Safe Harbor

by Luanne Rice

  She glanced from right to left, trying to get her bearings. They had left Orient Point far behind an hour earlier—the land on her right. To the left, they had passed Silver Bay and New London, and now she thought maybe they were passing Noank. That big land mass almost dead ahead had to be Fishers Island.

  “Is that the Vineyard?” Allie screamed, taking her eyes off the compass for ten seconds.

  “Nope. It’s Fishers.”

  “Let’s stop there, Quinn!” Allie shrieked. “We can wait for the storm to be over and start up again later.”

  Quinn narrowed her eyes, holding the tiller so hard, she was getting blisters. The rain pelted her face and braids. Allie’s idea had merit, but it was flawed. If they did stop, grown-ups might find them and send them home. They’d be grounded for life, never get this chance again. The tackle box filled with money was nestled in the bow, as safely stowed as Quinn had been able to secure it.

  The other problem was herself. She had to admit something: She was scared. Not just for herself but for her sister. This storm was more than a little rain. Once they got past Fishers Island, they’d be out of the Sound, into the ocean. Quinn had never sailed in the ocean before.

  “What about our mission?” Quinn asked, wiping her eyes to look at Allie.

  “Paying the man back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can’t we do it later?”

  “We might not get the chance.”

  “It’s for Mommy and Daddy?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Allie gave it some thought, then nodded hard. “Okay,” she said. “I want to keep going.”

  “You sure?”

  “Ninety, Quinn,” Allie yelled over the wind as she started staring at the compass again. “Keep going!”

  Why did you do it, take it… . You’ve ruined us… . Quinn heard her mother’s voice crying over the sound of the wind. She caught her breath on a sob.

  “No one can ruin us, Mommy,” she said out loud, and she didn’t even care if Allie heard. They were in this together, all of them, the Grayson sisters and their parents, even Aunt Dana and Grandma; Quinn knew it was up to her to make things right for her family, no matter what.

  So, pointing into the storm, Quinn kept sailing.

  THE LINEN CLOSET was just a simple cupboard of two old doors, one over the other, cut out of the same dark wainscoting as the rest of the walls. The bottom level was filled with extra blankets, quilts, and mattress pads. The upper door opened to reveal four shelves, the lower two filled with towels, the top two stacked with sheets. Standing on tiptoe, reaching as high as she could, Dana found the moonstone box.

  She took it down and held it in her hands. It felt heavy, and when she moved it, things slid around inside. The tiny lock was half an inch in diameter, and when almost by instinct Dana inserted the key hanging around her neck, the box opened.

  A sound escaped her, and Maggie danced at her feet. As she lifted the lid, her heart pounding as she thought of what might be inside, her eyes filled with tears. There was Lily’s locket.

  Dana’s fingers closed around it. She felt the size and weight: a sterling silver oval, hand-tooled and etched, quite heavy, the approximate size of a misshapen, somewhat oblong silver dollar. The hall light, an overhead globe, was too dim. Dana carried the box and locket into her sister’s bedroom for better light.

  Sitting on the edge of the double bed, she opened her hand. There it was, right in her palm. The locket her sister had worn against her skin for twenty-eight years. Dana had bought it for her when they were thirteen and eleven, and over the years it had held pictures of just about everyone Lily held dear. No wonder Sam hadn’t found it on the sea bottom; Lily would never have worn her precious locket out sailing.

  Hands shaking, Dana opened the locket now. She undid the clasp with her thumbnail, feeling the small click of release. The two silver ovals, hinged on one side, fell open like a book, and a second, even tinier key dropped onto her lap. Dana closed her eyes, almost afraid to look. When she finally did, her pulse began to race.

  On the right side, Dana stared at a small shot of Lily and the girls in the herb garden. Mark must have taken it from far off, but it was a portrait done in love by someone who had known the subjects very well. Lily wore her sun hat, and she was circling both her daughters with her arms.

  All three smiled at the camera. The picture showed Quinn before her rasta phase, her brown hair beautiful and flowing in the sunlight. Allie’s bright curls gleamed, nearly as brightly as her smile. Each girl playfully wore one of Lily’s garden gloves, holding her trowel and rake like scepters. Lily held a small book in the hand she rested on Quinn’s shoulder, a pen in the one on Allie’s.

