The Edge of Winter

by Luanne Rice

  Turning to Mickey, Neve gestured for her to stand up so they could head home.

  “I’m not leaving,” Mickey said. “Not without Dad.”

  “Honey, his lawyer’s on the way.”

  “I don’t care,” Mickey said. “I’m staying until they let him go.”

  “Mickey, they will. His lawyer will straighten things out…. Come on, let’s get you home. And I have to go back to work.”

  “You go ahead,” Mickey said, crossing her arms across her chest. “But I’m not leaving.”

  Neve sat down beside her, looked straight into her green eyes. She saw determination and anger there, a storm brewing deep inside. Neve wanted to put her arms around her, tell her that some battles weren’t worth fighting. The trauma of Richard’s drinking—the way he seemed determined to ruin his own life—was a very old war that Neve had once made her own. Now she saw their daughter doing the same thing.

  “Mickey, you can’t make Dad be different.”

  “I’m not trying to do that,” she said.

  “He has to make his own mistakes,” Neve said.

  “I know, Mom. But he wasn’t drunk! Whoever called the cops on him said he was—but he passed the test. I think I know who did it, too!”

  Did it matter who had called? Neve felt secretly grateful to whoever it was. Richard might have been sober today, but the idea of Mickey getting into a car with him still made her shudder.

  “Mickey, we can talk about this at home,” Neve said.

  But Mickey just shook her head, wriggled more deeply into the chair, settled with her arms wrapped so tightly across her chest, it was almost as if she were trying to hold her heart in. Her eyes glittered with furious tears.

  Neve took a deep breath. The show opening was in hours, and Dominic would kill her if everything wasn’t perfect. She still had so much to do this afternoon—check the lighting, make sure it was directed properly at each painting; call the caterers to make sure they had doubled the usual order, to accommodate the extra crowd Dominic was expecting; field last-minute press inquiries.

  Glancing down at Mickey, Neve removed the book bag from the seat beside her. She sat down; Mickey barely registered. The desk sergeant gave her a noncommittal look, then went back to his computer screen. Neve sat back, trying to summon up images of Berkeley’s work, just so she could exhale.

  She thought about calling Chris, then Nicola. What would her own lawyer think, to know that she was here at the Secret Harbor police station, standing up for Richard? He’s a deadbeat, Nicola would say to her. He won’t even take care of his own daughter, so what do you care about him for?

  Neve knew she’d have a hard time answering to Nicola. But she glanced down at her child, sitting there with such intense vigilance, and she knew why she was doing this, ignoring her own obligations at the gallery, why she still cared about him.

  Neve thought of Tim’s love for Frank, Joe’s love for Tim. Fathers and children…Richard was Mickey’s father, and always would be. And for that reason alone, for Mickey, Neve knew that this was a battle still worth fighting. And even the opening of the Berkeley show would have to wait.

  Down at the beach, everything was quiet. Shane had arrived just as the cops had come to take Mr. Halloran away. He’d caught a glimpse of Mickey—she was in the Lexus, being driven behind the squad car by another cop—and the look of hatred in her eyes told him she knew he’d been the one to make the call.

  Shane had nothing left. The last weeks of winter had brought him so close to Mickey, and now he’d probably thrown that away. She’d invited him to her mother’s art gallery, for a big party that night—but after what had just happened, once she’d realized his part in it, Shane figured he’d be the last person she wanted to see.

  So he’d come to the beach with his father’s old camera—a huge, clunky underwater job that his mother had bought him for their wedding present. Shane didn’t know if it even still worked. He’d seen some pictures his dad had taken—fish swimming around the wreck, the old periscope, a white blur that looked like the under-belly of a shark.

  He thought that if he could get some good pictures of U-823, maybe he could give them to Mickey, maybe she’d forgive him. She could give the pictures to whatever legislator she met with on the class trip to Washington. He’d seen her talking to Josh, knew that she was still focused on her goal. Shane glared out over the waves, desperately wishing he could make everything okay again.

  A few minutes later, he saw someone walking down the beach. Just a dark figure, heading from the direction of the ranger’s house. Shane peered over—it had to be a surfer. He was wearing a black wetsuit, but where was his board?

