“What do you mean, dear?”
Arggggh.
A man in an elegant, pale blue seersucker suit carrying a martini hesitated at the seat beside Nan. “Is this lounge taken?”
Nan raised her head to see past the brim of her straw hat, and Marley watched with interest. Tall and slim, he was dressed with effortless, understated style. He looked like a kindly grandfather dressed for a summer wedding. Exactly the sort of fellow Nan needed.
“Please, join us. I’m Marley, and this is my …” She held out her hand as he sat.
Nan rose, silencing her with a touch of her hand. Then she smiled at the gentleman. “Feel free, I was just going inside.”
And with that, she did.
“If you’ll excuse me, I must …”
Go get my grandmother’s head examined.
They found privacy in a guest lounge off the dining saloon. Nan sat in a stiff-backed chair, removing her hat and setting it aside, then resumed her reading. Marley closed the door and sipped again from her drink.
“Don’t you think you’ve had quite enough of that?”
Her disapproval would have been enough, on any ordinary day, to have shut Marley down. None too ironically, seeing the world through rum-colored glasses showed a view less inclined to guilt. She sipped the drink again, meeting Nan’s gaze.
“First you interrupt an important phone call. For the first time, Jimmy truly regretted his actions.”
Marley snorted. “You’re joking. He does that every time.”
Nan gazed at a painting of a seagull. “Then you take a phone I can’t afford to replace and destroy it in a tantrum.”
“I am sorry for that, and I’ll replace it. Wait. No, I’m not sorry. At least for a few days, we have a respite from that—that animal. Isn’t it nice to relax, without worrying about him pestering you? Without flinching each time he raises his hand to pick up his beer?”
Nan looked at her, clearly surprised that Marley could observe the obvious.
“And then there was that perfectly nice man just now—”
“Oh, yes, that unctuous character with his flimflammery!”
Marley laughed, then immediately stifled herself. “You mean, ‘is this seat taken?’ That flimflammery?”
“Marley, I am not a young woman looking for the pretty lies of happily ever after—”
“Well, Nan …” Marley bowed her head, then met the older woman’s eyes. “I am.”
Nan stared back at her, the anger draining away.
“You’re beautiful and men have loved you. You’ve raised a daughter and a granddaughter. But Nan, I’m so tired of being alone—of hiding in a dark closet. All of my classmates are marrying, having their first child—or second—or traveling the world, visiting exciting places. All I’ve done is work and study and live in the past. I’ve been working for 10 years now. I’m not beautiful, I’m ordinary and plain and odd—”
In a fluid motion the woman rose and placed her palm over Marley’s mouth. “Hush. Anyone who would dare call you odd, even in jest, should have her head examined.”
She lowered her hand.
“What a pity you didn’t grow up with your father. He would have taught you what a lovely young woman you are. He would lead you to the mirror and show you how to look beyond that serious studiousness, to the hunger for adventure and love for a clever joke that lurks in your eyes.
“You’ve grown up in a small community with small minds shaped by a small idiot box. Yours is a beauty rare and exotic. You look like your grandmother.”
She looked nothing like Nan, and her confusion showed.
“Your father’s mother. She was a beauty from a faraway land, and in your lovely dark eyes are her laughter and her tears. Be patient, my darling. It takes a certain kind of man to begin to know how to deal with a woman like you. You will find him. And whatever you do, don’t let him go.”
She kissed Marley and lifted her chin. “Now. Why not have a short nap? I’ll lock the door and we can enjoy the quiet peacefulness of this lovely lounge before we reach the island.”
Marley acquiesced with a yawn. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt well-rested. It seemed as if even Nan’s best days turned into high drama.
Nan found a light blanket in a chest and arranged it on a plush sofa, and Marley slipped her beach cover-up on, then curled inside the cocoon. She noticed the large chrome clock on the opposite wall—12:30, it said—just before she dropped off to sleep.
