Dateline: Atlantis

by LYNN VOEDISCH

  “We had roasts in England…” he starts to say.

  “Oh, Lord, this isn’t English food and thank the angels that it isn’t,” Freya jumps in. “Welcome to the Heartland, my new friend.”

  Amaryllis looks across the table and catches Donny’s eye. He’s grinning like a pirate from some community theater production. All he needs is a knife between his teeth to complete the scene. Her instincts are correct, for he grabs the carving utensils and begins slicing into this carnivore’s dream.

  “I don’t know if I can trust you with that knife,” Amaryllis says, ribbing her old pal.

  “You don’t know the half of it. I can saw a woman in half.” Donny takes a pretend swipe in her direction. She pretends that she’s going to hide under the tablecloth until Sean makes a “quit it” gesture. They’ve seen that move since they were eight years old. They obey.

  Chitchat spins around the table, nervous and curt at first, then long and gossipy. Nora introduces her son, Ian McWhelty. Ian. The last time I saw my cousin he was dressed for Little League. The kid, about fourteen and shy as a feral kitten, slumps in his seat and attempts to avoid eye contact. Sean rambles on about politics, and Freya is busy giving cooking tips to Nora.

  Just when Amaryllis is about to sag into the plate of mashed potatoes, Sean straightens and addresses the group.

  “We promised to tell Amy the truth. And now, we shall.” Amaryllis looks around the table to see everyone eyeing her. “We always meant to tell you,” Sean continues, “But we made a solemn vow to keep you safe. The less you knew the better. Recent events mean we can’t keep you in the dark any longer.”

  Freya cuts in. “We’ve always had a guilty feeling that we’ve been keeping secrets. A skeleton in the closet, you know.” She pats Amaryllis’ hand. “We’re truly sorry for that.”

  Nora winces at some unknown memory, while Sean gets up and retrieves a huge, leather-bound photo album from a drawer in a forgotten cabinet. He thumbs backward through the well-worn pages, and Amaryllis can see glimpses of herself at seventeen (so skinny!), Donny at the amusement park (so blond!), Freya holding her when she was three years old. Finally, Sean finds the photos of a grand wedding. There stand her parents, both resplendent in their formal attire. Amaryllis notices that Wright’s interest is resurrected.

  “That’s Irish lace she’s wearing in her veil,” he says, pointing to the black-and-white image.

  “She did that to honor the Quigleys, she got it from grandmother, godresthersoul,” Freya says, bubbling.

  “Which grandmother?” Donny asks.

  “Why my mother, of course,” Freya answers. Of course. Of course?

  The story of the veil starts the revelations in an awkward way. Donny is frowning and Nora looks at Sean with a conspirator’s shifty eyes.

  “Your true name,“ Sean says with a dramatic pause, “is Amaryllis Amelie Lang. You bore this name for eight years until the accident in Florida changed everything.”

  Amaryllis, confused, over-fed and bothered by the steam heat, finds her voice.

  “Well, what the heck happened in Florida, anyway? It was always this big enigma. It’s been driving me crazy for years.”

  “Your parents were both archaeologists for Midwest universities,” Sean says. “They’d been dredging up ancient artifacts for years.” Amaryllis knew that much. But Sean continues.

  “Despite their impeccable scholarship, none of their papers received good reviews from their university peers. They’d been finding evidence that the historical timeline is far lengthier than anything taught in schools. Their research had theoretically pushed back human civilization to 10,000 BCE. Or even earlier. Naturally, most of the other professors and researchers laughed at their theories.”

  “They couldn’t get a fair hearing.”

  “Nope. Academics can be bloodthirsty when it comes to covering up competing theories. Your parents got a cold shoulder all over the world.”

  To illustrate, Freya jumps up to show Wright and Donny the strange historical pieces that Amaryllis had been admiring earlier: the odd writing, the photos of sea-covered columns. They listen in silence as Sean drones on. Amaryllis can see her father wearing Sean’s strong, serious features. She can imagine her father lecturing undergraduates with a beam of discovery in his hazel eyes. She closes her own eyes and tries to remember the feel of her father’s touch. She sees his face, but were the eyes really hazel or were they green? It’s a trick of the light, her mother always said. Her eyes fly open.

