wrangle.”

Jack could imagine the burn simmering in Sophie’s arms and neck. They had been tensed for what seemed like hours. The line would strain and then whirl, strain and whirl—the water roiling and falling still, and roiling and falling still.

“Jackie, can you reach in my pants for me?”

Jack’s head snapped up. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t get all excited,” Sophie said. “There’s a flask in my right pocket.”

“Why don’t I just hold the pole for you?” Jack asked.

“Because I don’t trust you not to lose this fish, and because I’d really love a sip of bourbon at the moment,” she said. “Now, are you going to help a girl out or not?”

Jack slipped an arm inside the rubbery pants, careful not to hit any improper areas. Would that really be so bad, though? The thought came out of nowhere and he dismissed it just as suddenly.

“This is the part I love—bantering with the fish, Jack. This is the sport of it,” Sophie said, taking a pull from the flask that Jack offered. She explained that she never much cared to see the fish lying in the bottom of her boat afterward, its huge tail poking like a fan of night sky out of the basin, its gills winking at their unnatural habitat, at the brutal air. That sight, she said, always made her chest tighten, made her sad. “Honestly, I’d much rather the fish argue for a while and then split. Deep down, every time, that’s really what I hope for.”

And as if she had wished it, that was precisely what happened. After a countless number of under and backs beneath the boat, the fish had started to tire. And just like that, the line went slack.

Sophie reeled in to find only a piece of the fish’s head dangling from the hook.

“What happened?” Jack asked. His mind immediately went to scenes from Shark Week of rows and rows of teeth lining jaws that could swallow their tiny rowboat whole.

Before Sophie could answer, there came a sort of honking noise from in back of them. Both Sophie and Jack turned to see a seal, illuminated by a ribbon of moonlight, floating on its back, the salmon between its flippers and teeth. It seemed to be laughing at them, which amused Jack. He laughed with the seal. Sophie did not. “There’s a reason your kind get clubbed to death!” she hollered at it. “You asshole!”

This made Jack laugh even harder. Sophie glowered at him.

“Does that mean we’re done?” he asked.

“Nope,” she answered.

Veins of red were already draped across a murky sky before Sophie got another fish on the line and got it in close enough to the boat to gaff it. Jack watched as the fish looked up at her from the water, as if it were conceding, right before the point of the gaff shot into its gills and up through its head with a crunch. Sophie netted the fish and dropped it into the basin. Jack looked away, staring toward shore.

“Miracle Beach,” she said, tossing her chin in the direction Jack was looking and taking a swig from her flask.

Jack looked at her with eyebrows arched. “Odd name,” he said.

“Legend has it that the Cape Mudge Indians were always being attacked by other tribes. They weren’t so much for fighting, you know. Then one day a starving stranger stumbles in and the Indians feed him and give him clothes and this stranger tells them that it’s their lucky day: He’s a messenger of the Great Spirit, and because of their generosity, they’ll be protected and rich. But the messenger warns them not to get too full of themselves, which, of course, they do, and another tribe attacks them. The messenger makes the Cape Mudgies sweat it out, but he eventually saves them, only to turn one of their princesses into that little island over yonder, Mittlenach.” Sophie nodded northeast over her shoulder. She offered her flask to Jack and, when he refused, capped it and reached an arm back inside her survival pants to put it away.

“So what’s the miracle?” Jack asked. “I don’t get it.”

“Well, Mittlenach looks like it’s moving away from you when you boat over to it.” Sophie shrugged. “But that’s more of an optical illusion than a miracle, I’d say. Your guess is as good as mine.”

She started the minimotor and it sputtered to life, slowly picking up speed and propelling them toward shore, Miracle Beach growing ever larger in front of them as their boat cut through the liquid black.

“HEADS UP . . .
HEADS UP!”
A VOICE YELLED AT HER. A MAN’S voice, not Martine’s and not friendly.

Like a spawning salmon, Macy was headed in the opposite direction of the river of horses and riders in the warm-up pen, which would have been acceptable protocol had she actually been paying any attention. She pulled her right rein hard, forcing Gounda to switch leads and directions a split second after landing. He took the change of plans in stride, relaxing back into her hands and collecting himself as if preparing for the next jump. Although she knew
smart horse
was probably an oxymoron, at times like this she had to wonder. It couldn’t be all instinct, after all.

“My God. Pay attention! You’re going to hurt someone out here.”

The other rider shook his head at her, scowling as though she had actually run into him, instead of just almost. Ian Painter. She knew him. Everyone did. He had imp black hair. Eyes to match. A jawline that could cut granite. He and his regular mount, Rosetta, had won more Grand Prix rounds than any other team in Canada’s history, and he was currently looking at Macy as if she were gum stuck to the bottom of his very expensive field boots.

There were hundreds of ways this situation could have been avoided.

First of all, she could’ve looked ahead, out of the corner and through to the landing of the jump, before nearly colliding with one of the country’s premier jumper riders.

Also, she should never have come here in the first place.

