Lost At Sea

by Erica Boyce

  “Yes.” Diane exhaled. Jess could practically hear her resettling. “John was right.” She paused again. “It should stay in the family.”

  It wasn’t an apology. Not quite. But it was as close as she was going to get. “Wow,” Jess said. She watched a seagull pick a shard of shell up off the deck. It turned to face her, yellow-rimmed eye sizing her up. It seemed unimpressed. It spread its wings and pulled its way up into the sky. Those birds’ personalities used to crack John up. They were the pigeons of the sea, circling the boat at lunchtime. Jess almost told Diane about her visitor—it seemed like a good omen—but then she thought better of it. Maybe John didn’t talk to Diane about the seagulls. Maybe that was just their thing, him and Jess.

  “Anyway, what else am I going to do with the thing?” Diane said. “It felt like you and John spent half your time studying the markets sometimes. God knows that’s not a hobby I’m looking to pick up.”

  Jess smiled. It was almost exactly what she thought Diane would say when she first learned about John’s will. Diane snorted, and soon, they were both laughing, Jess covering her face with one hand. Helpless.

  When they wound down, Jess wiped her eyes and said, “I can pay you at least fifty percent up front, I think. Got some savings ready to go, and I think the going rate is—”

  “We can figure out the details later,” Diane said. “Why don’t you stop by our house on Saturday at around ten. We’ll sort it all out then, I promise,” she said and hung up.

  Jess tilted her head back and looked up at the sky. It was blue, so blue. Nothing clearer than a fall New England day. She put her phone away and went back to work.

  * * *

  Jess chased Frank down before she left the docks on that afternoon. He was loading some gear into the bed of his truck, and she handed a couple of plastic bins up to him while she tried to think of how to ask. When everything was loaded, she still had nothing. He thanked her and was about to climb up into the driver’s seat when she finally said, “Hold on.”

  He paused with his hand on the door handle.

  “I think I might’ve found a permit of my own,” she said.

  “No shit.” He raised his eyebrows. “Good for you.”

  “Yeah.” Jess studied the toes of her boots. “There is one way you could help me out, though.”

  Frank said nothing.

  “I could use a reference letter,” Jess soldiered on. “So the person leasing it knows I’m trustworthy. That I can catch it.”

  “Sure.” Frank opened the door and got in. “When you need it by?”

  Jess looked up, startled. “Um. Tomorrow would be great.”

  “You got it. See ya, J.”

  * * *

  For the rest of the week, she worried that Diane would change her mind. She worried right up until the moment Diane answered her door in a clean, white button-down and cuffed jeans with her hair swept back.

  “Hi, there,” Diane said. “Come on in. I’m afraid we’ll have to chat back in the dining room,” Diane whispered as she led Jess through the house. “I forgot you were coming by this morning, and I seem to have double-booked myself.”

  Jess’s foot skidded across the floor. Even she knew that Diane was not one to stray from her schedule. John’s phone used to vibrate every once in a while with the calendar reminders his wife had programmed into it. “I can come back later,” Jess offered, though she didn’t know if she could take another day of the uncertainty.

  “Oh, no, it’s fine,” Diane said. “It’s just Maureen and a mutual acquaintance. They can keep themselves occupied in the living room until we’re done.”

  Jess did her best not to crane her neck for a glimpse of the sofa as they passed the living room door. Someone’s elderly dad had overheard at the hospital that Lacey’s biological mom had resurfaced, and stories had been swirling all week, but nobody knew who it was. Theories ranged from the new worker at the post office to DP High’s most-hated math teacher to the governor’s wife, though that last one was posited by Sammy, so no one paid much attention to it. Maureen and Diane were a pair, just the two of them, with no mutual friends that Jess knew of. The other woman in there must be Lacey’s mom, the Devil’s Purse mystery.

  When they passed the living room, though, Diane shifted so she stood between Jess and the door. Jess dutifully kept her eyes forward under Diane’s watch.

