The Favorite Daughter

by Patti Callahan Henry

  “Your wrist.” Beckett lifted her hand gently to look at the black-and-blueness of her hand and arm. “What happened?”

  “I fell.” Colleen gently pulled her hand away and cradled it as she settled onto the cushioned seat at the back of the boat. “Go!”

  Beckett revved the motor. It was high tide, as it had been when Gavin left in the middle of the night. A cycle had already passed: a tide out and a tide in. “If he’s out here, we’ll find him,” Beckett hollered over the wind and the water slapping the sides of the fast-moving boat.

  The marsh passed by, the islands of green and waving grass, the maze of waterways, blue and gray and winding, isolating the islands from one another, keeping them apart even as they were bound together below the water. Each narrow, oyster-edged waterway led to another. Many people became lost in these waters, as the landmarks were few once you were in the thick of the estuaries. But Dad knew every landmark, every star and horizon view that would guide him home.

  Home.

  It was his mantra and his guiding light.

  Where would he have gone? He never wanted anything more than he had—that was his way. He’d never wanted fancy. Even when he could afford it, he didn’t want it. There was the time Colleen yearned for an expensive prom dress. The rest of the schoolgirls were sharing photos of their chosen gowns, making sure no one bought a duplicate—sequins and feathers; halters and taffeta. Dad had told Colleen, “Mother will sew you a beautiful dress. Who needs to cover up the real beauty of who you are, my Lena? No fancy dress can make a girl beautiful inside.” And in the end, it was a simple satin shift with thin straps that looked fragile enough to break. It was a gown that other girls wanted and believed came from a fancy-pants store in Atlanta, which was what Colleen had told them.

  “See?” Dad had said. “One doesn’t need more to be more.”

  He hadn’t taken off in the boat for something more or better. That wasn’t the reason. So why had he gone? To prove that he could still navigate? Had his delirium put him in a dream? Was he looking for something?

  She spun around to Beckett and placed her hand on his shoulder. “He’s not in the marsh anymore. He’s not in the river. He went to the open water.”

  Beckett pulled back on the throttle. “Why do you think that?”

  “The open water, where this ocean leads to another. He talked about it; one of the last things he told me was that we were connected to that place by water, to the place where I was born by another bay. The place where Colleen, the first Colleen, died. And when I interviewed Bob Macken, he told me that the only time Dad went into the sea with his little boat was after Mother died. He went there for solace. Maybe he’s gone there again.”

  Beckett pulled his phone from the storage compartment over his head and dialed quickly. “The police,” he said to me before speaking into the phone. “This is Beckett and I’m with Colleen Donohue—I believe we need to quit looking in the river and head to the open water.”

  Something was said on the other side of the line and Beckett answered, “Yes, I’m with his daughter.”

  Beckett hung up without another word and throttled forward again, heading toward the sea.

  Colleen lifted her face to the wind, tasting the Lowcountry air she loved so very much. Someone could have put her in this boat with a blindfold and she would know where she was. The fetid pluff mud, the salt-soaked air and stinging aroma of rich sea life would tell her. This was her dad’s lifeblood and he’d headed out into it when he hadn’t known what else to do.

  It hadn’t been any different throughout her life. When Dad needed to think or needed to understand or decide, he’d take the boat out. Maybe he’d be gone for an hour, or maybe six, but when he returned so did his smile and peaceful way. He found himself out on these waters and somehow in the middle of last night, he’d tried to do the same again. He’d wanted Gavin back and he’d believed that he’d find himself out here as he always had.

  She couldn’t explain all that to Beckett. She could just point him to the outlet where the river met the sea.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Memory both is and is not our past.

  James Gleick, Time Travel

  Sunlight glittered over the surface of the water, tossing itself around the waves, playing. Splendor didn’t fade in the light of danger, but instead seemed to taunt Colleen. Her dad had headed out here for exactly this, for the inherent beauty, and for the connection to the other side of the sea.

