Safe Harbor

by Luanne Rice

  “Thank you, Sam,” she said.

  “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “It was you. They’re naturals, aren’t they? Once they had hold of the tiller, they forgot to be afraid.”

  “That’s how it always is,” Dana said, staring over the water as if she were lost in a dream. Maybe she was remembering every kid she’d ever taught. Was that all Sam would ever be to her? Leaning forward, he tried to see into her eyes.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked. He knew it could be anything: her nieces, Lily, some man she loved.

  “About the ocean,” she said.

  “That’s a big subject,” he laughed.

  “I’ve wanted to see them all,” she said. “Every one. I’ve rented houses on the Pacific—in Oregon and in Mexico. A short time in Japan. I spent one winter in the Indian Ocean, in the Seychelles. Someone offered me a chance to teach painting aboard a cruise ship, and I traveled through ice in the Antarctic. Most recently, I saw the Atlantic from the other side, from France.”

  “A lot of ocean,” Sam said.

  “But right now,” Dana said, shielding her eyes as the sun sank lower, turning her fair skin and white shirt rose, bathing her in light, “I’m wondering why I ever left New England. I love it here so much.”

  “New England,” Sam said, his heart kicking over. “You’re not just talking about Connecticut, are you?”

  “No,” she said. “I loved those summers Lily and I spent in Newport.”

  “Good students,” Sam said, deadpan.

  Dana laughed. “That’s true. And I loved the Vineyard… .”

  “The Vineyard?” Now Sam’s heart did more than kick. It somersaulted and landed in his stomach. He could practically feel himself reading the ferry schedule. Driving off the Islander in Vineyard Haven, asking directions for Gay Head, heading up the North Road.

  “You told me you saw me there.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Dana said. “Wondering about how.”

  “What if I tell you after you tell me why you loved it?”

  “Well, it was my first house,” Dana said. “Lily called it ‘my sea away from home.’ She thought I was a little crazy to go looking for other water to paint when I had all this.” She gestured at the view of Long Island Sound, its waves purple and gold in the sunset. “But then she came to visit and understood. I stayed for just a year, then she took over. For one thing, by then she’d met her husband there.”

  “At the Vineyard?” Sam asked.

  “Yes. I’d found a little cottage up-island, just around the bend from the cliffs at Gay Head.” She closed her eyes, and Sam knew she must be picturing the great clay cliffs, the earth painted gold and brown and red as they sloped down into the Atlantic Ocean. “It’s just east of Newport, barely over the horizon, but it was the most exotic place I’d ever been. I started painting the minute I arrived, and I don’t think I stopped for an entire year.”

  “You painted the cliffs?”

  “I painted the sea,” she said. “It’s where I began studying the water column. I thought the rocks and the seaweed and the fish and the sediment glittering in the sunlight made the most beautiful picture I could ever paint.”

  “Big fish off Gay Head,” Sam said.

  “I know. Once I was swimming at Zacks, and a surfcaster pulled in a blue shark right past me. A big blue shark.”

  Sam nodded. He felt the blood rush to his face, and he hoped she’d think it was just the sunset. He had seen her swimming at Zacks Cliffs. Gay Head was a small town. That day, searching for her, he had parked his car by the lighthouse and ambled down the path to the beach. He had found her, playing in the waves.

  Zacks was a nude beach.

  Sam was nineteen. Eleven years after his sailing lessons, after dating girls and wishing they looked like Dana, were as kind as she’d been, made him laugh like she had, Sam had decided to go searching for her.

  What did he have to lose?

  He’d been tops in his class at Rogers High School, on a scholarship at Dartmouth, taking the fast lane to life as a maverick oceanographer just like his brother. Falling in love wasn’t happening for him, and he had a pretty good idea why. None of the girls he knew was Dana. Inspired by Joe’s dauntless searching for treasure, Sam had set off on a treasure hunt of his own.

  It had started with Lily. Bumping into her in Woods Hole, where he was doing a fellowship for the summer and she was waiting for the ferry, he had casually asked about her sister. The Vineyard, Lily had said. Gay Head, to be precise. And so Sam had gone, found her, swimming nude in the surf at Zacks Cliffs.

