by A N Sandra
Small lights by the path blinked as they walked to the boat dock and there was the yacht, well-lit in the twilight, with the staff dressed in white waiting to greet them.
The boat was huge. Helena was surprised they were taking such a large boat for a simple dinner cruise. The sun was setting, and the water was turning the shade of inky blue that caused the sunset to look more orange. She hoped her father would be at the timeshare when they got back. Tawna made Ray and Lourdes behave somewhat when Joel Harris was with them. It was hard not knowing when her father would be there. Knowing that her mother never was there wasn’t even hurtful anymore; the wound had healed when she quit pulling at it. When her father was busy with work, Helena still felt completely abandoned, as if she were much younger than almost sixteen.
A waiter was passing hors d’oeuvres and Helena had some pickled shrimp on tiny skewers, then she had a brussel sprout wrapped in prosciutto. A very handsome young man in a white waiter jacket called them to dinner and Helena drifted to the table.
“Wish Dad was here,” Peter said as he dropped into the chair next to her.
“Yeah.” Helena realized she hadn’t really talked to Peter all day. There hadn’t been time to talk much with all the arguing. Maybe Tawna had been right to make everyone leave their phones back at the timeshare.
“We’ve never taken a vacation with Mom, ever, have we?” Peter asked.
“No. Were you thinking we had?”
“I was trying to remember. I couldn’t think of one, but I thought maybe I was wrong.”
“Saving the world doesn’t leave you with time for a vacation. Mom would never have married Dad and had us if she didn’t work for his company,” Helena smiled. And she didn’t feel bitter. She had just accepted what was. Reality. “I don’t see why she had kids, but she must have wanted to make Dad happy.”
“She loves her research. I don’t know if I will ever love anything or any person as much as Mom loves work,” Peter observed. He toyed with his salad without really eating it.
“We just aren’t as important as her grand vision. Don’t ever take it personally. I’m not going to work if I don’t want to. Mom is contributing to society enough for the whole family, and Dad runs the company and helps her save the world. I’m going to college and then I’m just going to spend my trust fund until I die if I don’t find a job I want to do. I’m not going to look too hard, either.”
“This salad sucks.” Peter held up a piece of it with his fork. It might have been lettuce, or it might have been seaweed. The creator of the salad had clearly tried too hard to be original.
“It tastes okay, though.”
“I’m not going to try it.”
“There’s going to be plenty of food even if you don’t.” Helena chewed her salad carefully. She wasn’t really sure what it was, but she had committed to eating it, so she swallowed each bite. “They always have five courses at these things.”
“Maybe we’ll know what the soup is and then I can eat some.”
“Maybe.”
The soup was cold. Fruit soup, made with some kind of wine and coconut milk. It was delicious, and Peter broke down and ate some, even though the waiter couldn’t tell them exactly what it was.
“Papaya for sure,” Helena said, savoring a big sip of soup.
“It’s kind of limey,” Peter answered.
“It might have a little kick of chili.”
“If we had enough light we could see what color it is.”
“Probably better that we can’t.”
“Probably.”
The fish course was Ahi tuna and both of them dug in even though they weren’t really hungry, because the taste was pure buttery goodness. The beef course of tiny sirloin medallions covered with brie was delicious, but they were mostly full. They each took a few bites and sat back in their chairs like rag dolls. Ray and Lourdes sat across the huge table, but they might have been on another planet. Tawna was pacing the deck like a caged cat, with a martini glass that the waiter kept topping off with a metal shaker.
The waiter set dessert in front of each of them, flan, decorated with fresh berries and a delicate cream sauce.
“Maria’s flan is better,” Peter announced after taking two bites.
“You should tell her that when we get home,” Helena told him. She sipped some coffee and took a tiny bite of flan. “I don’t know why, but I had the worst feeling right before we left today that I might never see her again.”
“She might retire someday, but I don’t know why you wouldn’t see her again,” Peter said.
