Safe Harbor (16 page)

“Do it, Quinn.”

“We're not tipping,” Allie said in wonder, craning her neck like a bird peeking out of its nest.

“Look, you've got the world's best sailing teacher onboard right now,” Sam said. “I know, because she taught me.”

“Me too,” Quinn said. “She and Mommy taught me.”

“And me,” Allie said.

Catching Dana's eye, Sam smiled. He had such a kind and handsome face, she thought. His eyes were so bright behind his glasses, blue-green from reflecting the sea. But she shook her head to let him know it wasn't going to work—Allie was gripping her wrist so tight, Dana thought she'd never get her to let go.

“Quinn, take over,” Sam said.

“Right now?”

“Sure. Why not? Allie, you can have a turn too.”

“What good will that do?” Allie asked, nails digging into Dana's skin.

“I'm not so scared when I know how to do something,” Sam said. “When I feel a little more in control.”

“Today might not be the day,” Dana said, looking down at Allie's fingers around her wrist.

“I'd like to try,” Quinn said slowly. “You want to, Al?”

“I don't know. . . .”

“Sure,” Sam said. “Your aunt is the best, and I mean the best. If she could teach me to sail, she can teach anyone.”

“We were on the big boat, Daddy's boat,” Allie said. “But that was too huge for us to sail. And it tipped a lot.”

“Heeled, Allie,” Quinn said. “You're saying the wrong thing.”

“We won't heel much today,” Sam said. “Unless you want to.”

Dana felt herself settling down. Being on the water had always calmed her, touched her deep, deep inside. Sam's voice was so quiet, as if it were part of the breeze, and she admired him for coming up with this way to help her nieces, encouraging them to sail where she'd been unable to. She felt Sam—just a little—chipping away one of the high walls she'd built.

“I'll try,” Allie said in a tiny voice.

“Me too,” Quinn said, and Dana saw that she was staring out into the Sound, in the direction her parents had sailed that last night.

Without anyone changing places, Dana began to refresh their memories. Sam watched her steadily, offering an invisible lifeline she never had to let go of. She showed the girls the sails, told them the difference between the jib and the main. She talked about running and standing rigging, let them touch the halyards and hold the sheets. Allie practiced sliding the jib sheet in and out of its block, while Quinn sat beside Sam and pushed the tiller back and forth.

When the time came, they rearranged themselves. Sam made room for Dana at the helm. Their hands brushed as they passed, and Sam caught Dana's eye.

“All yours, skipper,” he said.

“Thanks, Sam,” she whispered, and she didn't just mean his deference. Her heart swelled to be sailing again. It was the first time all summer, the first time since Lily's death. It filled her with peace to be sailing in her sister's beloved boat with her sister's two daughters, and she knew she had him to thank for it.

Sunlight glittered on the blue Sound as the girls settled into place. With Allie beside Sam in the bow and Quinn next to Dana at the tiller, very slowly they began to sail.

Allie cried out once as the boat caught the wind. Sam put her hands on the jib sheet, pointing up the mast as he taught her to trim the sail. Dana held her hand over Quinn's, letting her get a feel for the tiller, the boat pointing into the wind and over the calm sea. Then Dana slid away, and Quinn took over.

“We're sailing!” Allie called.

“We're doing it!” Quinn yelled.

Catching Dana's eyes, his face shielded against the sun, Sam nodded. Dana saw him grinning, and she knew she was doing the same thing. She tried to conjure that small boy she had taught to sail in Newport, Rhode Island, so many years before, but all she could see was a wonderful man.

His glasses might have been the same, and she thought she recognized a few freckles and a cowlick. But the wind was blowing her own hair, clearing the cobwebs out of her head and heart, making her nieces sing out loud.

“Lily,” Dana said under her breath. “They're born sailors, just like us. We're doing it, Lily. Doing it for you.”

CHAPTER
12

B
ACK AT THE HOUSE,
Q
UINN PRACTICED TYING
knots and Allie drew pictures of their sailing adventure. Sam and Dana drank iced tea under the white umbrella. The sun had started to set, turning everything golden. Sam looked over at Dana. Stretched out on the teak bench, her legs seemed to go on forever. Her eyes crinkled, staring over the Sound, and he felt incredibly content to see her looking so happy.

