Summer Harbor

by Susan Wilson

  “You’re not Mack.”

  “No, but I’m doing exactly what he did.” Is this what Mack felt in his last moments? The despair of knowing you’ve caused your own death? That an impulsive action would end so badly? There was no doubt in Will’s mind: Mack had never intended to die.

  Catherine pressed herself closer to him as they huddled on the floor of the cockpit against the biting rain and impenetrable darkness. “We’re going to survive.”

  Will longed to believe her.

  Thirty-four

  Half drowsy with physical and emotional satiety, Grainger was barely aware of the drive home. His headlights shining down the drive reflected against the taillights of a car, and for a confused moment, Grainger thought Kiley had somehow beaten him here. Pilot was barking and he could hear the dog’s nails against the heavy wooden door. He let him out and flipped on the yard lights. The rain glittered in the spotlights, sparkling like snow. Beyond them he could see nothing.

  “Will?”

  Grainger opened the door of the car, half hoping to find the boy inside, but there was nothing except a girl’s purse. Dread clamped down as Grainger grabbed his big lantern. He ran to the pier, calling Will’s name over and over while Pilot barked merrily, happy to be a part of the game.

  Once or twice in his life, Grainger had felt fear—real, bowel-watering fear. The southwest wind blew damp against his skin, chilling him despite its warmth. The halyards clanked against the aluminum masts of the boats tied to his moorings, loud and frequent as the boats rocked energetically. Where Blithe Spirit should have been, the dinghy faced him. As boats tethered in bad weather do, its bow pointed into the wind.

  The moon was long gone and Grainger could see nothing beyond the limits of his lantern light as he swept it left and right.

  “Kiley? Is Will home?”

  “What? I don’t know. I was asleep.” Kiley’s voice was on full maternal alert, her antenna up and active on the first ring of the phone.

  “Go see.” Grainger knew, and knowing, had already called the authorities. If Will was asleep in bed, the car mysteriously left in the boatyard, Blithe Spirit simply having slipped her mooring, he’d call them off. But knowing, he also knew that every second counted when someone was lost on the water.

  “He’s not here.” The thin sound of alarm. “How did you know?”

  “I’m coming for you.”

  Grainger sped to Kiley’s house, his mouth so dry he knew that he would never be able to offer hope to her that everything would be all right. He drove the five miles to Overlook Bluff Road like a madman, Pilot’s chin in his lap. When he got there, he could see her pacing in the front parlor in the light of the seaglass lamps, one hand pressed against her forehead, the other against her stomach. Feverish and sick, that’s what she looked like, like someone in anguish—and she still didn’t know what he knew.

  Grainger ran up the front steps.

  Kiley did not run into his embrace. “How did you know he wasn’t here?” Grainger reached out to take her in his arms, but she pushed herself away, waiting for him to explain.

  “Kiley, I know where they are.”

  “Where is he? They?”

  “Will and Catherine have taken a boat.” He couldn’t say which boat.

  “Jesus.”

  She knew. Of course she would know.

  As they drove back to the boat works, Grainger told her he’d already alerted the authorities—surely they’d arrive to find them brought home, scared and chastened. Even if Will was foolish enough to go out at night, he was a pretty good sailor for a beginner. Grainger didn’t speak of the gusting wind and strong moon tide, but Kiley well knew the dangers threatening even experienced sailors. The undeniable knowledge lay silent between them, and he pressed the accelerator harder.

  As they pulled into the boatyard, they could hear the whup whup of a helicopter and see the beam of its searchlight as it circled the cove. But they couldn’t still be in the cove. The very lateness of the hour spoke disaster. Will wasn’t ready for this kind of sailing, at night and in a ten-to-fifteen-knot southwesterly wind. They couldn’t know how long he’d been out, but surely much too long to still be in the cove. Unless he was on the rocks, or victim of some fluke accident. Overboard. They needed to enlarge the search area. Grainger nearly bent over with the emotional pain.

