Safe Harbor

by Luanne Rice

  And neither girl said one thing as they took their last look at their sailboat, the Blue Jay their mother and aunt had bought with the proceeds of their hot dog stand so many years ago. Watching with a lump in her throat, Quinn saw the name done in proud gold letters:

  MERMAID

  Aquinnah Jane Grayson held her sister’s hand, watching as that painting on the boat’s transom, done by two other sisters of one mermaid with two gilded tails, was covered by one great wave. The sailboat hovered just beneath the surface. Quinn held her breath, watching. And then it sank into the sea.

  EPILOGUE

  THE FERRY RIDE WAS BRISK, EXCITING. THE SEA and sky met in a line of vibrant blue, and the air held the first true chill of autumn. Dana stood on deck with Sam. She kept a close eye on Quinn and Allie, thinking the ride might make them nervous, but it didn’t at all. They leaned into the wind, never taking their eyes off the waves.

  It was Columbus Day weekend, the first long weekend since school had started. Dana had reenrolled the girls in Black Hall. She couldn’t pinpoint any single moment when she knew she wasn’t taking them back to France; the change had come gradually, over the summer. If there was any one instant, she might have said it was that moment, driving the girls back to Hubbard’s Point after they had nearly drowned in the surf off Newport, that they had pulled up to the house and Sam had said, “We’re home.”

  Sam stood beside her now. He had his arm around her shoulders, as if the jacket she wore weren’t enough to keep her warm. She shivered in the October chill, and as if it went straight through him, he held her closer. They had caught the ferry in Woods Hole; he had shown the girls where he’d gone to grad school, the stone library on Eel Pond, where he’d spent so many hours dreaming of their aunt.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She smiled, looking up into his green-gold eyes. They were bright today, reflecting the golden sky and the autumn colors onshore. She had never felt so known by any person but Lily. Sam could tell with a glance what she was feeling. Her mission in life—whatever it was—seemed to suit him just fine, and he always seemed happy to be along for the ride.

  “I’m fine, Sam. How about you?”

  “I’m great. A long weekend with you—what could be better?”

  “We’re doing Quinn’s mission.”

  “An excellent reason to come to Martha’s Vineyard.”

  Dana laughed, snuggling into his arms. But deep down, she still wished she could change life, wished there were a different reason for coming.

  Now the announcement came, that it was time to return to the cars. Downstairs everyone went, climbing into their vehicles and feeling the sense of anticipation that comes from getting to the island.

  With the girls sitting in back, Dana reflected how they had all come full circle. This was the island where Quinn was conceived and born. The girls had been rescued just a few miles south of Newport, where Dana and Lily had first met—and rescued—Sam. The summer had ended, but life was just beginning. They had money to repay, ashes to scatter; the girls were finally ready. It was Dana who wasn’t sure she wanted to say good-bye.

  The Islander bumped the dock. As if Sam could read her mind, he reached over to take her hand. He drove the van onto the dock, and the minute the tires hit solid ground, Quinn breathed: “My island. I’ve come back at last.”

  THE FIRST STOP, even before getting to Gay Head, was an old garage in Quissit. Quinn had the address all written out. Down Main Street, past all the restaurants and inns and ice cream shops, was a narrow lane. The houses there were small and old. Across from the fish market stood Conway’s, an old filling station, the pumps no longer working, with an apartment out back.

  Aunt Dana had looked up the address. She offered to walk in with Quinn, and so did Allie. But Quinn said no. This was really between her parents and Jack. Quinn was just their emissary.

  “Looks like this is the place,” Sam said, staring at the whitewashed building.

  “Yep,” Quinn said, holding the new tackle box on her lap.

  “You don’t have to do it, Quinn,” Allie said.

  “Yes, I do,” Quinn said, taking a deep breath. She looked at Aunt Dana and Sam in the front seat. She tried to smile, but she felt too nervous. “I’ll pay you back. I promise.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Aunt Dana said.