“Thank you, Sam,” she said.

“I didn't do anything,” he said. “It was you. They're naturals, aren't they? Once they had hold of the tiller, they forgot to be afraid.”

“That's how it always is,” Dana said, staring over the water as if she were lost in a dream. Maybe she was remembering every kid she'd ever taught. Was that all Sam would ever be to her? Leaning forward, he tried to see into her eyes.

“What are you thinking?” he asked. He knew it could be anything: her nieces, Lily, some man she loved.

“About the ocean,” she said.

“That's a big subject,” he laughed.

“I've wanted to see them all,” she said. “Every one. I've rented houses on the Pacific—in Oregon and in Mexico. A short time in Japan. I spent one winter in the Indian Ocean, in the Seychelles. Someone offered me a chance to teach painting aboard a cruise ship, and I traveled through ice in the Antarctic. Most recently, I saw the Atlantic from the other side, from France.”

“A lot of ocean,” Sam said.

“But right now,” Dana said, shielding her eyes as the sun sank lower, turning her fair skin and white shirt rose, bathing her in light, “I'm wondering why I ever left New England. I love it here so much.”

“New England,” Sam said, his heart kicking over. “You're not just talking about Connecticut, are you?”

“No,” she said. “I loved those summers Lily and I spent in Newport.”

“Good students,” Sam said, deadpan.

Dana laughed. “That's true. And I loved the Vineyard. . . .”

“The Vineyard?” Now Sam's heart did more than kick. It somersaulted and landed in his stomach. He could practically feel himself reading the ferry schedule. Driving off the
Islander
in Vineyard Haven, asking directions for Gay Head, heading up the North Road.

“You told me you saw me there.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“I've been thinking about that,” Dana said. “Wondering about how.”

“What if I tell you after you tell me why you loved it?”

“Well, it was my first house,” Dana said. “Lily called it ‘my sea away from home.' She thought I was a little crazy to go looking for other water to paint when I had all this.” She gestured at the view of Long Island Sound, its waves purple and gold in the sunset. “But then she came to visit and understood. I stayed for just a year, then she took over. For one thing, by then she'd met her husband there.”

“At the Vineyard?” Sam asked.

“Yes. I'd found a little cottage up-island, just around the bend from the cliffs at Gay Head.” She closed her eyes, and Sam knew she must be picturing the great clay cliffs, the earth painted gold and brown and red as they sloped down into the Atlantic Ocean. “It's just east of Newport, barely over the horizon, but it was the most exotic place I'd ever been. I started painting the minute I arrived, and I don't think I stopped for an entire year.”

“You painted the cliffs?”

“I painted the sea,” she said. “It's where I began studying the water column. I thought the rocks and the seaweed and the fish and the sediment glittering in the sunlight made the most beautiful picture I could ever paint.”

“Big fish off Gay Head,” Sam said.

“I know. Once I was swimming at Zacks, and a surfcaster pulled in a blue shark right past me. A big blue shark.”

Sam nodded. He felt the blood rush to his face, and he hoped she'd think it was just the sunset. He had seen her swimming at Zacks Cliffs. Gay Head was a small town. That day, searching for her, he had parked his car by the lighthouse and ambled down the path to the beach. He had found her, playing in the waves.

Zacks was a nude beach.

Sam was nineteen. Eleven years after his sailing lessons, after dating girls and wishing they looked like Dana, were as kind as she'd been, made him laugh like she had, Sam had decided to go searching for her.

What did he have to lose?

He'd been tops in his class at Rogers High School, on a scholarship at Dartmouth, taking the fast lane to life as a maverick oceanographer just like his brother. Falling in love wasn't happening for him, and he had a pretty good idea why. None of the girls he knew was Dana. Inspired by Joe's dauntless searching for treasure, Sam had set off on a treasure hunt of his own.