  Jess paused in front of the dining room table. She’d only ever seen it covered with chafing dishes at the Staybrooks’ holiday parties or occasionally tableclothed and set when John invited her to dinner, four place settings evenly spaced. Jess realized with a sudden ache how much she’d miss those nights, as stiff as they’d been.

  Now, the table was bare save for a beige file folder lined up perfectly in one corner. Diane sat down before it and motioned for Jess to take the chair beside her. Jess’s knees cracked audibly as she sat. She ran her hands over the wood tabletop. It was surprisingly dinged and scratched for such a formal room. She could imagine Diane chiding John for putting heavy, unwieldy things on there that didn’t belong. The image warmed her up.

  “Okay, so,” Diane said. She opened the folder, and Jess noticed her nails were painted again, though their length looked bitten to the quick.

  “I brought you a letter,” Jess said before she lost her nerve. She retrieved the envelope from her pocket and held it out to Diane. “From Frank Callahan. About my fishing abilities and how I can catch the scallops. Just, you know, so you don’t have to take John’s word for it. I can make those payments.”

  “I see.” Diane’s brow furrowed as she took the letter. Jess had sealed it up without reading it, embarrassed, and part of her worried she’d see its contents written all over Diane’s face as she scanned it, but Diane stuck it in the back of the folder without a glance. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Diane said, “but thank you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, as to the lease.” Diane pulled a sheet out of the folder and pushed it across the table toward Jess. “That’s what I’m thinking in terms of a schedule of payments and totals. Does this seem fair?”

  Jess looked over the typed columns and blinked. It was well below market price, spaced out into several installments.

  “I know it’s the middle of the fishing year and you two had already used up a good chunk of the scallops you were allowed to catch with that permit, is that right?” Diane said.

  Jess swallowed and shook her head. “Even with that, the cost is too low.” Maybe Diane had gotten the wrong pricing information. “Leases are going for at least twice as much right now.”

  “Yes, I know.” Diane folded her hands on top of the table. “I also know this is a tough time of year to be fishing. John always started complaining around Thanksgiving.” She smiled wryly, and Jess mustered a smile in return. “I don’t want you to get in over your head with the payments. Or do anything foolish for the money, like John did.” They both looked away. “So I came up with something that I thought seemed reasonable.”

  “But it’s not enough,” Jess protested. “John would’ve wanted the lease to support you both.” She held her breath. She might’ve overstepped.

  “You’ll notice the lease price gets closer to market in the new fishing year, once you’ve had time to get your feet under you. We can revisit that when the time comes, of course, and adjust where necessary. And not that it’s any of your business”—she leveled her gaze at Jess, but there was mischief in her eyes, a look Jess recognized from John—“but I will be putting the income in an investment account. I’ve found one that’s been doing very well lately, and the money will go toward Ella’s education. Toward all our family.”

  Jess chose not to puzzle out the ambiguity in those last three words. She paused before she nodded.

  Diane slapped her folder shut. “Good. This way, that permit can support all of us.”

  And
it suddenly dawned on Jess that Diane was right. This, then, was what John truly would have wanted. For his business, his legacy, to help all the people he loved most in the world.

  “Are you coming?” Diane asked from the doorway.

  “Oh. Yeah.” Jess pushed her chair back, stumbling over its spindly legs as she followed Diane.

  “Sorry about that,” Diane said. “I keep meaning to replace those fancy things with more practical chairs, but, well, they were a gift from my mother.” Diane smiled wistfully.

  Jess realized she knew next to nothing about Diane’s parents. John had never said anything about them.

  “You know your way from here, don’t you?” Diane said.

  “Sure,” Jess said, though anything outside the dining room and the playroom was largely uncharted territory.

  “Good. We’ll see you soon, then.” Diane put her hand on Jess’s upper arm, more of a touch than a squeeze, and returned to the living room.

  Alone, Jess finally let her posture droop. She took a wrong turn and found herself in the kitchen. Ella was sitting at the counter with the town librarian, their noses buried in a workbook spread between them.