  “We trust you.” Sam grinned.

  “We’ll have to have a lot of hot dog stands,” Allie groaned. And with that, Quinn got out of the car.

  She walked up the short sidewalk. Yellow leaves covered the trees. A picket fence surrounded the white building, and pink roses were still in bloom. She thought it funny that a garage would have roses. The garage and fence looked freshly painted, and there was a new truck in the driveway. Quinn’s stomach flipped, but she knocked on the apartment door anyway.

  An old man answered.

  “May I help you?” he asked.

  “I’m here to see Jack Conway,” she said as businesslike as possible.

  “That’d be me. Come in.”

  Right inside, Quinn saw the walker. She glanced around. The place was bright, with the sun streaming through the square windows. Crocheted doilies covered every surface. Photos of the old man with an old woman hung on the walls. Facing him, Quinn handed him the tackle box.

  “I believe this belongs to you,” she said.

  Looking confused, he opened it. The bills were different. The old ones had sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. But Quinn had borrowed five thousand dollars from Aunt Dana, and together they had gone to the bank, to convert the check into cash. On the way they had stopped at Bayside Bait to get a new tackle box, as close as possible to the old one.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “It’s the money you gave my father,” Quinn said. “I’m Aquinnah Grayson.”

  “Ah,” the old man said, and his watery blue eyes turned sad. “Mark. I heard about what happened to him and your mother. I’m sorry.”

  “You paid him—” Quinn had to hold back from saying “off.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You didn’t have to. My sister and I want you to have this back.” She looked around the small, modest room. Obviously, he could use it. Anyone could—five thousand dollars was a lot of money—but maybe Mr. Conway in particular. Quinn saw bottles of medicine on a table across the room; through an open door, she saw someone lying in bed, covered with a blanket. She tried not to stare.

  “Your father helped us out,” he said.

  “Who is it?”

  “Emma, my wife.”

  “How did he do that?”

  “He gave me a job. It’s not easy, at my age, getting hired for work like that. I’m a carpenter by trade. My father taught me everything he knew, and I’ve carried on my whole life. We’re islanders, see? This filling station belonged to Emma’s family, and I took it over when I married her. We had a ground leak with the pumps about ten years ago, and we couldn’t afford the cleanup. Had to close.”

  “Oh,” Quinn said.

  “I got work where I could, but it was scarce. Lot of young guys coming over on the boat, taking the best jobs. I’ve known your dad a long time—he used to pump gas here for a summer job. And he worked with me, banging nails.”

  “Really?” Quinn asked, looking outside as if she might see her father standing at the pumps, building things.

  “Yes. He was always a good boy. When we heard he was developing those tracts down the way, Emma told me to see him. She’s got diabetes now, poor circulation in her legs. We need the money for her care and everything else. She told me to take a chunk of our savings, give it to Mark as a sign of goodwill—to slip my name at the head of the list for carpenters. Damned if it didn’t do the trick.”

  “He never spent it,” Quinn said, pushing the box closer. “He never would.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to take the chance. Mark’s a good man, but he had business to think of. Would’ve been easy for him to give the job—
building the foundations—to someone half my age. But he gave it to me. Did a damn fine job too. Best new construction on the island.”

  “My parents would want you to have this back.”

  “Please keep it. I gave the money to Mark, and it’s only right his children should have it.”

  Quinn shook her head. Her braids were much longer now, and they brushed her face. She wouldn’t be deterred, and she had other aspects of her mission to accomplish. “It’s a different tackle box,” she said. “What happened to the other one is a long story, but the money’s all there.”

  “Well, thank you, young lady. You’re just like your father—very generous.”

  “I hope your wife gets better,” Quinn said, glancing at the bed in the other room.

  “I’ll tell her you said so,” Jack Conway said, shaking Quinn’s hand as he led her to the door. Walking down the path, smelling the October roses as she passed the white fence, she saw her aunt, sister, and Sam watching her from inside the van, and she gave them two thumbs-up and started to run as Allie opened the door.

