Another picture was a modern one. It showed two boys standing in front of a fishing boat, both grinning from ear-to-ear. The boat was probably about 19-feet long, less than half the size of The Guardians.
“Here you go,” John said, returning with the coffee.
She took it, wrapping her hands around it. The heat felt good. She brought it slowly to her lips, breathing in the rich aroma. She finally took a swallow and it warmed her insides.
“What is the average length of time someone is missing before they’re found?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Every case is different and it takes as long as it takes. Given the size of your husband’s boat, it should be easier to spot than some others we’ve found. So, theoretically that could cut down on the search time considerably.”
“But it might not.”
“Like I said, we’re still trying to figure out why The Guardians was reporting adverse weather conditions when no one else in the area they were supposedly in had anything amiss on their radars.”
“Couldn’t fog and other weather be isolated in small areas? I mean, I have a cousin who lives in San Francisco and she’s always talking about driving in and out of patches of fog. Oh, and then there’s those rainstorms where you can actually see the line where the rain stops. Sometimes it’s raining on one side of the street and not the other.”
“While all that is true, it’s just unusual that there would be a fog bank as pervasive and long-lasting as what they were describing for where they were. Usually, fog burns off, but apparently it lasted most of the day yesterday. You would think that somebody else would have noticed something like that.”
“What if Dave wasn’t thinking straight because he was injured and he sailed farther out to sea instead of back toward Miami?”
“We thought about that. We’re also accounting for him possibly drifting north or south. We’ve reached out to other stations to help with the search and ones farther out just to keep an eye out.”
She nodded. The coffee was helping to clear her head, but a sense of helplessness was settling in just as fast. The police officers had been right. There really was nothing she could do here.
Even so, she refused to go. She wanted to hear whatever they heard when they heard it and not a single second later.
“You feeling a little better?” John asked, sizing her up.
“Yes, thank you. I appreciate the coffee.”
“How about if you go home and get some rest and I’ll call as soon as I know anything.”
“No. I’m not leaving.”
“Please, Sally. Let us do our jobs.”
“I’ll just sit here silently. You don’t have to talk to me. I promise I won’t get in the way. I just want to be here the second any news comes in.”
“Look, the guys are already anxious and on edge without seeing you here. It’s putting extra pressure on them.”
“Maybe when they get tired of seeing me it will remind them just how important it is that they keep searching until they find my husband.”
“Look. They don’t need a reminder. They know exactly how important it is and they will do everything in their power to find the ship. The last thing we need at the moment is to have you underfoot.”
She stared at him steadily. “Just answer me this. Would you leave if they were searching for your wife?”
His shoulders slumped in defeat. “No. No, I wouldn’t.”
“So, how can you ask me to do what you couldn’t?”
“All right. You can stay. But if you cause a fuss, I will have you removed from here. Understand?”
She nodded, struggling to stay focused on the feeling of the warm coffee cup in her hands. One of her college roommates had gone on to be a trauma counselor. She always said that when you were overwhelmed and freaking out, to fixate on tactile feelings, such as the feeling of the warm ceramic mug against her hands.
She wasn’t sure if it was working or not. Maybe she was just going into shock or becoming numb. Whatever was happening, she didn’t fight it. She couldn’t stand another wave of chaos in her mind just then. It was too much.
Just focus on the coffee and on the fact that Mark will come home to us. We’ll drink coffee that’s much better than this and the whole family will be together.
She settled into her chair, quietly watching as John went in and out of the office. She listened carefully whenever someone spoke with him about the search.
Time passed. He offered her some food, but she wasn’t hungry. Her stomach was turning over too much to try to put food in it. She just sat and slowly drank her coffee. Between a horrible night’s sleep and the bad news in the morning, she was thoroughly exhausted. At some point she realized the coffee was all that was keeping her awake.
The minutes ticked by with agonizing slowness. Finally, a man walked in and dropped some papers on John’s desk. “The birds are refueling sir. They’re searching the tertiary quadrant next.”
“No sign of anything?” John asked, an edge to his voice.
“Nothing, sir. No boat, no lifeboats and no wreckage.”
John visibly winced when the man said wreckage, but Sally breathed a sigh of relief. Sometimes no news was good news. In this case, no wreckage definitely counted as good news.
The man left the office and John began to leaf through the papers. She wanted to say something, but she had promised not to get in his way, and, really, she had nothing more to add at that moment.
After more time had passed, she got up to stretch her legs. She glanced at some more of the pictures on the walls before excusing herself to the restroom. She returned a couple of minutes later and resumed her silent vigil.
Sit, drink coffee, think about Mark. Repeat.
Another man came in and reported that the search boats had yet to find anything, either. Apparently, they had people combing through the last communiques with the boat before it disappeared. As dearly as she wanted to hear those, she continued to sit and wait.