  The immensity of the ocean overwhelmed Colleen and she let out a cry as she moved to the bow of Beckett’s boat. She and Hallie had always talked of the universe’s never-ending expanses. As children this had scared them. So much out there. Too much unknown. They’d talk about it and scare themselves and then cower beneath the covers together. No matter how big the universe, together they had their one little square on earth.

  But now the sea felt larger than the universe, a place where it would be impossible to find one little dot of a boat and man who had been gone for at least twelve hours. Colleen stared over the water and then to the sky, wanting to beg the sun not to move, to stay exactly where it was until they found her dad. Don’t slide below the horizon. Don’t take us to darkness.

  Above, the whap-whap sound of blades slapping through the air caused Colleen to look up. A helicopter. She glanced back at Beckett and formed a prayer motion, hands on her chest. Thank God for the helicopter, they would find him. She knew they would. Which didn’t mean that she would quit looking, but now they had a better chance.

  It was afternoon now—the sun was brutal and Beckett’s small canopy offered little shade. He found two baseball hats in the bottom of a cooler, moldy and wet, but they both put them on, knowing the beating sun would do them no favors. There was an old curdled tube of sunblock and they both slathered cream on their exposed skin. But there was no turning back, that much was for certain.

  Beckett throttled back and the boat came to idle, bobbing in the water as he walked to the front of the little Boston Whaler and took Colleen in his arms. “I don’t know where to go. Tell me where he’d go. Is there a fishing hole? A quadrant?”

  She shook her head against his chest. “No. He never left the river with me. He rarely left the bay or the marsh. All of his favorite spots were there. He liked to know the ocean was here, but he didn’t take that tiny boat into it. Only once as far as I know.”

  “He would have run out of gas by now,” Beckett said.

  “Then follow the current.” Colleen pointed east. “Follow that.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Beckett let her go and stared toward the horizon, his eyes scanning just as Colleen’s were.

  “He liked the beach only once every year or so. He always preferred . . .” Her voice skipped over the next words like a rock skimming on top of the water in jumps and dips. “The safety of the river and bay.”

  “But not now.”

  “No.” She turned to him and knew the wetness on her face was not the splash of ocean water. “We must have set something loose in him. This is our fault. We asked him all those questions and made him talk about the past, something he had kept safe in his own way, inside his own mind, and lived in his own secrecy. We should have left well enough alone. We unraveled something wound tight and, in his confusion, in his dementia, he went off looking for it.”

  “This is not in any way whatsoever your fault.”

  “It’s my fault in more ways than one, Beckett.” She looked toward the water, willing her eyes to see her dad’s boat, his gray hair set against the blue water. “I heard someone get up last night and I should have gotten out of bed to check. But instead I rolled over, all happy and satisfied because I thought it was Hallie. I thought Hallie was going outside to look at the stars like she does when she’s upset. I was wrong. So deadly wrong.”

  “How could you have known?”

  “I could have checked. Taken f
ive seconds to get my ass out of bed. I didn’t think . . .”

  “Stop.”

  “Go!” she said. “Keep going. He’s out here somewhere. I know it.”

  * * *

  • • •

  When day began to fade from the sky and evening crept near, Beckett idled the boat and took her in his arms. “The day is almost over and I don’t have lights on this little boat. It wasn’t built to be this far out. There are professionals out here—we need to go back in.”

  Colleen could feel her body telling her to do the same. They’d both guzzled the bottles of warm water Beckett had found at the bottom of the fishing bucket, and they’d had nothing to eat. Colleen had ignored her body’s pleas for food and water, ignored the sharp and insistent pain in her hand and wrist, and urged Beckett farther and farther out, following an internal compass that told her they had to keep going.

  She gazed out and there it was—she swore she saw a silver boat glittering in the far right corner of her sight, bobbing at the whims of the surging ocean. “There!” she screamed at Beckett.