It had started with Lily. Bumping into her in Woods Hole, where he was doing a fellowship for the summer and she was waiting for the ferry, he had casually asked about her sister. The Vineyard, Lily had said. Gay Head, to be precise. And so Sam had gone, found her, swimming nude in the surf at Zacks Cliffs.

“So, how did you end up there?” Dana asked him now.

“The Vineyard?” he asked, blushing harder. “I did graduate work at Woods Hole, just across Vineyard Sound. Couldn't very well have avoided it.”

“No, I suppose not,” Dana said, smiling.

“We were in Gay Head,” Dana said. “The whole Vineyard is great, but Gay Head is . . . magical. Lily loved it too. That little house looking over the moors to the sea. The beam of the lighthouse would sweep the walls, coming straight through our windows. After I decided to move on, Lily kept the place for a year herself. She and Mark fell in love there. In fact, that's where Quinn was conceived. She's named after the place.”

Sam waited, watching emotion cross Dana's face.

“Aquinnah,” she said. “That's the Indian name for Gay Head. Lily wanted to name her after the place we all loved so much.”

“Did you ever go back?”

Dana shrugged, lowering her head. “A few times to visit Lily. Not enough.”

“No?”

“Quinn was born there. Lily and Mark tried to make a life for themselves. Painting, Lily could work anywhere. But Mark was a businessman. He bought and sold property—but not on the Vineyard.”

“The real estate was too expensive?” Sam asked.

Dana laughed. “No, Lily wouldn't let him. He wanted to develop the land he bought, and she couldn't stand to see the island spoiled. So they—”

“Are you talking about my island?” Quinn asked, coming onto the terrace with a nylon line knotted into a bowline.

“We are,” Dana said, sliding her arm around her. Sam gazed at them, aunt and niece. Their faces were alike, high cheekbones and beautiful wide eyes. Their hair, as differently styled as it was, was a similar chestnut brown. Salt from the day's sail glistened in Dana's elegant waves and Quinn's myriad crooked braids.

“Martha's Vineyard,” Quinn said, settling onto the blue stone terrace. “I was born there, you know. And I learned how to walk and talk there. I'm named for the most magical part—Aquinnah.”

“I know,” Sam said, remembering how Dana had used the same word, “magical.”

“Someday I'll go back,” Quinn said, and suddenly, she seemed to be speaking to the Sound, to that distant spot where her parents had gone down. “I'll see the place where I began.”

“Someday,” Dana said, pushing herself out of the chair. She faced west, at the stripe of dark red just above the trees of Little Beach. A crescent moon hung there, cradling Venus in its violet embrace. Sam swallowed, remembering how he had watched her one other sunset, when the Gay Head cliffs had glowed like jewels in the dying light. He wanted to tell her, but with Quinn there, he wouldn't.

“Is everyone hungry?” Dana asked. “Should I make dinner?”

“Anything but hot dogs,” Quinn moaned.

“Okay,” Dana laughed, heading inside to see what she could find.

Sam wanted to follow her, but Quinn stopped him. She took a folded paper from her pocket and spread it on his lap. Sam peered closely, saw that it was a chart. She had drawn a compass rose, the contours of land, a bell buoy, and a green can.

“That's where it happened,” she said.

“I see,” Sam said.

“It's the Hunting Ground—that's what it's called. Right out there,” Quinn said, pointing at the Sound. “Just past the Wickland Shoals. Fishermen say it's the best place to fish between here and Orient Point. It's where my parents' boat sank.”

“Where's the boat now?” Sam asked, staring down at the spiky braids on her head.

“Still down there. Their bodies were recovered,” Quinn said with no feeling in her voice whatsoever. “They came ashore after three days. I would have found them myself if they didn't. But the boat's another story.”

“Tell me,” Sam said.

Quinn spun her head to look up at him. “Divers found it. They had to, for the insurance. They were going to bring it up to the surface last summer, but then we had two big storms in a row. A gale, and then that sort-of hurricane.”

“Desdemona.”

“Yes, Hurricane Desdemona. She moved the boat away from where it had been, just far enough so the divers couldn't find it.”

“How do you know? Did they see it again?”

