Wrecked

by Mary Anna Evans

  As he swam slowly downward, he left the opalescent blue and dropped into a blanket of translucent gray. The water grew chilly and continued to cool as he went deeper.

  Visibility quickly dwindled to ten feet or so as he descended still farther. He could see his own outstretched hand but not much more. If the Philomela really lay below him, and he believed that she did, then she was on the sand at the bottom of the murk, and underneath the sand, too. He dipped his head down and, with a few flicks of his fins, began his descent in earnest.

  The water around him cooled with depth and the gray water grew darker. His eyes darted here and there, peering through the dive mask adhered to his face. Somewhere below him was a wrecked ship that had been loaded with cargo when it went down. There would surely be guns aboard and very old ammunition. There would be rusted iron hoops of rotted barrels that had held the ship’s supplies of flour and salt pork. Probably, there would be rotten silk and spoiled books.

  Maybe there would be gold and silver, too, but not in fabulous quantities. The Philomela was no treasure ship. She was a smuggler’s ship. The captain didn’t mind the lack of treasure. He loved history, so he was more interested in things like rotted barrels and spoiled books. Money had never held any meaning for him beyond the value of the books it would buy.

  The sea bottom had not yet come into focus when he felt peace suffuse him to his fingertips. It felt like magic.

  It made no sense to him for the chilly water to suddenly grow comfortable and welcoming, but it did. And he felt buoyant, as if a deep breath would float him all the way to the surface, which was a long way away by now.

  He had been afraid without realizing it, afraid of the dark and afraid of the deep, but he realized that he simply wasn’t now. The captain looked around for his companion and saw nothing but soft gray. Even his aloneness failed to frighten him.

  One part of his mind refused to be distracted from self-preservation, and it rang an alarm. That part of his mind knew that he wasn’t supposed to feel no fear, not down here where it would be so easy to die. And he wasn’t supposed to be alone. His companion had agreed to help him, because fellow researchers helped each other. He would need help to get down to the Philomela, since he’d never even put on a scuba tank before, and his friend had promised.

  His eyes drooped. His body screamed for sleep, and this is what finally told him that something was wrong. Despite the fact that his pressure gauge said that he had plenty of air to breathe, his body was starving for oxygen.

  Lifting his face to search for the sun, he wondered how far he would have to rise to find air.

  How deep was he? Twenty feet? No, more than that. The surface was much too far away.

  Even with fins, he didn’t have the power in his legs to kick himself to the surface before this pervasive fatigue trapped him underwater. He knew he couldn’t do it while wearing such a heavy weight belt. He still had the presence of mind to fumble with the belt, but it was long past the time when removing it would have helped him. The buckle opened, allowing the webbed belt to slide between the steel teeth that held it closed, but it didn’t slide enough to free him from the belt. That was when he panicked and that was when he was lost. That was when he knew he would never see the Philomela. He would never see anything, not ever again.

  No longer sure which way was up in the dim, deep murk, he kicked hard. He rose out of the murk and into the soft blue water, but he was fatally disoriented. His fins propelled him more sideways than up.

  The end was quick.

  Within the hour, the weight belt would slide off his body as the rocking of the Gulf’s deep currents and eddies worked the last inch of webbing free of the teeth that held it. In such warm water, buoyant decomposition gases would form rapidly in his body. The lift provided by those gases and his buoyancy compensator would do their work. The captain would rise. The currents and the wind and the tide would bring him back to land, one more time, but he would no longer care.

  Captain Edward Eubank had almost no time left, but he spent it dreaming of shipwrecks and blockade runners and beautiful things lost to time.

  Chapter Eight

  Faye’s sore muscles woke her early. She’d slept hard, like a woman who had been moving trees for days. Now that she was awake, her muscles were complaining about all that work, and her kids were complaining about having to get up so early during the summertime. Nevertheless, she needed to get to shore and punish her muscles some more, because people needed her. And also, the sooner the cleanup work got done, the sooner she could get out to The Cold Spot and see what was there.

  Michael was glaring at his scrambled eggs. He’d wanted the sugary breakfast cereal that he ate at Emma’s house, and he’d been willing to make his mother suffer in order to get it. He’d lost the battle, but this didn’t mean that he would necessarily agree to eating the eggs. He actually liked eggs, but he hated losing arguments with his mother.

  Amande’s surly expression was inextricable from her status as a nineteen-year-old still living at home with her parents, and Faye was mightily tired of it. Her daughter had tried to flounce out the door without eating breakfast, but Joe had blocked the door bodily, holding out a plate of bacon and eggs. She was sitting at the kitchen table with the rest of the family, but she wasn’t speaking to them.

  For reasons Faye didn’t comprehend, Joe was less bothered than she was by all the unpleasantness around them. He lived in a world where love truly did conquer all, so he was actually smiling at his scowling children as he gathered up their dirty dishes. Faye did not live in that world, and she blamed the people who made sugary breakfast cereals for most of the problems with this one.

