Guillermo visited Nadia here and there in Greece and she went to Italy to see him, much more when her grandmother was still alive. Once the property was sold though, Guillermo began traveling the world, seeing her only once a year. When he arrived in the Caribbean, he set his bags down and never left again. He allowed Nadia to use some of her money to pay for college. Her trip to the islands to see him now, was the first time he’d seen her since before she graduated two years earlier.
Nadia knew part of that was her fault, but she was a grown woman, and she was tired of having to come to him like a little girl begging daddy for money when it was hers to begin with. Before she left Greece, she told her mother she had a feeling this would be her last trip to see her father, and from the looks of things…she was right.
Nadia leaned her head against the backrest of the chair and closed her eyes on the horizon.
SEVEN
Reid glanced at the radar and the GPS periodically as they headed towards Clarence Town, Long Island, forty-six miles away from San Salvador. When they made port, she planned to fill up the boat with gas and anchor out in the bay overnight, before heading to their first spot the next morning.
“How much longer?” Louie asked, stepping into the wheelhouse. He’d been out on the stern, sitting in silence with Nadia.
“Oh, about forty-five minutes or so. We should get in before dark and have plenty of time to fuel up. Is she being a pain?” she said, nodding towards the stern where Nadia was sitting in a deck chair, working on her tan in her bikini top.
Louie snickered. “She sure is pissed at you. I think you hit a nerve.”
“I personally don’t care. I didn’t invite her and I’m sure as hell not going to act like her father is Mr. Saint Bahamas,” Reid huffed. “That son of a bitch is as crooked as a question mark. It’s about time she realized that.”
Louie didn’t know anything about Guillermo Franchino, and from what he’d learned and seen in the past twenty-four hours, he hadn’t formed a great opinion of him.
Reid stood up, stretching her back. “Keep us on this south, southwest heading. I need to hit the head.”
Louie nodded and took over while she went into the cabin to use the bathroom. When she finished, she refilled her cup of water and walked out of the wheelhouse.
“We’ll be making port in about a half hour to refuel. If there is anything you need, I suggest you get it then. We won’t be around civilization for at least a week,” Reid said, leaning against the gunwale, grabbing the rail with her empty hand as she drank some of her water. “There’s a small market near the marina. Louie will go with you,” she added.
“I don’t need to be babysat,” Nadia replied, crossing her arms as she looked up at her through the lenses of her sunglasses.
“I didn’t say you did. However, some places aren’t the safest.”
“I don’t need anything.”
“Alright.” Reid pushed off the side of the boat to walk away, then turned back around. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t mean to upset you. Your father doesn’t have the best reputation, not with me and certainly not within these islands.”
“Was that an apology?” Nadia asked as Reid walked away.
“Call it what you want,” Reid stated as she walked into the wheelhouse.
Louie raised an eyebrow. “You two mix like oil and water.”
“I have no idea how the hell I’m going to sleep with her,” Reid sighed, taking her seat at the helm.
“She’s pretty. You won’t have to close your eyes.” He grinned.
Reid laughed, nearly spewing her water. “I didn’t mean it like that and that is the last thing I’ll be doing with her. Trust me.” She shook her head. “We’re getting closer,” she added, noticing the landmass of the island coming into view on the radar screen.
“Good. I’m starving and that fish she caught is calling my name.”
“Just remember who caught the first fish,” Reid teased.
“It sure as hell wasn’t you,” he countered with a big smile as he walked back outside.
*
The marina wasn’t overly crowded when the Lady Pearl pulled into the bay. Reid motored the boat up to the fuel dock and Louie jumped off, tying up the bow while she looped the stern line around the cleat. As soon as the boat was secure, Louie headed off towards the store to find the one thing Reid had forgotten at the grocery store, a lighter to start the stove and grill.
“Fill her up,” Reid said to the man running the fuel pump.
“Sure thing,” he mumbled, eyeing Nadia, who was standing on the stern in her bikini top, like he’d been in prison for the last decade.
“Today!” Reid growled.
The man startled and quickly began filling up the boat’s tank. Reid shook her head and went into the wheelhouse and down into the cabin to retrieve the money to pay for the gas. When she turned around, Nadia was right behind her, nearly touching her as she wrestled her t-shirt back on.
“Are you sure you don’t need anything?” Reid asked.
“Yes, but I think I’ll walk with you and stretch my legs.”
“Come on,” Reid said, locking the wheelhouse.
They walked up the short dock in silence. The sun was starting its slow decent below the horizon on the opposite side of the island, indicating it would be dark within the hour.
Louie bounced out of the marina store just before they walked in, waving a cigarette lighter back and forth with a big grin on his face.
“We can cook your fish!” he said to Nadia.
“You go right ahead,” she laughed.
Reid grabbed three flashlights, two battery powered lanterns, and a pile of batteries.
“Are we going for a year?” Nadia asked with a raised eyebrow.
“The inevitable always happens at night. If we lose power, we’ll need to be able to see. It’s pitch black out on the water,” Reid answered. “Is he finished out at the pump?” she asked the cashier.
“Yes, ma’am. Fifty gallons.”
