by Luanne Rice
The goal was to save the boat, she thought, holding Sam’s hand as he drove the van. But why was her mouth dry, her stomach flipping? She had a feeling the stakes were higher, much higher, than a small sailboat sitting at the end of the beach. She had the feeling she was trying to get to her sister’s home—her home—before something terrible happened.
THE SAILS were heavy and huge. Quinn tried to remember which was the head and which was the clew. She rigged the jib first, threading the sheets through the blocks, letting the sail flap in the breeze. Next, she stowed all her stuff—her canteen, a blanket, and the tackle box full of money—up front. She had a long sail ahead of her, and although the day was sunny, waves could get pretty big and she wanted to keep everything as dry as possible. To be extra safe, she secured her double-wrapped diary around her ankle with a bungee cord.
Last of all, she rigged the mainsail. Once she hoisted the sail up the mast, she might as well announce her intentions to the world. Grandma would be sitting in her chair by the window with Maggie, and this would really give her something to sigh about. If she happened to be watching the beach, the white sail would be as obvious as a red flag. She might just call Hubbard’s Point security to stop Quinn from sailing.
Now, trying to push the boat down the beach into the water, Quinn threw her back and legs into the mighty effort. She moved the boat a foot, and then another foot. This would be much easier with another person. Sam, Aunt Dana, her mother, her father. Thinking of those faces gave Quinn the strength she needed to keep pushing. “Two are better than one,” her mother always used to say, grinning when Quinn would help her in the herb garden.
“Quinn, wait a minute!”
“Oh, shit,” Quinn said, looking up. She had asked, and she had received: Here came Allie, running down the beach in a cloud of knees, elbows, and Kimba.
“You think I didn’t see you at Little Beach?” Allie asked. “Well, I did! And I didn’t tell!”
“You’d better not tell about this either,” Quinn warned. She made her face and voice mean to scare Allie away. Dammit, now she was going to get choked up. She had wanted to avoid saying good-bye.
“Who would I tell?”
“Grandma, Aunt Dana … but you’d better not.”
“I won’t, how can I?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going with you.”
Quinn couldn’t believe her ears. Allie would be no good on this mission whatsoever. She would be right in the way.
“No way,” Quinn said.
Allie just nodded, her blond curls bouncing with fervor. “Yes.”
“You don’t like sailing. You’re afraid of heeling, and we’re going to heel—a lot.” When Allie’s determination seemed only to increase, Quinn widened her stance and knew she had to get tough. “You’ll cry. You’re a baby—look, you couldn’t even leave Kimba for one minute. There he is, stuck to you like glue. That dumb feline scrap …”
That did it. Allie’s eyes filled with tears. They ran down her cheeks, and her lip trembled, making Quinn feel awful. But she had to stay focused: She was on her way, and she wanted to leave before Grandma saw the sail and called to stop her. Glancing at Allie, her heart ached. But she started pushing the boat into the water.
“I’ll leave Kimba behind,” Allie cried, pulling on Quinn’s shorts, “if you’ll take me with you.”
“I can’t, Al,” Quinn said, starting to cry herself.
“Where are you going?”
“Far away, Allie. Really far away. I’ll call you when I get there, okay? You can take the ferry out.”
Standing in the shallow water, her feet buried in sand, Allie held Kimba to her eyes and sobbed. The waves splashed her ankles and the boat. Quinn held the side, keeping the boat steady. She watched her sister, and her heart did somersaults. There was no one in the world Quinn loved more than Allie. She wasn’t perfect, and she cried a lot—but even Quinn was crying now. The trip was long, and it would be lonely… .
“Okay, Allie. Jump in.”
“You mean … ?”
“Yes, you can come.”
“Should I run up to the house and take Kimba back?”
Quinn shook her head—partly with impatience at the idea her sister actually thought Quinn would wait while she went up the hill and back and partly because Quinn herself kind of wanted Kimba along. He was a tie to their babyhood, to their parents. “You can bring him,” she said. “Put on your life jacket.”
