Finch stood up straighter. “Huh. Okay. Let’s figure this out.”
Emmie looked up the number for Stephanie Spencer, who answered with her voice clouded in sleep. She couldn’t remember exactly what time Robin had left, but she knew that Robin was mad at Brian. She couldn’t say when Brian had left the party, either. “I can’t be exactly sure, Ms. Porter. I had a little too much to drink.”
Finch sprang into action. He called Grace Wheeler to come down and sit with Emmie. “Come up with every name of every person at that party last night. Let’s call every one of them. Maybe Robin went home with someone else.”
Grace nodded and sat at the kitchen table with paper and pencil and phone book, starting the list.
Then he called Doc and Kate Taylor, and together with Grace’s husband, they went out, spreading around town, looking for any sign of where Robin might have gone. They walked the route from the captain’s house to Stephanie Spencer’s house, north of town a short distance. By one o’clock, when they had still not found any sign of the girl, Finch called the sheriff’s office.
They sent a deputy, who took a statement from Finch and Emmie. “So she’s only been missing for what? A few hours now?”
Emmie sat on her sofa, stunned at the question. “Since last night. Since shortly after midnight. That’s the last time anyone saw her.”
The deputy shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t really file a report or anything. Can’t start a search. Not yet, anyway. Not until she’s been missing for twenty-four hours.”
Emmie’s eyes went wide. “What? You won’t start looking for twenty-four hours? That won’t be until the middle of the night.”
“That’s the law, Ms. Porter. They make us wait. I mean, she’s what? Seventeen years old, you said?”
Emmie nodded.
He took a breath, as if he’d been through this exact scenario a million times and was completely bored by the whole thing. “So she’s not a child. She’s old enough to know what she’s doing. This is exactly the age when a lot of young girls run away. She could be anywhere. Maybe she went to the bar. Maybe she met someone. Maybe she’s at a hotel in Sea Rose Harbor. Or sleeping it off somewhere.”
Finch stood up, his arms rigid at his sides, fists clenching. “I would appreciate it if you would not throw your dirty ideas on my daughter. Robin isn’t like that.”
The deputy nodded. “I’m sure she’s not. It’s just that . . . they really won’t let us do much. Not for twenty-four hours.”
They were silent for a few moments. “Is there a boat or something? Could she be sleeping on a boat?”
Finch met Emmie’s eyes. He and Grace’s husband headed out the door, down to the marina.
It was the beginning of a storm. Wind ruffled the water. Pine needles shivered in the breeze. Just a breath of dread, just a shred of fear.
It was Finch and the Taylors who organized the search. The sheriff’s office joined them the following day. They interviewed everyone at the party. Several of the young people remembered that Brian and Robin had been arguing, off and on throughout the evening. No one really remembered when Robin left, and most were very fuzzy about what time Brian had finally left. No one could say whether Brian had been at the party the entire evening. There’d been way too much drinking.
Jim Butler was so distraught that he could hardly speak. “I should have gone outside. I knew Brian was mad at her. I should have given her a ride home.”
They checked the ferries running out of Sea Rose Harbor, asking everyone who worked that night if they had seen this young woman, Robin Porter. They checked hotels and motels all up and down the island, and on the other side, in Anacortes, where the ferry emptied onto the mainland. There was nothing. No sign. No trace of Robin Porter.
Before cell phones, before everything was on computer, before bank cards, there was little way to trace movements.
They searched for a week, with a smattering of help from a few people in Copper Cove. Most of the kids who had been at the party did not contribute to the search. A handful of adults, those closest to Emmie, combed every piece of woods and farmland, every stretch of beach. No sign was found.
They tried to get the sheriff to do a search of Maggie’s house, the one where she and Brian had been staying together for the three weeks of Christmas break. Maggie was furious.
“What the hell are you trying to say, Emmie Porter?”
Emmie shook her head, tears filling her eyes. “I’m not trying to say anything, Maggie. I just want to make sure we cover all the bases. I want to make sure we’re not missing something. Maybe there’s some clue, some . . .”