“About what I expected,” Reid replied, handing the woman enough Bahamian dollars to pay for everything.
“Where are you headed?” the woman asked.
“Fishing excursion,” Reid said. Nadia looked oddly at her as she grabbed one of the bags and followed her outside. “No one needs to know what we’re doing or where we are going,” Reid uttered.
As soon they made it back to the boat, Reid and Louie untied the lines and they headed out of the bay. Reid checked the map and the depth gauge as they motored around the bottom of Long Island. She moved into a shallow sound about fifteen feet deep and dropped the anchor. They were about a hundred and fifty yards from shore, but thirty feet away, the water was only a few feet deep. There was nothing but sand and thick brush on this uninhabited side of the island.
Louie dove in, swimming up to the shallow area where he could stand on the sandy bottom and take a saltwater bath while Reid set up the grill. While she waited for the grill to heat up, she prepared the tuna steaks and started the stove in the galley to boil a pot of water for the orzo.
“Is he seriously taking a bath in the ocean?” Nadia asked curiously.
“Yep.”
“Wouldn’t you want to wash the saltwater off, not rinse with it?”
“Yep,” Reid muttered. “I never said he was normal,” she added nonchalantly.
*
By the time Louie was finished bathing in biodegradable soap and subsequently swimming around to rinse it off, dinner was ready. The galley table was set up between the two cushioned benches on either side of the narrow wheelhouse, with three plates full of orzo and a large, medium cooked and well-seasoned tuna in the middle of each one.
“I know you don’t want to eat your catch, but at least give it a try. You can’t survive out here on crackers and dried fruit,” Reid said, looking across the table at Nadia.
“It’s good!” Louie cheered with a mouthful of fish.
Reluctantly, Nadia gave in and took a sm
all bite. She’d had fish many times, even tuna steak, but she’d never caught it herself. However, after a simple taste, she forgotten all about killing and chopping her catch to pieces and devoured the plate of food.
When everyone was finished, Louie cleaned the dishes since Reid did the cooking. That was their rule. Now that Nadia was around, she would figure into the rotation as well.
“How about a little pirate water to commemorate our first night at sea. Tomorrow, we’ll wake up and be over our search site within a half hour,” Reid said as she poured three shot glasses full spiced, dark rum.
“I haven’t had a lot of rum. We don’t really have it where I live. You have to go into the big cities to get the fancy liquor,” Nadia replied.
“What is the drink there?” Louie asked.
“Well, we drink wine like water,” she laughed. “But, ouzo is a household staple. We generally mix it with a little water, but you can drink it straight too. It’s served before dinner in my family with a plate of olives and cheese, sort of like an appetizer.”
“Never had it,” Louie said.
“It tastes like liquorice,” Reid added.
“Yes, it does.” Nadia smiled.
“You’ll like pirate water.” Louie grinned. “Goes down like water off a duck’s back.”
“Here’s to the Duchess,” Reid cheered, holding her glass up.
“The Duchess!” Louie beamed, clinking his glass to hers.
Nadia chuckled and pressed her glass to theirs, before they downed the shots.
“Wow!” Nadia exclaimed. “That’s a lot better than whatever they’re calling rum at home.”
“I said the same thing. Then, I woke the next morning in the street!” Louie revealed.
Nadia laughed. “I’ll try not to make that same mistake.”
Reid poured another round for everyone before putting the bottle away.
EIGHT
The sun was long replaced by a sky full of twinkling stars when everyone started yawning. The boat was equipped with an anchor alarm and Reid actually put out a second anchor to make certain they didn’t drift during the night. The last thing she needed was to wake up with the boat beached, or worse, out to sea in the middle of nowhere.
Louie stretched out on the longer bench opposite the helm, while Reid and Nadia went down into the cabin to sleep on the v-berth.
“Port or starboard?” Reid asked.
“Excuse me?” Nadia stared at her.
“Which side do you want?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. I’ll take this one,” Nadia replied, pointing to the starboard side.
Reid nodded and untied her bikini top that doubled as a bra. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually worn a bra. In fact, she didn’t even own one. She had eight different bikinis that she used for her underwear and bras, which worked out great when she was in or around the water every day. She pulled her board shorts off and set them to the side before climbing onto the left cushion of the v-berth.
It was fairly dark in the cabin, except for the little bit of moonlight coming through the hatch above them that Reid had opened to allow in the cool night air. Nadia removed her shirt and bikini top, replacing it with a tank top from her bag. Then she took off her shorts and set them on the bag. Unlike Reid, she was actually wearing panties. They each had a thin sheet incase the air was too cool, but more than likely they wouldn’t need them. The boat was equipped with air conditioning in the cabin and wheelhouse, but that would require running the generator which would be noisy and a waste of gas. So, they decided to save it for an extremely hot night.
*
Reid lie awake, listening to the sound of Nadia sleeping within arm’s length. The soft glow of her wrist watch illuminated the time: 12:27AM. She’d been trying to go to sleep for the past two hours and simply couldn’t. She pulled her shorts on before crawling quietly out of the V-berth and grabbing the nearest flashlight. The cabin door creaked, but she kept going and quickly moved into the wheelhouse. Louie was snoring like a logger on the starboard bench. She opened the compartment by the helm, retrieved her note book and chart, and went out onto the stern.