  Kiley walked away from him, moving to the water’s edge, then onto the pier. He followed. The sweeping circles of the helicopter’s beam held their attention, the sound of the rotors loud in the night air. Pilot barked as two police cars pulled into the yard, followed by the town’s Search & Rescue vehicle.

  “I’ll talk to them,” Granger said.

  Kiley made no response, but kept her eyes on the circling helicopter.

  Grainger knew both of the cops in the first car. They’d been in high school together. They’d played football; he’d played baseball. Adults now, they met most often at Linda’s Coffee Shop.

  “We’ll keep on the radio with the Coast Guard. That the mother?”

  “Yes. The boy’s mother.”

  “We’ll send someone to talk to the girl’s parents.” The one behind the wheel shifted, easing his heavy gun belt. He gestured with his chin toward Kiley. “Why don’t you try and get her inside? No sense her standing on the end of the pier all night.”

  He left them sitting in the cruiser, Kiley illuminated in their headlights, her back to him, her hands flat on the white-painted top of a piling. Pilot stood behind her, his nose against the back of her bare knee. Grainger walked to the end of the pier, and was cast into sudden darkness as the cruiser turned around.

  Instinctively, he reached to touch Kiley. Her back was hard, resistant to comfort. “Kiley, they’ll find them.”

  “What were you thinking, giving him that boat?” There was a long pause, and she stood very still as if afraid any movement would break her in half. “How could you bring that boat into his life? How could you compromise his life?”

  “I wasn’t compromising his life; I was trying to give him life skills.”

  “How could you let him take that boat?” Her voice rose as she turned to face him. The light coming from the boathouse illuminated the anger in her eyes.

  “I didn’t let him. I forbade him. I was with you.”

  Kiley lowered her voice to a rage-hoarse whisper. “You should have stopped him. You should have gone after him.”

  “How could I? I didn’t know he was—” Then Grainger realized she wasn’t talking about Will at all. It was Mack, and his failure to go after him, to stop him from sailing away. Meeting her whisper with his, he answered, “I know. And don’t think there hasn’t been a day of my life since that I haven’t regretted it.”

  “Get away from me.”

  “Kiley, no, don’t shut me out. We can go try to find them. We can take my Zodiac. Come on.”

  “What makes you think you can save Will? You couldn’t save Mack.” Kiley’s voice was shrill and anguished. “You didn’t even try.” She struck both fists hard against his chest. Grainger let her hit him, over and over until she tired, and at last let out the bottled-up grief, laying her wet cheek against his bruised chest. He held her sobbing against him. Despite the sweetness of their reunion, she hadn’t truly forgiven him. Now, if anything happened to Will…Grainger held her close, scalded by the burn of worry.

  Eventually he was able to move her from the pier into the boathouse, and he gently wrapped a blanket around Kiley’s shoulders, and left her nestled in his big easy chair. Grainger pulled on his rain gear, picked up his box of emergency equipment—flashlights, flares, and first aid kit—and went back out. He bailed the standing water out of the bottom of his inflatable boat, checked the gas tank, and loaded in his emergency kit.

  “Hey!” One of the Search & Rescue volunteers waved a hand. “Where are you going?”

  “Out.” Grainger clipped on his life jacket. “I’m going to go look for them.”

  “Don’t. We don’t need to be look
ing for anyone else tonight.”

  It would be torture to be ordered on land by the authorities, to remain a nonparticipant in this thing. By daylight, if they found nothing, then the search would be expanded. People with boats would join in, women would begin to bring food to the firehouse, where the command center would be established. The people of Hawke’s Cove knew how to go about these things. It would be enacted exactly as he imagined it had been for Mack. Except then the food was brought to the MacKenzies: the empty boat had been found, and they were funeral meats, not sustenance for the searchers still optimistic in the dawn.

  “You won’t have to look for me.” Grainger turned his back on the man and shoved the Zodiac into the water. The outboard engine drowned out any further objections, and Grainger sped out toward the mouth of the cove, one hand on the tiller, the other sweeping the area in front of him with his wide-beam lantern; arcs of yellow light illuminating a narrow band of sea.