  Despite the squabbling, all four of them were in the boat on schedule. As Faye used her foot to shove the boat away from the dock, she looked longingly in the direction of The Cold Spot. Sooner or later, she’d get home before dark and wouldn’t be utterly exhausted. The tide would be low enough to walk out into the water where she wanted to go. Or, at most, she’d be able to use a snorkel to get there, and thank heaven for that. Fathoms of water above her head freaked her out, so she had no plans to learn to scuba dive.

  As the marina came into view, Faye watched Amande perk up. This made Faye surlier than her surly children, because she knew the reason her daughter was starting to glow. That reason was Manny.

  Joe elbowed her and grinned as Amande started her about-to-see-Manny routine. As the boat slowed down to enter the marina’s no-wake zone, she removed the orange scrunchy that had kept her long hair from whipping in the wind. Once released, honey-brown curls framed her golden-brown face, hanging down her back below her shoulder blades. Next, she pulled a tube of lip balm from her pocket and made her full lips shine.

  Joe cut the motor and let the boat drift into their slip. The sudden silence made it easier for Amande to hear her dad as he made lame jokes at her expense.

  “Hey, my lips are dry,” Joe said. “Can I borrow some of that stuff? What do you call it? Lip gloss? It smells like mangoes.”

  She gave him her best withering glare. It said, You embarrass me.

  Joe lived to embarrass Amande. “I wanna borrow some of that conditioner you use, too. Your hair always looks great and that stuff makes you smell like a watermelon.”

  Faye was biting her lip to keep from blurting out, “Does Manny like fruit salad or something?” There was only room for one comedian in the family, and Joe easily outshone her.

  Amande was way too busy tying up the boat to take the bait. She’d been running around in boats since she was in elementary school, so the job was done quickly and well. Without making eye contact with her parents, she leaned down into the boat and grabbed her little brother. After she’d deftly removed his life jacket and tossed it in the direction of Joe’s head, the two of them disappeared into the marina’s grill. The sight of Michael’s back with its stubby black ponytail and chunky, little brown legs norma
lly made Faye smile, but she was too busy stewing over her rebellious daughter.

  “We’re going to have to do something about this,” Faye muttered as they followed Amande and Michael.

  “About what? Manny? She’s known Manny longer than she’s known us. He’d never do anything to hurt her.”

  While both those things might be true, they didn’t change the fact that Joe was a starry-eyed dreamer. They also didn’t change the fact that Manny had befriended Amande when she was an awkward and lonely little girl in Louisiana and he was a handsome twenty-something. Faye and Joe had adopted her when she was sixteen and moved her to Florida, so she hadn’t seen Manny in three years. Time had turned her into a whole new person physically during those years, but she was still heartbreakingly young. Anyone could see that she was no longer awkward, but she was probably still lonely.

  But now here Manny was, the brand-new owner of the only marina within a practical distance of their home. He was impossible to avoid. If they wanted access to civilization, then they had to go through Manny. He was back in Amande’s day-to-day world, and Faye knew in her bones that it was no coincidence that Manny had chosen Micco County as the place to start his whole new life.

  Manny met Faye’s eye when she passed through the door, and she knew at a glance that the two of them understood each other. She didn’t like him, but she would tolerate him for Amande’s sake, and the feeling was mutual.

  He manned his own grill at breakfast time. Savvy restauranteurs know that their customers are friendly over pancakes and that they bond to the person who flips them. Manny knew that cooking breakfast for his customers would keep them coming back for life.

  “Been hitting the books, Missy?” he said, holding out a full cup with a hand that was darker than the espresso in it. She sat on a bar stool and took it from him as if he were handing her champagne.

  Asking Amande about her studies was Manny’s way of kissing up to Faye. He knew it. She knew it. Amande knew it. It wasn’t working.

  Faye had been secretly thrilled when Amande chose to take a gap year after high school. It would have hurt her too much to send their new daughter away so soon after she joined their family. They needed time to bond. But now Amande had put college off for another year, mollifying her mother by taking a few online courses, and Faye was not okay with it. She saw Manny as an obstacle standing between her brilliant, studious daughter and her future.

  Amande was looking at Manny when she said, “I’m ahead of schedule in all three classes. Getting an A in every one of them, too,” but she was really talking to Faye.

  Faye was self-aware enough to admit that Manny was a handsome man with his rakish grin. His perfectly coiffed black hair set off hazel-brown eyes that were fascinating because they were never the same color twice. Manny carried himself like a man who spent a lot of time on the water, with the fluid grace of a dolphin. Or a shark. He was unquestionably a hard worker, and the marina’s booming business showed it. And he adored her daughter. None of those sterling qualities outweighed the fact that he was well past thirty.

  Faye had grave doubts about a man Manny’s age who was interested in a woman who was only barely of legal age. Granted, Faye herself was nine years older than Joe, but they had gotten involved when he was thirty or thereabouts. She didn’t consider the two situations to be remotely comparable.

  Plus, Joe’s age made the Manny-and-Amande situation creep Faye out even more. While Faye was old enough to be Amande’s mother if she’d started having children in her early twenties, Joe was in high school when their daughter was born. Yeah, he was technically old enough to be her father, but just barely. It gave Faye the willies to see Amande flirting with a man Joe’s age.