  He paused and tilted his baseball cap forward. “I don’t see anything,” he said over the wind. “Colleen, we have to turn back.”

  “Right there! Right there . . .” She pointed. “Three o’clock.”

  Beckett shook his head, not seeing what she did, and yet he drove toward her finger’s direction. As they drew closer, she was more and more sure: yes, there was silver glinting on the waves. Then he saw it, too, and he gunned the boat to its limits. They bounced over waves his small boat was not made for, Colleen’s spine jarring with each hit as the boat slammed against the current and she cradled her wrist in her opposite hand.

  They reached the johnboat as the sky darkened, as a brilliant sunset settled over the horizon behind them and the water turned a darker blue. The moon rose in front of them.

  “Dad!” Colleen shouted as they drew closer. Over and over she called that one name. But no gray head popped up. No man waved at them in desperation. “Call someone.” Colleen turned to Beckett as he eased his Whaler closer to the johnboat. “Tell them.”

  The boats bumped together and Colleen jumped from one to the next, landing crooked and falling on her bottom in the metal hull of her dad’s boat, twisting her foot as she lifted her injured hand so as not to use it. There he was, lying flat on the bottom of the boat, his face hidden under the bench seat. “Dad. Oh, God, Dad.”

  She fumbled to her knees, ignoring the pain as she bent to see his face under the bench. He must have been hiding his face from the sun. Colleen placed her hand on his neck, something she’d seen done in movies and medical shows. This was where the pulse was, right? Yes, there was a slow lumbering wave beneath her fingertips that revealed a beating heart. His chest rose and fell, slowly but steadily.

  She shook him gently. She said his name into his ear. She tried to lift his eyelids but withdrew in horror to see his eyes were rolled back to expose the whites. She looked at Beckett, who was tying the boats together, lashing them with a rope from stem to stern.

  “Is he . . . awake?” Beckett asked and peered over the bow.

  “No. And I can’t get him in your boat. We’ll have to drag him. He’s so sunburned, Beckett. My God . . .” A sob escaped just as the low hum of motors and horns drew near. The Coast Guard had arrived.

  Beckett said, “I gave them the coordinates.”

  Men in blue uniforms and caps took over, hollering instructions, placing Gavin on a board and lifting him into their own boat, where he would receive medical attention. As Colleen watched, they expertly slipped in an IV and settled an oxygen mask on his face.

  Beckett and Colleen climbed onto a second Coast Guard boat, as they had no light of their own to guide the way home. The men spoke in solemn tones. The boat with Gavin took off, rocking them all as they grabbed the edges and poles of the boat that would take Beckett and Colleen back to Watersend while the first would take Gavin to the hospital in Savannah.

  He was alone; her sweet dad with his ravaged body on a stretcher, alone on that boat with strangers.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  I think it is all a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it is.

  Vladimir Nabokov, interview, BBC Television, 1962

  Gavin Donohue lay supine on the hospital bed, his toes pointing west and east under the tented blanket. Machines beeped and squealed and Gavin was oblivious to all of it, his eyes closed and his body still. The lines on his face had etched deeper somehow, the sunburn evident and flaming around his face. His eyes were closed, the lids puffy and red, the veins blue beneath skin so fragile. His chapped lips were covered with thick white cream. He breathed—in, out, in, out—slowly, intermittently, without any smooth rhythm. Colleen stood with Hallie and Shane around his bedside, all bearing their own guilt for where their dad was and why and, Colleen knew, each sibling in some small way blaming the others. If this or if that or if only.

  They stared at him, no one speaking, until Dr. Matthews entered—a tall, thin woman with dark hair and a white lab coat with iodine stains on the sleeve. She stood at the end of Gavin’s bed, her hands placed evenly across the footboard, her stethoscope dangling from her neck. She cleared her voice before she spoke.

  “You are all his children?”

  “Yes,” they answered in unison.

