Spellbound

by Jeanette Baker

  Graham’s voice was grim. “There’s another storm coming in. We need men who can handle the boats. Can you help us, lad?”

  “I’ll be there,” Sean said shortly and hung up.

  Sheets of rain pounded down on men in yellow slickers and thick rubber-soled shoes as they gathered on the pier for assignments. Graham Greene’s instructions left no room for questions. Last night’s wind made it impossible to predict where the boat might have drifted. All they could do was search.

  Sean climbed into a thirteen-foot Calibogie with a small mast and tied-in sails. He preferred a sailboat with an outboard motor to a straight cruiser. One never knew when a motor would quit. Sails were his insurance policy.

  “Turn your radio on,” Greene shouted, “and report in every thirty minutes.”

  Sean nodded, reached down, and pulled the cord. The motor roared to life. Greene lifted the ropes from the pilings and threw them on deck. Sean twisted them into an expert coil, knotted and secured them to hooks on the deck. Bending his head, he stepped into the cabin and took the wheel, checking to see if everything was secured. The open ocean would be a challenge compared to the relative calm of the harbor.

  Keeping his eyes on the instruments, he fiddled with the radio, found the right station, and flipped on the controls. The Loran was useful for more than just finding fish. He shrugged out of his slicker, hung it up beside him, and sat down, keeping both hands on the wheel. Calculating the timing of Russ’s movements the evening before, he made mental adjustments to the route the harbor master suggested he take.

  Russ left Mollie’s house after eight o’clock the night before. If he’d gone straight to the harbor without stopping, he would have been on the water by half past eight. Thirty minutes would have placed him at the pier of Inishmaan with time to spare before the worst of the storm set in. But his coworkers claimed he’d never arrived. He must have stopped somewhere before leaving the island. Sean racked his brain. Where could he have gone for the two hours it had taken for the storm to whip itself into a dangerous fury, and why would he have remained on the boat in such weather in the first place? The only other explanation was that he had miscalculated his coordinates and overshot the island, an easy thing to do when visibility was zero.

  Too quickly the island shore disappeared, and Sean was shrouded in a cloak of gray. Gray ocean, gray mist, gray sky all blending together in a world with no beginning or end, no horizon, no relief from the frightening netherworld color that terrified anyone unfamiliar with western Ireland.

  Sean checked his compass again, rechecked the Loran, and adjusted his position. In less than a minute he was off-course, evidence of a fierce wind and a dangerous current. Again he readjusted, pulling hard on the rudder and holding it in position instead of setting the automatic device. As a precaution he reached for the thick belt attached to a hook on the cabin wall, wrapped it around his waist, and secured it to the pin beneath the rudder. A troubling notion occurred to him. Russ Sanders was a Californian. He’d claimed to be an experienced sailor. Sean wondered just how experienced he was when it came to navigating the Atlantic.

  Graham Greene’s voice crackled over the radio. Sean lifted the radio and held it to his mouth, keeping a tight hand on the wheel. “I’m holding steady,” he said into the mouthpiece. “I’ll check near Nugent’s Inlet. There are two or three safe harbors he might have found.”

  “A new storm’s approaching,” Greene cautioned him. “Don’t be a hero, Sean.”

  He replaced the radio. A wave of water the size of a barn rolled toward the boat, demanding all of his concentration. Grimly he maintained his hold. The Calibogie was a flat-bottomed vessel, virtually unsinkable, but it would turn as much as three hundred sixty degrees in rough waters. Sean didn’t relish hovering upside down for any length of time before the boat righted itself again. It wouldn’t take more than ten minutes for the cabin to fill with water.

  It occurred to him that he didn’t have a will. A year ago he would have laughed at the idea. But now, after Kerry, it made sense to him. The children would go to Emma, of course. He would have preferred Mollie. The girls loved her, and she was the right age, more so than his mother, Emma, or Patrick. But what a burden for a young unmarried woman. And what a handicap. What chance would she have for children of her own? Who would want a woman, even a woman as lovely and warm as Mollie was, with three young children not her own?

