Daughter of Deep Silence

by Carrie Ryan

  Grey doesn’t answer, at least not verbally, but the Senator persists. “She’s dangerous.”

  “No, she’s not,” he counters. “She’s just a girl with shit luck.”

  The unexpected defense on my behalf draws me up short, causing my breath to catch. Just a girl, I think. My eyes flutter closed as I swallow. If only that were the case. Life would be so much simpler if it were true.

  “She’s a loose end,” the Senator barks. “There’s no reason for her to have come back here—”

  “It’s her home,” Grey argues. “Where else would you expect her to go?”

  “And now of all times,” the Senator continues.

  Grey snorts. “You weren’t complaining last night when her reception raised a shit ton of money for your campaign.”

  “Why is she here?” the Senator roars, loud enough that it startles even me. “What does she want?”

  FIFTEEN

  In the silence that follows, the turn signal begins ticking and the car slows. There’s a thump when the Senator’s car crosses over a speed bump along the entrance to the club.

  “Listen to me, Grey,” the Senator says, voice low. “This is bigger than you. It’s bigger than me.”

  Grey sighs and it sounds tired and sad. “I know, Dad.”

  The car hits another speed bump.

  The Senator continues. “I can see no reason why the two of you need ever associate in the future. What’s in the past is in the past. Leave it there.”

  “You’re the one who made the Persephone the cornerstone of your campaign,” Grey objects.

  The car pulls to a halt. There’s a muffled conversation and the Senator tells someone—probably the valet—to wait.

  “Look.” The Senator’s voice has lost its sharp edge. “I just don’t want to see you go through it all again.” For the first time, he sounds like a father, like he actually cares about his son. “We’ve worked so hard to get to where we are. I don’t want her bringing it all back up—we almost lost you the first time and—”

  There’s a loud beep: the voice mail ending. My breath catches, totally unprepared. I stare at my phone, willing it to give me more even though I know it’s an impossible request.

  Jumping to my feet, I pace around the pool, trying to sort out the jumble of thoughts racing through my head. It felt like the Senator had confessed, but as I think back through the fragments of the conversation, I realize there’s nothing definitive.

  Nothing proving it. The Senator only talked about how this was something he couldn’t control anymore. About how he could only protect Grey so much. About how this was something bigger.

  He’d used the word attack.

  But even that wouldn’t be enough evidence to bring him down. He’d find a way to brush it off—to claim he meant the rogue wave attacking the ship. And people would believe him.

  However, the Senator had made one thing abundantly clear: I was dangerous. Because the Senator was afraid that I might uncover the truth. And for that to be a real fear, that means not only is there a truth to uncover, but that it is something within my reach.

  Suddenly, it is all too much. I crouch, digging my fists against my forehead and squeezing my eyes shut. It’s all true. A sob presses against my teeth, and I bite my lips to keep it contained.

  For four years I’ve clung to the memory of the Persephone. I’ve relived the attack over and over again. But as time passed, the memories began to erode around the edges until a small voice began to ask, “What if you’re wrong?”

  And now I realize that a part of me had hoped I was wrong. Hoped that I’d dig and dig and dig and, in the end, Grey would come out clean. Because then it would be okay for a small part of me to still pine after him.

  To believe in him.

  The Senator’s last statement echoes softly in my head. We almost lost you the first time. Frowning, I head inside and up to my room where I pull a suitcase out from under my bed. Tucked inside is a fireproof briefcase and I enter the combination to pop it open.

  Several well-worn notebooks are stacked inside, and I sort through them until I find the right one. It has an orange cover with GREYSON WELLS printed in small letters across the top. The dog-eared pages are filled with cramped handwriting—various shades of ink, my emotions at the time evident in how messy or neat the writing is.

  It’s everything I ever learned or knew about Grey; page after page of details no matter how minute. What I remember from the cruise, what I found online or learned by asking the right questions of the right people, even what I’d seen with my own eyes.

  Over the past four years I’ve become an expert on Grey. An expert on everyone in the Wells family. I have the same kind of notebook on each one of them—it’s how I knew Mrs. Wells drinks that horrid Refreshergy supplement every morning in her smoothie and what her favorite brand of bourbon is. It’s how I knew that Senator Wells’s chief of staff is named Harrison Cheefer, whose secretary is Mindy Gervistan, and that during the summer he golfs at the club at least once a week.