  “I’m sorry, but your father’s condition is critical.” Her voice held steady as if this wasn’t a damning verdict but something one said every day.

  “Dad,” Hallie said. “Dad, not Father.”

  Colleen knew why she corrected the doctor about something so trivial at a time like this—because it mattered. Dad always said it: names matter.

  “Your dad.” The doctor corrected herself and continued. “He was out on the water for eighteen hours or more without protection, which under normal circumstances would be bad enough, but this is much more dangerous.”

  “Why?” Hallie stepped forward. “You can’t die of starvation and dehydration in that time. You can’t . . . can you?”

  “He drank seawater. Maybe a gallon or more of seawater.”

  “What?” Colleen asked.

  The doctor nodded, her lips closed in a tight line. “He must have become confused. He headed out to open sea without water or food. When he ran out of gas, it appears he must have filled an empty water bottle over and over again with seawater. It happens. When people become disoriented and confused, they believe the water will help. Then the sunburn and hyperthermia disorientation make it worse.”

  “Why would he do that?” Shane’s voice didn’t sound like his. “You’re telling me that if he hadn’t drunk the seawater he might be okay?”

  “I can’t say that for sure, but we would probably be able to reverse the damage. As it stands, the salinity shut down his kidneys. His organs are failing; one by one they are failing.”

  “Stop them from failing.” Hallie’s statement seemed so logical, so absolute. Just stop the failing.

  “We are trying.” Dr. Matthews touched the tented blanket over Gavin’s toes. “We are doing everything we can, but you need to be prepared. We can start him on dialysis, but not if his heart muscle has been damaged. We are going to get an EKG immediately. His breathing is erratic and his blood pressure is high.” She paused.

  “I don’t get it.” Hallie walked to the head of the bed, placed her hand on her dad’s sunburned forehead, on the raging red skin that had become swollen.

  “Seawater has almost four times more salt than our body’s fluid. When there is a high concentration of salt in the blood, the salt is transferred by osmosis to the cells. The body tries to excrete the water through the kidneys, and then this dehydrates the body even more. When you drink saltwater you are actually doing more damage than not having any water at all. Your organs don’t receive the oxygen they need, and that is where we are now. We
’re giving him fluids.” She pointed at the bag hanging off a silver pole at his side, the tube winding its way through the beeping machine and then into a vein in the crook of his elbow. “But it’s . . .”

  “Too late,” Shane interjected.

  Hallie kissed her dad’s forehead and then again looked at all of them. “I don’t need a lesson on salinity or hyper-whatever disorientation. I meant I don’t understand why he went out on the river in the middle of the night and drank gallons of seawater.”

  Shane made a small noise in the back of his throat. “He’s confused, Hallie. You know that. There’s no understanding the why or how. He just did. He wanted to go out alone on the river. He’s been trying for weeks now. How many times have we intervened?”

  “We should have taken the boat out of the water. We should have hidden the key. We should have locked his bedroom door . . .” Hallie listed all the should-haves, and of course there were more.

  “I should have checked on the noise in the middle of the night.” Colleen raised her hands in the air. “Me. I should have gone and made sure that it was Hallie looking at the stars. Me. I’m the big should-have in the scenario.”

  Dr. Matthews cleared her throat. “This is a tragic situation and when we’re dealing with Alzheimer’s these terrible things happen. There is only so much a family can do to keep their loved one safe. Blaming each other or yourself is not helpful.”

  “Yes.” Shane took his dad’s free hand from beneath the blanket, held it in his own. “Now what?”

  “We have a few more tests, but . . .”

  “You don’t hold great hope.”

  “Your dad is surrounded by love and the best medical care possible. There is always hope.”

  “Until there isn’t,” Hallie said, dropping her face into her hands.

  “Stop it!” Colleen said.

  “You’re the one who’s always telling me to look at the truth, Lena. ‘Look at reality, Hallie. Look straight at it,’ you told me. That’s what I’m doing.”