Lost At Sea

by Erica Boyce

  Also by Erica Boyce

  The Fifteen Wonders of Daniel Green

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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2020 by Erica Boyce

  Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by Kathleen Lynch/Black Kat Design

  Cover image © Rekha Garton/Arcangel Images

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  www.sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Boyce, Erica, author.

  Title: Lost at sea / Erica Boyce.

  Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Landmark, [2020]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019025315 | (trade paperback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Missing persons--Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction. |

  LCGFT: Psychological fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3602.O92494 L67 2020 | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025315

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Reading Group Guide

  A Conversation with the Author

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  To my brother, who taught me everything.

  Chapter One

  As a general rule, the women of Devil’s Purse did not wallow. Loss was a way of life in their small town tucked into northern Massachusetts. They knew how quickly a hungry fire could sprout in the belly of a boat, how a wave could sweep across a deck and brush away their full-grown men. There was a time the town was known as the biggest fishing port on the coast. Nowadays, tourists driving up to Maine wonder why the highway signs all tick down the miles until Devil’s Purse. They wonder what could possibly be so important there.

  Still, the men fish on, kissing their wives, children, mothers on their sleepy cheeks before dawn and easing out the door. They hold their breaths while hauling in nets and traps and wipe the ocean’s spit out of their eyes. And when they fail to return, the women allow themselves one good cry behind closed doors before setting their jaws and searching for job listings. It was rumored that Elise Cunningham found out her husband was missing through a phone call in between clients at her in-home massage parlor. And she hung up the phone, pumped fresh oil into her palms, and pressed her fingers into the next fleshy back. When Evan Bannock was lost at sea, his wife, Shirley, quit her day job and opened a marine supply store selling tackle and rope to her husband’s friends. “Someone’s gotta make a living off all those years we spent in the industry,” she would say to most anyone in earshot, her mouth a bittered twist.

  There was no time to wallow. Their families depended on them now.

  Chapter Two

  Thursday, November 9, 2017

  It was late afternoon when Lacey’s phone buzzed. She stared at the ceiling for a beat, studying the swoops and swirls in the plaster. She pushed her cheek into the cool wall and ground her head into her pillow.

  Her phone buzzed again. She rolled over and read the texts.

  Happy belated bday! Dance practice canceled. Can u hang out yet? Wanna go 2 library? Hello??? I’m waiting outside. :)

  She sighed and let her head fall back onto the edge of her bed. Ella. Lacey’d been home a few weeks and still hadn’t seen her. No one would want her around Ella anymore. Not now. “Not ever,” hissed the beetle that lived inside her. It had been there as long as she could remember, feeding on every last one of her worries and amplifying them. She knew logically that there was no beetle. It was just some defect of her brain that refused to let anything go. But it helped her sometimes to imagine it as something external, small and crushable.

  Her phone buzzed a third time, sending tremors up her arm from her palm. “Fuck it,” she muttered and rolled out of bed.

  Maureen was waiting at the dining room table. Pretending not to be waiting, chewing on the end of a pencil and staring down at the spreadsheets she always insisted on printing out. Her dirty-blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail that drooped in its elastic. Before, Lacey might’ve stepped behind her and tightened it for her. Lacey stood in the doorway, tapping her fingertips against the wall. Maureen eyed her.

  “I’m going out, Mom,” Lacey said. “Do you need anything from the store? Or anything?”

  Maureen pushed back from the table. “Where are you going?” She crossed her arms tightly in front of her chest.

  “Just to the library.”

  Maureen studied her face for a moment. “You’ll be back within an hour,” she said, not a question.

  “Yeah.”

  “Promise.”

  “I promise.”

  “And you’ll have your phone on you? And answer the minute I call you?”

  Lacey promised again and walked out through the kitchen, tripping a little over the upcurled edge of the rainbow-colored rug covering the tile floor. She could feel her mom watching her go.


  Once, after a bad day at Devil’s Purse High, Lacey had slumped onto the floor, her back against the cabinet door that always stuck a little. She had groaned dramatically and started picking fuzz from the rug. “Why did you ever move us to this godforsaken town? There’s, like, nothing to do here, and everybody sucks.” She popped the tab on a can of soda, the crack punctuating her point satisfyingly.

  Maureen, who had been in the middle of a test run for the mashed potato bar for the Reynolds wedding, put down her peeler and dropped a half-naked potato in the sink. She turned to her daughter, hands on her hips. The two stared at each other until Lacey’s mouth twitched.