The flat, nasal peal of an alarm startled her out of a deep sleep, and she opened her eyes, disoriented. The clock on the opposite wall said 2:15. The cabin was as dark as if it were night, and the walls shook with winds blasting the ship.
The alarm screamed just outside the door, and she shoved back the blanket and staggered to her feet. Ah, the rum punch.
Where was Nan?
The room lurched, and she toppled toward the wall. She righted herself and stumbled to the couch. The furniture looked to be fastened to the deck. At the next swell, her bag and the couch’s pillows went flying, and she grabbed at the handle of her bag, barely catching it. The cacophony of the storm, of screams from another room, froze her in place.
The door opened, swinging on its hinges. Nan stood there, drenched in a life jacket, clutching another, her face ashen. “Didn’t you hear me knock? You missed the muster drill.”
“Muster—?”
“No matter. We’re to shelter in place. The other passengers are secured in other guest rooms. Marley, a fearful storm is upon us. I saw the waves like Triton rising in the sea.”
At that moment the cabin slid sideways from underneath her. Marley grabbed her with one hand even as she clutched the couch with the other. Between the two of them struggling against the pitching cabin, Nan made her way to the couch.
“Sit down and hang on.” Marley trembled with fear and with the raw fury of the storm. The soft light from the sconces was dark. Only the brash light of a fluorescent emergency light at the foot of the door relieved the darkness—and for that, even, she was grateful.
“Quick—put this on.”
Marley slipped one arm, then the other, through the holes of the life jacket. She fumbled with the connectors. Finally they snapped into place. She tightened the straps just as the next swell hit.
“Oh, dear God, protect us,” she whispered.
Nan wasn’t religious, but her daughter had been, and for a moment Marley closed her eyes and felt her mother with her. The decades melted away and she was a child again, kneeling beside her bed at night, with her mother’s head bent over hers.
And then she felt an arm strong around her shoulders. Just as if she’d been asked, the older woman had looped an arm about her shoulders. “Chin up, child. Where’s the pillbox?”
“In my bag. I’ll not lose it.”
“Put it on your chain. In case we’re separated.”
“Nan, don’t—”
“Do it. Now.”
She dug out the pillbox, finding its small bail. She slipped it on the chain and inside her clothing, against her heart.
The women huddled together in the dark underneath the blanket, listening to the wind rise and the waves crash over the ship. Marley trembled, trapped in the darkness and her fear.
“Nan, do they have lifeboats?”
“Of course. It won’t come to that, though.”
“How do you know?”
Nan stroked her hair without speaking. Rather than comforting her, it terrified her. Could lifeboats even be lowered in these conditions? She couldn’t imagine how. The ship they were in now was being tossed like driftwood. If the winds got any stronger—
And then, as if her fear had given it new power, the scream of the wind filled the room.
She looked at the window as water crashed there. A wall of seawater high enough to sink the ship had washed over the ship—higher than its main cabin. The sloop bobbed in the turbulent sea as if it were a toy. The water receded, and the ship righted itself once more.
“Nan, I’m so afraid.” She buried her face in her grandmother’s throat.
“Hush. There’s something I should like to say.”
She opened her eyes and gazed at her grandmother in the eerie flicker of the emergency light.
“Forgive me for being cross this morning. That man we encountered is a man I knew long before you were even born.”
She was grateful for the distraction. How little it mattered now, how silly her suspicion. “Was he in love with you?”
Nan laughed at that, bringing the sparkle to her eyes. “It was a long time ago. And no.”
She took Marley’s hand, absently examining it in the flickering silver light. “Poppet, once I loved a man—someone you don’t know. I was a young frightened woman, with none of your accomplishments, none of your clever book learning. I knew only the talents of the girls of my era—er, my age.”
She stopped, gazing vacantly ahead in that otherworldly way of hers. At last, she went on.
“He loved me and he was so good to me. But it was in another time. Life was far simpler, much sweeter. Then I—I lost him, through my own foolishness. And I lost that life, that love—forever. Do you remember your Grandfather Spencer?”