  “I have no clue what happened,” Ella groaned. “I carried the two and everything.”

  “Sorry,” Jess mumbled, though it wasn’t like either had spotted her. She backed out of the room, but it was too late.

  “Hi, Jess!” Ella said. “Rebecca’s just helping me with this stupid math problem.”

  “Don’t say ‘stupid,’ Ella,” Rebecca said and smiled at Jess.

  Rebecca. Jess tried to imprint the name on her memory, but she knew she’d forget it as soon as she walked out the door.

  Ella sighed loudly. “Yeah, yeah. Hey, you want to come over for dinner next week? I’m collecting a bunch of stories about Dad for his party.”

  Jess glanced at Rebecca.

  “His wake,” Rebecca mouthed over Ella’s head.

  “Happy to,” Jess said. “You sure you don’t want to meet down at the docks? I don’t want to impose on—”

  “Mom already said it was okay. See you then!” Ella bent back over her book.

  Jess had been dismissed.

  * * *

  Rebecca tried to concentrate on the numbers in front of her as Ella retraced her steps through the math problem, but there were a couple of things distracting her. For one thing, Annie was here. She’d reintroduced herself as Annie Bray the minute Rebecca walked in the Staybrooks’ door, as though Rebecca could’ve possibly forgotten what she’d learned in the hospital room. Annie’d barely met her eye as they shook hands.

  For two days after her visit to the hospital, Rebecca couldn’t sleep. The scene from the maternity ward replayed itself over and over—the woman’s face, her baby screaming while the doctor took its Apgar score, the plastic jug of water Rebecca clutched in her hands as a woefully inadequate comfort. This, then, was the one who’d managed to give up a baby, the most precious thing. It hadn’t been as easy for Annie as Rebecca’d imagined in her darkest moments.

  “Ugh, I give up,” Ella said. “Can you help me?”

  “How about you try from scratch?” Rebecca said. “Retrace your steps.”

  “I just did that twice. Hello, you were sitting right here? You do it.”

  “Let’s see.” Rebecca pulled the workbook closer and let her hair fall forward to cover her blush.

  The other thing distracting her was this: yesterday afternoon, she’d gone to see the reproductive endocrinologist. His office manager had called her during lunch break. They’d had a cancellation, and would she be able to come in now? Rebecca had barely hung up the phone before telling Addie that she had to go home and would see her for the Saturday afternoon shift.

  It began much like any other doctor’s appointment. The nurse took her blood pressure and pulse and height and then started taking more and more from her, vials and vials of blood. With each one, the nurse explained what they’d be testing: thyroid, progesterone, something called an ovarian reserve that made her feel rather like a factory. The needle left a small bruise on her inner arm that they patched over with a square of gauze. “Good girl,” the nurse said as she strapped it on with medical tape. From time to time, Rebecca pushed on the spot where the needle had been.

  They did an ultrasound, too. Rebecca was readying herself for the gel to be spread across her abdomen when the technician came in and pulled out a wand. It was an internal ultrasound, she said with sympathy in her eyes. Rebecca gulped, and the technician positioned her feet in the stirrups and slipped the wand between her legs.

  “There’s one ovary,” the technician said and pointed at one fuzzy spot on the screen with no discernible difference from the rest of the fuzzy picture.

  Rebecca smiled in what she hoped was an encouraging fashion.

  And then, finally, she was shown into the doctor’s office. She sat in a pleather chair with her pocketbook on her lap. There was a small tray of sand with a rake on the far corner of the doctor’s desk, and calm, tinkling music played on a speaker somewhere, like the kind of thing you’d hear in a spa. Rebecca stared at the Zen garden until the doctor bustled into the room.

  “You’re here alone today?” he said as he sat down behind the desk.

  “My husband had to meet with his accountant. He’ll be here for the next one,” she promised.

