by Sarah Jio
I’m close enough to see the officers standing in front of the accident scene. I remember that our rental car is a blue sedan. So far, I just see a black Jeep. It’s crunched, accordion-style. My God. I peer farther ahead and see a stretcher. A dark-haired child, a little girl, is being wheeled into an ambulance. I can’t make out her face, but I see a fleck of pink. “Ella!” I scream. “Ella! Mommy’s here!”
Another police car pulls up along the roadside, and an officer leaps out of his car and restrains me. “Ma’am,” he says, “you’ll have to stay back.”
“But my daughter!” I cry. “She’s my . . .” And then I see the minivan with a huge dent in the side. I see blood on the roadway. A man with a torn shirt is hovering over a woman who is screaming into the ambulance. “My baby!” she cries. “My baby!”
I step away. I feel scared and horrified but also relieved. My heart aches for this mother whose baby is fighting for life, and yet, mine is safely buckled in her car seat with her dad somewhere on the road ahead.
I hear my phone ringing in my bag. It’s James. “Hi,” I say, sighing.
“Where are you? I hear a lot of noise in the background.”
“There was an accident,” I say. “I thought it might be you, so I walked up to make sure. Oh, James, I was so scared.”
“Honey, don’t worry about us. We just got to the restaurant. Ella ordered mac and cheese.”
“Mac and cheese,” I say, the words instantly soothing me. “James, I thought—”
“Hey,” he says. “Everything’s fine, honey. Please, don’t worry.” I hear Ella making adorable noises in the background. I want to be there, sitting beside her. “I was thinking that after we’re back from this trip, maybe you could take some time off, or at least talk to your editor about not taking on so many assignments.” He pauses for a moment. “I mean, if you want. It’s your decision, and I don’t want to pressure you. It’s just that, well, we miss you.”
I take a deep breath, then exhale. I hear Ella giggling about something. “You’re right,” I say. And he is. Something has to change.
An hour has passed, maybe more. I’ve paddled across the lake and back, narrowly avoiding an incoming seaplane, and am now staring ahead to my houseboat and the adjoining dock. It’s not one of the fancier docks, comparatively speaking. Most of the houseboats on the neighboring docks are newer, two stories, and generally less cobbled together than the ones on my dock. But there’s something a little stiff and cold about the newer ones, with their elaborate architecture and pristine finishes.
I see Alex ahead. He’s waving at me from his deck. I smile and paddle toward him.
“Hi,” I say, handing him his vest. “Sorry if it’s a little wet.”
“I’m glad it served as a nice seat cushion,” he says, grinning. “Want to come in for a bit? I could offer you three-day-old takeout. I think there’s some pad Thai somewhere in the fridge. We could scrape off the layer of mold.”
“Sounds appetizing,” I say, smiling again.
He helps me tie the kayak to the cleat, then offers his hand to help me out. I take it, just as I begin to lose my footing. He reaches for my waist and catches me before I fall backward into the lake.
“Sorry,” I say as I steady myself on the deck. I unzip my life vest and survey my jeans. They’re a little wet, but not soaked.
“Did you enjoy your three-hour tour?” he asks.
“Yeah. There are some ritzy houseboats out there. I was shocked. I saw one that looked like an Italian villa.”
Alex nods. “The newer docks don’t have the same character. They’re McMansions on barges.” He shrugs. “It just doesn’t fit. This community was built by poor artists, bohemians. Fifty years ago, you could buy a houseboat for five hundred dollars. Nowadays, on most docks, you have to be a millionaire to move into the neighborhood. I don’t know, somehow that just doesn’t seem right.”
I nod, admiring his idealism. I’ve read a bit about the history of the houseboat community myself and was surprised to learn that the neighborhood sprung up from such humble beginnings. In the late 1800s, for instance, Lake Union’s “houseboats” were simply crudely built shacks on barges, inhabited by poor laborers, mostly loggers, and their families. There was even a saloon and adjoining brothel perched at the end of one of the docks. “How about you?” I say, suddenly curious about Alex’s own history. “Have you always lived in Seattle?”
“No,” he replies. “I grew up in Oregon, on a farm. My parents moved there when I was four.”
“Wow. What did you grow?”
“Hops,” he says. “For beer making.”
I grin. “So your parents were fun loving, I take it?”
“Well, I guess you could say that.” I imagine him in overalls, running through fields with vine-covered trellises. “How about you?”
“I grew up in Kansas City,” I say, “in a quiet little neighborhood. Church every Sunday, you know.”
“Do you still attend?”
“Church?”
Before the accident, we began going to church as a family, but now, well, I couldn’t imagine a God who would take two beautiful lives in one fell swoop. “I used to pray,” I continue, “but I’m not so sure what I believe anymore.”
“I go to Saint Mark’s,” he says. “It’s up on the hill. They have a wonderful choir. Sometimes I don’t even listen to the sermon. I just sit in the pews and think. I guess it just feels good to belong, you know?”
“Yes.” His words hit me on a deep level, maybe because I’ve been unattached for so long, floating aimlessly. I miss belonging.
“Anyway, if you’d ever want to,” he says, “you’re welcome to join me.”