  “So, how did you end up there?” Dana asked him now.

  “The Vineyard?” he asked, blushing harder. “I did graduate work at Woods Hole, just across Vineyard Sound. Couldn’t very well have avoided it.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Dana said, smiling.

  “We were in Gay Head,” Dana said. “The whole Vineyard is great, but Gay Head is … magical. Lily loved it too. That little house looking over the moors to the sea. The beam of the lighthouse would sweep the walls, coming straight through our windows. After I decided to move on, Lily kept the place for a year herself. She and Mark fell in love there. In fact, that’s where Quinn was conceived. She’s named after the place.”

  Sam waited, watching emotion cross Dana’s face.

  “Aquinnah,” she said. “That’s the Indian name for Gay Head. Lily wanted to name her after the place we all loved so much.”

  “Did you ever go back?”

  Dana shrugged, lowering her head. “A few times to visit Lily. Not enough.”

  “No?”

  “Quinn was born there. Lily and Mark tried to make a life for themselves. Painting, Lily could work anywhere. But Mark was a businessman. He bought and sold property—but not on the Vineyard.”

  “The real estate was too expensive?” Sam asked.

  Dana laughed. “No, Lily wouldn’t let him. He wanted to develop the land he bought, and she couldn’t stand to see the island spoiled. So they—”

  “Are you talking about my island?” Quinn asked, coming onto the terrace with a nylon line knotted into a bowline.

  “We are,” Dana said, sliding her arm around her. Sam gazed at them, aunt and niece. Their faces were alike, high cheekbones and beautiful wide eyes. Their hair, as differently styled as it was, was a similar chestnut brown. Salt from the day’s sail glistened in Dana’s elegant waves and Quinn’s myriad crooked braids.

  “Martha’s Vineyard,” Quinn said, settling onto the blue stone terrace. “I was born there, you know. And I learned how to walk and talk there. I’m named for the most magical part—Aquinnah.”

  “I know,” Sam said, remembering how Dana had used the same word, “magical.”

  “Someday I’ll go back,” Quinn said, and suddenly, she seemed to be speaking to the Sound, to that distant spot where her parents had gone down. “I’ll see the place where I began.”

  “Someday,” Dana said, pushing herself out of the chair. She faced west, at the stripe of dark red just above the trees of Little Beach. A crescent moon hung there, cradling Venus in its violet embrace. Sam swallowed, remembering how he had watched her one other sunset, when the Gay Head cliffs had glowed like jewels in the dying light. He wanted to tell her, but with Quinn there, he wouldn’t.

  “Is everyone hungry?” Dana asked. “Should I make dinner?”

  “Anything but hot dogs,” Quinn moaned.

  “Okay,” Dana laughed, heading inside to see what she could find.

  Sam wanted to follow her, but Quinn stopped him. She took a folded paper from her pocket and spread it on his lap. Sam peered closely, saw that it was a chart. She had drawn a compass rose, the contours of land, a bell buoy, and a green can.

  “That’s where it happened,” she said.

  “I see,” Sam said.

  “It’s the Hunting Ground—that’s what it’s called. Right out there,” Quinn said, pointing at the Sou
nd. “Just past the Wickland Shoals. Fishermen say it’s the best place to fish between here and Orient Point. It’s where my parents’ boat sank.”

  “Where’s the boat now?” Sam asked, staring down at the spiky braids on her head.

  “Still down there. Their bodies were recovered,” Quinn said with no feeling in her voice whatsoever. “They came ashore after three days. I would have found them myself if they didn’t. But the boat’s another story.”

  “Tell me,” Sam said.

  Quinn spun her head to look up at him. “Divers found it. They had to, for the insurance. They were going to bring it up to the surface last summer, but then we had two big storms in a row. A gale, and then that sort-of hurricane.”

  “Desdemona.”

  “Yes, Hurricane Desdemona. She moved the boat away from where it had been, just far enough so the divers couldn’t find it.”

  “How do you know? Did they see it again?”

