by Seren Goode
“So, how do you feel about her now?” Shim asked.
“Who?” Leaving one hand on the wheel that was being tugged around by the wind, I used the other to stretch up, then switched, stamping my foot as I shook off the last of the sleep. We just had to get past this truly gnarly stretch of coast to Brookings tonight. Then, if the weather held, two more days of harbor-hopping before we would have to face the Columbia River to get into the port at Astoria. I hadn’t told everyone yet that we didn’t need to go all the way up to Seattle.
“Your mom.” Shim spoke quietly, but the question boomed, overpowering the storm. I stared at him. His face was serious. “You were angry at her for leaving you, Waters tells you how he met her and how scared she was, then you find out she was killed by these Helios guys.”
I had been trying not to think about it, thank you very much. But here was Shim, pushing me. Wind knocked me sideways, and I caught myself and braced.
“How do you think I feel?” I lashed out at him.
“It doesn’t matter what I ‘think,’ it matters what you feel,” he shot back.
“Is this because I asked you about your father? Are you getting even?” I was deliberately misreading his intentions, I knew it, but I was angry he was forcing me to think about this. Especially now.
Rain started to fall in thin razor-sharp drops, and the wind whipped it around us, adding to the cacophony and beating against the side of the boat, plastering our rain pants and jackets to our skin.
“I’m going below,” Skylar yelled at us as he slipped down the companionway, his hands white knuckling the railing as he went.
“No, of course I’m not trying to get even.” Shim jumped up, his face stern. He put a knee on the bench and a hand on a railing to steady himself as he glared at me. “And I’m not going all touchy-feely on you.” He made a disdainful face. “I’m trying to get you to stop bottling it up and think about what you feel. Grace, you found out your mother, who you love and thought had left you, was dead, and she had been murdered. And you immediately had to put it aside to deal with Waters. Then you found out more about her life from Waters, and you had to put it aside to try and find Lincoln. Now, we are finally the ones pursuing the truth about all our parents instead of being pursued. We are going to find out more, I know it. I can feel it, can’t you?” He beat his chest with his free fist and carried on without a response, shouting above the accelerating storm, “And I just…” he stalled in the face of the hurricane of emotion he had generated, and he suddenly stilled. “I’m just worried about you. The same way you were worried about me when you thought Logan was hurting me.”
We were only a few miles out from the Port Brookings harbor, motoring along, but suddenly, I felt as if I was adrift without an anchor. I staggered back. The pain in my chest radiated up like the mushroom cloud of smoke we had seen above the burning Fly to Blue Too, and quick on the heels of the pain came a furious rush of emotion.
“I’m angry,” burst out of me on a yell. “Is that what you want to hear?” I forgot about our course, the boat, the lives of the people depending on me, and I let myself feel. I didn’t even notice Shim coming closer or reaching around me and flipping on the AP.
He stared down into my eyes, and the rest gushed out of me.
“I don’t even know what this emotion is. Anger is not enough of a word for it, and I’m not sure if it’s directed at her, the Helios, or myself.”
“Why would you be angry at yourself?” His voice was cautious, the way people speak around wild animals they are trying not to spook.
“For not believing she was gone. For feeling relief she hadn’t voluntarily left me. I’m awful.” I finished the last in a soft voice that couldn’t have carried the inches between us, but he seemed to have heard anyway. He shook his head.
“It’s not awful to not want someone to hurt you. I’ve felt if many times. And it hurt you when she was suddenly gone.”
“I should be mad at the Helios. And I think I will be someday when the rest of me doesn’t feel so confused.”
“You can’t ‘should’ yourself into feeling something.”
“Do you do that?” I deflected. Being the focus of attention was uncomfortable. I’d rather be solving someone else’s problems than focusing on problems I didn’t even know I had.
“Sure, I’ve always thought I ‘should’ love Logan, but I just…” Shim sighed. “Well, it’s hard when he has no love for me.”