“Thanks, but I’m still ambivalent about church, God, about all of it.” I nod toward his houseboat, changing the subject. “So what was it like when you bought it?”
“Pretty bad,” he says. “It had been a rental for decades, and the last round of college students who lived here nearly destroyed it. Jim said they packed in one hundred people one night and it actually took on a foot of water.”
“Wow,” I say. “So you gutted it?”
“Pretty much.” He gestures toward the door. “Come in. I’ll give you the grand tour.”
I follow him into a tidy living room. There’s a beige sofa and coffee table facing a flat-screen TV and two matching armchairs. The air smells of fresh laundry. James used to do all of my laundry—fold it, too, making him the rarest man in America. I notice a laundry basket by the couch and a pair of boxer briefs on top and smile to myself.
“I redid every detail,” he says. “The walls, the kitchen, the bathroom.”
“The kitchen is gorgeous,” I say, walking over to admire the solid wood cabinets and slab granite counters. They’re nearly bare, but then I remember that Alex doesn’t cook.
He shrugs. “I don’t know why I bothered. I’ve never even used the stove.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not,” he says.
I run my hand along the gas range and admire the elaborate range hood. I wonder if Kellie, his coauthor, ever cooked on this stove. I envision her standing in front of the stove on a lazy Saturday morning. She’s wearing a red lace negligee, and one of the spaghetti straps falls down her shoulder as she drizzles syrup over buttermilk pancakes.
“Can I offer you something to drink? OJ, Pellegrino?” Alex asks, jarring me from the daydream.
“Water’s fine.”
He fills a glass and hands it to me. I like that he doesn’t ask me too many questions about why I’m here. He’s giving me space in a way that no one did in New York. And it makes me want to open up.
He gestures toward the couch, and we both sit down. He begins to speak at the same time I do, and we laugh.
“You go first,” he says.
I nod. “Well, I was at Pete’s the other day, and someone told me that there was a woman who lived in my houseboat years ago, and that she disappeared under mysterious circumstances. And
then I—”
“Penny,” Alex says, nodding.
I remember the hospital bracelet I found in the chest. “How do you know her name?”
“It’s one of those unspoken agreements on Boat Street,” he says. “Everyone knows, and yet no one ever discusses it.”
“Why is that?”
He shrugs. “When I bought this place, the real estate agent mentioned the story, that some woman disappeared here in the 1950s. She said the bad memory has haunted the dock since, and that residents don’t like to talk about that night.”
“I wonder why.”
“I don’t know,” he says. “But I’ve learned that it’s best not to bring it up around the old-timers—Jim, too. It was a painful time for them, I think.”
I nod. “Alex, I found something, in the houseboat.”
His eyes widen.
“A chest,” I continue. “I think it belonged to Penny.”
“Really? How do you know?”
I tell him about the contents—the wedding dress, the dried flower, the memorabilia from a love story long past—and he nods. “I just keep thinking that there’s a clue inside. If she disappeared, it had to be for a reason. Or, do you think she was . . . ?”
“I’ve wondered the same thing,” he says. “Hey, we’re a couple of journalists. If anyone could dig up the truth, it’s us, right?”
I grin. “Except that I write about resort vacations and you photograph food.”
Alex returns my smile. “Yes, there’s that.”
His phone rings in the kitchen. “Sorry,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”
“Hello,” he says, picking up the cordless on the wall. A moment later, he frowns, then presses the phone to his chest. “I’ll just be a minute,” he says.
I smile and pick up a book on the coffee table about sailboats. “No problem.”
I flip through the pages of the book, but I can’t help but overhear snippets of Alex’s conversation in the back bedroom. “Are you serious? . . . Unless you’ve changed your mind. . . . Yes, you know that. . . . No! . . . Kellie, honestly, I’m not going to have this conversation for the one thousandth time. . . .”
Kellie. So my hunch was right. But why is she calling? Why does he sound so angry? I hardly recognize his voice, so bitter and defensive.
“Sorry,” he says a moment later, setting the phone back on the wall. He sighs and takes a big drink of water. “Where were we?”
“Listen,” I say, thinking of his past with the mysterious Kellie, a past that might not be resolved, and suddenly I feel tired. “That kayak trip exhausted me. I think I’ll head back and take a nap this afternoon.”
Alex looks momentarily wounded, but his smile returns. “OK. But promise you’ll have dinner with me one night soon.”
“I promise.”
I secure the kayak to the cleat, then walk around to the front door. I reach into my pocket for the house key but instead find the hospital bracelet I displaced from the chest.
Darn. I’ve locked myself out. I think of paddling back over to Alex’s, but then I notice Jim ahead. He’s whistling a familiar tune and holding a bucket of paint. He appears to be touching up the trim on his parents’ houseboat.
“Hi,” I say, walking toward him.
“Morning,” he replies. “I’m finally getting around to painting the house. Mom’s been on my case.”
“It looks nice,” I say. “Hey, I seem to have locked myself out. You don’t happen to have an extra key, do you?”
“No,” he says, setting the bucket and brush down. He wipes a smudge of beige paint on his T-shirt. “But I know how you can get back in.”