  “No, but I know. I feel it.” Quinn stood up, staring toward the Hunting Ground. Sam felt a chill, as if she were putting out radar. “It’s there. Somewhere close to where they first found it. If we don’t get to it first, those divers will go down again. I want to know before anyone else.”

  Inside, Dana began running water and clattering pans. She had turned on music; Carly Simon sang out the window, making Sam think about the Vineyard again.

  “What do you want to know, Quinn?”

  “I know what I hope,” she whispered, “and I know what I think.”

  “What do you hope?”

  “That it was an accident,” she said in a voice thinner than the crescent moon in the western sky.

  “And what do you think?”

  “That they did it on purpose.”

  They hadn’t noticed Dana. She had stepped onto the terrace, the salad bowl in her arms. Her blue eyes were clear, wide open. Sam knew she had heard, but for some reason she made up her mind not to let on. Holding the big wooden bowl toward Quinn, she held the door open behind her.

  “Can you mix the salad, Quinn?” she asked.

  “Okay, Aunt Dana.”

  “What can I do?” Sam asked, carefully folding Quinn’s map, putting it into his wallet.

  “I don’t know,” Dana said steadily, never looking away from his eyes. “What can you do?”

  THEY ATE DINNER at the table. This time Quinn didn’t fight anyone for their seats. Dana made sure to leave Lily’s and Mark’s chairs unoccupied, and that seemed to satisfy both girls. A soft breeze blew through the open windows, sending thick ropes of wax down the white candles.

  It was a family tradition to eat by candlelight every summer night. Candles filled the room. Tall white ones in brass and etched glass holders on the oak table, votives in squat crystal balls on the bookshelves, bright colored candles in pressed-tin angel holders from Mexico, and glazed painted mermaid holders from Greece—gifts sent by Dana from wherever she was. Mozart played on the stereo, Dana’s favorite violin concerto.

  The telephone rang, and Dana went to answer. It was Victoria DeGraff, the gallery owner who represented Dana in New York. She said she’d sold several large paintings recently, and that a magazine wanted to do a story called “The Artist Who Paints Like a Mermaid.”

  “Will you come down for lunch soon?” Victoria asked. “And let me set up an interview?”

  “I don’t know,” Dana said, listening to the children laugh with Sam.

  “Let me put it this way. You have to. I insist! I’ve been selling your work for fifteen years now, the least you can do is let me take you to lunch.”

  “Okay,” Dana said, smiling because she realized what a relief it would be to have a little of her old life back, to escape her family for a little while. They decided on the first Thursday in August, said affectionate good-byes, and hung up.

  Returning to the table, Dana had to answer Quinn’s third degree: Where was she going and for how long?

  “New York, in a month,” Dana replied. “Just for a day and maybe a night. Grandma will baby-sit.”

  Satisfied, Quinn sat back. Allie chattered on and on about her sailing prowess. She wanted to quit swimming and tennis, take up sailing. She’d race anyone who came along. When winter swept in, she’d be heading the Frostbite Fleet in Hawthorne Harbor.

  “Captain Allie,” Quinn giggled.

  “What’s so funny about that?” Allie asked. “Aunt Dana, were you or Mommy the captain of the Mermaid?”

  “We took turns,” Dana said, sounding stern for Sam’s sake.

  “Your aunt was the captain in Newport,” Sam said.

  “Where she taught you?” Allie asked.

  “Well, she must’ve taught you well,” Quinn said, yawning from her day in the sun, selling hot dogs and sailing, “because you did okay on board the Mermaid today. May I be excused?”

  “Yes,” Dana said.

  “I’m going for a walk,” Quinn said, running into the kitchen to get her flashlight. Dana knew she was headed for Little Beach; she wouldn’t even try to stop her.

  “I’m going to my room,” Allie said.

  “Don’t lose that map,” Quinn said to Sam, handing him what appeared to be a wad of money as she hurried out the door.

  When Dana and Sam were alone, she felt that familiar sinking feeling come over her. She had to confront someone she wanted to trust, faced with blatant evidence that she shouldn’t.

  “Did she just pay you?” Dana asked.