Maggie refused. “You just want to smear dirt on my son.”
The sheriff did manage to get a search warrant, two days later, but it turned up nothing. They found Robin’s purse, in the parlor downstairs, and Brian insisted that she had left it there before they went to the party. But nothing else.
For most of that week, Brian had very little to say. He helped with the search, but he was quiet and withdrawn, and he quit after only an hour or so of looking. He didn’t wring his hands; he didn’t show any emotion, any fear, about what might have happened to her. He didn’t act like a man who had just lost the woman he loved. He didn’t sit with Emmie and Grace, trying to figure out what might have happened.
A week later, he left to go back to college. He never came back to spend a holiday with his mother. He never came back for summer break, choosing instead to find a job in Seattle. He never came back to the island again. He never again spoke to Emmie.
The sheriff’s office brought dogs, two days in, but by that time, with the storm on the night of New Year’s Eve, and the rains that had followed, there was no trace of scent anywhere. The law pulled out after a week, about the same time that Brian left to go back to school. The case was marked, “Missing. Unsolved.”
Every time the phone rang, Emmie jumped. Every time a car pulled up in the yard, she felt her knees buckle. Her hair went completely white, almost overnight. She wandered the streets at all hours of the day and night, often in the pouring rain, talking to birds and trees and sky and water. Where is she? Have you seen her? Have you seen my daughter?
Finch took a leave of absence from his job, just so he could stay by Emmie’s side. They looked everywhere. Over and over and over again, they walked that path, from Stephanie’s house to the captain’s. They walked every trail, every street, every tiny little deer trail they could find.
Almost a year later, Finch found Emmie in the cemetery one night, soaking wet, her teeth chattering with cold. He wrapped a blanket around her and pulled her close to him. “Let’s go home, Emmie. Get you warmed up.”
Emmie looked at him, her eyes filled with hopelessness. So much of Emmie’s light had dimmed in the past year. Her hair was white, her skin was pale, her eyes were cloudy. Her voice cracked with emotion. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Finch took her hands in his, kissed each one. He looked in her eyes. “I don’t know.”
Tears flowed down her face, lost in the rain. “I want to believe she’s still alive. I want to believe she’s out there, somewhere.” She met his eyes. “But that’s not the way it feels. She would never just leave and not tell me. She would never just leave and not try to contact me.
“I keep thinking about what Brian said, about how maybe she went for a swim. It felt all wrong, those words.” Emmie’s voice drifted for a moment. “Did he hurt her, Finch? Did Brian hurt my baby?”
She buried her face in his chest, sobs racking her too-slender frame. “How could I not have known? I always knew. I could always feel it. Whenever there was an animal hurting, I felt it. How would I not have known? How could I have missed the pain of my own daughter?”
Finch pulled her body next to him; he wrapped his arms around her, his chin resting in her now-white hair. His own tears flowed. He swallowed. “I don’t know the answers. I wish I did. But I do know this. No matter where she is, Emmie—you can still talk to her. Talk to
her like she’s right here with you. Like she’s still living here in town with us.” He waited a moment, holding her close to him. “The same way you talk to the animals and the trees. Talk to Robin’s spirit—wherever it is. Whatever form it might be in.”
He guided her up the hill and back to their little home, across the road from Maggie’s. They lay in the bed together all night, holding on to each other. Finch never went back to his job with the tribe. He moved into the house with Emmie, and he was the rock she leaned on for another twenty years. He died of a heart attack, in 2010, just a year after Grace Wheeler lost her husband.
That night marked the turning point for Emmie, the place where she started to come back from the edge. She started talking to Robin constantly, no matter where she was or what she was doing. When she went for a walk with the dogs, she talked to her daughter. When she wandered through the stones of the cemetery, she talked to her daughter. When she stopped to admire the pink buds of the cherry trees in the spring, she talked to her daughter.
