Yacht Girl

by Alison Claire Grey

  Dee shut her eyes, willing herself to sleep. Slumber was when all of this pain left her, at least for a little while.

  If she needed to, she’d take a pill. She still had a stash of them, she’d hidden them inside an old Caboodle in her closet; one that used to only hold dried up containers of liquid foundation that she’d used years ago. It had held scrunchies and love notes, bracelets and eye shadow palettes she’d bought at the mall.

  Now it held her drugs.

  She’d been just about to search for it, when she heard a light tapping on her bedroom door.

  “What?” Dee snapped. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “Sorry, sweetie,” she heard her father’s voice on the other side and immediately felt guilty. “I just wanted you to know I’m going into the motel tonight. Our night auditor called in sick.”

  Dee stood up and walked to the door, opening it.

  “Sorry, Dad,” Dee said. “Do you want me to do it? You were there all day.”

  Her father smiled and shook his head. “No, it’ll be fine. If I get tired I’ll lay down in one of the rooms for a bit. We don’t have any more check-ins tonight. I don’t mind, truly. But thanks for offering, sweet pea.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

  What would she ever do without Robert Beckett? No matter what happened to her, at least she had him.

  “If you’re sure,” she said. “Where’s Meg?”

  “She just got home with Jessa. She’s trying to get her down for the night,” he said.

  Dee still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that her sister had a kid. There was so much mystery behind the entire thing. Meg refused to discuss who the father was other than assuring them all he wasn’t someone local. None of them could imagine Meg having some sort of fling with anyone, but clearly Jessa was the proof of Meg’s own secrets.

  Dee laid back down after her father left. She could hear the sound of Meg’s voice in the room next to hers, reading Jessa a book.

  Who read books to a three-month-old? Only Meg.

  Rooster McCoy walked back to his car from the Waffle House pay phone.

  He’d dialed The Siesta to see if Dee might be working the front desk, but a man had answered, so he hung up.

  The car made an awful sound as he turned back onto the road, but he ignored it. It wasn’t like he planned to keep it any longer than the next few hours. Maybe a day or two. After taking a Greyhound from Newark, New Jersey to Petersburg, Virginia, he bought a series of cars for cash that he found in the gas station magazines. This one, a silver Camry, had been purchased from a college-aged kid near Valdosta, Georgia. It ran fine for a while, but it had started to pull to the left and was in desperate need of an alignment.

  But he’d wanted to cover his tracks. Just in case things didn’t go the way he planned. He didn’t need proof he’d been near Dee.

  Rooster checked his directions once more and rolled slowly down the street until he spotted the house. There were lights on inside and a car in the driveway.

  He parked on the street, his head on a swivel as he approached the front door. The collar on his jacket was popped and his ballcap pulled low. He knocked sharply on the door.

  Dee had just gone into the kitchen for a drink when she heard the knock. She could hear Meg softly singing a lullaby through her closed door.

  A man stood on the front porch, Dee could tell by his silhouette, but she couldn’t tell who it was.

  Maybe she was going to finally meet the mystery man who fathered Jessa, she thought. Dee was convinced Meg must have some secret lover.

  Dee turned the deadbolt and opened the door wide enough to see who was there, but not far enough to allow him to come inside.

  “Can I help—” she began, but then her voice caught in her throat.

  “Howdy, Beckett,” Rooster replied, smiling under the porch light.

  Before Dee could get any of her terrified muscles to cooperate, Rooster had wedged a foot inside the door, meaning he could come inside anytime he wanted to. Dee didn’t have the strength to move him.

  She took off running back to her room, but he was on her before she reached the door.

  “Beckett, I just want to talk. Dee!” Rooster had her around the waist and lifted her into the air as she kicked. He deposited her on the couch just as an angry Meg came out of her room to investigate the noise.

  “Dammit Dee can’t you be quiet so…”

  Her heart stopped.

  Rooster had Dee pinned on the sofa, holding her shoulder in a vise grip and wagging a finger from his other hand in her face.