The half-moon glowed brightly up above, surrounded by millions of stars scattered across the sky. The shallow bay where they were anchored didn’t have much current, so the boat sat virtually still.
Reid sat down on one of the two deck chairs and began pouring over her notes with the flashlight. She wasn’t second-guessing herself. However, she wanted to make absolutely certain she had pinpointed the correct locations to search.
She was reading a transcript from the captain’s log of Sir Francis Johannes, the captain of a French merchant ship in 1708, when she heard the wheelhouse door open. She turned around, pointing the flashlight up. Nadia was walking towards her with her arms crossed over her chest.
“Did I wake you?” Reid asked as Nadia sat down next to her.
“Yes. But it’s okay. You left the cabin door open and he snores like a freight train. I got up to close the door and realized you hadn’t come back.”
“I usually have to sleep with ear plugs when Louie is around.” Reid smiled. “I didn’t shut the door because the damn thing squeaks so loudly. I’ll spray it tomorrow.”
Nadia stared up at the sky. “It’s so peaceful out here. The sky looks a lot like this at home, but without the lull of the ocean and salty breeze,” she sighed, pulling her knees up into her chest and brushing all of her hair forward over her left shoulder.
“Where is home?”
“Greece. Veria to be exact. It’s a small industrial and farming city in Macedonia.”
Reid nodded. “Your mother must be Greek.”
“Yes. I live with her and the rest of my family. Well, not exactly with all of them. We’re all on the same land, but my mother and I do live in the same house. It’s actually a small, two story house that was converted into two apartments. I live upstairs and she is downstairs.”
“That’s interesting. So, all of your family is close together?”
“Yep. It’s a blessing and a curse.”
“I know Guillermo is as Italian as it gets. How did he wind up with a half Greek child? Or, I should say mostly Greek because you definitely don’t look him?”
Nadia laughed. “He was in the Italian Army and stationed nearby for a joint training operation. My mother’s family owns a restaurant and bakery and my grandmother sent her to the base with a basket of food and a box of sweets to entice the soldiers to dine at their eatery. That’s how my parents met. They fell in love and she got pregnant with me.” Nadia paused, pursing her lips.
“We moved to Italy when he was sent back, then went back to Greece when he retired five years later. Everything sort of went downhill for my parents after that. My grandfather thought my father wasn’t good enough for my mother and he made sure everyone knew it. Eventually, my dad got sick of it, divorced my mother, and went back to Italy.”
“Wow. I had no idea. I didn’t know anything about you or that part of his life. He sort of talks in circles, you know what I mean? Like a lot about nothing or minimal subjects.”
“He’s always been that way. He has a soft spot for my mom and that’s probably why he never remarried. She never did either,” Nadia replied. “My mother stood by her family, mostly her father, and let my dad go. My grandfather is a stern man and has very strong beliefs. I love my entire family, but I don’t think I could ever let them decide what is right and wrong for me.”
“It takes a lot of courage to go against your family,” Reid said, speaking from experience. She sent her family postcards on their birthdays and at the holidays, but they hadn’t actually spoken in years. She came from a long line of Harvard Medical School grads and she simply didn’t fit in. She often wondered if she was the mailman’s kid or something. She had nothing in common with her parents or her two brothers, but that had stopped bothering her a long time ago. “So, how did your dad wind up in the islands?” she asked, changing the subject.
“His mother, my nonna, Carlotta Vitale Franchino, owned and lived on a large piece of coastline property with huge cliffs overlooking the ocean below. The Vitale family had owned the land as far back as my great-great-great grandfather, refusing to sell to the corporate chains who wanted to build a resort there. The property was only about six hectares, but the location was what set it apart. Anyway, when Nonna Franchino passed away, she willed me twenty percent of the property in case my father lived a long healthy life, preventing me from getting the estate until I was too old to enjoy it, which is what she said in her letter to me.”
Nadia stared at the moon, then looked at Reid. “When she died, my dad sold everything, including my portion because I was under eighteen.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yep. He sold it all, put my money into a trust fund that he controls, and took off to the islands.”
“What a greedy bastard,” Reid said as she stared through the darkness at the young woman next to her, finally understanding why Nadia had come along on the trip. Her father was obviously using her trust fund as leverage to get her to do whatever he wanted. “He really is a son of a bitch,” she muttered under her breath.
“He wasn’t always this self-righteous. He was actually a really good father and my mother wouldn’t still love him to this day if she knew what he’d turned into.”
“You’ve never told her? I mean, you did say you visit him. She doesn’t know he dangles your inheritance like a carrot?”
“No. It would break her heart. She thinks my father and I are still very close and I visit because I love spending time with him. That of course, used to be true. Now, I visit so he’ll give me what is owed to me, even if it is in small chunks here and there,” Nadia sighed. “She doesn’t know anything about the trust fund. In fact, she doesn’t know he sold all of the property. She thinks he only sold a small part of it.”
Wrecked Page 4