  THE ISLAND had changed in some ways. Many big, new houses, like the ones Mark had built, dotted the landscape. But mainly, looking across the rolling hills and long salt marshes, Dana thought it was the same as she remembered. They drove up-island, past fenced-in pastures and golden meadows, the old stone walls covered with briars and vines. They passed Alley’s Store and the old graveyard, with the Atlantic Ocean shimmering on the left and the inner harbor of Menemsha a bright blue jewel on the right. They passed Honeysuckle Hill, four new rooftops nestled into the tall trees; Dana found herself unable to really look.

  When they got to what should have been Gay Head, the sign read AQUINNAH.

  “Oh, my God,” Quinn said, seeing it.

  “They changed the name because of you?” Allie asked.

  “Probably,” Sam said. “Makes sense to me.”

  But, in fact, that was the real name of the town. It had always been the Indian name, and by a narrow margin the town council had voted it in again—they were told by Elizabeth Raymond, the woman from whom they picked up the key to their cottage.

  It was the same place Dana and Lily had rented so many years before. While the girls jumped on the bikes they had carried on car racks, Sam and Dana walked around the place. They found the spot in the yard where Dana had staked her tent, her outdoor studio where she had painted her first sea-columns.

  They sat on the porch, gazing across the long, amber meadow that led to the bright blue ocean. Dana knew the path that led past the brick lighthouse to the beach, but for now she was content to sit beside Sam and feel the memories of that long-ago time sweep through her with the ocean breeze.

  At night the full moon rose out of the sea, turning the island silver. They cooked bluefish on the grill, and both girls were yawning before they had even finished eating. The sea air and the full moon and the new-old island had gotten them, along, perhaps, with the knowledge of what they were going to do the next day. They shared a double bed, the brass box of their parents’ ashes on the table beside them, and they were fast asleep by the time Dana walked in to kiss them good night.

  “How are they?” Sam asked, sitting on the porch. His face looked ruddy in the light of the gas hurricane lamp, his eyes bright green. Moonlight spread across the field, turning it gold.

  “They’re asleep.”

  “Good,” Sam said, pulling her close. He was very respectful, not wanting them to see him and Dana sleeping together. But when they weren’t looking, he wanted to hold her all the time. She leaned into him now, feeling her heart beat with his through their thick sweaters.

  “I can’t believe we’re in this same house,” she said.

  “It’s the one I drove by,” he said. “And saw you painting in the yard. Do you think if I’d stopped then, we would have been together all this time?”

  “I don’t know,” Dana said, kissing him and thinking about the mysteries of time, about how love and secrets seemed so intertwined, like the vines growing on the Vineyard walls. “But I don’t want to think so. I don’t want to think of all that wasted time… .”

  “Wasted time?” he asked, holding her on his lap.

  Dana couldn’t help it. She touched her stomach. She thought of the girls sleeping inside the house, how she had never had a baby of her own. She thought of the time she had spent in solitude, denying the possibility of love while she gave everything to her art, to paintings of the deep blue sea. She thought of Jonathan, of the mistrust and betrayal that had brewed between them. Years alone, then with the wrong man. Gazing across the space, she smiled sadly. Sam was so bright and handsome, so full of love. He would make a wonderful father.

  “Thinking of life,” she said. Of her nieces’, just beginning, of Mark’s and Lily’s, all over, of herself and Sam, of the babies she had never had.

  “Oh,” he said, trailing off.

  He kissed her face, her lips. She held on, filled with passion. But she knew life was strange. It had given her this wonderful man to love just as her body was getting ready to stop being able to have a family. She was forty-one, almost forty-two. She had spent her whole life painting and adventuring, and it had taken Lily’s death to bring her home, make her want to settle down.

  “What are you thinking of?” she asked, holding his face in her hands.

  “You,” he said. “How beautiful you looked playing in the waves …”

  “That was so long ago,” she said. “I was as young as you are now.”