  Manny plunked a plate of pecan pancakes in front of Faye’s daughter, saying, “This is your favorite dish since you were a little kid. I keep real maple syrup around just for you.”

  Faye didn’t think. She just blurted out, “Amande, you had breakfast half an hour ago.”

  She wasn’t trying to hurt her daughter’s feelings. She certainly wasn’t trying to say, “Do you know how many calories are in those pancakes?” If she were honest with herself, she was saying, “I don’t want you to spend another minute chitchatting with this sexy man who is all wrong for you.”

  But Faye knew that Amande didn’t hear either of these things. She heard, “I’m your mother, and I think you’re fat.”

  Amande was almost a foot taller than Faye, so she naturally weighed a lot more than her mother, and her build was far more muscular and curvaceous than scrawny Faye’s. Faye knew that this bothered Amande, but she honestly thought her daughter was goddess-beautiful.

  Despite the difference in size, and despite the contrast between Amande’s long brown curls and Faye’s straight and close-cropped black hair, Faye clung to a belief that her daughter looked like her, at least a little. They both had strong jawlines, up-tilted eyes, and mid-brown skin. If she were honest, she’d admit that they also both exuded the same try-and-stop-me approach to life.

  Deep down, Faye harbored the adoptive mother’s fear that Amande would someday turn to her and say that she’d never loved her, not like she would have loved her biological mother…her real mother. She held tight to any physical resemblance she could find.

  None of these things changed the fact that she’d just said what amounted to “Are you really going to eat again?” to a teenaged girl.

  “Why would you say that?” Amande demanded. “Why would you ever say that? And why would you say it in front of somebody?”

  There were tears in her eyes, and Faye had put them there.

  “Sweetheart, I didn’t mean—”

  “You don’t respect Manny. You don’t respect my college just because it’s teaching me online. For some reason I don’t freakin’ understand, you want to ship me off someplace far away to study, even though I practically just got here. I’d go, but then I’d miss Dad and Michael. And, yeah, I’d miss Manny, too. What’s wrong with that?”

  She shoved the plate away from her so hard that it crashed on the floor at Manny’s feet. The pitcher of maple syrup went with it, sloshing stickiness over his stylish deck shoes.

  “I think maybe I’ll go someplace far away after all.”

  And then Amande had slid Michael off her lap and handed him to Joe, so she could run full-tilt out the door. Maybe she was running for the old-but-safe used car they’d bought her. Or maybe she was running for the battered oyster skiff she used for exploring or fishing or escaping her annoying parents. Faye didn’t care which avenue of escape was calling Amande. Either option meant that her daughter was running away from her.

  The problem with having a daughter who is nearly six feet tall is that she can outrun you with those long legs. Long, tall Joe’s legs stretched farther than Faye’s, of course, and so did Manny’s, but Manny was trapped behind the bar, and Joe was holding Michael. And also, surefooted Joe was so rattled that he tripped over his own bar stool. They were all still gathering their wits when the door slammed behind Amande and took her out of their sight.

  Faye’s legs were short but speedy, and she was determined, so she beat the men through the door by a split-second. Amande was nowhere to be seen.

  Faye knew that Joe spent sleepless nights worrying over Amande wrapping her car around a tree, so it was only natural that he would head right to the parking lot at a time like this.

  Manny had watched her tooling around in boats since she was a preteen, so he knew how far from civilization she was capable of going in that skiff. He headed left toward the dock.

  Faye was between Manny and the dock. She had once been a teenaged girl with a boat, so she too knew how far away the water could take Amande. What was more, she had an island-dwelling parent’s nightmares about drowning. And also, she would be damned if Manny was the one who found her daughter. She turned left, too, trying and succeeding in keeping her
head start.

  Faye still couldn’t see Amande, but she could hear her daughter’s feet striking the dock. She and Manny had clearly chosen the right place to look. A long line of boats in their slips obscured Faye’s sight line, but they wouldn’t for long. She ran hard.

  In a moment, Amande would be in view. There was no question about it, because the dock was only so long. At its end, there was no place to hide.

  Before Amande came into sight, she gave herself away. Faye knew where her daughter was because she could hear her scream.

  Chapter Nine

  Where was she? Where was Amande?

  The sound of her daughter’s scream hit Faye hard. She was shaky, weak, nauseated. Knowing that these things were caused by adrenaline did not help at all, because she needed to find her daughter with all of her being. She flung herself in the direction of Amande’s heart-stopping scream.

  Faye stubbed her toe on a loose board and almost went down, but determination kept her on her feet. Behind her, Manny dragged the rubber sole of one of his deck shoes on the same board. She heard him go down, but he was cool, smooth Manny, so he probably did it gracefully.

  The scream morphed to a long continuous wail that tore Faye’s heart out. It only stopped when Amande took a breath. The next sound out of her mouth was a single word.

  “Mom.”

  There was another ragged breath before the next wail. “Mom!”

  When Faye reached Amande, she found her standing in the spot where Manny let her keep her boat for free, but she wasn’t looking at the battered skiff. She was staring down into the water near where it floated, rising and falling with the moving water. Something long and narrow floated on the same waves. It was covered in black and maroon rubber, with an air tank painted a dull, matte maroon strapped onto it.