  That was all Maureen needed. She threw her damp kitchen towel over her head like a kerchief. “Because, dahling,” she said and, on her ex-dancer’s tiptoe, fluttered across the rug toward Lacey. “Like I’ve told you before, I wanted to come back to the place where I first held you,” she warbled and twirled, “in my arrrms.” She finished with a flourish, one leg held behind her in a perfect arc, one arm dangling the towel over Lacey’s head. “And also where I signed your adoption papers.”

  Lacey had rolled her eyes and allowed one giggle before handing her soda up to Maureen. Her mother had sipped it and winked.

  Now, Lacey cursed under her breath and kicked at the offending rug edge. It rolled back down placidly as she trudged out the door. Even all these blocks back from the ocean, the wind was blowing in just the right direction, so the air was full of salt, the kind of day where your skin would grow tacky with it if you spent enough time outside. She refused to look back at the house. She knew Maureen would be standing at the window, gripping the sill and biting her lip, watching Lacey until she turned the corner and was gone.

  * * *

  “Finally! It’s about time.” As promised, Ella was waiting for Lacey in their old usual spot under the huge oak tree at the corner directly between their houses. At nine, her limbs had grown long and knobby in the months since Lacey had seen her, and she no longer fit in the crook of the tree’s lowest-lying branch. She leaned awkwardly against the trunk in a pose Ella probably thought was cool and casual. But when Lacey stood before her, Ella could no longer contain herself and threw her arms around Lacey’s waist. Was it weird of Lacey to spend her free time with a kid? Maybe. She’d known Ella for years, and sometimes, it seemed like Ella was one of the only people truly happy to see her. Ella was too young and transparent to say anything the beetle could twist around.

  “Hey, kidlet,” Lacey said, smiling as she gently pried Ella off.

  Ella wrinkled her nose, the delicate freckles there folding. “I’m too old for you to call me that!”

  “You? Never.”

  Ella sighed. “Whatever. Are you ready to go to the library or what?”

  Lacey hesitated. “Are you sure your mom’s okay with this? Did you tell her you’d be with me?”

  “I told her you’d be helping me with my homework, and she called the library to make sure Rebecca was going to be there. It makes no sense. We used to hang out all the time. I told her I had to help you celebrate your birthday.” Ella pulled a rumpled packet of shortbread cookies out of the backpack slung over her shoulder. They were Ella’s favorite, and at some point along the line, Ella had convinced herself they were Lacey’s favorite, too. Lacey tore open the packet and passed it back to Ella, who stuffed a cookie in her mouth. “Anyway, who cares what she thinks?” Ella asked, a stray crumb or two escaping with her words.

  Lacey did. Lacey cared. One cold fall night the year before, Lacey had come over to babysit or “hang out,” as Ella called it. Ella’s mom, Mrs. Staybrook, had been fixing her earrings in the front hall mirror and asked absently how Lacey’s college applications were going.

  Lacey was about to rattle off the list of schools to which she’d already applied when, embarrassingly, the dam broke. Mrs. Staybrook turned expectantly, but Lacey’s mouth simply gaped as her eyes filled with tears.

  “Lacey? Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” She paused for only a moment before dropping her earrings to the floor and stepping to Lacey’s side.

  “It’s just, I don’t know, so stressful,” Lacey managed. She held her hands to her face to hide her eyes. She couldn’t stop the endless swirl of deadlines and essay prompts, and she kept picturing the terse rejection emails she was certain would follow. The beetle had been particularly bad that day, sneering at nearly every word she said. She had tried to ignore it and managed everything with neat, handwritten lists and calendar reminders. But in that moment, with her arms still half in her coat sleeves, ridiculously, it all seemed too much.

  Mrs. Staybrook guided her to the small bench in their front hall. It was a decorative bench, and she was constantly asking Ella not to leave her dirty sneakers under it. She smoothed a path between Lacey’s shoulder blades with one palm, over and over again. “Tell you what,” she said. “Why don’t you take the night off and do something fun?”

  “But what about your work event?” Lacey snuffed the mucus into her nose and tried to subtly wipe the salty tracks off her cheeks.

  “Oh, don’t worry about that.” She rolled her eyes. “I see those people in the office every day. I don’t need to see them at night, too.”