  That left Emma, their legal guardian, designated by Danny and Kerry Tìerney. Emma was relatively young. She had a husband, and she adored the children. They would grow up in California. Best of all, they would be close to Mollie. Emma was the logical choice.

  A part of him, the logical part, had already posed the question: if Mollie was the optimal choice for the children, why not ask her to marry him and secure the best mother they could possibly hope for? The other part of him, the romantic, hot-blooded Celtic side of him, yearned for a woman who wanted him for himself, a woman who would stand beside him wherever his path led, with or without the children. Sean knew Mollie loved him. He knew the attraction between them was powerful. They’d danced around it long enough to stir the embers into a blaze that threatened to consume both of them unless it was satisfied. But why did she love him? Would she love him if he wasn’t caring for her brother’s children? The questions nagged at him.

  Ten years ago he wouldn’t have concerned himself with such absurdities. He would have snapped up Mollie Tierney in an instant and been grateful for the opportunity. But experience and a jaded wisdom had left their mark. He wasn’t so quick to believe that once you married a woman, she was yours, unequivocally, forever.

  Another wall of water washed over the boat. Sean heard the groan of mast against wave, felt the give of the sturdy little boat and anticipated the sway of the deck, a full forty-five degrees this time. His hands strained against the rudder, holding it steady, a few degrees lost, not much but enough. He dared not release a hand to adjust the instruments. By his calculations he should be very near Inishmaan. On a clear day it would be no more than thirty minutes. He had been out twice as long now. Cold seeped through his jacket. His fingers felt numb. Where was the damned island? It was past time to check in with Graham. If only the wind would let up.

  He glanced at the Loran. The Calibogie looked like a tiny twig tossed about by moving mountains. But now there was something else on the screen, and it looked very much like a boat, and it wasn’t moving even in the middle of the squall.

  The wind turned. Sean braced himself. The water was moving in both directions, cresting over the deck and cabin, crashing in on the boat. Sean heard the crack of the mast. The rudder spun out of his hands. He felt the surge of the mighty wave, the crest lifting the boat higher and higher. The deck lurched beneath his feet. His stomach heaved. He pitched forward, and his head struck the wood of the instrument panel. He was conscious of pain and blackness and then nothing.

  Barefoot, Mabry O’Farrell stood outside her cottage, facing west. Something was terribly wrong. She could feel it in the taste of the wind and the pounding surf, in the strange heat coming up from the ground warming the soles of her feet. Where was Sean O’Malley and that likable young American with the lovely grin? Why must her sight fail her when she needed it most?

  Like an angry banshee, the wind screamed in her ears pulling at her hair and clothes, twisting the wool of her scarf, stinging her eyes and her lips and the sharp bones of her face. She paid no attention, her gaze focused on something beyond the grayness, beyond the scope of ordinary mortal vision. There was nothing pleasant in the scene that appeared like a distant landscape before her eyes. Change, in Mabry’s experience, was rarely pleasant, not in the beginning. It took time, becoming accustomed, forever leaving behind the old and embracing the new, before it was welcomed. She had never been one to adjust easily, even now, when the death of her island was imminent.

  The truth of it was she was afraid. Age had overcome her, and the time for new beginnings was long past. She had never bee
n away from the island, never felt the need once the possibility existed. What better life for an old woman than this melding of sky and sea and wind and rock? The island had shaped her, given her wisdom and longevity. Mabry knew, with a certainty she had never felt before, that the end of her life was closing in on her. The ebb and flow of the tides and the pulse of her blood shared a rhythm. Without the one, the other would cease. How could she make them understand, these skeptical, sacrilegious children of this modern world, that she must stay, that she and the island shared a life source that couldn’t be severed?

  Frustrated, she muttered a Gaelic curse. The wind tore the sound away. Where were the visions when she needed them most?