A couple of years later, there was a baby born to the J Pod orcas. A female, at first called J28. It wasn’t until the baby was almost a year old that she was given a name—Polaris. Emmie was out walking the dog, wandering through the stones of the cemetery, when she heard the whale bell ringing in the park down below. She looked out in the water and saw them—several members of J Pod, swimming past in a group. The baby was in the middle, popping up to the surface with what looked like absolute joy on her face.
And that’s when Emmie knew. Robin was with her orca family now.
THIRTY-FOUR
They were sitting in a circle at the old Hadley house, David, Caroline, and Alex, listening as Grace finished telling them the story of that New Year’s Eve, thirty years before. Every person in the room was flooded with tears, with the heart-wrenching pain of what Emmie had been through. Of what Robin had been through.
Grace took a Kleenex from a box and wiped her nose. She passed the box on to Alex. “Emmie knew, last night. She knew something was wrong. We were just getting ready to sit down to dinner when the power went out. I was looking for a candle and matches. Emmie walked over to the window, and she stood there, staring at the captain’s house across the road. You can’t actually see the house, just that big group of trees. Once in a while, if there’s a light on inside, you might see the glow. But mostly, it’s just darkness.”
Grace took a shuddery breath. “But Emmie stood there, staring out into the dark, shaking her head. ‘There’s something wrong,’ she said. And then she grabbed her coat, told me to call the sheriff and meet her at the captain’s house. And she headed out into the storm.”
“I knew it, too,” Caroline sniffed. “Alex went running out of here, into that storm. And I stood there at the door, watching her go up the hill, and I just had this weird feeling. I told David that something felt really off.”
David grabbed one of the Kleenex from the box that was circling the group, and nodded. “We grabbed the nearest weapons we could find and headed up that hill. But of course, Caroline beat me. She is a little younger.”
Grace blew her nose, and then put a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Alex? He’s in jail right now, waiting for the judge to set bail. And hopefully, bail will be too high for him to get out right away. But you know . . .” She paused, as if she didn’t want to say more.
Alex nodded. “There are no guarantees. I know that.”
“He might be out tomorrow, for all we know. And of course, you can get a restraining order, and you should, but . . .”
“That’s no guarantee, either. I know that.” Alex slumped in her seat for a moment. “All these years, I stayed. Afraid that he would hurt someone else. Afraid he was going to hurt my mother.”
She shook her head. “But I can’t live like that anymore. Whatever happens . . . whatever he does . . . I can’t go back again.”
Grace put an arm around her. “We don’t want you to.”
Alex wiped her nose. “But what about Emmie? I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
“Alex, this is not your fault. And I know Emmie would much rather put herself in harm’s way than let anyone else suffer. She’s been like that her whole life. At least as long as I’ve known her.” Grace pulled back and looked at Alex. “Emmie always wondered what would have happened if even one person at the party that night had gone out to help. If even one person had volunteered to take Robin home. Would she still be with us, if that had happened?”
Grace wiped her eyes. “And I feel the same way. I couldn’t live with myself if I sat at home, safe, while he was trying to hurt you. If I can help, you know I will.”
“Me, too.” Caroline blew her nose. “Turns out I’m pretty fierce with a bottle of champagne in my hands.”
“Well, I don’t like to brag,” said David. “But I’m pretty good with a pair of knitting needles. Anytime. Anywhere.”
“Grace?” Alex’s voice was soft, almost too quiet to hear. “They never spoke, in all these years? Maggie and Emmie?”
Grace shook her head. “No.”
“Did Emmie hold it against her? Against Maggie?”
Grace took a deep breath. “I think maybe at first, she did. She was hurting so much. But you know Emmie. You know how she is. I asked her about it once. If she blamed Maggie. This was . . . I don’t know . . . maybe five years after it happened? And Emmie just said, ‘Brian could have been my son. Robin could have been her daughter. Whatever happened that night was not Maggie’s fault.’ She’s right, you know. Maggie has suffered, too. Maggie lost her son, that night.”