  Lacey nodded. She pictured her own friends, all of whom would probably be busy studying on a school night like this or out with their boyfriends. Even her mom was getting ready to cater a fall fundraiser. If she left now, she would probably just end up sitting in her room and watching Netflix. Her and the beetle. She squared her shoulders. “No, really. It’s fine. I’m fine. You should go to your thing.”

  Mrs. Staybrook pursed her lips. “You know, John’s been complaining all day about having to go to this,” she said. “Hey, honey?”

  “Yeah?” Mr. Staybrook replied. He stepped into the hall, still wearing his Carhartts and a sweatshirt.

  “What do you say we play hooky and have a movie night with Lacey here? I’m feeling a little tired. And you’re dressed for the couch, anyway.” She raised one eyebrow at Lacey.

  He glanced between Lacey and Mrs. Staybrook. He grinned. “Hallelujah,” he said. He turned back toward the living room. “Ella,” he bellowed, “Papa Gino’s or Smoky’s for pizza tonight? We’re all eating it, so none of your Hawaiian pineapple crap!”

  From somewhere in the house, Ella cheered.

  That was the last time Lacey babysat for Ella. “Don’t worry about it,” Mrs. Staybrook had murmured as she left that night. “Focus on one thing at a time, okay? You’ll be fine.” She’d brushed a bit of lint off Lacey’s coat, and Lacey had believed her. For a few months, Lacey kept meeting Ella after school once a month, treating her to doughnuts and hot chocolate with the money she’d saved from babysitting. She felt it was only fair. But it’d been a while since then.

  * * *

  Ella’s voice was accelerating, growing increasingly animated.

  Lacey blinked. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

  Ella rolled her eyes. “I said, it’s too bad you were gone last month. They threw a party at the town pool to celebrate the last of the summer people, and they had food trucks and everything!”

  Lacey smirked. Fourth grade, and already she’d picked up the exact touch of disdain with which to say “summer people.”

  “Sorry I missed it. How’s school going? Who do you have this year?”

  “Ugh, Miss Michaels. She’s the worrrst.” Ella dragged her feet and slung her arms low as if the mere mention of her name were enough to pull her down to the depths of hell.

  Lacey winced. “Oh, yeah, she’s a tough one. You know she used to teach sixth grade, right? When I was in her class, she called my mom and told her I cheated on a test. My mom asked what made her think that, and Miss Michaels said my grade was too good. That was the only evidence she had. My mom helped me make a dartboard with her face on it that night.” Ella cackled. Lacey tugged on a hank of hair
that was stuck under one strap of Ella’s backpack. “But you know, maybe if you stopped talking during class and raised your hand every once in a while, she wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “Hey!” Ella grabbed at her hair and scowled at Lacey. “For your information, I’m the top student in her class right now. So maybe she shouldn’t complain so much. Race you to the library!” And she was off, her sneakers pounding against the pavement and her backpack swishing from side to side. Lacey ran only a few paces before breathing started to hurt. She slowed to a walk and watched Ella run the rest of the block. When she reached the library, Ella flung her arms out in victory. Only then did she notice how far behind Lacey was. She turned to watch Lacey trudge and folded her arms disapprovingly.

  Chapter Three

  “Ready for the after-school rush, Becks?” Addie called from the reference desk.

  Rebecca held back a sigh. She shifted out from under the beam of sunlight thrown by the library’s ’70s-era skylights. No one but Addie called her “Becks,” and she called her that no matter how many times Rebecca pointedly fiddled with the nameplate on her desk in Addie’s presence. The “after-school rush” consisted of, on average, a few harried stay-at-home moms and one or two lost-looking high schoolers. Addie joked about it nearly every day, and it had ceased being funny months ago.

  Rebecca would never say these things out loud. “Sure thing,” she said, flashing Addie a thumbs-up. She turned away from the circulation desk to sort through the row of reserved books on the chipped wooden shelves behind her and ran her fingers over their spines. Their jackets shone under the fluorescent lights. Addie notwithstanding, she felt safe here, tucked behind this desk with all these books. She could see the neat rows of new arrival displays stretching out toward the back of the library, where encyclopedias and dictionaries lay forgotten. Behind her, the clacking keyboards of the computer room built a near-constant backbeat to her workdays.

  Mack wanted her to quit. “All those kids,” he said. “It must be hard for you to spend so much time around them.” He eyed her stomach uneasily. He would never mention outright the years they’d spent trying, test after test thrown into the bathroom trash with a dull, plastic thunk.