“No, but I know. I feel it.” Quinn stood up, staring toward the Hunting Ground. Sam felt a chill, as if she were putting out radar. “It's there. Somewhere close to where they first found it. If we don't get to it first, those divers will go down again. I want to know before anyone else.”

Inside, Dana began running water and clattering pans. She had turned on music; Carly Simon sang out the window, making Sam think about the Vineyard again.

“What do you want to know, Quinn?”

“I know what I hope,” she whispered, “and I know what I think.”

“What do you hope?”

“That it was an accident,” she said in a voice thinner than the crescent moon in the western sky.

“And what do you think?”

“That they did it on purpose.”

They hadn't noticed Dana. She had stepped onto the terrace, the salad bowl in her arms. Her blue eyes were clear, wide open. Sam knew she had heard, but for some reason she made up her mind not to let on. Holding the big wooden bowl toward Quinn, she held the door open behind her.

“Can you mix the salad, Quinn?” she asked.

“Okay, Aunt Dana.”

“What can I do?” Sam asked, carefully folding Quinn's map, putting it into his wallet.

“I don't know,” Dana said steadily, never looking away from his eyes. “What can you do?”

 

T
HEY ATE DINNER
at the table. This time Quinn didn't fight anyone for their seats. Dana made sure to leave Lily's and Mark's chairs unoccupied, and that seemed to satisfy both girls. A soft breeze blew through the open windows, sending thick ropes of wax down the white candles.

It was a family tradition to eat by candlelight every summer night. Candles filled the room. Tall white ones in brass and etched glass holders on the oak table, votives in squat crystal balls on the bookshelves, bright colored candles in pressed-tin angel holders from Mexico, and glazed painted mermaid holders from Greece—gifts sent by Dana from wherever she was. Mozart played on the stereo, Dana's favorite violin concerto.

The telephone rang, and Dana went to answer. It was Victoria DeGraff, the gallery owner who represented Dana in New York. She said she'd sold several large paintings recently, and that a magazine wanted to do a story called “The Artist Who Paints Like a Mermaid.”

“Will you come down for lunch soon?” Victoria asked. “And let me set up an interview?”

“I don't know,” Dana said, listening to the children laugh with Sam.

“Let me put it this way. You have to. I insist! I've been selling your work for fifteen years now, the least you can do is let me take you to lunch.”

“Okay,” Dana said, smiling because she realized what a relief it would be to have a little of her old life back, to escape her family for a little while. They decided on the first Thursday in August, said affectionate good-byes, and hung up.

Returning to the table, Dana had to answer Quinn's third degree: Where was she going and for how long?

“New York, in a month,” Dana replied. “Just for a day and maybe a night. Grandma will baby-sit.”

Satisfied, Quinn sat back. Allie chattered on and on about her sailing prowess. She wanted to quit swimming and tennis, take up sailing. She'd race anyone who came along. When winter swept in, she'd be heading the Frostbite Fleet in Hawthorne Harbor.

“Captain Allie,” Quinn giggled.

“What's so funny about that?” Allie asked. “Aunt Dana, were you or Mommy the captain of the
Mermaid
?”

“We took turns,” Dana said, sounding stern for Sam's sake.

“Your aunt was the captain in Newport,” Sam said.

“Where she taught you?” Allie asked.

“Well, she must've taught you well,” Quinn said, yawning from her day in the sun, selling hot dogs and sailing, “because you did okay on board the
Mermaid
today. May I be excused?”

“Yes,” Dana said.

“I'm going for a walk,” Quinn said, running into the kitchen to get her flashlight. Dana knew she was headed for Little Beach; she wouldn't even try to stop her.

“I'm going to my room,” Allie said.

“Don't lose that map,” Quinn said to Sam, handing him what appeared to be a wad of money as she hurried out the door.

When Dana and Sam were alone, she felt that familiar sinking feeling come over her. She had to confront someone she wanted to trust, faced with blatant evidence that she shouldn't.

“Did she just pay you?” Dana asked.

“Um,” Sam said, distinctly uncomfortable. “Can I tell you it's between her and me and let it go at that?”