  The other side of the locket held a picture of Dana and Lily. The same era as the garden photo, it must have been taken about three years ago. Dana stared at it, seeing the love in her sister’s eyes. Her heart ached, realizing how much she missed that love. As she drifted to the window, looking for boats, she knew she’d never feel such deep, abiding, forever, knowing love the same way again. Yet, wishing for it, missing it terribly, made her thoughts turn to Sam.

  Sam was out there, looking for the girls. Dana trusted him so deeply. He had inserted himself into their family just when they all, but Dana especially, needed him most. She wanted him to bring home Lily’s daughters; more than anything, she wanted to care for those girls the way her sister would want her to.

  Right there, in their own house, the home Lily had loved so much. Dana thought about blame, her mother trying to blame herself for the girls’ sailing away. Maybe it was actually Dana’s fault, she thought, holding the locket. She shouldn’t have gone to New York, left Quinn alone when she was so vulnerable and volatile.

  “I’m sorry, Lily.” Her voice broke as she spoke to her sister’s picture. “I didn’t mean to cause them harm. Tell me what to do—please, Lily. Help me know what to do!”

  Now, when she looked at the picture of herself and Lily, she noticed the chain around Lily’s neck. It held this locket, and just behind it—glinting gold—the tiny key. Dana saw it with a start, and she touched the same key on the cord around her own neck.

  Looking right at the picture of Lily, Quinn, and Allie, Dana saw the book.

  It was a reddish volume, almost brown in color. Quite small, it was the size of a child’s diary. Peering more closely, Dana saw by the strap and lock that it was a diary. Rain lashed the windows, and strengthening wind snapped the awnings. What could it matter? They’d found the sunken boat, learned about the accident. The tackle box of money was a source of shame, something concerning the Sun Center, but what did it have to do with their family today?

  The locket burned in her hand. She stared at the pictures, and something made her glance at the little globe beside Lily’s bed. The mermaid seemed to beckon, and Dana lifted the glass and shook it. The water swirled with tiny red, yellow, and blue fish. The globe had come from Miss Alice’s shop, around the same time Dana had bought the locket.

  She’s magic, girls, the old lady had told them, her fingers gnarled around the precious crystal ball. White hair pulled back in a bun, face as wrinkled as an old witch’s, Miss Alice had stared into the mermaid’s globe with love and joy, and somehow Dana and Lily had known that any magic that came from her hands was of the best, kindest sort. Mermaids exist, you know. They live right here in New England. They spin nets out of moonbeams, and they pull stars down from the sky. Whenever you need their help, all you need to do is ask. Say Mermaid, mermaid, tell me true …

  “What’s a girl supposed to do?” Dana asked out loud now, bypassing her sister Lily for the surest help of all. She shook the globe, and the fish swam madly around. Something made Dana look back at the pictures in Lily’s locket, at the diary in her hand.

  Dana spun back in time. Where had Lily hidden her diaries?

  Under her mattress, behind the books in the bookcase, over the window, in the attic: Dana had found all of those places, and Lily had known. But th
ere was one place Dana had found that she had kept secret. Lily’s last spot, the one she’d used before they’d both started art school, that Dana hadn’t let on about.

  Since finding the gold key—the wrong one, as it had turned out—she had wondered where the adult Lily would hide a diary. But why would Lily try to improve on perfection? Why hadn’t Dana thought of it before now?

  Because she hadn’t asked the mermaid, she thought, tearing down the stairs, out the kitchen door, into the rain, the second key held tightly in her hand.

  THE COAST GUARD boat beat north and south across the Sound, with Sam standing on deck with binoculars. He trained them on the Hunting Ground, from the red bell to the green can, into the shipping lane, all the way to Orient Point.

  “No sign of them?” Hanley asked.

  “No.”

  The rain hadn’t let up, and the wind had slightly increased. Sam leaned against the rail to keep from losing his balance. Thinking of two small girls in a small sailboat filled him with fear, and he kept the glasses fixed to his eyes.