  “They thought there was an ancient civilization. Like Atlantis,” she guesses.

  Sean nods with solemnity, his bald spot coming into view with the motion.

  “And the word ‘Atlantis’ is just death in the academic world. Deadly. The kiss of the spider woman.” Sean laughs, then turns somber again. “So, they decided that being blackballed and remaining in Chicago wasn’t going to get them anywhere,” Sean says, passing the photo album around the table. Nora jumps up to clear the plates; no one else moves. “They moved to Florida, which is near to many important dive spots. You’ve heard of the Bimini Road?”

  Only Wright nods. The man knows something about everything. When does he have time to read about all this?

  “It’s a long, rectangular structure beneath the clear waters of the Bahamas,” Sean says, fishing through a file of newspapers he’s brought over to the table. He holds up a blazing blue photo of a J-shaped pavement below pure ocean. “A lot of crackpots say it is a wall of Atlantis, fallen over during the kingdom’s final collapse. Others say it’s an antediluvian road, now sunk to fifty meters below the surface.

  “Geologists call it naturally formed beach rock,” Sean says. “But Maggie and Kristoff disagreed, wondering how beach rock formed so perfectly with no beach nearby. And beach rock, they pointed out, rarely cracks as perfectly straight as the ‘paving stones’ of the sunken road. They also wrote of other anomalies—structures sighted off the Berry Islands, triangular shapes sighted by pilots. They just had to know.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Amaryllis asks.

  “Because the more you knew, the more danger you’d be in,” Nora says. Freya rebukes her with a sudden wave of a finger.

  Amaryllis senses the burn of Donny staring but tries to fake interest in her angel food cake, which Nora has been delivering to each diner.

  “Yeah, I see where I get the drive to uncover things, Donny. Stop being so damn smart,” Amaryllis mumbles.

  Donny just rests his head in his hand, elbows on the table, and keeps listening.

  Freya picks up the story as she pours coffee. Another giant, steaming pot stands on the table and Amaryllis reaches for it. Earl Grey tea. She can tell by the bergamot scent—like dried and sugared oranges. Her hand collides with Ian’s, and they both draw back. The boy blushes to near purple.

  “You like tea, too?” she whispers. Ian nods. She pours a cup for the teenager and then pours a cup for herself. They share a look of camaraderie for a millisecond. And then it’s gone.

  “There is more down there than wild tales of Atlantis,” Freya continues. “There is also a military installation. It’s still there. Near the complex is a mysterious tower that pokes out of the ocean now and again. Completely unexplained.”

  “Off-limits,” Sean says.

  “Dangerous,” Nora rasps.

  “One night, your parents decided to dive near there,” Freya says with a nod at the other speakers. “They weren’t exactly on Navy property, but they may have drifted too close. “ She reddens and dabs at her brilliant blue eyes with the back of her left hand.

  Sean rushes to finish the somber thought. “Whatever they did, it went wrong. Experienced divers don’t make the mistakes that happened that day…”

  “They drowned?” Amaryllis exclaims. She’d always heard of an accident. She never knew it happened at sea. She had asked, but it was always dismissed as “the tragedy.” Young Amaryllis often thought the pair were run over by a speedboat. She has no id
ea what happened out in the vast, dazzling ocean, full of sea creatures and jellyfish that sting. Her heart beats repeated hammer blows to her chest.

  “Well, we’ll never know,” Sean pronounces. “They washed up a week later at Homestead Beach. There was no sign of foul play, and their tanks were empty. The air tubes were not cut and they were still in their wet suits.”

  Amaryllis is floating, lost in the deep azure with vague borderlines. Light trickles in from above, but she loses her ability to reach the light. She bows her head: not in prayer but to keep anyone from seeing her shake. She’s been there. She knows what her parents saw. The crystal showed her.

  “Then those officious state workers shipped you off to live with my sister…” Nora says in a sour tone.

  “And that’s when you became Amy Quigley,” Donny shouts out. “But you are really Amaryllis Lang.” He turns to confront Sean. “Why hide her identity?”