“Yeah, maybe she is thinking of retiring and I just picked up on it. She was at least fifty when she came to work for us. She probably wants to retire.” Helena took another sip of coffee. “I think her husband retired from his job a couple of years ago.”
“You’ll miss Maria more than I will if she does retire,” Peter predicted.
“Yeah, the nanny liked you more than me, but Maria liked me more than you.”
“I still text Brianne sometimes,” Peter confessed. “She was a really good nanny.”
“Awww,” Helena was touched by Peter’s unexpected needy side. “That’s nice.”
She sipped more coffee. Dinner had been more pleasant than she had thought it would be, but she wanted to go back to the timeshare now, and the boat was not heading back toward shore. It had been a long time since she had seen shore, or even lights from other boats.
“Tawna!” Helena called across the deck. “When are we heading back?”
Tawna walked over to the table the youths were gathered around and smiled a crocodile smile with her big teeth and gold jewelry flashing in the dark. Helena felt her gut twist a little.
“We aren’t heading back,” Tawna said, and her voice did not sound at all like her normal self. Not even her normal too-many-martinis self. “Dad and I planned a surprise adventure for you. It’s going to be several days before we find him. It’s going to be like ‘Where in the World is Carmen San Diego.’ Isn’t that great?”
“Where is Dad then?” Peter asked, his blue eyes narrowing until they became dark slits.
Helena was glad she had not been the one to ask. She would not have been able to keep so calm.
“He’s meeting us at our final destination,” Tawna said, with her toothy smile firmly in place. “This time on the boat is like a team building exercise. We’re going to have a lot of fun.”
“We’re going days without our phones or anything?” Ray looked mutinous. Lourdes sat next to Ray with a peculiar look on her face. Lourdes was slightly pudgy, with a dark complexion and dark hair. She often looked younger than she really was, but her green eyes saved her from an ordinary appearance. Her deeply cut eyes seemed to be looking at what no one else could see.
“I don’t think it sounds fun at all,” Lourdes finally said. Her large lips pouted.
“What a great start! All of you are mad at me at once. The team building has begun!” Tawna walked back to the rail of the boat. She tried to look casual as she took a huge swig of her drink, but she looked rigid in spite of the fact that she should have had enough alcohol to be fairly bendy.
“How much has she had to drink?” Peter wondered quietly to Helena.
“Enough that I could push her right over the rail?” Helena questioned back.
“Do you think Dad really thought this was a good idea?”
“Dad thought marrying Tawna was a good idea,” Helena said. “So maybe he thought skipping our normal vacation and hanging out on a boat without our phones or books or anything was a good idea. Heck, maybe it was even his idea.”
“There is no way Dad dumped us out here for fun. You and I need to learn to take care of ourselves, so this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.”
“I can’t even tell you how much I want to be done with Tawna’s drama.”
Stuck on the boat without her phone or even a book to read caused Helena anxiety. Without her father, but with Ray and Lourdes and Tawna, who knew wh
at might happen. Helena decided to bite her tongue off rather than make a fuss, which wouldn’t do any good anyway. They were who knows where out in the ocean. A confrontation with a drunken Tawna could not end well.
Helena escaped below deck. There were four bunks below, each with a monogrammed pillow, so that each of them would know their bunk. She had a bottom bunk, under Lourdes. Surprise. There were deep purple pajamas on the bunk and Helena found the bathroom and put them on. There was a bookcase with a lot of books on it and that made her feel a little better. There was also a television with a Playstation. Ray would be fine when he saw that. Peter would be upset about not being able to call his girlfriend, but probably even if Tawna hadn’t made them leave their phones they wouldn’t have cell phone reception this far out at sea.
Helena got into her bunk, which was very uncomfortable as it had no box springs at all and was quite narrow, especially compared to her large bed at home. It wasn’t even as comfortable as the bed at astronomy camp last year, which had been her benchmark low for any sleeping place. She could hear the others coming below deck and she turned her back and closed her eyes and hoped she looked asleep.