  They were wasting time looking in the cove. If Will hadn’t deliberately done so in the first place, the wind and tide would have taken them out to sea. It was almost two o’clock. The tide was slack at half after midnight, incoming by one. If they were adrift, the rising tide was going to bring them southwest, but the wind, diminished but active, would drive them northeast. It was random chance, which side of Hawke’s Cove’s peninsula they would end up on, the north or the south—if they weren’t already out beyond sight of land. As Grainger motored through the mouth of the cove, he cut the engine and raised his face to feel the wind. If he chose wrong, his efforts would be useless. The rubber boat drifted to starboard and Grainger made his decision. He gunned the engine and began to explore the south side of the peninsula. Inlet by inlet, cove by cove, he would use up all of his battery power, all of his gas—but he would not go home until he had found them.

  Thirty-five

  Grainger had left his dog in the house, and it barked and scratched at the door until Kiley roused herself enough to holler at it. “Shut up!” Pilot looked back at her with a cocked head and immediately she felt bad. “Come over here.” The gray dog did, sitting on her feet, keeping her in place when she would have been outside in the drizzle, pacing up and down the short pier. What if she lost Will in the same way she’d lost Mack? If anything happened to Will, she’d die. But first she’d kill Grainger. But she knew that neither of those things were true—death would be too easy.

  All the time they were reveling in each other’s bodies, Will was out in the wind and rain and darkness. It would be too tempting to see the ironic comparisons between the first time she slept with Grainger and this. Kiley shook her head. No. This time they’d find Blithe Spirit before it was too late. She wouldn’t imagine the worst, not here, not alone except for this dog. Kiley slid her feet out from under the dog’s rump, got up, and opened the door for him. “Get out of here.”

  “Ma’am, do you want me to take you home?” A very young police officer in a long rain slicker was just outside the door.

  “No. I’m fine. I’m waiting here.”

  “Just let me know. It could be a while.” He seemed awfully young to be so confident, betraying no discomfort at the sight of her tear-streaked face, no fear that she might launch off into hysterics.

  Kiley shut the door. She wasn’t going to succumb to hysterics, or wallow in inertia. She found the harbor master’s channel on Grainger’s radio and a navigational chart, beside it an Eldridge’s Tide Chart. She’d follow the progress of the search with a felt-tip marker.

  Grainger had gone out to look for them. Maybe she should have gone with him. They had come so close to renewing the purity of their old love. But as the night wore on, Kiley knew that whatever the outcome, that renewal was tainted.

  As she heard the crackle of static punctuated by a voice reading off a location, she marked a red dot at the spot. She needed to be here in case the Coast Guard or the harbor master, or someone else found them, and not Grainger. How awful would that be, for Will and Catherine to be rescued and her not be here? What if she’d gone with Grainger and then they were lost?

  Kiley’s mind sketched a million variations of lost and found as she followed the slow progress of the search.

  Bell’s Cove, Bird’s, Morrel’s, all empty. Was that good news or bad? As long as there was no flotsam, no empty life jackets or broken spars, there was hope.

  Grainger fought the desire to close his eyes for a minute. The wind had died, and the rain had diminished to a mere drizzle. Dawn was coming, less a brightening than a lessening of dark. Gray, soupy dawn, a single gull bright white against the murk. French’s Cove was next, smaller than the others, but more familiar. The Sunderland house, where he’d once lived, crouched on the headland. Its white-and-black chimney stood sentinel over the cove below, the rising sun striking fire in the eastern windows.

  Below the headland, riding her anchor, he saw Blithe Spirit.

  At the sound of his motor, two heads popped up from the cockpit. Two sets of arms waved madly. Grainger wiped the spray from his face, mingled with tears of relief and joy. He fired his flare gun into the new dawn.

  Thirty-six

  Kiley shivered, but not with the fresh air touching her moist skin. The weight of worry that had been holding her down, once released, levitated her limbs into a St. Vitus’ dance of relief.