  Sean’s voice is maddeningly flat as he drones on about changing her name and keeping up the pretense that she was a member of Freya’s family. It was better to completely cut her off from the Lang moniker. There’s no proof, but someone with high stakes in disproving the Lang’s theories must have been implicated in their deaths, Sean confides. There were too many inconsistencies, too many coincidences. Their underwater cameras had disappeared. The boat they chartered showed up right on schedule—it was in the logs—but the captain disappeared before the police could question him. Their house had been burglarized, and papers tossed. Enemies were everywhere, even down in Florida—even though the only jobs the Langs could find were at community colleges. It all adds up to something snarled and entangled.

  “The case has remained unsolved for more than twenty-five years, and no one wants to re-investigate,” Sean finishes.

  Amaryllis sits up straight, absurdly pondering the fact that she’s half Swedish. Freya had been trying to tell her that all along, but in Chicago, Irishness clothes you as heavily as a wool greatcoat.

  “I’m Amaryllis Lang?”

  “A big and luscious flower that gives everyone hope through the cold months. Maggie thought it was perfect for a baby born in December,” Freya says gently.

  Donny leans back in his chair and changes chronological directions.

  “So two decades later, you and a photographer find something threatening to these unknown killers and they tried to attack you, too.”

  “Yes, not to put too fine a point on it,” Sean says, tension raising his voice by half an octave. “I doubt the bombing in Mexico was a coincidence. Neither was the photographer’s abduction. Or the fact that Amy was drawn here to Chicago. That’s why the truth spills out now. Amy is in danger.”

  CHAPTER NINE: SEA SCARS

  A cell phone bleats in someone’s pocket and diners at the table start like deer in the forest. Wright mumbles excuses and takes the call, walking away from the dining room as he begins murmuring monosyllabic answers. His face is pale and unreadable as he paces into the living room. No one speaks, and Amaryllis tries without shame to eavesdrop on the conversation.

  “You’re sure,” she hears Wright say. “But…how? It’s inexcusable.”

  Silence. Then “Oh, my God.” The rest is unintelligible. After a few pregnant seconds, Wright walks on unsteady legs into the dining room. His face is specter-like. He doesn’t bother sitting down, but simply leans against the wall as he announces to the group that Garret Lucas, the Star photographer, is dead.

  Amaryllis’ mind attempts to shut down. There’s been too much to process, and now, this shock makes her emotions reel. She’s on a crazy carnival ride and can’t jump off. She’s grateful when Donny takes the lead.

  “I thought he was under FBI guard,” Donny says, throwing his napkin on the table. “How can something like that happen?”

  “What killed him?” Freya pipes up. “In a hospital, of all places…”

  Wright leans against a chair as if to steady himself.

  “Someone traded IV drip bags,“ Wright says. “That Versed that put him out during the kidnapping? Well, it was in the bag. Lucas suffered an overdose.” He pauses looking down at the table. “At least, he went peacefully, in his sleep.”

  “But it’s impossible,” Amaryllis says, finding her voice and her outrage. “He was under watch.”

  “Someone posed as a nurse and got through security. It was during a staff shift change,” Wright said. “No one but the agent saw it. The hospital says no one answering the nurse’s description worked there. At least, that’s what the doctor told me.”

  “We’ve got to get over there,” Wright adds, pulling himself up and putting on his editor’s game face.

  Donny stands and folds his arms across his chest. “Something tells me these thugs would like to lure Amaryllis to the hospital, as well. Garret knew where and how the photos were shot; she has the story. I suggest she stay here.”

  Wright thinks for a second. Amaryllis starts to protest, but then sees the logic in Donny’s thinking. Instead, she grabs her cell phone to call a taxi for Wright.

  She watches many worried eyes burrowing deep into her journalist’s bravado. She’s scared, her stomach is in free-fall, her nerves are standing on end, and she can’t reveal it.

  “So, when Mr. Wright gets Garret, we’ll fly back home and I doubt anyone will bother us again,” Amaryllis says. Fat chance, the faces say.

  There are a few frozen seconds when no one dares to move. Finally, Freya breaks the overwhelming gloom.