  “You’re more beautiful now,” Sam said.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “You are, Dana. I love you.”

  “I love you too, Sam,” she whispered. The air was spicy with the scent of salt, apples, wood fire, and grapes. They heard the salt hay blowing in the breeze, and they saw the moon shining in the sky overhead. The lighthouse stood there, a dark sentry in the moor, shining its beam across the sea.

  “You say you’re thinking of life,” he said.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Am I in it?”

  “Oh, Sam …” She didn’t know what to say. Yes, he was in it. But how long would he want to stay? She had lived so much longer than he had. She knew how people changed their minds, how they could be ripped apart in an instant.

  “I want to marry you, Dana.”

  She felt his arms around her body. He kissed her tenderly, and he felt so strong and warm, like someone who would never let her go. His lips kissed her mouth, her neck, and they whispered into her ear,

  “I want to be your husband. I want to be their father.”

  “‘Their’?”

  “The girls’. We can adopt them, Dana.”

  “Quinn and Allie,” she said.

  “I want us to do it for Mark and Lily,” Sam said. “Do the best we can, give the girls everything they would have had.”

  “I want that too,” Dana said, her eyes flooding.

  “And a year from now,” he said, stroking her head, looking straight into her eyes, “I want us to come back here, to this exact house, with our baby.”

  “Ours?”

  “Yes. If you marry me now, we can do it. It can happen—we’ll be teaching our baby to swim at Hubbard’s Point next summer. Marry me, Dana. Say yes.”

  And so she did. “Yes,” Dana said to Sam, sitting on the front porch of that little Vineyard cottage with the Atlantic breeze blowing through their hair. They rocked and kissed, holding each other for hours while the stars wheeled through the sky. She thought of love, and she thought of life, she dreamed of the children she and Lily had been, and the ones sleeping inside now, and she dreamed of the ones she and Sam would have.

  If it were a painting, it wouldn’t be a water column.

  It would be a family, playing on a wide, sandy beach at the edge of a calm sea. The sun would be setting, and a full moon, like the one in the sky now, would be rising. Mermaids would have cast their nets, and the sea would be alive with silver fish. The peop
le, all standing together, would be a family. The love on their faces would be as true as life, more real than wishes. It would be the love Dana had in her heart.

  That would be her painting, and she knew, holding Sam that moonlit Vineyard night, that it would be her life.

  They stayed awake all night. Partly because they didn’t want to let go of each other, partly to keep up the delight they felt about what was to come. But mostly, Dana knew, as a way of keeping vigil with Lily. As a way to prepare for saying good-bye.

  THE SEA WAS FLAT CALM. The boat was small, a little lobster boat Sam had borrowed from an old retired oceanographer who lived on the island. Quinn and Allie wore their life jackets, standing on deck while Sam drove them from Edgartown Harbor all the way around the island to Gay Head.

  The cliffs looked bright red and orange in the sunlight. They rose from the sea, and some of their clay had washed off, turning the near-shore water opaque. Quinn scanned the scene. She looked for the lighthouse, and from there she found their cottage, her superior sense of direction working again.

  She thought about it now: how she had cut the window for Aunt Dana, how she had told Allie to keep them heading east to get to this island. Well, the window was working out fine. Mr. Nichols had shored up the old garage, building a skylight in the process. It was going to be Aunt Dana’s official studio, a gift from Grandma.

  And this trip to the island was working out too. Quinn held the brass can, but Allie didn’t move too far away. The time had come to scatter their parents’ ashes. The girls were finally ready, and what better place than the sea, just off the island where they had met?

  “Tell me where,” Sam called from the wheelhouse.

  “I will,” Quinn called back.

  She and Allie glanced back at Sam and Aunt Dana. They were standing very close together, looking like a team. They kept smiling, as if they had a secret, and yawning, as if they hadn’t slept all night. Quinn didn’t have to read any diaries or eavesdrop at any doors to know they were getting married. She had a special sense for big things, and she could read it in their eyes.