They just squeezed the orange juice, right now, for us,” Peter told Helena rather loudly as she sat down to breakfast. She had found a bundle of clean clothing in her own size at the foot of her bed when she woke up. Light blue pants and a shirt. Expensive resort wear, perfect for sailing. Peter looked around and made sure that Ray and Lourdes were not looking at them and that Tawna was nowhere to be seen. “Do you think we’ve been kidnapped?”
“What?” Helena wasn’t awake enough to take such thoughts seriously. Also, she needed coffee. Orange juice was not enough of a pick-her-upper.
“Shh. Listen. You know what’s funny? Tawna loves to post everything on social media. ‘Look at the Harris family having fun.’ ‘Look at the Harris family spending money.’ ‘Look at the beautiful Harris family.’ Why didn’t she take a single picture of her big trick last night? Don’t you think she must be up to something?”
Helena hoped that a white plastic carafe across the table held coffee. There were mugs sitting around it. Bliss! Coffee. She took a big, hot, bitter sip of the most terrible coffee ever and turned to Peter.
“Tawna doesn’t like us that much; why would she kidnap us?” Helena wasn’t sure where Peter was going with his train of thought.
“That’s the point. She doesn’t really like us. To have access to Dad’s money she has to spend every day with us. She has to pretend to like us. Maybe she is kidnapping us, and Dad will have to give her millions of dollars to get us back.”
More coffee was needed to think of an answer. More coffee.
“I don’t know if Dad has millions of dollars not committed to Mom’s big project. I mean, I know we have plenty of money and we have trust funds and everything, but Mom’s project is using the whole budget of the company, even though the Hollister Foundation is financing all the actual manufacturing of the chips. Besides, she would probably get a lot if she just divorced him anyway.”
“I thought of that,” Peter answered. “I don’t know if she would get a lot if they got divorced. She signed a prenup and they’ve only been married two years. Also, all the money is tied up, like you said, so a judge probably wouldn’t take money away from Mom’s saving the world project just to make Tawna a rich divorcee.”
“So, she takes matters into her own hands and kidnaps us?” Helena was doubtful. “Sounds like a pretty big stretch.”
Peter looked a little hurt that she wasn’t taking him seriously.
“But it would be a great adventure if it’s true!” she added to make him feel better.
“If they can’t pay will she throw us to the sharks?”
“Have you seen any sharks?” Helena was interested. She looked at the ocean over the railing of the boat.
“No, but they’d come if she threw us in,” Peter said.
“Well, if we have been kidnapped, and if Dad doesn’t pay soon enough, I will fight like a tiger before I get thrown overboard to become shark food,” Helena told him. “Does that make you feel better?”
“We need a plan—”
Tawna came out onto the deck.
“Good morning you two.” She smiled wide but managed to seem insincere. Her flowing blonde hair was caught in a low ponytail and she was wearing a lovely white linen pantsuit. “Do you like your breakfast?”
“We haven’t eaten yet,” Helena told her. She gestured toward the table with sparkling clean white plates. “They haven’t brought any food out.”
“The staff was probably waiting for me. I’ll go tell them to get started.” Tawna walked back through the door, presumably toward the galley.
“She seems cheerful—” Helena began.
“You don’t buy it, do you?” Peter interrupted.
“Not really. She does seem to be playing us… and I had a horrible feeling when we left Dallas that we were never coming back… but none of this makes any sense.”
“Breakfast is here!” Tawna came back out, followed by the waiter carrying a large tray.
“Just think about it,” Peter urged Helena quietly.
“Oh, I will,” Helena answered.
She chewed her scrambled eggs carefully and sipped more awful coffee and went over everything Peter had said. She nibbled on a pastry and thought some more. It came to her why she didn’t believe she had been kidnapped. Lourdes and Ray were talking to each other and Tawna was having a mimosa leaning over the deck of the boat, so she felt free to talk to Peter.
“The reason we’re not being kidnapped is because she could never get away with it. She couldn’t take her own kids back to Dallas and put them in school and go on with life, could she?”