  “You’ve still got that story, Amy,” Freya says, hands shaking as she rises to collect the dessert plates. Despite her love of sweets, she’s hardly bothered to do more than push the cake around the plate. “Are you still going to run it?”

  “We can’t really,” Amaryllis says, her voice dead. “Not without the pictures. They absolutely shut us down there. I honestly don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  Donny’s eyes are on her again, and she turns to meet them. His emotions are hard to read, but his deep brown eyes look more intense than usual.

  “You could find out who these killers are,” his voice is level and smooth. “I think it’s imperative now. You could go down to Florida and pick up an old, cold trail. It’s been done before.”

  She looks at him with eyes that feel like icy glass. She never wants to see Florida again. She never wants to even think of the deadly creatures in the deep that slithered in and murdered her parents. She hates the idea of ever diving underwater again. Still, she realizes Donny has a valid point. She continues to stare into his frank gaze until Freya starts her nervous babbling.

  “She’s no P.I. She should just stay here with us for a week or so and get over all this trouble.” No one answers.

  When they put on their coats to go, Amaryllis hugs Freya and Sean with a ferocity she never felt before.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow.” Tears are forming in her eyes, and she fights for control. A drop ekes out and lands on her collar. ”Thank you for telling me everything. Somehow, it helps.” She tries to hide her emotion by keeping her head low. When she turns to go, it’s straight into Donny’s arms, as he hustles her though the whirling wind into his warm Mercedes.

  #

  Amaryllis is burrowing herself in fur, crying and alternately reaching for Kleenex or a cup of tea. She knows she’s sobbing for more than Garret, but for the release, the need to blow off the bad energy that’s been knotting up her insides ever since that trip to Mexico. It’s good to wail into the soft fluff of whatever it is that Donny has draped around her. She snuffles and sniffs, realizing the flood is ending—and then without a warning, it cuts off, like a tap sealing a pipeline. She sits up, sniffs again, embarrassed, and blows her nose into the tissues. She discovers she’s used about a quarter of the box.

  “Where’d you get dis?” she asks, her nose and sinuses so plugged that she can barely speak. Her voice bounces around inside her own head like an animal in an unfamiliar trap. Who’s talking? Why am I here, howling like a moron?
/>   “The fur? It’s a throw. They sell them, for keeping warm.”

  Amaryllis looks at Donny with eyes that feel like slits. She knows the lids are swollen, and it hurts too much to open them any wider. She wonders if she looks like a lizard. Did Donny take her home to sober her up with caffeine? She doesn’t remember drinking any alcohol at the dinner. Oh yes, Garret and the hospital. Donny took her somewhere safe—his apartment.

  She sits up to look out the window of the highrise, and sees an ocean of lights decorating the southern sky. The Willis Tower stands proudly in the southwest, the John Hancock building is to the southeast. Donny’s made a home in the clouds, just the way he always bragged that he would. She wonders if the sun rises over the lake in his bedroom window.

  “Men don’t have fur throws, Donny,” she says pushing the luscious, soft thing aside. “And it’s not politically correct.”

  “That’s my girl. You’re getting the old fire back into you, Wiggly,” Donny says using her old nickname. He stands to stretch, and even in her grief, she can’t help but admire his physique—an athlete’s build that even a lawyer’s dress shirt can’t conceal. “Anyway, you like lamb chops, right?”

  “Uh, yeah…”

  “It’s sheepskin. You know the old saying; take what you need but make sure nothing is lost. Eat the meat, keep the skin, make soap from the bones.”

  She stifles a laugh. “You’re Greek, not an American Indian. I can just see you making soap from the marrow.”

  “Well, the principle is still good. Would you rather have polyester?”

  She is sitting up now, still working hard at clearing her raw nose. She reaches for the tea. He thinks of everything, doesn’t he?

  Donny watches her for infinitely long seconds. His eyes blend concern with a slight sparkle of fascination. There is so much intelligence and ferocity in his gaze that she’s a bit frightened. His blond locks are still streaked with last summer’s sun. His patient, kind face has never really lost its childhood set: rambunctious and proud, gentle, but ruthless with those who threaten the people he loves. She sees a scar on Donny’s chin and beckons for him to come close.