  When the thin, raspy voice on the radio dispassionately announced the boat had been sighted in French’s Cove, all hands aboard, Kiley fled past the young officer and into the dawn. She ran to the end of the pier, where she scanned the distance for the lights of the Coast Guard’s search-and-rescue boat. After what felt like hours, the boat finally chugged into the cove. Two figures were clear, standing on the deck beneath the windows of the pilothouse. She waved, and they waved back. Just as the vessel pulled alongside the dock, Kiley spotted Grainger’s Zodiac coming into the cove, Blithe Spirit towed along behind.

  Suddenly a man and a woman were with her on the pier: Catherine’s parents. She knew she should introduce herself as the mother of the villain in this piece, but she was so caught between relief and anger herself that she was incapable of civility. The three said nothing until the boat was made fast and the kids jumped onto the pier. After a slight hesitation, a swift kiss good-bye, the pair separated to go to their respective parents.

  Will was quick to hug her and offer assurances. “Mom, we’re all right. I’m so sorry.”

  “We’ll talk about it at home.”

  Will knew better than to argue. Kiley kept her hand on his arm as if he would try to escape.

  Catherine had run to her parents, taking their relieved hugs, soothing them away from their anger. “We’re all right. We just got pushed out of the channel; the sail ripped.”

  Kiley heard her say, “It wasn’t Will’s fault,” and knew that the relationship between Will and Catherine was about to come under siege.

  It felt almost like that night she’d gone to the police station to collect Will. Disappointment that he would take such a chance; anger that he would endanger himself and someone else. The utter foolishness appalled her and reminded her viscerally of the helplessness of a parent—or a friend—to prevent such mistakes. The only thing she wanted now was to get him away, away from Grainger, away from Hawke’s Cove. That she had ever believed they would find peace in Hawke’s Cove, that it would help repair the damage to her trust in him, was laughable.

  Grainger was securing Blithe Spirit back on her mooring. Done, he gunned the outboard to run up to the pier. Kiley pushed Will toward the car.

  “Get in the car.”

  “But I want to talk to Grainger, to thank him.”

  “Get in the car, Will.”

  As they drove home through the village, up Seaview Avenue and along the bluff, it was already full daylight. The damp night air was warming toward the day’s heat. Tonight the breeze would rise again with the moon, but tonight Will would be safely away from Hawke’s Cove.

  The human heart couldn’t take too many blows, and her
s had suffered two too many. Will had too closely reenacted the other accident. Kiley could barely remind herself that, as if in some cosmic consolation, this time it had ended happily, everyone chastened but safe. All she knew was that Grainger, by introducing her son to Blithe Spirit, had nearly cost her Will.

  They went in by the kitchen door, and Kiley looked with weary eyes at the collection of boxes that needed to be packed into the small car.

  “Can I thank Grainger later?”

  “No.”

  “He found us, Mom.”

  “He should never have given you that boat.”

  “It wasn’t his fault; it was mine.”

  “I know that. It was yours.”

  “So why are you mad at Grainger?”

  “Go take a shower and get some sleep. We leave at noon.”

  “What about all the stuff? We need to get a roof rack.”

  “I’m going to leave it. All of it.”

  “No. You can’t be serious.”

  “I am. It’s time to go.” Kiley kicked a box into a corner, then opened it, pulling out the bunched newspaper and dropping it onto the floor.

  “Mom. Stop. What are you doing? Leaving it all behind won’t help.”

  “Help what?” Kiley spun to face her son. The grittiness in her eyes had passed, fresh tears cleansing them.

  “It won’t help to make you forget. You can’t take this place and Grainger out of your life, any more than you could forget about me. They’re part of who you are. You can deny it, hide from it, pretend otherwise, but I’ve seen it in you all of my life. From the time I was a little kid, any mention of this place made you smile, whether you wanted to or not. It killed you not to be here.

  “Don’t do this to yourself. Why can’t you just understand that even if you never took back a single object from this house, it, and everything it represents, still lives inside you? As long as you have me, you have a connection here. To Grainger.”