Safe Harbor (31 page)

He showed me an old tackle box. Heavy-duty plastic, dark gray, scarred from lots of old fishhooks. On it, attached to the hasp, was a small brass padlock. I asked him what it was, and he opened it up.

Five thousand dollars was inside. Old bills, mostly fifties and hundreds, looking like someone's life savings. That's pretty much what it was, he said. Jack Conway, the old handyman who lived behind the fish market in Quissit, wanted to work on the development. He wasn't slick enough to be hired straight out by the contractor, so he came to Mark and asked for a job.

Mark told him he couldn't take his money, but Jack insisted. It was a matter of pride, Mark said. Jack has a bad leg and a bad back, and he used to have a drinking problem. No one will hire him, but Mark felt sorry for him—so he said he'd find him a place in the project. Jack refused to take no for an answer. He gave Mark the tackle box and said he'd go to his grave with the secret.

So now Mark has an old crippled drunk working for him. He's not in charge, but what if something goes wrong? What if he makes a mistake that gets someone hurt? Not only that, but my husband took a bribe. Mark thinks the whole thing's hilarious. He says the project will take Jack all through the year, that it will give him a good income—$30,000 or so. And once Jack's worked for a while, he'll give him back the tackle box.

Of course, none of that is the problem. The problem is that Mark's putting up new houses on the island, the hill I want to stay the same forever. I want Quinn's Aquinnah—High Ground—to be the same for her children as it was for her.

I am furious.

Quinn really tried my patience today, but I did something I'm not proud of. She pushed and pushed, asking why Mark and I aren't getting along. She heard me crying and him yelling, and she said if it kept on, she might as well kill herself.

Oh, my God.

She actually said that. Maybe I'm making excuses, but I didn't feel I had any choice. I went straight into her room while she was at swimming lessons and read her diary. Allie was home with a sore throat, and she saw me. Not knowing where Quinn kept her key, I tried my own. Naturally it didn't work, so I cut the strap.

I deserved what I got. My daughter wrote about crying herself to sleep, being so worried about us getting divorced, not understanding what was going on. I am really reacting badly to Mark's project—it runs so deep! The Vineyard is my spiritual home, where I fell in love with Mark and had Quinny. It's where I last lived with Dana. . . .

I have to let this go. Hearing my daughter—she's only eleven!—say she felt like killing herself worries me crazy. I'm so mad at Mark for taking Jack's money. I told him the sight of the tackle box makes me sick—he retorted with some wise remark about taking the good with the bad. He stuffed some old Sun Center papers inside and said I might not like everything, but I had to look at the whole picture.

I threw the tackle box in the back of the garage. I hope he takes it to the dump.

Dana read the last entry, dated July 30 of last summer, the day of Lily's death.

Okay. Truce. The moon is out, shining on the calm, dark sea. My children are fast asleep in their beds. Moments ago I was the mad twin, screaming like a banshee at their father, the love of my life. Call it full-moon fever, call it PMS, I was really a big fat jerk. Said things I wish I could take back. I accused Mark of ruining us, killing our family—a really cruel reference to what Quinn said three days ago, which I'd already told him about.

We're going for a sail.

The girls will be fine. They will, won't they, dear diary? I've never left them alone in the middle of the night before, but on the other hand, I've never screamed at my husband like that either. He wants to make it up to me. I want to make it up to him. Maybe we'll make love on the waves. Maybe we won't.

It doesn't matter. I love him.

And I love them. It scares me to say this, but I love them even more than him, more than Dana, more than my own life. I hate that I've hurt Quinn so much, fighting with her father. I never heard my parents yell that way, and I'm upset with myself for doing it. She knows I'm ashamed of Mark for taking that money—she heard me call it a bribe. She knows the man who paid it was old and crippled
. . .
ouch.

It's a crystal-clear night, and the breeze is blowing a steady seven. My daughters are world-class sleepers. I can't remember the last time either of them woke up before morning. No nightmares, no sleepwalking, nothing but sweet dreams. They'll snooze the night away, and I'll be home in an hour. Maybe forty-five minutes.

Oh, the moon is so beautiful. As I sit here on the herb garden wall, I see the moonlight spread all across the sea: from here to the Vineyard to France. The mermaids have cast their net; Miss Alice would say they're watching over us.

All of us, all of the mermaid girls: Mom and Dana and me and Quinn and Allie. We are so, so lucky to have each other.