  “No pleasure boats out here at all,” Tom Hanley said. “For once, people had their eyes on the sky. Most people, that is. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Sam said.

  Sam could have sworn Quinn would come out here. Where else would she go? A novice sailor, she definitely had Underhill blood. Sam had no doubt her mother and aunt would try sailing in this, feeling the ultimate in wind and sea. He remembered from that summer in Newport, when Dana had let the class sail and race in the midst of small-craft warnings.

  The captain slowed down, and Sam’s gut lurched—for a minute he thought some debris had been spotted. If they didn’t find the boat, they might still find bits of wreckage. They might come upon the girls clinging to the mast.

  “What’s he doing?” Sam asked, turning to look up at the bridge.

  “Going back,” Hanley said.

  “But they have to be here somewhere!”

  “We’d see them if they were. Maybe they’ve ducked into a cove or beach somewhere. We’ll ride along shore, look for them there.”

  Sam put the glasses back to his eyes. He began to scan the Connecticut shoreline, still looking for signs of the Mermaid, for Dana’s nieces waving for help. Knowing what she’d been through with Lily, he wasn’t going back to her without them.

  “THIS IS IT, Allie,” Quinn said as they flew along the north shore of Fishers Island.

  “This is what?”

  “It. Our last chance to stop.”

  “Our last chance before what?”

  “The open ocean.”

  “Is it scary there? Worse than this?” Allie called.

  How could Quinn answer that question? She hung on to the tiller with white knuckles, the waves starting to splash over the bow. The boat was moving so fast, the water washed through the hull like mercury, running out the drain holes in back. If she had a speedometer, she’d bet it would show they were going a hundred miles an hour. But she didn’t, so all she could do was guess.

  “Worse than this!” she yelled. “Bigger waves and more wind.”

  “Will we tip?”

  “I won’t let us.”

  “Are there shipping lanes?”

  “Don’t think so! The ocean’s too big!”

  “What if we sail right past the Vineyard? What if we miss it?”

  “Then we’ll wind up in France, and Aunt Dana can come to get us!” The boat rose and crashed on a wave, knocking the laugh right out of Quinn’s mouth. “But we won’t miss it, Al. Just keep us on course. That’s your job. Mine’s sailing the boat, yours is reading the compass.”

  “Ninety, Quinn!”

  “Ninety, Al,” Quinn yelled over the wind as they rounded the island’s northeastern point and sailed straight into the Atlantic Ocean.

  DANA DIDN’T HAVE a coat or hat on, and she didn’t have a shovel. She held the second key in her teeth and knelt in the herb garden, digging with her bare hands. The rain fell in sheets, blowing in off the Sound, flooding the small garden.

  Built in a circle, surrounded by a stone wall, the garden was twelve feet in diameter. Lily had planned it herself, laid out every inch back when she and Dana were still in school. Even then her love of flowers and herbs was great; her specialty as an artist had always been to paint landscapes and botanical specimens, and their mother had given her this spot to plant any kind of garden she liked.

  Flat blue stones had been placed at intervals to make weeding and planting easier. The herbs were arranged in perfect Lily-order: sage plants to the north for wisdom; thyme to the west for long life; lavender to the south in memory of their father and others who were gone; rosemary and mint to the east for love.

  The spicy, mysterious scents rose around Dana, mingling with the richness of soaking-wet earth. She dug around the rosemary, Lily’s favorite herb, and around the thyme, Dana’s own. Racking her brain, she tried to remember. Years before, she had seen Lily sneak out to the herb garden at night, her diary in hand. It had clicked instantly: She’s going to bury it there, to hide it from us.

  Dana still didn’t want to read her sister’s diary. She thought of how it had always been her big-sister challenge to find it, know its location. That was all: Knowledge had been power or, perhaps, love. Actually reading it was different.

  She couldn’t explain why, but just then she felt it was her last hope, the only chance she might have to save her nieces’ lives. Lily, or the mermaid, or both, had sent her out there in the pouring rain to find Lily’s diary and find the truth.

  But it wasn’t there.

  The garden was pocked with holes, as if a dog had forgotten where it had buried its bones. Leaning back on her heels, Dana let the rain pour down her face, soaking her mud-stained hands and knees. She wished Sam were there to help her dig, tell her what to do next.

