The She (23 page)

She was out of breath and flopped down in the bow, leaning forward, taking off her mittens. I wondered if my nose and cheeks were as red as hers, and I figured they were probably worse, since I'd had my face in the water I sat down in the booth, squirmed back in the corner and put my legs up so I couldn't look out that porthole.

I couldn't tell what she was thinking, but I decided she reminded me of my mom, strong and beautiful, making it a matter of principle not to look rattled.

"Mr. Church wrote down those loran TDs," she said finally, and her eyes came up to mine. They weren't hard, just kind of determined looking. "You realize, if you can get your grandfather to fund a dive of that wreck, you can eliminate two awful rumors, not just one."

I huffed, looking down at my reddened knuckles. "Don't laugh at me for saying so, but one of us could die out there. Or both. We could get eaten, trying to prove something."

She smiled a little at the ceiling, reached into her bag, took her prescription bottle in her hand, and stared at it. She squeezed it and dropped her hands. "I don't care."

She sounded deadly serious, and I eyed her fist around the bottle. "Grey, take your meds. Come on, don't be a hero. It's medicine, not a weekend party frolic with the Xanax heads."

"I don't really think I'm depressed, Evan. I'm just being realistic. You tend to look at risks differently when your life is already in danger."

I glanced up at the porthole but didn't look out. I figured if Grey were talking about The She,
all
our lives were in danger; I wasn't feeling inspired to go down in a bubble drum, to be served up like an hors d'oeuvre at The She's cocktail hour; I told her as much, and while she looked out the porthole with respect, I got it that she was talking about something else.

"I didn't realize it for the first week I was at Saint Elizabeth's, but the truth is, my life was probably in danger the moment I walked in there. My dad showed up every day. Did you know that?"

"I saw his name on your visitors page," I said, though I still couldn't decide how Chandra's tale of him prostituting her gelled with those visits.

"You know why? It's not that he loves me so much. Or if he does, it's in some twisted way. He comes in there all lovey-dovey, and after a week it occurs to me why. He's afraid I'm going to spew some stuff. He's actually petrified."

She kept glancing up at the porthole, and it made me pay closer attention to her. I realized talking about something on shore was taking away her tension over The She. I kept my mouth shut.

"My dad is the type who, um"—she smiled behind her fist and glanced at the porthole again. "He's very stupid in some ways. He's always treated women like they were nothing, you know? A doll to buy jewels for A lay. A thing to dangle off his arm when he walked into a fancy restaurant. I mean, he was completely blind to the fact that I wasn't turning out that way. He took a lot of chances, talked a lot of business in front of me or let me hear his end of it over the phone, just assuming that I was his sweet little girl and that, like my mother I would never ever turn on him because ... women don't turn on their men, okay? I have a feeling real mafia dads are smarter." With that, she laughed totally, but it left her quickly and left an ornery look on her face covering a layer of something like terror.

"I guess his wheels started to crank about a week after I went to Saint E's. He got scared and would be really nice. I wasn't so nice back. Then he started to try to talk me out of being there, saying I didn't need it, the program was stupid. I could see right through him. Then he started to threaten to sign me out himself, and then I threatened him back. I told him if he didn't leave me alone I
would
tell, lots of things. So he'd better get off my case."

I could not get over her nerve. "Are you scared now?"

"Not of him, exactly. He's done some shit to me in his life, but I don't think fathers go around killing their offspring. He's not that ill."

I thought of Chandra's lending story and didn't know if I agreed.

"The way he put it to me was that he trusted me to get myself fixed up without 'betraying the family.' But he said that if other people knew I was in there,
they
might get a little bit nervous. Maybe some guys who'd watched him spew business in front of me, like I was some trinket, some Barbie doll."

"Sounds like the type of guy my mother used to love to hate," I couldn't help saying. Grey was reminding me so totally of Mom.

Grey smiled, too easily. It amazed me. I thought she should be a hell of a lot more wound up than she was suddenly looking.

"Grey, what are you going to do in two weeks when you get out?" I asked.