  “Hello, Meg,” he said. “Why don’t you join us?”

  Meg turned to go back into her room, but Rooster grabbed her before she could make it inside.

  “No, no, I insist,” he said before depositing her next to Dee on the couch. He slid a chair from the corner over and sat down directly across from the Beckett sisters.

  “I have a baby,” Meg whispered. “Please don’t do this. Whatever you’re planning. My baby is asleep in there. Please, God, don’t do this, Rooster. She left LA. What more do you want from her?”

  Rooster rubbed his stubbly chin.

  “You’re serious?” he asked. He stood up and walked over to Meg’s room and stuck his head inside. “I’ll be damned. Congratulations.”

  Meg rolled her eyes.

  “Anyway, I’ve come to bring you back home, Dee,” Rooster announced as he took the chair again.

  Dee and Meg took each other’s hands, squeezing tightly.

  Rooster looked up at the ceiling as if maybe there was a teleprompter there.

  “This place is a real shit hole, Dee. This whole two-bit town. I’ve only been driving around it for a couple of hours and I never want to see it again. You can’t be happy here. I know you. You were born to be in Hollywood. Beverly Hills. Why don’t you make this easy on everybody and pack a few things and we can go. Drive up to Tallahassee tonight, grab a hotel room where we can catch up a little bit, then fly back to LA tomorrow. Sound good?”

  “She came here to get away from you,” Meg spat. “You’re garbage. I don’t care how much money you have, you’re still garbage.”

  “The mouth on this one,” Rooster laughed, his eyes locked on Dee while he pointed at Meg with his thumb. He shook his head, then turned his attention to Meg. “Hey, big sis, if Dee got the looks and the common sense, what did you get?”

  Meg bit her tongue. She just wanted Rooster McCoy out of her house. Jessa deserved better than to have such a man show up on her doorstep.

  “What do you want?” Meg pleaded.

  Rooster looked genuinely surprised by the question. “All I’ve ever wanted. Dee,” he responded.

  “I have all the auditions and photo shoots lined up for you, Dee. You can have your career back again, if you play nice. We had to teach you a lesson. You were causing a lot of trouble, but it can all be fixed if you’ll finally just fucking listen for once. I didn’t go to all the trouble I did with you to have you bail out now.”

  The two women sat and stared at him. It was their turn to experience disbelief. Meg didn’t yet know everything that had happened to Dee in California, but she knew enough. And she’d seen enough.

  There was no way in hell that Meg was letting her sister leave with this monster.

  “Get lost,” Meg said. “Just leave now and we won’t have to call the police.”

  Rooster laughed.

  “Every cop I ever knew was on somebody’s payroll,” he said. “I bet 5-0 here is just the same. All I’ll need to know is who gets the ‘donation’ and how much to write the check for, and magically all the charges will disappear.

  “But, by all means, call the police, It should be entertaining, anyway.”

  Rooster stared at Dee for the better part of a minute before standing up and grabbing her wrist. He yanked her to her feet and shoved her toward the bedroom.

  Meg tried to stand up, but Rooster’s hand on her shoulder forced her back to the couch.

&
nbsp; “Don’t get hurt because your sister is selfish,” Rooster warned. “Just stay right there on the couch.”

  Meg didn’t resist the push. All she wanted was Rooster out of her life; out of their lives, forever.

  But when Meg heard the telltale sound of a slap, she bounced up and ran to Dee’s room.

  She pushed the door open just in time to see Rooster put both hands round Dee’s throat as she cowered on the bed.

  “You’re nothing without me,” he shouted. “You were trash before I pulled you up out of the gutter and that’s all you’ll ever be. You don’t deserve me, but I didn’t do everything I’ve done for you to let you walk away now and lay right back down in this sewer.”

  He was in a blind rage, throttling Dee, who could only gurgle and cry.

  Meg needed a weapon, and she needed it fast. She spotted a small trophy from some long-ago talent show on Dee’s dresser. It wasn’t big, but the base was a solid piece of some sort of faux marble.