  I flip to the back of Grey’s notebook where I sketched a meticulous timeline of his life—before and after the Persephone. It’s stuffed with things like attendance at sailing camps, scholastic awards won, matriculation at posh boarding schools.

  But there’s a gap. For almost a year after the Persephone, there’s nothing at all. At first he’d done a few interviews—told his story to CNN and to Good Morning America. Answered questions for Brian Williams and Diane Sawyer. But those were all in the days before I was rescued.

  From the date of my rescue, Grey’s entire timeline goes blank. Sure, there are still mentions of him in a slew of articles, but nothing with any new quotes. It’s like he ceased to exist: He didn’t attend school; he didn’t go to camp; he dropped out of all extracurricular activities. No sailing. No lacrosse.

  I pull out the Senator’s notebook and compare the timelines. He was still active during that time, but less so. There weren’t nearly as many fund-raisers as he usually threw and he missed more votes in the Senate than he attended.

  Mrs. Wells’s timeline is similar—there were still the tennis matches with her club team, but she slipped in her ranking.

  Grey eventually broke his silence—at a hearing on Capitol Hill as part of an investigation into what happened with the Persephone and whether such tragedies could be avoided in the future. It was a year to the day after her sinking—no doubt some staffer found the timing to be poignant.

  The Senator had testified first and was exactly what I’d expected—smooth-talkingly arrogant. Haughty and confident in his position above the law. More than anything he’d been grandstanding, enjoying time in the national spotlight and laying the foundation for a future presidential bid.

  But I hadn’t expected the same from Grey. Because that wasn’t the kind of boy I’d met on the Persephone. Grey had been nothing like his father, even back then.

  Somehow, that had all changed. At the time of the hearing, Grey was sixteen, yet appeared totally undaunted by the cameras and rows of microphones. He’d been magnificent. Tanned, robust, assured. His voice cracked in all the right places, his recounting of the night so sincere it brought tears to more than one viewer’s eyes.

  Watching it had cut away any last hope I had of his innocence. Not that I believed he’d been somehow involved in the attack, but it was obvious that he was intentionally covering up the truth. I hated him then, the consummate actor. No hint of hesitation behind his lies. Nothing left of the guy I’d considered myself in love with.

  After that it became difficult to be charitable toward Grey. Instead, I clung to the lifeline of revenge, painting Senator Wells as enemy number one and Greyson as a close second, deserving of every bad thought and intention I could hurl their way.

  I’d written off this year-long gap as his father’s fear that Grey would trip up and confuse the narrative.
The less he talked, the less anyone could investigate.

  But now, a small part of me wonders whether he struggled like I did. Maybe he hadn’t spent the year being trained in the art of media manipulation, but instead had spent the year trying to put himself back together.

  The Senator’s words echo in my head—we almost lost you—and the Frances part of me begs to feel a minute ping of sympathy for Grey.

  I don’t allow it. Instead, I lie back on my bedroom floor and throw my arms wide. Outside, thunder booms against the windows, wind tossing the clouds like sea foam. I recall something else the Senator said: We’ve worked so hard to get to where we are.

  I close my eyes and smile. How much more delicious will it be, then, to tear it all apart?

  SIXTEEN

  That evening, I’m reheating leftovers from the fundraiser when Shepherd strolls into the kitchen from the patio. He’s obviously been out in the ocean: His chest is bare, a beach towel hangs low around his hips, and water drizzles down his sun-darkened skin. It’s difficult not to stare.

  When he sees me, his steps falter.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey,” I say back.

  “You sticking around town for a while?” he asks, expression guarded. “Or are you headed out now that the fund-raiser’s over?”

  I shrug as though I haven’t thought about it. “I’d planned on staying for the summer at least. Not sure after that. I wanted a break from school.”

  He comes closer, glancing around at the open food containers. But says nothing.

  “You hungry?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Nah, I’m headed out with some friends tonight.”

  I nod. “Oh.”

  “You want to come?” he adds, almost as an afterthought.