  Her eyes traveled around the small garden and suddenly came to rest on the sundial. She hadn’t seen it at first. The old brass dial, green with verdigris, nestled beneath the herbs. Verbena and blue moon lobelia grew around it, and tendrils of white honeysuckle had covered it over. Cemented into its base since the house had been built in 1938, the sundial had been placed there by their grandfather.

  Touching the brass pointer, rusted greenish-blue, Dana was amazed to feel it wobble. She leaned forward in the mud, rain in her eyes, and pulled the entire sundial out of its cracked cement base. There, hidden in the well beneath, was Lily’s diary.

  Wrapped in thick plastic, it had sat in its waterproof tomb all this time. Dana pulled it out, held it to her chest with the key in one hand, and let the rain wash her tears away. Lily had knelt here every day, weeding her garden, hiding her diary—first from her mother and sister, then from her husband and children.

  Now, rather than having a sense of betrayal, Dana had the definite feeling of collaboration. Lily had led her here for a reason, and Dana believed it was to save her girls.

  “I found it, Lily,” she said, her right hand tightly holding the key she had just taken from the moonstone box, “and I’ll find them too.”

  Then quickly, but being careful not to slip or drop the precious book in the mud, Dana walked into the house. She bypassed her mother, staring silently out the living room window with Maggie once again lying on her lap. It was as if the dog had done her job and could rest again.

  Dana walked straight upstairs, water streaming onto the polished fir floor. Into Lily’s bedroom, where she pulled the door closed behind her, she wrapped a towel around herself and sat down on the bed.

  Fingers shaking, she held the tiny key. She inserted its tip into the small round lock and turned. Nothing happened. Withdrawing it, she used her towel to clean any rust that might have formed on the lock and tried again. The key fit.

  This time the key turned. The lock released, and Dana pulled the strap. She began to read:

  Hello, new diary. You’re just the latest in a long line, but I love you already. Get ready to hear it all, the good and the bad. I tend
to be an emotional kind of girl, and it helps me to pour my heart out on paper. This saves my loved ones from bearing the brunt of my feelings.

  I don’t like to yell at my husband, and I really don’t like to yell at my kids. But no one’s perfect—life happens. Mark is my mirror—I look at him and see what I could do better. When he’s abrupt with Quinn or impatient with Allie, I get so mad at him. Not that he’s that way often. He’s a great father. I’m really lucky.

  What an interesting start to my new diary! It’s all about Mark. Well, it’s always easier to look at his behavior than my own. So let me gripe a little, tell you what he’s been up to.

  His company is doing great. Grayson, Inc., is developing two major new projects, one in Cincinnati, Ohio, one right here in Connecticut. Both are retirement communities: the wave of the future. Of course we both know this: Mom’s getting so old, and Mark’s parents both died in that gloomy place near Providence. So developing old-age homes is good—Mark’s a kind, good-hearted man, and he’s very conscientious about the properties he’s doing.

  The bad news is that Cincinnati’s so far away. He travels there a lot—and I mean a lot. The way he oversees the project is unbelievable! He practically has to check every hammer and nail to make sure it’s up to code. The contractor calls with one tiny question, and Mark hops a plane to the site.

  I think I liked it better when he wasn’t so successful. We didn’t have as much money, but we had enough. Who cares about new cars, a bigger boat? I like the Mermaid just fine. It’s only January, and he’s already talking about buying a big sailboat for the summer.

  February second—Groundhog Day. I hope the little critter doesn’t see his shadow. I don’t want six more weeks of winter! Both girls have colds. Allie is a little dream. All I have to do is give her crayons and paper, and she’s happy. But Quinn. My God, she’s the stuff-up beast of the Western World. She’s driving me crazy, wanting to go outside and play. When she can’t breathe and has a fever of 101!

  She wants to visit her aunt for spring vacation. Excellent idea, my beautiful beast! I could use a dose of Dana. France wouldn’t be so bad either. But I’d probably take one look at her life—nonstop painting, that romantic studio she has, that handsome young lover—and want to trade places.