  Meg grabbed the small silver microphone atop the trophy as a handle and she swung the trophy as hard as she’d ever swung anything in her life. It connected with the back of Rooster’s head, and he released his grip on Dee and turned to Meg.

  Rooster rubbed his head and when he pulled his hand away it was slick with blood.

  “You spunky little bitch,” he hissed, before slapping Meg across the face and grabbing her by the hair. He swung her around and onto the bed, preparing to hit her again, when it happened.

  When Rooster turned away from Dee, she rolled away to her nightstand, where a plastic “Panama City Beach High School” cup, purchased from a football game many years ago, sat filled with pens and pencils.

  Among the writing implements, Dee found what she was looking for. A letter opener, a gift to her father from one of the snowbird couples who came down from Canada every winter.

  They were world travellers, and they brought Robert various knicknacks, shot glasses, and souvenir mugs over the years from the places they’d visited.

  One of their trips took them to Spain, where they took in an afternoon of bullfighting in Seville. They brought Dee’s father a clever letter opener in the shape of a sword, with “Seville” etched into the blade.

  It had more heft to it than a typical letter opener, and it was hell on envelopes, and it was certainly never intended to become a murder weapon.

  But on this night, that’s exactly what it was.

  As Rooster began to rain blows down upon a defenseless Meg, Dee took the letter opener and jammed it, with all of her might, right into the side of Rooster’s neck.

  It sunk in deep, meeting little resistance. A perfect shot, puncturing Rooster’s carotid artery and angling out the front of his throat.

  His eyes went wide and he turned toward Dee just as the blood began to spurt from his neck.

  Rooster clawed at the handle of the letter opener, but he couldn’t manage to locate enough of it to get a worthwhile grip.

  He pitched forward, and Meg rolled out from under him just before he crashed.

  It had happened so fast that the girls were in shock. They stared down at Rooster as he made sounds they knew would haunt their nightmares.

  “Are you okay?” Meg finally asked her sister.

  Dee knelt on the bed looking down at Rooster with a mix of hatred, disgust, and fascination. She looked down at her own hands, which had a dozen tiny droplets of blood spatter on them.

  “Yes,” Dee whispered.

  Meg was unconvinced.

  Rooster made a horrific gurgling sound and lunged toward Dee, who deftly avoided him.

  He tried to rise back up to his knees, looked at Dee with a mask of confusion painted on his face, and he collapsed onto the bed, blood pooling on the comforter beneath him.

  Meg and Dee stood quietly, saying nothing as they watched him die.

  A cry from Jessa startled them and Meg ran out of the room to check on her daughter. It was nothing popping the pacifier back in her mouth couldn’t fix.

  Meg returned to find Dee still rooted to the spot from which she’d escaped Rooster’s last lunge. Rooster’s back was barely moving, raising and lowering almost imperceptibly. His breathing sounded torn somehow.

  “We have to call the police,” Meg said, turning to retrieve her phone.

  “No,” Dee said flatly. “We can’t.”

  “Why the hell not?” Meg demanded.

  “You don’t know his family,” Dee explained. “They have more money than God. Their lawyers will twist this around so that we ambushed him and we’ll both go to prison. Dad will be ruined. Jessa will be…”

  Dee put her hand over her mouth and began to cry, unable to speak of the unspeakable.

  As the two women argued, neither of them noticed Rooster’s last breath. He was gone, and the blankets on Dee’s bed were heavy with his blood.

  Meg’s nostrils flared. She was furious. With Rooster, of course, but also with Dee for bringing this shit home with her.

  But this wasn’t the time for anger.

  It was the time for careful thinking.

  A plan was needed, and quickly. Whatever was to happen was best off happening under cover of darkness, and especially before their father returned home after a long night at the motel.

  “The Sinks,” Meg said.

  Dee cocked her head as Meg’s words sunk in. Of course.

  She nodded her head slowly.

  “Can we make it?” she asked glancing at the digital alarm clock on her nightstand, next to the cup from which she’d pulled her “sword.”