After another hour, it seemed as if all her life, all she’d been doing was waiting.
John finally looked up at her. “You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Anything I can get you?”
“No.”
“Any questions?”
“About the search? No. I’ve heard everything you’ve heard.”
“Questions about anything else?”
“Actually, I have one question about all these ships on the walls,” she said, pointing to the pictures she had been staring at.
“Yes?”
“They’re from all different time periods, including that one of the two boys who look like the picture could have been taken yesterday.”
“That picture was taken in 2015,” he said, without even looking at the picture in question.
“That makes sense. The boys look so happy standing there. Are these the ships this station has saved?”
He shook his head grimly. “No, these were ships we couldn’t save. All of them were lost.”
The revelation startled her. She kept staring at the one picture, feeling a sick twisting sensation in the pit of her stomach.
“The boys--” she started to ask, but couldn’t get the rest of the words out.
“Yes, the boys were lost, too. They were fourteen and went on a fishing trip together. The boat was found a year later. It was in decent shape, but there was no sign of the boys.”
As the horror of what he was saying washed over Sally, she felt instant heartbreak for the families of the boys and a renewed sense of urgency to find Mark and Dave. She didn’t want a year to go by before The Guardians showed up without them.
As a deluge of emotions rushed through her, she struggled to get a grip on them, her eyes zeroed in on a blank section of wall. She saw a flash of something, just for a moment, and then it was gone. It was a picture of a boat she knew well.
She sucked in her breath as she realized tha
t John would soon be putting up a picture of her husband’s boat on that spot.
10
The phone rang, startling her so much she nearly dropped her mug. As she jumped, she sloshed some of the coffee on her hand. John answered after the first ring, and moments later he began to scowl. She kept her eyes glued to his face, trying to glean what she could by watching his facial expressions and body language.
He finally hung up the phone and sat still for several seconds, not moving.
“Wh--What is it?” she stammered, her mouth having gone dry.
“A storm’s moving in. A big one. We’ll have to call off the search until it’s over,” John said bluntly.
He wouldn’t look at her.
It’s over.
She knew it.
He picked up a stress ball off his desk, squeezed it a couple of times and then suddenly threw it at the wall. It hit with a loud thunk. Even though she saw him throw it, the sound made her jump again.
He stood abruptly, and began to pace, jamming his fingers through his hair.
“Of all the lousy timing,” he muttered to himself, voice tinged with anger and regret. “Son-of-a…”
He turned to her then, and she could see her own hopelessness mirrored in his eyes.
“I promise we’ll go back out the moment it’s safe to do so.”
“But you think this is it—the end. If they’re not gone now, they will be by the time you get to them,” she said, her voice shaking uncontrollably.
“I’m not going to lie to you. The odds of us finding them alive have just dropped considerably. But we’re not giving up. I’m not giving up.”
Her eyes drifted to the blank spot on the wall. “You’re going to put the picture of my husband’s ship up there, aren’t you?” she asked, pointing an accusatory finger at it.
“I pray I don’t have to,” he said forcefully.
She nodded.
“Look, the storm’s set to last at least twelve hours. You need to go home and get some sleep. I’m not asking this time. You’ll need it later. No matter what happens.”
“I don’t want to go home,” she admitted.
“I understand. There’s a hotel down the block. I’ll have one of the guys run you over and you can stay there for a while.”
“Thank you,” she said, rising unsteadily to her feet. “I’m not giving up hope.”
“Neither am I.”
“All right. I will see you first thing in the morning.”
His lips pressed into a stark line as he nodded to her.
~
An hour later, she had showered and crawled into her hotel bed. She lay on her side of the bed, facing Mark’s side. She kept rubbing her hand over the pillow where his head should have been. She had spent what was left of her tears in the shower and now she was too exhausted even to move, other than to curl more deeply into the sheets.
She closed her eyes, trying to picture Mark there beside her. She pretended for just a moment that she could hear his laugh. Her body sunk further into the mattress as her muscles relaxed. She didn’t know how long she’d sat in the chair in John’s office, but it had felt like an eternity.
An eternity waiting to hear anything.
An eternity waiting to hear that they had found The Guardians.
An eternity waiting to hear where her husband was.
Oh, Mark, she thought as she drifted to sleep. Where are you?
~
Pain hammered at every inch of his body, jolting him awake. Mark was still for a moment, trying to remember where he was and what had happened to him. Slowly, everything started to come back. The boat. The storm. Dave telling him that they were in some kind of trouble.
He didn’t really remember much after that.
He slowly opened his eyes, half-afraid of what he’d see—or what he wouldn’t see.
Darkness.