“Was that Papaw?”
Nan laughed. “Yes, I believed you called him that. I met him years later, and he loved me and we married. Then he, too, died. And my life became a waking nightmare. Jimmy was there when I had no one at all, Marley. No one. Forgive me, I beg you, for allowing him to hurt you.”
“Nan, he never laid a hand on me. You made sure of that.”
“He bruised your spirit. He mocked you for things beyond your control. He is a hateful man. And he made sure that small child cowering in the darkness stayed there.”
“I don’t judge anything you did for me. I just think how much better your life could be, with a man who loves you.”
“Stop worrying about my choices and consider your own. Make those choices wisely. We can never turn back the hands of the clock. I made so many mistakes, keeping you away from others, leaving you no childhood friends at all.
“But if I have protected you, ’twas only because I’d seen the terrors life had to offer. They were fresh in my mind and my heart. Do not pity me. I have known love. For the rest of my life, if I need companionship on a cold winter’s night, I need only take out a single memory of that love to warm me.”
With the next crash of a wave, the window shattered and water rushed in. Marley froze. “What now, Nan?”
“Just stay calm. Perhaps there’s a drain in the floor.”
There was not. Aside from the thirty-foot waves battering the ship, driving rain poured in. Soon Marley felt the water pooling at her ankles, then her shins. Then her thighs.
“Nan, we’re going to have to get into one of the other cabins.”
“Make me a promise.”
“Please, not right—”
“All we have is now.”
She waited, surprised at her grandmother’s sudden calm.
“You’ve always taught me that, Nan. Stop in an ordinary moment to love your life. For as far back as I can remember. ‘Listen to that chickadee, it’s calling to you, hey, sweetie!’ Take just a few moments each day, and stop and love your life.’”
“Yes, because I let our home become dangerous. Now, I want you to promise you’ll stop being fearful.
“And the best secret I can tell you is still: Life lives in this moment. That’s all. Not the regrets of yesterday, not the fear of tomorrow. If we make it through this, swear to me that you will live. Live with courage. Do it for me.”
“Nan!” Marley cried.
“And I will do the same for you, child.”
Marley understood what that meant: No more Jimmy. “All right, then. I promise.”
The next wave crested, and she clutched Marley’s hand, pulling her through the deep water to the door. When they pulled it open, the water rushed out. The wind caught the door and slapped it through the water and into the room then closed again, tossing the heavy steel door in the wind and water as if it were a playing card on the breeze.
She opened it again, hanging onto the inner edge of the door to keep it from swinging around. She peeked out.
Marley’s pulse raced as she tried to look past her grandmother. She saw only gray. Gray skies, gray rain covering the ship, ocean swells daubing the ship’s details into gray. A broken beam—a spar, a mast, she did not know—dangled in the air not far above them, and she gave it a distrustful glance. One gust of breeze, and it would become a killing projectile.
Nan moved out into the wind, and the breeze slammed against her. She staggered a step or two before steadying herself. Marley gripped her hand, now wet with rain and saltwater, and moved out just enough to feel the wind against her. With her free hand, she gripped a rail along the side of the cabin. The cold rain sweeping the deck drove her breath away and pelted her neck in stinging sheets.
Nan yelled something she couldn’t hear for the banshee wail of the wind. She led her toward the next cabin over. That door, facing the ocean, was a good twenty feet away in the gale-force wind.
Nan, hurry, please.
They turned the corner and found the cabin locked. They both pounded, Nan crying out. “Please let us in!”
The door swung open. A man held it open, grabbing Nan to help her in. It was an awkward position, and instinctively Marley released her to help her inside so Marley could follow.
But at that moment a wave tossed the ship and the deck pitched. Marley slipped, she lost her grip on the rail, and in that suspended moment she watched each person’s reaction in the doorway. The man inside fought indecision, and in the next movement, when Nan would have bolted after her, he swung out a beefy arm to trap her inside.