When Dana finished reading, she had tears running down her cheeks. She had just spent an hour listening to Lily's voice, and she missed her more than ever. Moving quickly, she went into her room and checked under the bed. The tackle box was gone, but even before that, she'd known where Quinn and Allie had gone. She picked up the receiver and dialed Sam on his cell phone.

“Hello?” he said.

“It's Dana—”

“Any sign of them?” he asked. “Have they come home yet?”

“No,” she said. By his questions she knew he hadn't found them either, but she hadn't expected that he would; he was searching in the wrong place. “They're sailing to the Vineyard.”

“Martha's Vineyard—in this?” Sam asked, his voice loud with disbelief.

“I'm positive,” Dana shouted so he'd be sure to hear above the wind. She knew her nieces' vision of family had come from Lily, and she knew what that was. “They have a debt they think they owe. Their parents'—they're going to pay it back.”

Sam called out to the captain, and Dana heard something about radioing ahead to boats closer to the area.

“They're dropping me off—I'll be right there to get you,” Sam said, hanging up.

And Dana went to get ready, to grab her rain slicker, and be waiting at the wall when he came to pick her up for the drive to the ferry.

CHAPTER
25

T
HE
C
OAST
G
UARD HAD BEEN ALERTED IN
Newport, Woods Hole, and Menemsha, and Dana told herself the girls would be safe now, that if Lily and the mermaids had brought them all this far, they'd keep watch just a little bit longer. While Sam used his cell phone to call the Steamship Authority, Dana said good-bye to her mother.

“I'm so worried,” Martha said. She hadn't left her post by the front window, sitting in the chair with Maggie at her feet. “The storm isn't letting up at all.”

“I know, Mom.”

“What can they be thinking? Are you sure they've sailed to the Vineyard?”

“That's where they're heading. I'm almost positive.”

“And you and Sam are going to drive to the
ferry
? Is it even running?”

“Yes.”

Martha shook her head as if it were the craziest thing she'd ever heard. Probably it was. But Dana felt as if she were operating under orders from her sister, that she didn't have much choice in the matter. Kissing her mother, placing Maggie into her arms for comfort, she ran outside.

Sam had the van started, the windows defrosted. The rain made visibility difficult, but he drove fast and carefully.

“How do you know?” he asked as they sped down I-95.

“That they've gone to the Vineyard?”

“Yes. You know. It's not a guess, is it?”

Dana shook her head. She felt the emotions fill her chest, sting her eyes. Having kept everything inside for the last hour, she wanted to pour the whole thing out. But wouldn't it sound ridiculous, like wishful thinking?

“Lily told me,” she said, not able to judge how it might sound.

“Lily?”

Dana nodded. She rubbed her eyes. “She really did, Sam. I know it sounds nuts, but she showed me where to look for the answer, and when I did, she told me where they are.”

“I believe you.”

“How can you? I'm not sure I even believe myself.”

“I know all about unusual communication, Dana.”

Her head snapped to look at him. Sitting in the driver's seat, Sam Trevor looked like a reasonable man. Tall and secure, fit and lean, his glasses on his straight, handsome nose, he looked like who he was: a man who taught at an Ivy League college. Yet here he was, agreeing with the impossible.

“Tell me,” Sam went on, “what she said.”

And Dana did: She told about being led to the locket, to the pictures—the story they told, sending her to look in the herb garden, eventually to Lily's diary. “The whole time,” Dana said, looking with wonder out the window at nothing in particular, “I heard her voice. She was speaking so gently, leading me along. . . .”

“She needs you to save her daughters.”

“But how, Sam?” Dana asked. “How can she be talking to me?”

“I study dolphins. You know about them, right? That they communicate with each other in very sophisticated ways that we humans haven't quite figured out. They swim together, and with a few clicks or the lash of a tail, they tell each other where the food is, that danger is present, even that they love each other. They speak to each other across long distances even when they are out of sight.”

“How do they do that?”

“No one really knows.” Sam reached into the glove compartment for a cassette tape, and he placed it into the player. Pushing start, he waited for the music to start.

It was the sound of dolphins. The tape was mostly silence—to the human ear, Sam explained—with a few clicks and trills, some low moans and grunts. “What we can't hear might be a whole love story to the dolphins,” Sam said. “They're adapted to listening to each other, to voices too soft for humans to pick up.”

“Too soft?”