  When he got close, Shane saw that it was the ranger. Tim O’Casey climbed over the jetty, carrying air tanks.

  “What are you doing?” Shane asked. “Aren’t you going to that art gallery thing?”

  “I could ask you the same thing. How’s Mickey?” he asked.

  “She…she’s with her father.”

  “Was that him in the squad car?” Tim asked.

  Shane nodded. “You saw?”

  “Yeah,” he said dryly. “They drove past—I tend to notice things like cop cars down here at the beach. So I called the station, and they told me what happened.”

  “He smelled like booze,” Shane said. “I didn’t want her driving with him, but I couldn’t stop them from leaving the school.”

  “You did the right thing,” Mr. O’Casey said.

  “I did?” Shane asked, looking up, surprised.

  “Yes,” he said. “You didn’t want her to get hurt.”

  Shane took that in. It wasn’t every day that an adult understood him. Even now, with Ranger O’Casey getting half of it, he was missing the other part.

  “Well, I didn’t want him getting hurt, either,” Shane said.

  Ranger O’Casey looked at him, waiting for him to say more. Shane almost couldn’t. It was like holy ground for him, talking about a father getting hurt, dying. He stared out at the waves.

  Shane had surfed a lot of big breakers, and he knew that it only took one moment—you could surf a thousand monster waves, or drive drunk a hundred times. You might slip by time after time, might think you’re invulnerable, might start to believe nothing bad will ever happen to you. And then that one time…

  Shane knew better than anyone else what that one time meant. That last moment on his father’s board—what had it been like? Whenever Shane paddled out, feeling the cold water on his hands and the spray on his face, he thought he knew. Exultation, man. The opposite of Mickey’s father. Shane had looked into his gray face and seen death just hanging back, waiting.

  “You didn’t want her father to die in a wreck, take her with him,” Tim O’Casey said.

  Death had visited Shane’s family long ago. Looking up into Mr. O’Casey’s eyes, he knew that it had visited his, too.

  “You’re right,” Shane said.

  “She’ll understand someday,” Tim said.

  Shane’s chest heaved. Why couldn’t adults get it? Someday would be too late. Shane wanted her to realize it right now, know how he felt about her, understand that he’d just wanted to protect her from the loss he’d gone through with his father. He wanted to be with her at the party tonight.

  “What’s that camera?”

  “It was my dad’s,” Shane said. “A Nikon Nikonos II, thirty-five millimeter.”

  “The best underwater camera there was,” Mr. O’Casey said. He glanced at Shane for permission to pick it up, and Shane nodded.

  He watched the older man examine the camera, noticed his gray hair and the lines on his windburned face. Park rangers and surfers: they both spent a lot of time out in the open air. Would Shane’s father be gray, would he have such a weather-beaten face if he were still alive? Shane stared out to sea and knew that he’d never know.

  “Really fine,” Mr. O’Casey said, examining the camera, then looking up at Shane. “Does this have to do with the U-boat?”

>   “Yeah,” Shane said. “Haven’t you seen the crane, on the barge moored in the harbor?”

  “How could I miss it?”

  “Didn’t you do anything with that stuff Mickey and I gave you?” Shane asked. “There were so many ideas in there—but you’re not doing anything. That crane is going to come right over here to the beach, reach down and pull the U-boat up from the bottom, take it to freaking Cape Cod! And you’re not even going to stop it!”

  “I’m going to try,” Mr. O’Casey said, his voice very still.

  Mr. O’Casey looked down, still holding on to Shane’s dad’s camera. His hands were big and rough, but Shane noticed the way he held the camera so lightly, running his thumb over the smooth metal edges, as if he really appreciated it.

  “May I borrow this?” Mr. O’Casey said, looking up.

  “Well, I was going to use it,” Shane said.

  “You scuba dive?” Mr. O’Casey asked.

  “Well, I have,” Shane said. “I just don’t have the tanks.” He glared at Mr. O’Casey to hide his embarrassment. Surfing was cheap—anyone could do it. All you needed was a board and—if you wanted to go all winter—a wetsuit. The waves were free. Scuba diving was different, it was for rich people; everything cost money. A good mask and fins could run over a hundred bucks, easily, not to mention tanks.