  “Hmm.” He turned to his computer screen, already losing interest. “We’ll need him to drop by and give a semen sample this week.”

  “That’s it?” she said before she thought better of it. The plastic bin they’d filled with tubes of her blood, the pictures they took of her entire reproductive system, and all Mack had to do was masturbate?

  The doctor barked out a laugh. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll start with that and then put him through the paces if necessary. You two have been actively trying for a year?”

  “Two years and three months.”

  He pushed his chair away from the computer and folded his arms. “The clinical definition of infertility is twelve months of attempts without success. And as you’ve probably heard, a woman’s fertility plummets after the age of thirty-five. So it’s good you’re here today,” he said ominously.

  Rebecca looked down at her knees. The doctor went on to say the ultrasound had shown no cysts on her ovaries. She knew from the frantic research she’d done on her phone in the waiting room that this was a good thing. Depending on the results of her blood tests and Mack’s semen analysis, he explained, they would start her on pills to “kick start her ovulation.” She would need to come in several times for blood draws and follicle scans over the course of her treatment, and their intercourse would need to be “carefully timed.” From there, they might do IUI or maybe IVF. FETs or ICSI might come later. Rebecca could not even begin to think about how much all those acronyms would cost them.

  That night, over dinner, Rebecca recited back as much of the conversation as she could remember to Mack.

  He stopped shoveling meat loaf into his mouth and watched her intently. “Sorry I couldn’t be there, babe,” he said when she was done. He pushed aside the salt shaker and reached across the table for her hand. She gave it to him automatically. “It sounds like a lot,” he said, “but maybe we’ll get lucky and get a baby out of it.”

  The day before, she wanted nothing more than to hear him say those words. Now, though, she wasn’t so sure. It was a lot: a lot of science, a lot of poking and prodding, a lot of bills. And no guarantees. This was not the way she’d imagined growing her family. There was nothing romantic about blood draws and speculums.

  Then again, she thought as she leaned over Ella’s math homework, perhaps nobody ended up with the family they imagined for themselves. Did Maureen Carson think she’d be a single mom? Did Annie Bray think she’d reunite with her daughter in a hospital room? Almost certainly, Ella and Diane
didn’t imagine they’d lose their third piece in the space of one stormy hour. Rebecca couldn’t imagine it herself, though the possibility was always there. She’d tried to prepare herself for a call from a captain or the Coast Guard, but her mind would go no further than that.

  Ella kicked at the legs of her stool and took a deep breath. Her cheeks were flushed and her ponytail askew. She looked defeated by more than just math.

  Rebecca planted her palm below her belly button, around where she thought her uterus would be. “I see the problem,” she said. “You forgot to include the fraction.”

  * * *

  Eventually, Jess found her way back to the living room door. She was nearly certain she knew how to get to the entryway from there, but she paused to make sure she had her bearings.

  And admittedly to peek in on the scene, now that Diane wasn’t watching her. Maureen sat at one end of the couch, her back straight as a tall ship’s mast. Diane was next to her, glancing periodically at the woman coiled in the other corner of the couch. She had dark, messy hair and wore a faded old T-shirt. Jess squinted at her until she could place her: she’d been a year or two ahead of Jess at DP High, though damned if she could remember the woman’s name.

  “Where is she now?” the woman asked.

  “At home,” Maureen said. She interlaced her fingers and held them so tight, Jess thought she could see her arms shake. “With Jude, one of my employees.”

  “And you trust this Jude?” the woman said. “He knows to call you if anything happens?”

  Jess quietly sucked in her breath. She had balls, whatever her name was.

  “Obviously, she trusts him,” Diane said. Any warmth Jess had glimpsed in Diane during their conversation was long gone now. “She’s only managed to hire two people in her career because no one else was good enough. And the second hire was her daughter.”

  The woman nodded and looked away.

  Maureen smiled at the back of Diane’s head and nudged her a little with her shoulder. “It’s okay,” Maureen said. “She’s right to make sure. It was—is—her job.”