“Like Lily's,” Sam said. And he reached across the seat to hold Dana's hand, because without even looking he knew she had started to cry. “Lily's been talking to you all along, Dana.”

“How do you know, Sam?”

“Because I sometimes hear my father. He tells me I'm a good guy, that I'm on the right track. He has an Irish accent, and I hear him most at night, when I'm alone on my boat. Malachy Condon helped me understand.”

“Who's he?”

“He's an old Irish guy who lives in Nova Scotia, probably the world's most gifted listener. An oceanographer like me, but a class all to himself. He lost his son Gabriel, and the dolphins taught him how to get him back: to listen to the right things.”

“What are the right things?”

“Oh, they're different for every person,” Sam said, holding Dana's hand a little tighter. “Gabriel was a poet, so Malachy learned to hear the poetry in everyday life. My dad was an Irish truck driver, so a lot of what I hear is kind of rough and salty. But with Lily . . .”

“It's beautiful,” Dana said, hearing her sister's voice. “And it's sharp and it's funny.”

“I used to listen for you,” Sam said. Glancing across the front seat, he caught Dana's eye for just a second. There in his gaze she saw intense longing, and she had the feeling it went back decades, to the time they first met.

“What did you hear?”

“I heard waves,” Sam said. “That might sound strange, but that's what it was. I'd lie in my bed and think of you, and I'd hear breaking waves, rolling over the shallows. . . .”

“You live on a boat.”

He shook his head. “On a boat, the waves are different. You're in them, on them. The waves I heard were onshore. They were rolling in after being at sea, after years at sea—one last stretch across the sandbars, cresting white and breaking hard before washing up on the beach.”

“Waves . . .” Dana said, closing her eyes, knowing that Sam was right—she had always lived within hearing distance of the waves breaking onshore.

“They brought me to you,” Sam said. “After all this time.”

Dana said, her eyes flying wide open and gazing across the seat at this man who was taking her to find her nieces, “However it happened, whether it was the waves or Lily or both, I'm so glad they did.”

Sam nodded, but he didn't speak. Maybe he didn't have to. The dolphins sang on the tape, but the van was filled with other voices as well: Lily's, Sam's father, Sam and Dana themselves. Listening, Sam kept driving and Dana kept praying. They still had miles to go.

 

T
HE STORM WAS BAD.
Allie kept them heading east, and Quinn did her best to hold the tiller straight. Her arms were getting tired, and she wished her eyes had windshield wipers. The visibility was terrible. The waves were huge. The life jackets were chapping their skin. Quinn didn't get seasick, but if she did, now would be the time.

“Where are we?” Allie yelled.

“We're almost there!”

“Really?” Allie cried with a sob of relief.

“I think so,” Quinn called back.

The truth was, she had no idea. The rain was falling too hard to see anything. The wind hooted around them, and the jib had finally bought the dust. It flew in tatters, like a torn white bedsheet hanging to the forestay. Quinn's heart was in her throat. She sensed her sister's panic. Allie was doing her best to stay brave, but it wasn't working. Even Quinn was terrified.

“Oh, Quinn!” Allie screamed as the boat hit a big wave and nearly went over.

“Hang on, Allie.”

“I'm trying.”

Quinn's hands hurt from grasping the tiller. Her skin had blistered, and now the blisters were breaking. The wooden handle was slippery with blood and rain; she wanted to let go, to push the water out of her eyes, but she didn't dare. She knew she might not be able to grab on again.

The next wave came out of nowhere. Quinn had been pointing straight, taking most of the waves head-on, but this one smacked them broadside. Allie shrieked as the
Mermaid
shuddered with its force, heeled almost over, and righted herself.

“Kimba!” Allie screamed, lurching to the side.

“Hold on, Al,” Quinn demanded, too worried about her sister to care about the stuffed toy.

“He's overboard,” Allie cried, holding the gunwale as she hung over the waves. “Oh, no. Quinn, Kimba fell in!”

“Jeez, Al. Get back in the boat,” Quinn yelled.

“Save him, please save him, Quinn.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Don't swear!”

“Goddammit, crap-shit!”

“It's not his fault!”

Quinn knew they should keep going. Their only chance was to ride out the storm. If she stopped sailing now, they might capsize or start drifting. They were right on course—her father had taught her about dead reckoning, and the only thing she knew was that they'd been pointing ninety ever since leaving Hubbard's Point. But Allie was leaning overboard in her bright life vest, sobbing her heart out.