  “Are you certified?”

  Shane nodded. “Yeah. I did it at camp one year. Big deal.”

  “It is a big deal,” Mr. O’Casey said gruffly. Then, “So, if you’re not planning to dive, how were you going to photograph the U-boat?”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t planning to dive—I’m just not going to scuba dive.”

  “Then how?”

  “Hold my breath,” Shane said.

  “You know how deep the wreck is?” Mr. O’Casey asked. “Over seventy feet. You wouldn’t have the air to get down there and back up; it would be too dangerous.”

  At the words “too dangerous,” Shane suddenly focused on the fact Mr. O’Casey was wearing a wetsuit, carrying fins and tanks, had his mask slung over one arm.

  “Wait a second,” Shane said. “What are you planning to do? Dive alone?”

  Mr. O’Casey hesitated—obviously not wanting to be a bad influence.

  “You are, aren’t you?” Shane said, his voice rising.

  “Look, I’m a very experienced diver,” Mr. O’Casey said. “My dive partner isn’t here right now, and there’s no time to wait—if we don’t get documentation, as much as possible, right away, Landry’s crane will come in and—like you said—take the U-boat away.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Shane asked, watching as the older man started to go to work: checking his gauges, strapping on his air tanks, slipping his mask over his head, letting it dangle around his neck, walking toward the water’s edge. “You’d go in there alone, without a buddy?”

  “Solo diving is sometimes preferable,” Mr. O’Casey said, strapping the tanks on. “Especially on a deep dive.”

  “I know—getting tangled, getting disoriented, necrosis,” Shane said. “I told you—I’m certified. But seventy feet isn’t considered that deep a dive. Don’t try to bullshit me when it comes to the water!”

  “Okay, you’re right,” Mr. O’Casey said. “Technically, this isn’t that deep.”

  “Besides, even if it was, and you decided to go without a buddy, you’d still need support on the surface,” Shane said. “It’s not like surfing, where it’s better alone. It’s basically suicide to dive on a wreck without someone watching.”

  Mr. O’Casey gave him a look, and it scared Shane. Not because it was menacing, but because it wasn’t. Mr. O’Casey didn’t care—that was it. He was going to go in, and he didn’t care if he came out. Shane could tell by the slope of his shoulders, the slackness of his face.

  “Don’t worry about me, Shane,” Mr. O’Casey said. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Then give me back my camera!”

  Mr. O’Casey handed it over, then reached into the knife sheath strapped to his calf—there, along with a ten-dollar dive knife, was a very expensive, tiny, flat, underwater digital camera. He checked it, put it back. He checked the buckle on his weight belt, adjusted the regulator, basically acted as if Shane wasn’t there.

  “Wait for your dive partner!”

  Mr. O’Casey turned his back, started into the water. When he was knee-deep in foam and about to pull his mask on, Shane splashed in after him, grabbed his arm.

  “I said, wait for your dive partner,” Shane commanded.

  “I can’t, Shane,” Mr. O’Casey said.

  “But why?” Shane asked, gripping his arm. “You have to—it doesn’t matter if he’s not here right now. Wait for him, so you can dive safely together.”

  Mr. O’Casey shook his head. “That’s not going to happen,” he said.

  “Why?” Shane yelled, holding on tighter as the ranger tried to pull away, barrel into the waves.

  The sun was canting downward in an almost-end-of-the-day way, and the waves beat in relentlessly. Shane had a flashback: him and his mom on the beach blanket, his dad going into the water alone. He knew one thing for sure—he wasn’t going to let Mr. O’Casey dive without someone going below with him.

  “Jesus!” Shane shouted, hating to destroy equipment, knowing he would if that’s what it took. He grabbed the back of Mr. O’Casey’s wetsuit, pulled so hard, the neoprene started to rip. Mr. O’Casey ducked, turned, pushed back.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing!”

  “You’re not going to dive alone!” Shane yelled. He gripped the ranger’s face mask, tried to pull it off. “God, what are you doing? Get out of the water, get out right now! Call your dive partner, he’ll come help you. Don’t you know that’s how the buddy system works? Didn’t you learn anything in dive school?” Shane had him in a death grip, trying to wrestle him out of the surf, and Mr. O’Casey must have had enough, because he twisted free, gave Shane one hard push to the chest, sent him flying backwards onto the sand.