“I miss her.” My inappropriate timing made it sound like I was comparing my loving mother to Shim’s unloving father.
“She sounds amazing.” He was leaning into me, protecting me from the wind as I shivered. “I bet my mom and Arie and those other two, Trystal and Micah, have good stories about your mom.”
“I’d like to hear them,” I said.
He nodded. “But Grace, we might find the Helios before we find the parents. Are you prepared for that to happen?” I was clinging to his arm now like a wet blanket, pulling his warmth from him. I shuddered at the thought of meeting up with whatever the Helios were.
“Do you think that will happen?”
He was thoughtful. “We know the government has our parents. I don’t think they would have killed Lincoln or blown up his boat, so we don’t know who has the diary. Waters said we should be very afraid of what was chasing our parents. Maybe it’s the Helios. I think, whoever that is, they are now chasing us.”
“Somehow, they knew we were headed to Lincoln’s.”
“Yes,” he said.
“And we are on his boat now.”
“Yes,” he said.
“We have to get off this boat.”
“True, but so far, we haven’t had to leave any registration information anywhere.”
“That won’t matter. They can track us through the GPS. The only thing that might slow them down is them thinking they got us when the other boat blew up.” I breathed in deep. I felt stronger, more determined from having talked this out, almost like a saline cleanse of an old wound. Painful, but healing. I pulled away from him and stood up straighter. “I’ve been thinking about not going all the way to Seattle.” Shim’s brows pinched together.
“If Portland is one of our destinations, then we only need to go as far as Astoria, then take a bus to the city. It would get us off the boat at least two days earlier, and we could go to Seattle afterwards.”
“That would be good.”
“The only problem is as soon as they find the boat in Astoria, they are going to assume we went to Portland. And I’m afraid they will quickly realize what we are doing there. Jaxon needs to be ready to meet with his professors, and they can’t know when to expect us.”
“That would be bad,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. Real bad.
Chapter 19
Into Astoria
Days later, fatigue was wearing on me and so was the theme song to Gilligan’s Island that was looping through my head at a frenetic pace.
To get into Astoria, we had to deal with the Columbia River and its infamous sandbar. We were also encountering the most shipping traffic we’d seen since San Francisco. Not wanting to alarm everyone, I didn’t mention the area we were entering was known as the “Graveyard of the Pacific.”
I’d timed our arrival to use the currents and winds to get us over the bar and past the normally strong seaward current. We made it, and the sun was setting as I switched our radio to channel sixteen and kept an eye out for freighters stacked high with lumber and logs.
Finally, we came to a large bridge spanning the waterway, and I headed to the south shore, pulling into a marina in the bridge’s shadow. Down shore, huge freighters were being loaded. Further up the shore, rotting piers and docks were smothered in thick moss, but the marina was quiet and had a lot of open spaces.
After docking in a guest berth, I secured the boat. Shim chatted u
p a local who, with a little cash incentive, was willing to sign for our spot at the marina so we didn’t have to show registration or proof of insurance.
Jaxon hauled himself off the boat. Unsteady, he stumbled up the pier. Our guest berth was at the end of the marina, close to a paved walking trail. He stumbled along until he was on solid ground, then, with a groan, collapsed, molding his body to the pavement.
It was pretty late in the evening by the time everything was secure, and the rest of us fell into beds in the cabin. The last thing I remembered was the sound of water lapping against the hull.
When I woke up, the sun was starting to climb into the sky. I was curled up in a ball on a seat cushion; I hadn’t even made it into one of the beds. Familiar now with Breeze’s soft snores and Skylar’s wheezing, I could tell they were knocked out in the forward sleeping cabin. I sat up and looked in. Sure enough, they were piled up like puppies on top of each other. I eased off the bench and grabbed my bag, heading to the bathroom. After a spit shower and a change into fresher clothes, I peeked into the aft cabin. Empty. Puzzled, I headed up on deck.