She knew what came next by the terror in their faces—Nan’s and that of the unknown man who’d saved her. She knew it from his step backward as he slammed the door shut, leaving her to the storm. She may have screamed; she didn’t remember. She recalled a flash of sky as she lost her footing.
Facing the cabin, she didn’t see the ocean cresting twenty feet above the gunwale behind her, nor did she see the massive wave as it engulfed her. And as terror of drowning swept her, the instinct for survival that her father, the sailor, had drilled into his two oldest daughters kicked in.
In the ensuing minutes, she thanked God that she’d had the presence of mind to take a deep, long breath as that door to her salvation slammed. And that her father had taught her to swim, and to hold her breath, and that she’d done so for the past twenty years, training for just this moment. Last she’d checked, she was up to four minutes and forty-five seconds.
But even with all that preparation—done without exertion and fear gobbling the oxygen stored in her blood—she soon realized the danger surrounding her, burying her beneath an ocean churning with sea life fleeing into the deep seeking shelter from the tropical storm. Without knowing her destination, she swam into that primeval darkness on the face of the waters, into a time before time.
All she had left to do then was remember—as she had for twenty years—and listen to her father’s voice as she tried to orient herself and swim toward the surface. As she tried to see any light in the darkness. Hold on.
In a moment she feared—she knew—she was dying. If she continued without oxygen, she would pass out, she would reflexively inhale, and she would drown.
And then, the moment transformed into something else. She still held her breath, the sea still stung her nostrils and roared in her ears. But no other feeling she’d ever known compared with what she felt now. The cold gray darkness had vanished, replaced by soothing, warm waters, by sunlight directly above. But even as she enjoyed the warmth, she felt faint, light-headed.
Hold on!
That ungodly sense of otherworldly peace filled her—a lie that could only be demonic, whispering that in the depths of the sea she was safe. Dear God, she needed to breathe, and she couldn’t begin to
see the surface. For all she knew, she was swimming away from the surface.
How life’s dreariest moments sparkle with meaning when one faced death. Greeting their letter carrier as she delivered the junk mail; cheered when someone let her merge in front of them on the freeway; a stranger at the grocery store loaning her a quarter when she came up short paying.
Revolting against the desperate thoughts, she tried to kick her legs with the frog-like strokes her father had taught her, but she felt weak. Then a pressure gathered in around her even as the churning water grew warmer and calmer. Even as her strength failed her.
Hold on, darling.
She recalled the days when she and Rachel dove beneath the cold surface of the ocean, or the local pool, smiling at each other as the air bubbles escaped, rushing only to the surface when their bodies begged for oxygen.
“Hold on, darling,” Daddy would coach from but a few feet away where he supervised them, treading water at the surface. “Pretend you’ve just escaped a pirate ship, and you’re swimming for your lives.” He would growl amusingly, and down they would go again, darting away from him like minnows. Hold on.
And then, later the same day, they cuddled within their mother’s embrace, bathed and cozy in the window seat in their room, reading Peter Pan and clapping for the lives of fairies.
“Why don’t we ever have any fun?” Marley had asked.
Mama had laughed. “Ah, my Merri lass, we spent the whole day today at the beach. We left only when you fell asleep in the surf.”
Rachel spoke. “But that’s not adventure, not real adventure. Not like the ladies in Williamsburg, in their fancy clothes and bonnets.”
“Every day of your life is an adventure. We wake up not knowing what may come our way. Eggs or Cheerios or even donuts for breakfast, who can say?”
The girls protested in unison. “That’s not a-venture,” Marley said, echoing her sister and scowling at her mother’s betrayal.
Their father, watching from the easy chair nearby, had laughed and grabbed her close, kissing her forehead. “You’ll have a-ventures. The likes of which your mother and I have never known. And believe me, we’ve known adventure.”
Immortal (The Trelawneys of Williamsburg Book 2) Page 5