“Thank you, Quinn,” Allie said, scrambling over the side into the Mermaid.
Quinn followed. She adjusted the tiller, lowered the centerboard. She checked her diary, made sure it was secure to her ankle. Pulling on her orange life vest, she told Allie to do the same. Trying to remember everything Aunt Dana had taught her, she sat on the leeward side and trimmed the sails.
“Where are we going anyway?” Allie asked as the boat caught the wind and wobbled around the rocky promontory of Hubbard’s Point. By way of answering, Quinn reached into her pocket and handed her the compass.
“Martha’s Vineyard,” Quinn said.
“That’s far!”
“Yes,” Quinn said, looking up at the blue sky, the puffy white clouds along the western horizon, “but it’s a beautiful sunny day, and that’s where we’re going.”
“Why?”
“To pay someone back for Mommy and Daddy.”
“Who?”
“I’ll tell you when we get there.” Then, drawing on her amazing sense of direction, Quinn said, “It’s easy, Al. All we have to do is sail east, exactly east, over the horizon. Watch the compass and make sure it stays on ninety the whole way.”
“Ninety,” Allie said, clutching Kimba and the compass.
“And don’t worry—we’ll stay out of the shipping lane.”
“Good,” Allie said, sounding only a little frightened.
“Here we go,” Quinn called out over the whistling rigging to the soft white clouds quickly encroaching from the west.
MARTHA HELD MAGGIE and paced the yard. Now they were both gone: Quinn hadn’t been home all night, and Allie had run off to find her. They were so young, such little girls, and the storm was coming. Then Maggie nestled in Martha’s arms, licking her cheek. Needless to say, Maggie would rather be off chasing raccoons, but she sensed Martha’s deep worry. Oh, the uncomplicated, gentle love between humans and pets: if only family relationships were this simple.
Annabelle and Marnie had gone off in their car, searching all the beach roads. Martha could almost see them inching past the recreation area, the tennis courts, the old cemetery, the small beach by the railroad tracks, the tracks themselves—especially the bridge over the channel, where kids loved to fish and jump into the water. Cameron and June had scoured the rocks, sweeping their binoculars over the sea as well, all the way out to Gull Island.
Now, walking down the yard, Martha saw an old van pull next to the wall at the foot of the hill. Dana and Sam got out, wreathed in smiles. Waving, they started up, but then Dana’s attention was pulled toward the garage.
Paul Nichols had left the door open. Walking down, Martha saw Dana and Sam inside, gazing around at the new window, at the metal supports Paul had brought over from the boatyard to stand under the beams. Dana’s easel had been pushed to the side, the painting covered with a drop cloth.
“What’s going on?” Dana asked.
“Your niece decided you should have some north light,” Martha said gravely, pointing at the crooked square cutout.
“Quinn did that?” Dana asked, sounding delighted.
“Yes, she did. Failing to notice, poor child, that that is a carrying wall, that it wouldn’t take much to make this old garage collapse. I asked Paul to do what he could, especially with the storm coming.”
“Is Quinn okay?” Dana asked.
“Well …” Martha began, Maggie nuzzling her for support.
“She means so well,” Sam said. “I was like her when I was her age. Ready, fire, aim.”
“Did she move the boat?” Dana asked.
“The boat?”
“The Mermaid,” Dana said. “She—or someone—must have moved it to higher ground. Sam and I drove by the beach on our way up here, and it was gone. I figured with the storm coming, you must have told Quinn to get someone to help her move it.”
“She’s not here,” Martha said. “I thought she must be at Little Beach, but we couldn’t find her. Annabelle and Marnie are out looking right now. I called Rumer, so she’s on the lookout too.”
“The boat’s not on the beach,” Dana said, turning pale.
“This is Hubbard’s Point. It’s so safe, she wouldn’t leave. Running away to Little Beach didn’t seem like a very bad thing, Quinn does it all the time,” Martha said. “Should we call the police?”