Nothing above deck. Where were they? I looked on shore, and on the walking trail, there were two lumps covered in sleeping bags. I approached the pile, treading softly down the pier and up the walk, trying not to disturb them. Shim had covered his brother up and was camping out next to him so he wouldn’t be alone. They were covered in dew, and I was surprised they hadn’t gotten rained on. Luckily, the sky looked clear this morning. Sleepy eyes opened at my approach.
Putting a finger to my lips, I whispered to Shim, “Shhh, I’m going to get real food.”
“You got your necklace?”
I pulled it out from under my collar and put my finger on the stone. He held up his hand, the large gaudy ring on his thumb.
“Keep an open channel and let me know if you see anything. They may know we’ve landed here,” he said.
I nodded. I hoped we were a few days ahead of the Helios and the government, but knew now wasn’t the time to take anything for granted.
I noted the berth number, then wound my way out of the marina. An enormous bridge dominated the sky to the east. It floated hundreds of feet off the ground and loomed over the town. At the edge of the marina, an access ramp stretched up to the bridge with homes and businesses tucked under the shadow of the slope. The bridge’s tall supports were wrapped in construction tarps, and the constant scraping and blowing of sandblasting accompanied the contractor’s banging and knocking on the metal bridge. The cacophony echoed and mingled with the horns of traffic, the blasts of seafaring vessels headed out to sea, and the seagulls cawing to each other. I suddenly realized it was just Monday morning. Weird. It felt like we had been on the water much longer.
I headed up the trail. A family of ducks was paddling around a calm patch of water under a rotted pier, oblivious to the massive tankers across the way that loaded handfuls of logs with winches like a mechanical arm at an arcade picking up pencils. Rows of tankers dotted the bay, waiting for their turn. Sources! This place was raw.
I skirted the fish cleaning station where a captain with a ruddy complexion was scrubbing down her passenger’s catch from the weekend. Scrub. Wash. Filet.
I was about to turn into town when I caught sight of the sign on the building behind the captain that read. “Fresh Salmon.” A menu was stapled to the left of the rectangular door cut in the wall and covered with plastic flaps. Oh yeah, the kitchen was open.
After picking up food and a newspaper, I headed back to the boat. It was strange, but after a week, the boat felt like home. Maybe it was the people waiting there more than the boat itself. I’d started this journey with four strangers, but from our time together, trying to unravel this mystery, we had become friends. Yeah, I would call them friends, even Jaxon.
When I got back, Shim was sitting up on deck, waiting for me. “Everything okay?”
“Yep, got fresh seafood and some crackers for Jax. How is he?”
“He’s in the head.” My eyebrows shot up. “No, no, he’s back in the mix. He got some Zs. And since we docked, he hasn’t…” He pretended to cover his mouth as he made a barfing motion. I cringed and handed over a bag with crackers and Gatorade. Shim nodded. “Thanks, this should help.”
The soft, salty air was surprisingly warm and fresh, and we decided to eat up on deck. The morning sun was drying and warming the wood. Shim helped spread out the food, then dug into the newspaper. In a matter of minutes, he was absorbed in the news, the paper spread in layers across the deck, anchored by the shoes he had taken off.
Jaxon climbed up from the cabin, still pale but moving better. He groaned at the food. “Fish? Why didn’t you just stab me with a harpoon?” He pinched his nose against what I thought was a delicious smell. Breeze and Skylar must have agreed with me, because when they came up on deck, they fell upon the food like starving animals. The four of us ate with relish.
Shim motioned for him to sit behind him, away from the food, and handed over the Gatorade and crackers. It was several minutes before anyone said anything.
“Slwe fround slomthing,” Skylar said with a mouth full of food. He chewed for a minute, as we watched—and waited—and then he repeated, “We found something. Down below. There’s a photo of our parents.”
“What?” Everyone stopped eating but Skylar.
“Photo, in a frame. It’s wedged under the edge of the bed next to the hull. Can’t get it out. Breeze found it when she fell out of bed.”
