The answer arrived three months later when I got pregnant.
A month after Brad and I began dating, I missed my period. I had assumed it was stress, but then I had missed it again the next month. I had taken a pregnancy test and sat on the toilet staring at a blue cross on a stick. I had insisted Brad use a condom, for disease prevention and as a prophylactic measure, but I had become pregnant anyway. It had elated and terrified me.
I always believed a fetus was a life, so I had not considered abortion. Brad had proposed, both to his credit and to my relief. I had not known him well, but Emma had needed a father, and I had lacked the resources to care for my child and continue my fellowship. Brad’s family had money, and he had seemed sincere, so I accepted.
Later, I tried not to judge myself for my rash decision, because hormones had hijacked my system. We had only been together for a few months, and everybody seemed shiny and flawless during the early stages of a relationship. At the beginning, everyone showed their best selves to their significant others. Dating was like a job interview, except with raging hormones and the future hanging in the balance. It only took a few months to discover the corrosion on Brad’s spotless image.
I shook away the memories.
Brad muttered over the running water in the head. Sexual frustration made him crazy, and I doubted any other woman had ever refused the gorgeous doctor with the perfect body. He had charisma, sex appeal, and family money—all aphrodisiacs to single women.
So many pretty nurses around him every day.
Not having sex was difficult for him, but worse, this rejection came from his wife. It had been hard for him to swallow, but his anger sprang from deeper psychological roots. His experience had conditioned him to get what he wanted. His parents had spoiled him and when things did not go his way, his frustration turned into anger.
And violence.
The head door opened, and Brad glowered at me with a familiar glint in his eyes—wild, hungry—like a lion stalking its prey. The hair rose on my neck. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
On the seventh day of our voyage, I awoke on the couch in the salon. Afternoon naps had become part of my daily routine. The yacht pitched up and down, but I had my sea legs and barely noticed. Now, the motion relaxed me, and when I lay in bed, it lulled me to sleep like a child. I pictured Emma in her crib and stood.
It had taken six days for us to cross the Java Sea, longer than expected, because the winds had shifted and weakened. We sailed northwest toward Singapore, between the islands of Java and Borneo, with the South China Sea to our north. Brad said we should reach the Strait of Malacca, between Indonesia and Malaysia, sometime this evening.
The most dangerous part of our voyage lay beyond, in the vastness of the Indian Ocean.
The sun hung low on the horizon and the breeze cooled. It happened fast, like someone had thrown a switch. I slipped on a crimson Harvard sweatshirt over my bikini. The temperature hovered in the mid-seventies at night, but the sea breeze made it feel chillier.
I climbed the stairs to the cockpit with ease, now accustomed to the rise and fall of the bow, the tilt of the deck, a world in constant motion. I had grown acclimated to miles of shimmering blue seas, the salty air, the relentless sun. We saw an occasional sailboat or tanker on the horizon, but we were otherwise alone. My aquaphobia had diminished to background static, like a television in the next room. The tremors returned if I dwelled on it, but I concentrated on other things and kept my fear in remission.
“Good you’re awake,” Brad said from behind the wheel.
“Still have your headache?” I asked.
“It’s worse.”
“Should I worry?”
He massaged his temples. “I’ve had a headache and fatigue since we left Bali. It’s jet lag.”
“For a full week?”
“I take longer to recover than I did when I was twenty. That’s all it is . . . jet lag.”
“What about your nausea?” I asked.
“Still there.”
“If you get sick, we’re in real trouble,” I said. “We should stop in port and have a doctor examine you.”
“I am a doctor. There’s no way I’m letting some island quack medicate me.”
“Still . . . I’m concerned.”
“Keep your eyes open for tankers while I get dinner,” Brad said and disappeared down the companionway.
We had slipped into a routine, two sailors bonded by a shared mission and a mutual interest in survival. He cooked breakfast and dinner and did most of the sailing, and I made lunch, washed our laundry, and took shifts at the helm while he slept. My sailing ability improved daily. I also kept a lookout for other vessels in the shipping lanes, which meant I spent my days laying on sunbathing matts and soaking in sun and fresh air. My contribution to the crew involved staring at sea in sullen silence, but it gave me time alone with my thoughts and the space I needed to think things through.
I had unraveled after I found Emma cold and still in her crib. I still could not describe my pain. My greatest fear, the most horrible thing I could have imagined, had happened. I had lost my child. She had died without warning, not after a lengthy illness, but suddenly, without time to prepare.
The worst part, the thing I tried not to remember, was when she died, I had not immediately known. The day it happened, I had woken up, brushed my teeth, and put on a bathrobe. I had done all of that while my daughter lay dead in the next room. She had passed away, and I had not felt it. A part of me had gone forever, and I had puttered around my bedroom, as if my world still existed. I had felt rested, happy Emma had not woken me during the night. I had enjoyed my sleep while my baby girl died.