Grace sniffled. “It’s Emmie’s greatest gift. Being so sensitive. Being able to see all the different sides to a story. Her greatest gift. Her greatest torment.”
“So Brian never . . . was never brought to justice?” Caroline asked.
“For what? As far as anyone really knows, as far as anyone can prove, there is no crime. No body. No evidence. No crime.”
They were quiet a moment, all of them lost in their own thoughts.
“For a while, it was all anyone in town could talk about. What happened to Robin Porter? There were a lot of people around here who figured she just ran off. Went someplace else.”
“Without her purse,” Caroline sputtered.
“Without ever contacting her mother,” Grace said quietly. “Which is not something I believe Robin would ever do. I can’t imagine Emmie’s pain. Never really knowing what happened. Never being able to say for sure if her daughter was alive or dead. Never being able to mark her life in any way, like she could if there had been a grave.” Grace was quiet. “Robin Rose Porter. May 10, 1970, to December 31, 1987.”
Alex lifted her head, felt a sharp gasp of breath. Rose? Her middle name was Rose?
THIRTY-FIVE
On a chilly morning in mid-January, Alex sat at her table in Maggie’s cabin, the computer open in front of her. Maggie sat at her desk across the room. She had not had much to say in the past two weeks, since that night in the storm. But it had not been lost on Alex that Maggie was quieter than normal, that her hands shook slightly when she poured her own coffee. Though she had not specifically mentioned anything about Brian and Robin, Alex felt certain that it was on her mind. How could it be otherwise?
Alex had not been able to forget the sound of that gun going off. She had not been able to forget the awful story that Grace told them. She had spent many hours thinking about how quickly things can happen. How there are times when everything comes crashing down around us, despite the best intentions. Maggie would never talk about it, Alex was certain of that. But she could see it in Maggie’s eyes—the questions, the doubts, the regrets.
The sound of the whale bell rose up from the streets below. Alex moved to the window, looking out into the gray. Maggie stood beside her. Neither one could see much of town below them, but they continued to hear the ringing of the bell.
“Let’s go,” Maggie said. They grabbed their jackets and started down the hill toward the par
k.
“I had a notice in my e-mail this morning.” Maggie panted as they hurried down the hill. “It’s in all the reports coming out of the whale research center. There’s been some bad news.”
“Oh?” Alex whispered. She kept her hands in her pockets.
“This is part of J Pod, going by out there,” Maggie said, tipping her head toward the gathering of people lining the overlook. “But two members are missing.”
Alex forced a swallow. “Missing?”
“Missing. Presumed dead,” Maggie said flatly. “They were last seen over two weeks ago. J28. Polaris. Born in ’92 or ’93. And her baby, Dipper. One of that group of babies born in the last year or so.”
Alex stared out at the gray misty water, along with several other people from town. Missing. Presumed dead. The words looped in her head.
Maggie continued, “Polaris had an older daughter and a sister. People have seen them catching salmon, trying to feed Polaris and the baby.”
Alex wanted to collapse in a heap, right there on the pavement.
“She had been showing signs of malnutrition for the past few weeks. Peanut head, they call it. Their bodies start burning their own fat reserves when they can’t find enough salmon.
“And that’s when it gets really bad for the babies. All those chemicals in the water? The PCBs and fertilizers and pesticides and every other stupid chemical we use on our lawns and parks and in every part of our lives? All that stuff washes down into the water and absorbs into every living thing. Including the orcas.”
Alex nodded.
“That baby was drinking mother’s milk, laced with poison.” Maggie swallowed hard.
Maggie turned and looked Alex in the eye. “After Polaris went missing, the sister was seen trying to push the baby up for air. Trying to help it breathe. Now the baby is missing, too.”
They had arrived at the deck, just above the sea wall and just beneath the whale bell. Several people had gathered at the sound of the bell, but the crowd was subdued. Most of them had read the reports in the morning edition of the paper.
The Music of the Deep: A Novel Page 25