The last show in Victoria had gone beyond poorly, though at the time, Macy had convinced herself that it hadn’t been her fault. Even when the young filly she had taken to that show had tried to jump a box oxer too early, even when Macy had checked the filly back hard and held her there to get one more stride in before she took off instead of going with the filly’s forward motion like she should have, and even when the filly argued and jumped anyway, as any horse that green would have, dropping her front legs between the one-meter span of the two jumps and tumbling like an Olympic gymnast with Macy still fixed to her back, Macy had pinned it on Jack.

Still blowing brown snot into a tissue days after her initial fall, Macy decided that her dismal performance could be squarely attributed to Jack’s need for constant hand-holding, his constant need for entertainment. She couldn’t concentrate. None of it, of course, had had anything to do with her. And that was how, on a whim, Macy came to drop off Jack and her young project filly at home, load up Gounda and some more hay, grain, and bales of bedding, and make the almost two-day drive to the July Classic at Calgary’s Spruce Meadows, where she currently had no business riding.

And then there was the matter of the hole inside of her. The one that felt as though someone had come along and scooped out all of her insides, leaving her feeling like a papery shell of someone she used to know.

That could’ve all been pretty easily avoided, too. She would’ve needed only to have told Nash no back in the very beginning. Right at the very start.

He had missed a connecting flight in Calgary and, stuck there until the following morning, saw an advertisement for the horse show in the airport, rented a car, and decided to go exploring. Months later, when Nash would turn what should have been a two-hour drive into a seven-hour expedition of roadside historical markers, Macy would decide that this was classically Nash.

Though if she had a chance to turn back the clock, Macy still wasn’t sure she’d be able to resist him. His earnest way and awshucks charm. Because even at that very moment she was banking on the off chance that death didn’t actually work the way everyone thought it did. Her eyes scanned the sea of jodhpurs and polo tops, saddle leather and dusty sweat, half hoping Nash would saunter out of the crowd in a navy blue suit, just as he had years ago, and not far from the practice ring where she now stood.

She could have walked away from him that day, but she would have missed so much: the way he would reach across and brush his thumb back and forth over the nape of her neck on car rides; the little disjointed dance he’d do on any happy occasion—whether he had just finished the dishes or landed a huge account; how he taught her to snap her fingers, throw a Frisbee, and skip rocks—all required skills that she had somehow left childhood without learning—and the pure pleasure he took whenever she actually got the hang of them. She would’ve missed the way he looked at her when she shot her first deer back in Wisconsin, beaming, with his breath escaping from his parted lips in wispy tendrils. The way he fumed when he was mad at her, shaking his head and biting his bottom lip to keep from smiling, even then. The way he’d mumble, “Morning, munchkin,” when she woke him up with a small peck on his cheek—groggy but content—then wrapping his arm around her neck and pulling her into the crook of his to keep her close for just a few more minutes while she’d struggle to escape, anxious to start the day.

Now it was as if their first conversation were happening fresh in front of her, all over again.

“I’m not quite sure what I’m doing here,” he had said to her.

They were in line at the concession stand. She wasn’t even sure that he had been talking to her.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“I’ve never been to one of these things before. Where do you go? Where are the performances?”

“Competitions. Not performances,” she had corrected him.

“Oh,” he said, mopping at his brow with a handkerchief. Macy had never seen anyone younger than her grandfather use a handkerchief. “Like I said, I’ve never been. But my motto is that a lot of great things can happen if you don’t always insist on a plan. Pretty exciting stuff here, from the looks of it. Anyway, you involved in all this?”

She remembered how sweat beaded his forehead and ran in streams down his hairline, how sweat had started to seep through his suit coat, and that he asked for a “brat” before settling on a plain hot dog when the woman behind the counter had no idea what he was talking about. Almost before she realized it, Macy had said to him, “I am, but I don’t ride for a while. I can show you around if you want.”

And so, for the next couple of hours, she kept him company. They walked through the barns and Macy pointed out to him the elaborate stall decorations each farm or trainer put up—some complete with living rooms and full bars. After that, she had sat in the stands with him, providing a play-by-play during each rider’s go: what the point of each class was, what the rider did well, what he or she did poorly, and what the judges were looking for.

Macy loved to talk horses—especially to people who didn’t know them. People like Nash, newcomers, didn’t care about the gossip: who paid how much for which horse and what trainer was involved and what trainer had been caught with what client by that client’s wife (or husband). No, people like Nash, they were just like her back when she was still a horse-crazy little girl—in awe of their sleek coats, their spindly legs, their raw power. In awe that something so beautiful would agree to be ridden at all. She had been feeling burned-out lately on all of the politics and posturing, and seeing it all again through fresh eyes had been just what she’d needed.

Macy looked around her now at all the intensity in the practice ring. At the concentration and will to win that drew lips into hard, straight lines. And then, more than feeling out of sorts and out of place, she found herself longing, lonely. For Nash.

For Nash, who that day eleven years ago, right on these grounds, had asked all the right questions, like wondering, when one horse refused a jump, whether the horse had been stubborn or the rider had done something wrong.

And for the Nash who had said all the right things in the most genuine, heartfelt way.