  Mollie walked from the stove to the dining-room table, where her mother and her nieces played Monopoly. Luke lay on a blanket on the floor babbling and waving his arms and legs. It was her third round trip. Each time she was about to sit down she found she’d forgotten something else, a spoon, a napkin, the sugar bowl. Finally it was right. She sat down and poured milk into the cups with trembling hands, half a cup for each of the girls, a splash for Emma and herself.

  Forty-three hours had passed since Russ Sanders had left Kilronen Harbor, and there was still no sign of him or his boat. The harbor master was not optimistic. Every member of the rescue team had returned to shore when the second storm hit, everyone except Sean. That was yesterday morning. The storm had raged for thirty straight hours, hitting barely an hour after he had left the harbor.

  Graham Greene had tried to reassure her. He spoke to her in the kitchen, keeping his voice low so the children wouldn’t hear. “Sean knows these waters better than anyone. He’s probably found shelter in a cove.”

  “Have you had radio contact?” Mollie asked.

  Graham hesitated, his kind, ordinary face too honest to dissemble. “I’m afraid not, Mollie, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s hurt. More than likely it’s a mechanical failure. That’s not unusual in a storm the size of this one.”

  She kept her eyes wide, refusing to blink, keeping the tears at bay. “Call me as soon as you know anything.”

  He patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Of course.”

  That was early this morning. There was still no word. Mollie filled four cups with tea, reversing the ratios for the girls’ cups. She added two biscuits to each of the saucers and passed them out. Then she folded her hands and stared unseeing at the Monopoly board with its three silver markers on St. James, Boardwalk, and the Reading Railroad.

  Somewhere else people went about the business of living, paying bills, laughing, sharing cafe mochas and conversation across a table. Somewhere else children jumped rope and played with Christmas toys and skate-boarded on the boardwalk beside white sand and blue oceans. Somewhere else women shopped in covered malls and skied down pristine slopes and ate popcorn in movie theaters with plush high-backed seats. Somewhere else friends met for lunch in trendy restaurants with tables by the window, linen napkins and gleaming silver and bone china cups with saucers. Somewhere else lives were predictable. Men left at eight and came home at five-thirty, played with their children, ate dinner, watched television, and made love to their wives. Somewhere else, but not here, not on this island where men fished during the days and drank away the nights and women knitted and stared at the horizon and endured.

  “Mollie.” Emma’s voice broke through her thoughts. “The worst of the wind has stopped. After tea why don’t you take the girls to the post office and drop off the mail? They need a break, and the fresh air will do you good.”

  She looked at her mother, at her blessedly familiar face with its gently pointed chin, new lines of suffering around her eyes and a tiny furrow denting her forehead. She had lost a son, her husband had returned home, and yet she was here, playing board games with her grandchildren, hurting for her daughter, graciously inviting her ex-husband’s fiancée to their holiday dinner, welcoming her into the family.

  Somehow Sean managed it as well. His last few months without his twin sister had faded into the wake of years of memories, of the beginning of a life shared, childhood pleasures, adolescent secrets. He’d survived her death, the blackness, the final parting, a devastation so deep that the very word pain was a gross understatement.

  At first Mollie didn’t recognize the emotions that rose from the pit of her stomach and spread out to her extremities and up into her throat, rooting her to the chair and freezing the muscles of her throat. It was something she’d never experienced before. Then it came to her. Terror. This icy numbness could be nothing else but sheer terror, the kind that comes when life is threatened and the adrenaline pumps hot and pulsing through the veins. What if Sean O’Malley was lost, a victim of the Irish Sea like Danny? Could a reasonable God allow this family another tragedy? Could she look into the clear, trusting faces of her nieces and explain that Sean would not be coming back to them? How could she go on knowing that her life and the world would continue without Sean O’Malley in it?

  She couldn’t do it. She simply couldn’t walk down to the post office with the children and pretend that nothing had changed, that Sean was working in his office and would stop by later to collect them, to coax Marni into a smile, pull Caili’s curls, and tickle Luke on the sensitive spot underneath his chin.

  What was wrong with her that she couldn’t endure what others had? Was there a weakness in her, an accident of birth that lowered her pain thresholds, leaving her unable to cope?