  “Um,” Sam said, distinctly uncomfortable. “Can I tell you it’s between her and me and let it go at that?”

  “No,” Dana said sharply.

  The candlelight surrounded them, making the room glow like the inside of a lamp. Outside, the waves splashed the sandy beach. With July Fourth less than a week off, the whistle of a bottle rocket sounded in the distance. Sam craned his neck as if to watch the fireworks, but when he turned back, Dana was still watching him. The Mozart was reaching its crescendo. More than anything in life, she hated being tricked, kept in the dark.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “I made a promise.”

  “She’s my charge, Sam! If I can’t trust you, why should she? Jesus!” Dana burst out, thinking about how easy it was to make promises, how easy it was to break them.

  “Okay, Dana,” he said as if he’d been trapped. “She wants to hire me to dive on her parents’ boat.”

  “What did she mean out on the terrace, ‘they did it on purpose’?”

  “That’s what she thinks. That the sinking wasn’t accidental.”

  “Oh, God,” Dana said. Suddenly, her feelings of betrayal evaporated. Thinking of Quinn’s pain, Dana’s eyes filled with tears.

  “She wants me to come up the Sound with a research vessel—I can borrow one from Yale, no problem. We have a depth sounder that can locate the boat. She thinks if I dive down and look for evidence of an accident—a hole in the bow, for example—everything’ll be okay.”

  “And if there’s no hole in the bow?”

  “I’ll look to see whether the seacocks are open or closed. She mentioned an insurance investigator.”

  “There was one,” Dana said, remembering Fred Connelly—his friendly, round face, his bald head. “Suicide was never a possibility. Or if it was, he never mentioned it.”

  “What did he find?”

  “Nothing like you’re suggesting!” Dana exclaimed. “They were sailing across the shipping lane, that’s all. There’s a lot of traffic out there—tankers, freighters. The night was clear, but Mark might have misjudged his distance … it happens.”

  Sam nodded, but Dana could see he wasn’t convinced. What had Quinn told him? What had gone wrong in this house? Unhappiness hid in the walls. Her mother hinted at it, Quinn had blurted it out. The candlelight tried to chase it away, but Dana could feel the emotion. She thought back to her conversations with Lily. Everything had always been “great,” “wonderful,” “perfect.” Why hadn’t Dana been tipped off to dig deeper?

  “It happens
,” Dana said out loud again.

  “Quinn thinks her parents went down on purpose.”

  “You’re encouraging her in this?”

  “How can you think that?”

  “Taking her money,” Dana said, the anger building. “Hanging around here so much.”

  “It’s not because of Quinn,” Sam said.

  “She’s vulnerable,” Dana said, ignoring him. Her body tensed up, and she went to the window. There, across the cove, she saw the gleam of Quinn’s flashlight. Playing out over the water, it seemed to point straight at the Hunting Ground.

  “Yes, she is, and she has you to help her.”

  “I’m trying, but it’s not easy. I don’t understand her. I don’t know what’s going on in her head. I’m her aunt, not her mother, and I’m worn out just trying to keep up.”

  “I know, Dana.”

  “You don’t know!” she said, a shiver going through her. “You remember me from the old days. You picture me sailing in any weather, always ready to race. Well, that’s not how I am anymore,” she cried, shuddering as the words flew out.

  “You’re strong, Dana. So strong.”

  “That’s just what people want to think,” Dana said.

  “Quinn asked for my help,” Sam said. He wore the same shirt he’d worn sailing, and his muscles gleamed in the candlelight. Salt crystals sparkled on his hair and eyebrows. “And I’m not backing down.”

  “I’m her guardian,” Dana said. “If I ask you to back down, I expect you will.”

  “Why would you ask?”

  “Encouraging her to think her parents sank their own boat?” Dana burst out. “You think that’s helping her?”

  Staring across the cove, they saw Quinn’s flashlight holding steady. “It would be a focus for her,” Sam said as he watched. “Something for her to do. Searching for evidence is real, solid, better than living with her fears.”

  “It’s a terrible idea.”

  “Are you afraid it will turn out to be true?” Sam asked. “Are you using your own fear to keep her from finding out the truth?”