I had been inconsolable for at least a month after her death. I did not remember most of it—the paramedics, the doctors, the police and their questions. The funeral. Tragedy had brought an unending flurry of activity, a waking nightmare. I could not concentrate or work and had taken a leave of absence from Boston Pediatric Surgical Center. The staff there had been great. Eric had been great. They showed incredible understanding, but there was nothing they could do to ease my pain.
The hospital had provided me with a psychiatrist, and I had attended weekly sessions sitting in a cushy leather chair listening to him drone on about the stages of grief: denial, guilt, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I had started with shock, an inability to believe Emma had died, which I guess was denial, then I had gone numb and remained that way for six months. I had experienced depression, for sure, but anger too—anger at myself for not being able to keep my baby alive.
And guilt. So much guilt.
I knew children died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome—SIDS. I also knew unexplained SIDS deaths happened about thirty-five times out of every one hundred thousand children. I had researched it. Now, doctors spoke about Sudden Unexpected Infant Death Syndrome—SUIDS. Who took time to think of better acronyms for the most devastating thing to happen to a mother?
Every day for six months, I had awakened and experienced a split second of blissful ignorance before I remembered, and the numbness returned. I fumbled my way through my days in a haze and when I thought about Emma, my denial turned to raw pain, as if my soul had been sliced open and bled through into my consciousness. I knew I had to accept Emma’s death and get back to work, get back to my marriage, get back to being a person again, but that seemed like a betrayal of her memory, because being happy would diminish my loss. I needed to feel the pain, to show Emma how much I loved her, how much I missed her.
I was not ready for happiness. Maybe I would never be ready.
Brad banged around in the galley, and the smell of baked chicken drifted
on deck. Night fell over Southeast Asia and the sky turned deep black in the east and fiery red to port. Lights sparkled on shore in the distance, far off the bow. They glowed miles away, but I felt like I could reach out and touch them.
“That’s Singapore,” Brad said, coming on deck with our plates.
“It’s beautiful.”
“We’ll enter the strait soon, and it should only take four days to reach the Andaman Sea. After that, we won’t see land again until we reach the Maldives.”
“I’m still a little scared,” I said.
“Nothing bad will happen.”
I sat beside him, devouring a chicken breast and salad. The fresh vegetables would not last for the entire voyage, so we ate them twice a day and saved the frozen corn, peas, and carrots for the second half of the trip. The sea air, being outside all day, and the boredom had brought my appetite back for the first time in six months, and I ate with ravenous abandon.
Brad finished and got up. I watched him pull a long fishing pole out of storage and attach a thick sliver lure to a metal lead.
“What are you fishing for,” I asked.
“Whatever’s biting.”
Brad tugged on the lure to make sure it was secure, then cast off the stern into our wake.
“That lure is huge.”
“There are monsters down there,” he said.
“Wonderful.”
“The wind will be weaker here, coming from the north, and we’ll have to tack back and forth across the strait,” Brad said.
“That sounds like real sailing.”
“The strait is wide, and we can sail in one direction for hours. Just keep your eyes on the sails in case the wind changes direction.”
He locked the fishing line, set the pole into a holder, and wiped his hands on his shorts.
“I’ll take the first watch and wake you around two o’clock,” I said.
“If your eyelids get heavy, come get me. The strait is congested, and someone needs to stay on deck.”
Since leaving Bali, we had taken shifts keeping watch at night. Brad said we could both sleep once we hit the Bay of Bengal, but there was too much maritime traffic in the Java Sea. He told me stories about tankers arriving in port with rigging wrapped around their bows. The crews of those commercial behemoths never felt the impact of a small sailboat.
“The time alone . . . it helps,” I said.
“That’s why we came.”
I had to admit, despite his flaws, Brad was trying to save me. “I’ll wake you if I see anything.”
“Dagny?”
“Yes?”
“I’m glad this is working,” Brad said.
“Thanks for supporting me.”
Brad lifted the remains of half a chicken off his plate and tossed it over the transom into the sea. I had noticed him throwing scraps of food overboard after every meal.
“Won’t the food attract sharks?” I asked.
“Fish need to eat too.”
“I don’t think it’s smart to chum around our boat.”
“You worry too much,” Brad said.
“Please stop doing it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“My concerns aren’t ridiculous.”
He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it and stood.
He confirmed the Automated Identification System was functioning and went below to sleep. The AIS transceiver broadcast our vessel’s identification number and GPS location to any vessel within twenty miles. It also had a collision avoidance function, which sounded a loud alarm if another vessel came close. It was not foolproof, but it was a nice backup if we both fell asleep.
I cleared our plates, climbed back on deck, and sat on the bench behind the helm. The breeze blew across the starboard side, holding the main sail to port. The wind diminished, as it did every night after the sun set.