“You do? How?”
He winks. “Remember, I grew up on this dock.”
I smile and we walk down the dock to my houseboat. Jim turns over an empty flowerpot and uses it as a stepstool to pull himself up to the roof. He climbs to the rooftop deck, reaches his hand through the open porthole window, then unlatches the door to the deck.
“There you go,” he says. “I’ll open the front door downstairs and meet you there.”
I’m not sure how I feel about the ease with which he has just broken into my bedroom, but I’m also grateful not to have to call a locksmith. “Thanks,” I say once I’m in the living room. “I take it you’ve done that a time or two?”
He grins, but seems distracted. “Wow,” he says. “It always amazes me how little this place has changed over the years.”
I’m not surprised, actually. The houseboat is charming in its simplicity. Fir floors. Whitewashed, wainscot walls. Sturdy, classic cabinets and finishes. “What was it like when you were a boy?”
“Well,” he says, looking around, “the sofa was here, just as it is now. But there was art everywhere, really abstract pieces that looked strange to a boy of eight.” He walks to the kitchen counter and eyes one of the barstools. “I used to sit here and watch her in the kitchen.”
I reach into my pocket and feel the plastic bracelet between my fingers. “Penny?”
He looks as if he hasn’t heard this name uttered in a very long time. It has power over him; I can tell.
“Can you tell me about her?” I ask gently.
He rubs his jaw, and it’s obvious that what he’s about to share may be hard for him. “I was just a boy when Penny came to live here,” he says. “She was the young bride of Dexter Wentworth. The artist.”
I point to the painting. “So he was the one who painted the ship?”
“Yes,” he says. “He didn’t deserve her.”
“What do you mean?”
“Listen, from what I understand, he wasn’t the best husband. She loved him, though. I used to like to sit out there in front of her deck and fish or just look at the boats. She was always baking. You’d walk in, and this place smelled just like vanilla cake. She’d always have a cookie or a muffin to offer. She was kind that way. Once I overheard her crying. I think she had a fight with Dexter. It made me so mad. Even then, I wanted to go in and punch that man in the face.”
“He didn’t love her?”
“Everyone loved Penny,” he says. “Well, either they loved her or they were jealous of her.” He shakes his head and his eyes narrow. “Mom was jealous of her. Penny was so beautiful. She didn’t need makeup or a fancy hairstyle; she had a natural sort of beauty. But it was her kindness that I remember most.” He smiles to himself. “I used to fantasize about her being my mother.”
“Did she have children?”
“No,” he says. “But she wanted them. Dexter had children from a previous marriage. They were estranged. I don’t think he ever wanted to be a father again. Besides, he had his art. He was really in demand back then, had his paintings in galleries all over town, even in some Hollywood homes. I think Penny tried so hard to fit into Dexter’s world, but she never could. She should have married someone like Collin, someone who would have worshipped her.”
“Collin?”
He points to Alex’s houseboat. “He lived there during the summer of fifty-nine.”
“Jim, do you know what happened to Penny?”
His eyes fix straight ahead to the stove, as if he can see her there, inserting a toothpick into a cake. “I wish I knew,” he says, standing up a little hurriedly. “Well, I’d better get back before the paint dries.”
I sit down on the sofa and pull out my laptop. It’s beginning to drizzle outside. Perfect writing weather. I think about what Jim said about Penny, about Dexter and the man named Collin. I wonder about them all. But mostly, I wonder if Penny was happy and if she felt loved. I key down to my cursor and recount the day I met James.
Eleven years prior
“You do know who that is, don’t you?” My friend Jessica nudges me in the side. We’re both editorial assistants at Condé Nast Traveler, and we’ve been sent to a briefing at the Waldorf sponsored by the Caribbean Tourism Board.
Jessica is the daughter of a Rockefeller, so she fell into the position, not that she didn’t deserve it. Sh
e’s whip-smart. Me, on the other hand? Just as smart, I guess, but I practically had to kill for an interview and only moved on to the second round because of my portfolio. The article in the New York Times Magazine helped—so did fetching coffee for the editor in chief of Town & Country for one torturous year. So when I look at Jessica, it’s hard for me not to roll my eyes. “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I say, trying to take notes. Someone from the island of Saint Lucia is speaking. My goal is to take notes, get a few quotes, then head back to the office. I have a date with Ryan tonight. He’s visiting from Duke, where he’s getting his graduate degree in finance, and he’s taking me to Jean Georges. I don’t want to read into his intentions, but we’ve gotten serious this past year, and I can’t help but think that a proposal is in the works. I feel giddy for a moment, to think that I could be Mrs. Ryan Wellington. His family has homes all over the country, and his parents travel by private jet. Theirs is an exciting, if not a little intimidating, lifestyle, but Ryan could be the son of a gas station attendant for all I care. It only matters that he loves me.
“James Santorini,” Jessica whispers.
I give her an I care because? look, and she frowns. “He’s a travel writer for the New York Times. He’s a total catch.”
I glance over at the dark-haired man Jessica is speaking of, just as he looks in our direction and smiles.