“Okay,” Quinn said, gritting her teeth. “Coming about.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Allie wept.

“Hard alee . . .”

The boom cracked overhead, the sail filling from the other side. The boat rocked on the big waves. Forward and back, sideways. Quinn scanned the waves for Kimba. She started swearing under her breath, then out loud. The sea was gray and black, and there was no way that dingy, threadbare, laundry-faded feline scrap was ever going to show up.

“Kimba, Kimba!” Allie called as if he could actually hear her.

“We can't keep looking. We'll get off course, we have to—”

“There he is!”

Quinn focused her gaze to where Allie was pointing, and damned if she wasn't right! There, bobbing in the waves as if he belonged there, smiling up with his cute little lion face, was Kimba.

“I'll get him,” Quinn said. She maneuvered over the best she could. Coming closer, ten feet, nine, eight . . . Reaching out, letting go of the tiller with one hand, leaning over the waves, she caught the soggy, sorry, soaked scrap of lint from the bounding sea.

“You're the greatest,” Allie sobbed, reaching for him. “You're my hero!”

And those were the last words Quinn heard before another wave caught the bow and flipped the boat upside down.

 

T
HE YACHT
E
NDURANCE,
a forty-foot yawl out of Stonington, Connecticut, was sailing through the storm toward Newport, Rhode Island, when the owner, Crawford Jones, thought he saw a small sailboat go over just south of Point Judith.

“What's that?” he asked his friend, Paul Farragut.

“What's what?”

“Did you just see a sail over there?”

“All I can see is the future,” Paul said. “It's warm clothes, a big steak, and a dry martini at the Black Pearl.”

“I'm serious. I think I saw a boat capsize.”

“Where?”

“Right there,” Crawford said, pointing southeast.

“Maybe it was an idiot windsurfer trying to catch the storm swells. Let's see if he gets up again. . . .”

The two men were silent, sitting in the cockpit and trying to see something that probably wasn't even there. The rain drove into their eyes, and the waves rose and fell, making visibility poor.

The
Endurance
had sailed to Bermuda and Halifax, had crossed the Atlantic in weather much worse than this. The men were best friends, expert sailors who had sailed together since childhood; they didn't feel any danger for themselves. They were both hungry, and although they were dedicated blue-water sailors, they were eager to reach Newport.

“It was nothing,” Crawford said. “I'm ninety percent sure.”

“Ninety percent?”

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” Paul agreed. “We'd better check.”

Turning the wheel, the men brought the
Endurance
about and sailed southeast to investigate.

 

“H
ANG ON,
A
LLIE,
” Quinn said as another wave broke over them.

The force smashed her head, filled her mouth with salt water, tried to pull her off the overturned boat. Allie was right beside her, clinging on to Kimba and the boat with the same tenacity. As long as they could see and hear each other, they were okay. But when the waves knocked them underwater, Quinn couldn't see and she felt panic.

“Quinn, are you still there?”

“I'm here.”

The sisters talked to each other constantly. The boat had flipped at least twenty minutes before. Although the sea was summer warm, the waves were too big to withstand much longer. Quinn was nearly blind with terror.

She held the tackle box under her left arm. The waves tried to rip it from her, but she wouldn't let go. Although she knew money didn't matter, she was on a mission for her parents. This whole disaster had begun with her wanting to repay their debt, and she couldn't bear the thought of failing.

“Drop that box,” Allie ordered.

“When you drop Kimba.”

That made Allie cry, and instantly Quinn was sorry. She was too sarcastic. It was a bad trait, and she was really seeing all her bad traits just then. Her impatience, her freshness, her meanness. Her little sister was awash in sea waves, and now she was choking on tears too.

“I didn't mean that,” Quinn said.

“You saved him for me,” Allie gulped. “I know you didn't.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“Because I'm scared we're going to die.”

Another big wave came, knocking them off the boat. Quinn held on to the box, grabbing for Allie. Dragging her sobbing sister back to the boat, she practically threw her against the side. She knew they had to hang on. That had been rule number one whenever their mother had taken them sailing:
If you ever capsize, girls, stay with the boat no matter what,
she had said.

“Don't let go, Al,” she commanded.

“I'm getting tired, Quinn.”

The waves hit them, made Quinn see stars, and this time when she went under, her mother's voice just kept going.
Keep holding on, my love. Whatever you do, Quinn, don't let go of the boat.