I didn't think she should go home. I figured she ought to rip off thirty thousand to run away with or something, but the thought of her running away felt completely awful. I started to say she could stay with us, then I thought of one of her father's crooked partners breaking in to stick a pillow over her face and silence her ... and getting Aunt Mel or Emmett by accident. I didn't know where reality was, didn't know what to say.

"I don't know." Her smile looked weighted down now. "I know I want to clean up my own life, so fuck him. At the same time, I'm not going to turn on him. He's family. You don't bust your family, I'm sorry."

"So what are you going to do?" I repeated, feeling some urgency rise in my throat.

She looked from her hands to me. "For one thing, I'm going to dive a wreck. And if some she-devil comes along to take me down, I'll just look at her and say, 'Whassup, witchie? I sure hope you brought your salt and pepper because I am fresh out.'"

She flopped down, and I watched hex; thinking of how a few short words like that can be jammed with so many unspoken truths. She didn't really care if she lived or died, and that truth showed up even more in her casual shrug, in her ability to flop onto her back and take her eyes off that porthole. It wasn't the same as wanting to commit suicide, but it was gruesome enough, especially when her family didn't seem to care if she lived or died, either. I wondered if my dead parents weren't a better deal than what she had.

I could also see that maybe this dive was keeping her from feeling suicidal. There really was something to KHK projects that I'd experienced myself. I might never have had suicidal thoughts, but I could get depressed as easily as the next person. I'd be going to pick up Miguel—to take him to a ball game or just to the park to kick a soccer ball around—and I'd see him run from the window and throw open the door when he saw me coming up the street. My mood would jump. It gives you a reason to be here, this whole thing about helping somebody else out when their life is too hard. It was more than remarkable, and at the same time a bit humiliating, that Grey might end up helping me more than I could ever help her.

I spent the next hour going over in my head how to get my grandfather to agree to fund that dive. I knew he liked Mr. Church. I didn't know if he would agree to spend that much money just because Mr. Church clapped his hands and put them on my head, and what I thought was a reliable memory came fluttering back. But I knew I could talk a very good game, and I got my lines together while watching Grey rest.

It helped me pass the time without looking out that porthole.

"When we got within fifty yards of the docks, I could see my brother standing on one, watching us, his cell phone in his hand. Grey was standing beside me looking over the starboard bow, and I nudged her and said, "Uh-oh, trouble."

Mr. Church floated in sideways, and Emmett caught the starboard bow with his foot.

Before he could start in on me, I blurted out, "Opa told me I could go, and he also told me he wasn't telling you."

"I don't need Opa to find you if I want to find you. I went to see Mr. Shields, who said you had been to see Church this morning. I came over here, and the
Hope Wainwright
was gone, and you were nowhere. Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to be out on a boat in November Evan? Do you know how fast a storm can rise up?"

"Opa said there was a warm-water eddy on the canyon wall and it was perfectly safe," I told him.

"I don't care. If something happens to you, what becomes of me?" He turned to Church. "I'm paying you back for that fuel. I don't want my brother feeling indebted to you in any way."

"Emmett, don't be tacky," I mumbled, climbing onto the dock and giving Grey a hand over. He looked at her with winter air blowing out both nostrils like a bull.

"And how are you feeling? Do your parents know where you are?"

"Um, believe me when I tell you, they wouldn't care," she mumbled around a laugh, and anyone but Emmett might have thought nothing more than, "This is not the type of girl you bring home to Mother." But I could feel his usual sympathy going out, and he took her mittened hand in his. He turned to Mr. Church.

"You and I are going to have a little talk, Edwin. Away from Opa. I'm taking you over to the diner for coffee, do you mind?" But instead of waiting for him to answer he turned to Grey. "You're not planning to drive back to Philadelphia at this ungodly hour are you? There's plenty of room at my grandfather's house, bless his sweet, industrious heart."

His sarcasm was ripping, despite his concern for Grey. I looked at my watch. It was eleven-fifteen, and I wondered if Mr. Church wasn't normally long in bed by this hour, He had another hour's ride back to Sassafras.

He said, "I think I can fit you into my busy schedule," and rolled his eyes at me, like another kid in trouble.