  “My dive partner can’t come!” he shouted, staring down at Shane. “He can’t come because he drowned. He’s dead, all right?”

  “Who…” Shane began.

  “My son Frank is dead.”

  Shane stared up, shocked, the wind knocked out of him, the worst feeling he’d ever had flowing in like the foamy waves all around him.

  “Mr. O’Casey,” Shane said, “I didn’t know…”

  “You didn’t know what?” the ranger asked. He was standing tall now, the slump gone, silhouetted against the glowing sea. Even in shadow, his face was a mask of grief—Shane saw it and recognized it. When he was only three years old, and had lost his father, he felt the exact same way Mr. O’Casey looked now.

  “You didn’t know I had a son?” Mr. O’Casey asked. “Or you didn’t know he died? Don’t you read the papers? Frank O’Casey. Lance Corporal Francis O’Casey, grandson of Commander Joseph O’Casey!”

  “And Lieutenant Timothy O’Casey!” Shane shouted. “I read the papers!” And Mickey had shown him. They had pored over old clippings and new stories. They had found Frank’s obituary. It had mentioned how much Frank had loved the beach, how he had learned to swim right here at Refuge Beach. And there, listed in the family left behind, was Timothy J. O’Casey, who had served as a medic in Vietnam.

  “I know,” Shane said, struggling to his feet. “I knew that you had a son, and that he’d died in the war. You were good to me, when I had to do community service. Mickey and I found Frank’s obituary. Why do you think we’re doing this?”

  “Doing what?” Mr. O’Casey asked.

  “Trying so hard to keep U-823 here?”

  “Because of the surf break.”

  Shane shook his head, and tears welled up. He hated that, didn’t want Mr. O’Casey to see, but it was too late. They flooded out of his eyes, and he stared with helpless fury at the older man.

  “For a memorial,” he said. “For your son
, and my father. And all the men who died in the battle.”

  “Shane,” Mr. O’Casey said, looking shocked.

  “So don’t say I don’t read the papers,” Shane said. “The only part I didn’t know about was that Frank was your dive partner. That’s all.”

  “I understand. I’m sorry,” Mr. O’Casey said. Shane stared at him, knowing he’d attack him again if he had to.

  “You’re not going in that water,” Shane said.

  “No,” Mr. O’Casey said, walking back toward Shane, unclipping the weight belt, dropping it into the sand. Strangely, he looked a lot lighter. The lines were still in his face, but his eyes looked almost alive again.

  “Good,” Shane said.

  “It’s ironic,” Mr. O’Casey said. “That you thought it would have been okay for you to dive down alone.”

  “Like you said,” Shane said, “I probably wouldn’t have gotten very far.”

  “Since you’re certified, maybe we can dive together another time.”

  “Yeah?” Shane asked, feeling as if he’d just gone over a speed bump.

  “Like you said,” Mr. O’Casey said, “it’s no good to dive alone.” He looked at the sky, which was starting to glow with the twilight hues of pink, red, and purple. Shane wondered whether the ranger was thinking of the party—he’d been invited, too.

  “She wants you to go,” Shane said.

  “Who—where?”

  “Mrs. Halloran,” he said. “She wants you to go to the opening thing. She’s nice; I like her.”

  “Yeah, so do I,” Mr. O’Casey said.

  “That dude’s your uncle or something?” Shane asked.

  “Berkeley. Yes, he is. My uncle Damien.” He looked over at Shane. “You read about that in the papers, too, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s all over the news. Kind of cool, because the stories all mention U-823. It’s almost as if your uncle and Frank are trying to save it for us.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Shane looked down at the beach, scuffed the sand with his foot, making a circle. He tried to get his thoughts together. It wasn’t easy; they were thrashing around, like seaweed in storm waves. He didn’t have any men in his life—his dad had drowned, he had no uncles, his grandfathers were dead. But there’d been something about those news stories that had pulled him in, made him wish he’d come from a family like the O’Caseys, men who had influenced each other, who held each other up, who were all part of the same team.