It was dark out, but the world was bathed in a silvery glow from the half moon shining high in the sky. He blinked at it, remembering something that Dave had said about how there was supposed to be a full moon right now. But there obviously wasn’t.
“Dave?” he croaked, his throat dry and scratchy from the saltwater and his voice unrecognizable even to him. “Dave?” he called louder before falling into a coughing fit.
“Dave’s not here right now,” he heard his friend say.
“Good, because I need to talk to someone who can actually explain what’s happening here.”
“That’s not me, er, Dave.”
“You alive?”
“Apparently,” Dave said with a groan.
“Where are we?”
“On the ship. At least, it feels like it.”
Well, at least they hadn’t gone overboard.
“The storm is over.”
“Looks like.”
“We should probably try sitting up,” Mark said.
“You first. I don’t want to—I really, really don’t want to”
Mark couldn’t say he blamed him. If he was feeling this bad, he couldn’t imagine how much pain Dave had to be in with his broken foot.
He rolled over onto his side and from there he gingerly sat up, testing every joint and muscle as he went. He experienced shooting pain all over his body, but it didn’t feel as if anything was broken. He was near one of the chairs and managed to stand up just enough so he could slide into it. He was surprised to find that it was already dried out which made him wonder how long they’d been unconscious.
David lay face down on the deck a couple of feet away from him. Every inch of exposed skin was covered with mottled bruises and Mark cringed at the sight. Then he looked at his own arms and realized they looked no better. They’d both been battered and bruised by the storm.
He stared out at the ocean, which now looked calm, tranquil even. There was no hint of the ravaging storm which had tried to kill them only hours earlier. He gazed across the horizon, but there was only ocean as far as the eye could see. He glanced back up at the sky, looking for a constellation he would recognize.
Dave slowly rolled over and sat up, groaning in pain as he did so. “Any idea where we are?”
“Not really. The ocean is visible, and at least the moon is out now. I can see Orion,” Mark said, pointing to the constellation.
“That’s impossible.”
Mark turned to look at Dave. “What are you talking about? It’s right there.”
All the color drained from Dave’s face. “You don’t understand. Orion can only be seen in our area in the winter.”
Mark frowned. “It’s autumn. What does that mean?”
“We’re either way, way off course or…”
“Or what?”
“Or we’ve time-traveled.”
“Okay, so how far off course do you think we’ve gone?”
“I don’t know. I can’t even begin to guess. I’ll have to study the sky and the other constellations to try and figure it out. Of course, it would help if we could see land anywhere,” Dave said, the frustration in his voice rising. “It’d be much easier just to go to shore—wherever—so we know for sure where we are. How many flares do we have left?”
“Assuming they survived the storm? Two red and one orange.”
“What do you think?”
“I think we should send a red one up now while it’s dark enough to show up nice and bright. Anyone out looking for us, or anyone out here at all, for that matter, should be able to see it for miles. Hopefully someone will come to our rescue.”
“Okay, let’s do it.”
Dave struggled to get up but he gritted his teeth and sucked in a breath.
“How about I help you into a chair and then I send up the flare?”
Dave nodded as his face contorted with pain.
~
Mark sent up the flare and then decided to take stock of what supplies they had down below. After a few minutes, he brought up bottled water, packaged food and
medication. “Well, the good news is, we won’t starve,” he said as he presented his findings to Dave. “At least not for a while yet.”
“If starvation was an option, I’d tell you to save yourself and shoot me now,” Dave said, without a hint of a smile.
“Pain that bad?”
Dave didn’t respond as he reached for the painkillers.
~
A half an hour later, after forcing down some food, Dave fell into a restless sleep. Mark knew under the circumstances, rest was the best thing for his friend, so despite being on edge, he didn’t wake him. He figured he could keep watch for any ships that might be coming their way.
The truth was, he was starting to lose hope that anyone had even seen their emergency flare. With no idea how far out to sea they were, he had no way of knowing if they’d have any better luck in the morning with the orange flare.
He stared out at the ocean, noticing that it appeared a lot more normal than it had the last couple of nights. He was thankful for that, at least. He didn’t know what exactly had happened, but he had a strong urge to sell the boat the second they docked at home. He could fish just as well in rivers and lakes.
He wished Sally was there, but at the same time, he was grateful she wasn’t having to go through this with him. He could have even lost her during the storm, and he never could have lived with that.
He wondered how she was doing. She must be terribly worried by now, and he had no way to contact her and tell her he was all right.
Then again, he didn’t even know if he was all right.
High above, a shooting star blazed through the sky. He stared at it and wished he could spend the night at home in bed with her. There was nowhere on earth he would rather be. If—when—he got home to her, he wouldn’t take one moment with her for granted.
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