The diner was right across the street from the docks, so we walked over after Mr. Shields's teenage son showed up to scrub down the
Hope.
Nobody said anything, not even Emmett, even after we'd ordered hot chocolate and I cupped the hot mug in my hands, bringing it under my nose so the steam could thaw my face. Grey did the same.

Mr. Church mumbled, "By the way, Emmett, you're looking quite the man these days. I don't think I would have recognized you, full university beard and all."

I guess Emmett caught the dig. "Thank you, I am a full-blooded adult, Edwin. No question. First, I'd like to know what you all were doing out on the water"

It was a hard question to answer not because we were out to hide everything but because none of us had really been sure. Emmett took the silence the wrong way.

"You were gone nine hours. I don't think there's any question you went to the canyons, but what were you hoping to accomplish?"

Mr. Church found his voice first. "Your brother asked me. I've done it for other people who've lost relatives at sea. It gives them a chance to hold a sort of at-sea memorial that brings more closure. I think that's all your brother wanted."

His kind tone didn't work.

"Edwin, the problem with that is my parents are
not
in the canyon."

"Of course not. They're in heaven," Mr. Church replied, and I hopped in my seat feeling the heat roll off Emmett. This is one, of those sticky moments where an atheist can be rendered speechless. There's not a whole lot he could say that wouldn't sound in utter poor taste. He was sharp and found his way.

"That's funny. Based on island superstitions, I would have sworn you'd have thought they were under the canyon floor stewing in one of the various Protestant hells, or a hole, or in Hades, or purgatory, depending upon which artistic rendering you're paying homage to. See any she-devils out there, folks?"

"Emmett." I found my voice first. "Whatever your problem is, or whatever you want to say, just say it. Stop attacking people."

He waved his hand in the air like he was sorry. "I just feel, and my aunt Mel feels, that Evan needs to accept the truth, and the faster he can do that, the faster he can resume the happy life we have tried so hard to build for him. He can get past this—and with the truth. Not with lies, superstitions, make-believe. I have an army of DEA agents who would tell him the same story I'm trying to tell him. So what are you doing, Edwin?"

Mr. Church blinked at the tabletop. He glanced at his watch, and I thought he looked tired for the first time tonight. "The DEA had to ignore critical information, simply because it didn't fit their plausibility structure. They're not trained to investigate the paranormal, or even the weather, let alone the complex infrastructure of the two of them—"

"I could tell you there is no supernatural, but let me be more diplomatic and say there is nothing supernatural about what happened to my parents."

"Yes, I think that would be far less
arrogant
of you," Mr. Church agreed.

I put up my hands. "Emmett, listen to me. He did that thing with his hands to me again. He pulled loran IDs out of my head, long numbers that I scribbled down eight years ago in a very stressful moment. Explain that."

Emmett wouldn't look at me. His head dropped and he stared at the table so I couldn't see his eyes. I felt an entrapment coming on, but I couldn't hear it in his voice. "So that's what you were doing out there. You were following those loran TDs to ... what? To see if you could sense the
Goliath
below you or something?"

I could feel it rolling off him, despite that he wouldn't let me see his eyes, this little tone of his that he used to use whenever he kicked my ass at chess. "Are you
sure
you want to move there, Evan?" I'd be looking all over the board until my eyeballs were bugging out. "Yeah, I'm sure." Boom, a little slide from some innocent-looking bishop on the other end of the board, four moves into the game. "Checkmate. But you'll get me next time." I hadn't yet.

"Yeah," I said cautiously.

"You think you found the
Goliath?
"

"Yeah." I watched him looking at his lap, and since he kept so quiet, I felt my confidence building. "Yeah. And I bet if we went over to our old house, we'd find those exact loran TDs scribbled on the wall."

He shook his head. "I had the housekeeper wipe them clean about a year after you put them there."

"Why?" I smacked the table in frustration. "Because it didn't fit the government's little theories? Do you remember them? I'll bet you do, Mr. Great Brain. Were they east of two-six-six-eight-zero, north of four-two-two-eight-zero?"