“Got shoved out, you mean.” Breeze feigned anger. Skylar shrugged and crammed in another mouthful of crab cake.
“Show us.”
Jaxon stayed on deck as Shim and I followed the twins below. Jumping on the bed, Breeze and Skylar pulled up the edge of the blanket and pointed below the mattress. Shim and I got down on our hands and knees in the tight space and twisted awkwardly to look up at the underside of the mattress to the spot the twins pointed at.
There it was. The raised blankets revealed a wooden picture frame stuck between the mattress box and the hull. The pressure had cracked the frame. The photo was of people sitting on a boat, but from this angle, you couldn’t see any more. Shim gave it a pull. It was wedged in tight. The twins pushed on the mattress box while Shim and I pulled on corners of the frame. At first, it wouldn’t budge, then, with a scraping sound, it slowly moved. Giving a hard pull, there was a crack and Shim jerked it free. With the abrupt release, his momentum had nowhere to go, and he fell on top of me. In the tight space, there was a scramble, and we somehow reversed our positions, me now on top, just as Shim knocked me in the solar plexus with his elbow.
I yelped. One hand went protectively to the wounded area, and the other braced on the hard muscles of his chest. Shim stilled at the impact, as if afraid by moving, he might hurt me more.
“I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” He put his hands on either side of my face, and my breath caught. I could feel his body down the full length of mine, every inch, every muscle. Staring down into his honey-colored eyes, my brain took a little vacation. I could feel the heat rushing through my checks, heck, my whole body. I inhaled and struggled to remember how finish the breath.
“Grace, are you okay? Are you hurt?” Shim shook me slightly, and my brain returned from its trip, unpacked, and picked up where it had left off.
“Oh, yeah, I mean, no. I’m okay, just got the wind knocked out of me.” I tried to crawl off of him but was backed up to the mattress box. Unconvinced, Shim slid out from under me into a crouch on the cabin floor. I landed in a sprawl. Somehow, we managed to back into the main cabin and rise to stand.
“Uh, what’s on the photo?” The twins had that saucer-eyes thing going again: Breeze’s mouth was gaping open, and Skylar was sporting a smirk.
Shim hesitated self-consciously, then looked down at the photo in his hand. He put it down on the table in the main cabin and pulled back so w
e could all see. The color photo was faded, but the image still clear. Five kids were sitting on the deck of this very boat, and in the middle of the group sat a man that must be Lincoln. They looked our age. I recognized my mom next to Lincoln. She was so young compared to the rest of them. The two that looked Indian must have been Micah and Trystal; they were the oldest of the group, and Micah had a wrinkle of tension between his eyes.
“That’s Dad,” Breeze pointed to a teenager sporting a golden tan and sitting with an arm casually hooked over a leg.
“That’s Kindle.” Shim gestured to the dark-haired girl sitting so close to Arie, she was nearly in his lap.
“Geez.” Skylar touched the heavy wooden frame. “Look how young Dad was.” His finger traced the face in the photo. I was thinking the same thing looking at my mother’s bright, innocent smile. She would have been younger than Breeze when the photo was taken.
“You were right; your mom has the same green streaks in her hair,” Breeze remarked. “You look really similar to her.”
“Except she was much prettier,” I clarified. Shim snorted, but he didn’t say anything. My eyes were glued to the image in the photo.
“I wonder if they wrote anything on the back,” Skylar injected into the somber silence. “They used to do that back then. Write about the people in the photo. Break open the frame.”
Shim flipped the frame over. The back of the frame was completely carved. The top was engraved with an intricate design, and around the edges were the carved names of all the people in the photo. I reached out to touch my mother’s name. Shim ran his finger over the design at the top.
“This design is the same as the one from the watch.” That got everyone’s attention. He had spent a lot of time studying the watch, so he would know. Under the frame’s design, the words “finding home, July 1995” had been engraved.