“We should call the Coast Guard,” Sam said.
DANA COULDN’T SIT STILL. She walked all through the house, in and out of the rooms. The storm had hit full blast, and waves were pounding the beach. White foam topped the Sound’s surface. The wind blew leaves off the trees. A branch fell from the tall pine nearest the road.
Sam was out with the Coast Guard. Boats had been dispatched from New London and Groton. Small-craft warnings had been replaced by full gale warnings. A shiver ran down Dana’s spine. If her sister and Mark had died on a calm, moonlit night, what could happen to Quinn and Allie in a storm like this?
Her mother sat by the window, keeping vigil. Sheets of rain pelted the glass, but her mother just stared through them, looking for a white sail. When Dana came downstairs, she held back for a moment. She thought of all the loss her mother had suffered, and her heart aching, she went to stand beside her.
“Hi, Mom,” she said.
Maggie looked up and barked. “It’s the Mags,” Dana said, glad to see the dog keeping her mother company, glued to her mistress’s side.
Her mother couldn’t look away from the window. She stared at the Sound, from the beach where the boat had been, all the way out to the red and green buoys of the Hunting Ground.
“Where are they?” her mother asked.
“I don’t know,” Dana said.
“I want to blame someone. When Sam told us about that tow rope, I felt so grateful. Someday soon we’ll know what company owned that tug, which one owned the barge, and we’ll know who to blame for Mark’s and Lily’s deaths. But when I think of the girls, all I can blame is myself.”
“No, Mom. It’s not your fault.”
“I should have watched them more. The minute I knew Quinn hadn’t slept in her bed, I should have called the police. But I kept telling myself It’s Quinn—she’s a free spirit, just like her aunt. She’s just on one of her adventures… .”
“You think she’s like me?” Dana asked, filled with emotion.
“Exactly like you. Lily thought so too.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way she’s always seeking,” Martha said without taking her eyes off the sea. “Looking for more, the most life has to offer. Lily loved that about her. She’ll be a nomad, just like Dana, I’ll be visiting them both in Timbuktu, Lily used to say.”
“I didn’t think Lily liked that about me. She always wanted me to come home.”
“She loved it about you, but yes—she wanted you to come home. You were her sister, and she missed you.”
“I miss her,” Dana said, her eyes burning with tears.
“Oh, I know you do, honey.”
They sat together, thinking of Lily, keeping watch for her daughters. Dana could hardly bear the anxiety, the not-knowing and waiting to hear. She wanted to paint, to go down into the garage Quinn had tried to transform, use the north light to paint a magical talisman, something that would bring the girls home. That made her touch the key around her neck, think of the locket Lily had always worn.
“Remember Miss Alice’s store?” Dana asked her mother.
“Of course I do. The place where you and Lily spent every cent of your allowance. Until you started saving up for the boat …”
Dana shuddered, wishing she and Lily had never bought the Mermaid. “When I went to Mark’s office,” Dana said, “I started thinking how cool it was, right upstairs from Miss Alice’s shop. Do you think that was Lily’s doing?”
Her mother smiled. “Definitely. Lily loved connection. Mark having his office there was a connection to you, to your childhood, to so many things.”
“Miss Alice’s shop,” Dana said, picturing the shelves crowded with penny candy, books, china tea sets, and glass bowls.
“It’s where Lily bought her hope chest.”
“Her what?”
“Her hope chest.” Her mother shook her head. “That’s what she used to call it anyway. It wasn’t very big—about the size of a schoolbook. You must have seen it in her room.”
“She had so many boxes over the years.”
“Well, this one was special. It was inlaid with moonstones, supposedly found on Little Beach. It’s where she used to keep her diary. Back when I committed the cardinal sin of reading it …”
The moonstone box. Dana hadn’t thought of it in years, but she could see it now: polished mahogany with a row of small glowing stones all around the edge.