I watched the horizon. Sailboats had running lights at the tops of their masts, and cruise ships lit themselves like Vegas casinos, but we had seen a few fishing vessels with no exterior lights at all. I also watched for sea garbage. Hitting anything at eight knots could put a hole in our hull and sink us. When we left Bali, my fear had bordered on panic, but days of monotony had dulled my worry, like a sore tooth, always present, but possible to ignore.
I pulled a harness from the cabinet, stepped into it, and connected the tether to the instrument panel. I made a habit of wearing it when I stayed on deck alone. I tugged on the lifeline to ensure it held and rested my hand on the wheel. If a rogue comber hit us or the wind changed direction and I fell overboard, Brad would never find me. The thought of floating on a black sea waiting to be eaten or drowned raised gooseflesh on my arms.
My worst nightmare.
Darkness enveloped the night sky, veiled the textured sea, embraced us. The strait blackened, hiding the marine world below. The surface flattened, making the swells almost indiscernible, and our speed lowered to two knots in the nearly windless night. I leaned backward on the bench and stared at millions of stars filling the sky. The night at sea, away from the ambient light of civilization, turned the world into a planetarium, a canvas painted with awe and wonder, and it stretched to the horizon.
I had never seen anything like it.
As a city girl, born and raised in Boston, the natural world seemed foreign. I had grown up in a two-story, nineteenth-century brownstone near the corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Fairfield Street. Three, enormous bay windows faced the street, and as a child, I would watch the parade of humanity jogging and walking their dogs on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. The city had soothed me, surrounded me with life, with love—as if the City of Boston had wrapped me in a hug. I remembered listening to the melted snow spinning off tires as cars hurtled down Commonwealth Avenue. The sounds of the city had comforted me like an infant listening to a mother’s heartbeat. My father had paid the house off, and after my parents passed away, I stayed.
Until I married Brad.
We had moved to the suburbs, but I kept the brownstone. When I thought about it, I could smell the smoke from our burning fire, as if remnants of the past reached out to me. It reminded me I came from somewhere. It was my family home, my last link to my father, and I would never let it go.
I surveyed the horizon. We were alone. The moon reflected off the surface, like a giant spotlight shining down from heaven. I sighed. For the first time since Emma’s death, I felt a measure of peace. Maybe I could learn to be happy again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Morning, Dags,” Brad said, standing behind the helm.
“It’s after seven. You let me sleep.” I exited the companionway with a cup of coffee and walked across the cockpit.
“You needed rest. It’s why we came.”
“See any ships last night?” I took a long pull of French roast. The warm, aromatic liquid sloshed over my tongue, relaxing me and sharpening my mind. I could almost feel my synapses connecting.
“A sloop came up behind us from the east on course to intercept, so I tacked to port.”
“You sound worried.”
“No, not really, but the boat turned with us.”
I stopped mid sip and looked at him. “Is there a problem?”
“Don’t worry. I shouldn’t have mentioned anything, but the sloop made several tacks with us. It’s probably nothing.”
“What are you thinking?”
“It was strange, that’s all. Usually sailboats give other boats a wide berth, but this one took active measures to hang with us.”
“Why would they do that?” I asked.
Brad sighed. “Don’t freak out, okay?”
“You’re scaring me.”
“It’s nothing, but there have been incidents of piracy around Indonesia,” he said.
“Pirates? Are you kidding me?”
“It has happened. It’s not as bad here as it is off the coast of Somalia or near the Persian Gulf, but Indonesia has their fair share.”
“But pirates? This is the twenty-first century.”
“I’m not talking about eye patches and parrots. They have AK-47s and meth addictions.”
My fingers tensed around the coffee cup. “Wouldn’t they use a motorboat?”
“Probably. I’m being paranoid.”
“Should we call someone? Radio for help?”
“We can if they show up again, but I haven’t seen them in hours. The Indonesian Sea and Coast Guard patrols the Johor Strait, and I doubt we would see pirates this close to Singapore. Their chance of capture is too high.”
“But if they’re pirates?”
“They’re not.”
“Humor me,” I said.
“We call for help on the emergency channel and head towards the closest port. We shut off the AIS, so we don’t broadcast our position and identify ourselves.”
“Maybe we should turn it off now.”
“I already did, two hours ago.”
The hair on my neck stood. I swiveled on the bench and peered over the transom. Blue water stretched to the horizon. “I don’t see anything.”
“They’re gone. It’s nothing. Really. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.
“Brad, if we have a problem, I want to hear about it. I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on.”
Brad flashed a condescending smirk, like it was ridiculous for me to assume I could help. I had the urge to tell him his recent behavior bordered on misogyny, but why inflame his insecurity? It was too early in the morning for a fight.
“It’s nothing. I’m going to rack out for a few hours. I’m feeling worse. Take the helm?”
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