Peter sighed and shook his head. His prep school education had been so good that he was well spoken and thoughtful, but he was still only thirteen. Global thinking hadn’t caught up to him yet.
“Even if she was going to try to run,” Helena went on to drive her point home, “Where would she run? Mom’s project has been approved by world leaders everywhere. From Egypt to Peru. The Hollister Foundation is in charge of the Global Bank and Global Forces, they could track down anyone the Hollisters told them to, and they would help Mom, I’m sure. There is just no place that she could hide, even if she got millions of dollars.”
Peter physically slumped and his good-natured face fell.
“I guess you’re right.”
“But,” Helena tried to cheer him up, “maybe, just maybe, Dad and Tawna are getting a divorce. Where is Dad? He never told either of us he wasn’t coming on vacation. Maybe Tawna bought the boat without telling him and he’s so mad he couldn’t make himself come.”
Peter did perk up a little. “I doubt we can get lucky enough for them to get divorced, but they might be having a fight. Tawna isn’t happy, no matter how much she’s smiling. It isn’t even eight in the morning and she’s drinking.”
“I think she does that a lot. We just don’t see it when we’re at school.”
“Really?”
“Maria hints at it.” Helena leaned really close to Peter. “Lately she’s been drinking all day.”
“What are you talking about?” Lourdes came over and stood behind Helena with her hands on the back of Helena’s chair.
“You, we’re talking about you,” Helena said. She knew she shouldn’t bait Lourdes, but she was starting to feel reckless. “Why don’t you go complain to your mom and see if she makes us walk the plank?”
“You guys are so funny,” Lourdes answered. She rolled her eyes. “Ray’s already on the Playstation below deck. It’s too loud down there now. I thought we might do a puzzle. There’re some puzzles by the bookcase and we could bring one up.”
Helena didn’t want to do a puzzle, but the day was going to drag by, and if Ray was going to play the Playstation at full blast, it wasn’t going to be peaceful enough to read below deck. Doing the puzzle with Lourdes might put Tawna in a good mood.
Family time.
“Sure.” Helena said.
“This is more family time than we’ve had since Christmas,” Peter commented as Lourdes went to choose a puzzle.
“Yep,” Helena told him. “I wish Tawna made Ray wear headphones when he plays those games.”
“He doesn’t like to wear headphones,” Peter imitated Tawna. “He has a hard-enough time already. Just be nice.”
“Hey—” Helena jabbed him because Lourdes was coming back with the puzzle. They spread the pieces out over the table on the deck and worked in the beautiful gulf sunshine surrounded by the sparkling ocean. None of them talked much, but they always got along best when they didn’t.
“You got a lot done pretty quick.” Tawna smiled as she looked over their work. “I wish you had played together like that at home.”
Helena bit her tongue so hard she was afraid it would bleed. Peter looked like he might be doing the same thing. Lourdes pretended like she hadn’t heard anything and Tawna took a huge swig of what was clearly no longer a mimosa, but a screwdriver. At least she was still pretending to drink a breakfast drink.
“Do you think there is fishing equipment on the boat?” Peter asked Tawna. “It would be fun to deep sea fish while we’re out here.”
“It might not seem like it, but I’m pretty sure we’re going way too fast to fish. I can ask, though,” Tawna said.
“What kind of fish would you catch?” Lourdes was curious.
“A manta ray,” Peter joked. “Or a leviathan.”
“Aren’t those endangered?” Lourdes was indignant.
“Probably,” Peter agreed.
Lunch was poached salmon sandwiches on fluffy torta rolls and creamy potato salad and something else. Peter held the green thing up on his fork to catch the sun.
“Can’t you just eat it?” Helena asked. She bravely chewed hers and it really tasted a little peppery. Like Arugula or something similar.
“Wouldn’t be prudent,” Peter said. “The kitchen staff is laughing at you for eating that now. I’m pretty sure it’s something the cook weeded from his grandmother’s garden yesterday.”