  “Do we have a choice?” Meg asked.

  Both of them knew the answer to that.

  Forty-Seven

  The Beckett women had been girls when they’d stumbled upon the Aucilla sinks.

  Their mother, Wanda Beckett, was driving them back to Apalachicola from Tallahassee and had, predictably, gotten lost. It was a bad time for losing their way being that it was pouring down rain, the rare kind in Florida where buckets of rainfall plunged down for a couple of hours instead of for just a couple of minutes.

  Wanda was at her wit’s end to boot. She was exhausted from spending an entire day around her energetic progeny; what with their constant need for her limited attention. And their father Robert (so typically) had still not replaced the windshield wipers, despite his wife’s constant reminders, making it impossible to see very far in front of their barely creeping automobile.

  At some point she’d taken a wrong turn. Their high-mileage, wood paneled, minivan had transformed from gliding on asphalt to sliding across mud and rocks as the roads transformed beneath them and the water continued to pound their van, relentless.

  Wanda was white-knuckling the steering wheel, her eyes squinting to see between the crying sounds of the ill-suited wipers swishing across a cracked windshield.

  She’d turned down the radio, silencing a Paula Abdul song, as she tried to concentrate on what was ahead of her.

  “Mama, can we listen to music?” Dee had complained. “I’m bored.”

  “Not right now,” Wanda murmured between clenched teeth. “I need to focus. Read a book.”

  “You know reading in the car gives me a headache,” Dee moaned as she pressed her cheek against the cool glass of her window. “Are we lost?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Meg was sleeping of course. That’s how it was with Meg and cars— since she was a baby, they’d been her favorite place to snooze.

  Dee gently pinched the fleshy part of Meg’s skin above her elbow.

  “What?” Meg didn’t even open her eyes. “Leave me alone.”

  “I’m bored, talk to me. Let’s play a game.”

  Meg opened one eye and looked out her own window.

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere, what game can we even play? There aren’t any license plates to count.”

  “We could play ‘I Spy’,” Dee chirped.

  “I just want to sleep.”

  “Shush!” Wanda snapped from
the front seat. “I don’t want to hear anything. I need to figure out where we are.”

  “Maybe we should turn around?” Dee quietly suggested, bracing for the reprimand.

  “Maybe you should do what I say,” Wanda retorted.

  They were silent for a few minutes. Meg went back to sleep, and Dee stared out the window. Green blurred by, but Dee noticed there was standing water mere feet away from them beyond the raised road, frightening her.

  “Mama, I think it’s going to flood,” Dee stammered. “We learned about flash floods in class…”

  “Delilah, shut up.” Wanda was well aware of her surroundings and didn’t need her daughter to raise her blood pressure more than it already was.

  The truth was, Wanda Beckett knew they were in trouble, but she worried if she turned back they’d get caught in something worse since the road wasn’t as raised from where they’d come from.

  She had no idea what to do. Every quarter mile or so there’d be a fork in the road, but when she’d look down it, she couldn’t see the road, because it was already covered in water.

  Wanda Beckett wasn’t a religious person, but she couldn’t help but begin to pray as they continued to drive into foreign territory, desperate for it to end, to come out on the other side onto asphalt and civilization.

  They’d yet to pass a single car or truck, which worried her even more.

  If something happened, there might not be help for a long time.

  Suddenly, as if the universe was reading her thoughts, the van made a sucking noise and the tires were spinning. They weren’t moving anymore.

  “Shit! Shit! SHIT!” Wanda yelled, pounding on the steering wheel. “We’re stuck!”

  The rain continued to clobber them. Wanda didn’t know what to do and she’d never been so angry at her husband for not being with them. She could feel her girls’ weariness hammering her from the back, their energy like a beam of apprehension, reminding her how much they didn’t trust her to make the right decisions.

  “I’m going outside. It’ll be just a sec,” she said as she opened her door, the rainfall smacking her hard as she slammed the door shut behind her before they could ask her a million questions.