“The things I’d do over if I could,” her mother said. “Never invade your rooms, never read your diaries, trust that you’d turn into the wonderful women you both became.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Dana said.
“It bothered me so much, seeing that box on her bureau,” her mother said, wiping her eyes. “I stuck it up in the linen closet so I wouldn’t have to look at it. Made me feel ashamed of myself every time—”
“The linen closet?”
“Upstairs,” her mother said. “On the top shelf.”
Dana kissed her mother’s head. Maggie jumped off her lap and headed up the stairs, as if something had suddenly become more important than staying with her mistress. Dana didn’t know what she was hoping to find, but her heart was racing as if Lily had just walked into the room.
SAM STOOD on the deck of the Coast Guard boat, scanning the water all around. The driving rain stung his eyes and rolled off the yellow slicker. The boat was beating back and forth through the Hunting Ground, the destination Sam and Dana had predicted the girls would head for. A hundred yards away, in the shipping lane, a tanker and barge passed each other.
“Why here?” Coast Guard officer Tom Hanley asked. “There’s nothing out here.”
“It’s where their parents’ boat went down.”
“I know—the Sundance. I got called out on that one. But what would two little girls be doing, coming to the place their parents drowned?”
“You don’t know them,” Sam said, picturing Quinn.
“Terrible thing, that sinking,” Hanley said. “Could not make heads nor tails of it. Calm night, solid boat, good sailors.”
“They hit a tow rope,” Sam said, watching a tug approach from the west.
“Really? How do you know?”
“I dove on the boat. Found rope fibers and sent them to a captain in your squad. The chances of locating the tug aren’t great, but he’s checking the shipping records from that night.”
“Well, makes sense,” Hanley said. “Think about it—this is Long Island Sound. All these pleasure boats skipping around, and this here’s the superhighway of commercial boat traffic between Boston and New York City. It all comes through here—people try to cross the highway, they might get hit. It’s amazing it doesn’t happen more often.”
“I hope it doesn’t happen today,” Sam said, watching for the Mermaid.
“Shit, if the weather doesn’t get them first,” Hanley said, shaking his head.
“As storms go, this one isn’t very bad. But they’re so young, and that’s a very small sailboat they’re in.”
“I know.”
The boat moved slowly west, away from Hubbard’s Point and toward the green can that marked the start of the Hunting Ground. The Sound was rising, four-to five-foot waves forming peaks and troughs, but if it had flattened out and Sam had turned around to look behind him, due east, he would have seen a small blue sailboat, one of its white sails ready to tear, beating eastward away from the Hunting Ground toward the island of Martha’s Vineyard.
CHAPTER 24
THE WEATHER CHANGED VERY FAST. THE DAY HAD been so bright and calm, and now the sky was gray and the waves were big. Not huge, like in hurricanes or even nor’easters, but pretty tall. Higher than any waves Quinn had ever sailed through in this boat. She held the tiller with all her might, pulling it in against her chest, surfing into the trough just to keep the boat from flipping over. Allie stared at the compass as if it were a crystal ball. Kimba was drenched in the crook of her arm. Everyone was drenched.
“Ninety, Quinn!” Allie called out, reading the compass.
“Good going, Al.”
“Are we almost there?”
Quinn exhaled. Jeez, what did she think this was, a car ride? It was just like Allie to get bored on a trip, have to ask every two minutes whether they were almost there. Their mother used to think up games to keep her occupied: count the license plates from all fifty states, watch for white horses in the fields, ask who will be the first to see the Welcome to Rhode Island sign?
“Are we, Quinn?” Allie asked as the waves got bigger. “Almost there?”
“Allie, do you see any signs? How about a mileage marker?”
“Don’t yell at me.”
“I’m only yelling so you’ll hear me over the wind,” Quinn said. The wind howled in her ears. It had torn the jib just slightly, about halfway up, and that one rip made the sail now sound like a wildly snapping flag. She would never have set out if she had known the weather was going to do this.