  Marni was staring at her, Mollie swallowed and wet her lips, “I think I’ll go upstairs and lie down for a while.”

  Emma looked at her, the line in her forehead pronounced. “Are you ill, Mollie?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

  Caili walked around the table and leaned against Mollie. “I’m sick, too, Aunt Mollie. Can I sleep with you?”

  Mollie hesitated. She wanted to be alone. Words formed on her lips. Then she caught sight of the little girl’s anxious green eyes and relented. “All right, love.”

  They climbed the stairs together. Mollie fluffed up the pillows and turned back the comforter. She helped Caili remove her shoes and climb into bed. Then she lay down beside her. The little girl rolled against her, tucked her thumb securely into her mouth, and stared at her aunt. “Shall we pray for Uncle Sean and Russ?” she whispered.

  Mollie swallowed hard. “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  Caili closed her eyes, clutched Mollie’s hand, and recited a prayer in the guttural, back-of-the-throat Irish that the islanders reverted to in times of great emotion.

  Mollie envied them their language, their traditions, their communion with the elements, their deep faith in God, and, most of all, their ability to endure. Even this child with her drooping eyelids and her body curled into a fetal position against her side understood that she was powerless to change the whims of fate and therefore accepted them. Prayer. There was power in prayer. Mollie closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around the small body tucked against her own, and prayed.

  CHAPTER 28

  “Mollie.” Her mother’s voice pulled her from the haze of sleep the following morning. “They found Russ’s boat. He’s safe.”

  Safe. Russ. The obvious question formed in her mind. She opened her eyes. “Sean?”

  Emma shook her head. “Nothing yet. Russ anchored his boat in a sheltered bay and waited out the storm. We can only hope Sean did the same. We’ll know more when the weather clears.”

  “Is Russ home?”

  “Yes. He’s just eaten a huge breakfast, and now he’s sleeping.”

  Mollie groaned, rolled over, and looked at the clock. “You did all this yourself, and it’s only six o’clock.”

  Emma pulled the comforter up and tucked it around Mollie’s shoulders. “Go back to sleep. There’s no need to get up yet. I just wanted you to know.”

  Sleep. She wanted her to sleep. Emma’s cure for everything, sleep and a glass of water. Mollie hung on the depths of despair. The hollow feeling was back in her stomach, and her
eyes burned from the tears she’d held back the night before. Sleep. She would sleep. Time would pass. Sean would be found, and this nightmare would fade into an annoying memory.

  She woke, much later, to clear skies. Stretching, she swung her legs over the bed, found her slippers and robe, and walked to the window. Water dripped in a steady rhythm from the rain gutters. Overhead, hungry gulls circled and screeched their outrage. The oil spill had diminished their food supply. Through the glass Mollie could smell the sea. Even though there was very little marine life left in the waters around Inishmore, it stilled smell of fish.

  Outside her room, in the hallway, the telephone rang. She held her breath and waited. Minutes passed. Nothing. She exhaled, looked longingly at her rumpled bed, and decided against it. Emma would need help with the children. There were nine days of vacation left. Maybe she could take the girls away from the island for a holiday, to Galway or even Dublin. They would visit the shops on Grafton Street, order tea and pastries at Bewley’s, see the Book of Kells at Trinity, all the touristy things that people did, things the girls had never seen. Marni would like that.

  Firmly suppressing the notion that it might be impossible to go anywhere because Sean O’Malley would be pronounced lost at sea and once again the island would be gathered for a funeral, Mollie carried her clothes into the bathroom, turned on the water, and stepped into the shower.

  * * *

  Both girls were unusually subdued when Mollie joined them for lunch. She helped her mother ladle tomato soup into bowls, slice grilled ham and cheese sandwiches into fourths, and carry everything into the dining room.

  It was comfortably warm. Luke slept soundly in his cradle, his small chest rising and falling with every breath.

  “When will Russ wake up?” Caili asked, her voice hushed.