  “No,” I respond automatically. I’d assumed he’d invited me just to be polite, but at the disappointment that flickers across his face I wonder if it was more than that.

  My first instinct is to scramble to offer an excuse but I swallow it down. I don’t realize I’m twisting the ring on my finger until I notice Shepherd staring.

  His eyes lift to meet mine and for a moment I catch a glimpse of raw emotion. Rage and pain but more than anything else—need.

  It feels somehow like a punishment.

  If only he knew that no one can punish me worse than I can punish myself.

  To prove it to him I lift my chin slightly. “Have fun,” I tell him dismissively.

  Like a switch, he shuts his emotions away and shrugs. “Night, then.”

  The moment he leaves the room I let out a long breath. Shepherd has always been a threat. The one variable I couldn’t nail down before coming here was his feelings toward Libby. Had he moved on? Did he still care?

  Would he look too closely for the girl he lost?

  It’s that last question that makes him dangerous. Because he’s the only one left who may know Libby better than I do. And that’s why I must keep him at a distance. Even though it’s the last thing Libby would have ever wanted.

  I stare at Mrs. O’Martin’s lifeless body sprawled across the floor of the hallway. Her chest is ragged and raw. Her blood runs down my arms and across the lovely clothes Libby’d let me borrow.

  There’s movement, and when I look up, a man’s standing at the end of the hallway, where it branches off like a crossroads. I have the same jolt of wrong when I see him that I did when he kicked down the door to my family’s stateroom. I’d expected a thug—a movie villain with a sneer in a scarred face. But the man staring down the hall at me looks like he should be wearing a business suit. He looks normal. And his face is bare—no mask—which means he doesn’t expect anyone to survive to identify him.

  It all happens in a split second, though it feels like forever, every second burning itself deep. He raises the gun and I slam the door shut before Libby sees what’s left of her mother. I run, followed by the concussion of gunshots and splintering wood as the armed man shoots at the door.

  Libby’s in the master bedroom and she yells at me to hurry. I kick that door closed too as she tears open the window seat and rips free an emergency life raft in a large plastic egg and two life vests. “Here,” she says, shoving one in my hands as she yanks the other over her head. I pull mine on and struggle with the straps. All I can see is the blood now coating my front. I think there might even be bits of flesh as well. Libby’s mother’s body caking my arms.

  I think of my own father’s head shattering. The blood blooming on my mother’s chest.

  “Frances!” Libby screams in my face and that’s all it takes to bring me back. She struggles with the doors out to the balcony. I fall to my knees, straining against the dead bolt at the base of the door. Finally it pulls free.

  Behind us the man keeps shooting, another coming in behind him.

  Libby stumbles onto the balcony and heaves the plastic egg out into the darkness. But I hesitate, just for a heartbeat, out of instinct and a fear of heights. Outside the noise is the same but different. The night is full of rain and fire, screams and gunfire, but the wind picks it all up and tosses it around into a jumbled confusion.

  Libby’s lifting a leg over the railing when she looks back at me, still on one knee, just rising to follow after her. She leans toward me, her hands out. “Come on, Frances!” she shouts.

  I reach for her, and she grabs my wrists and pulls, hauling me up and toward her. My hip slams against the Plexiglas baluster. There’s this infinitesimal sliver of time in which I catch her eyes and the sphere of the moment almost expands as if we could’ve paused and just said to each other, “Okay,” and breathed. But then it’s gone.

  “Go!” she screams. “Jump!”

  She already has one leg over the railing, and I follow, gasping at what’s about to happen as I teeter over the black emptiness below. Libby must sense my terror of heights, and before I can think about what I need to do, she shoves me, hard.

  I tumble through the air, the night spinning.

  Coming awake is like that first moment I reached the surface after jumping from the Persephone and almost drowning. I’m so desperate for air that it’s difficult to breathe and I find myself gasping, choking. It’s only then that I feel hands on my shoulders and realize someone is trying to tell me it’s okay.

  I strain to jerk free but I’m trapped and I open my eyes to find a man leaning over me. His face is thrown in shadow by the light in the hallway and I don’t know who he is or where I am. In a panic I claw at his arms but he doesn’t budge. He uses one hand to trap both of my wrists, pinning them gently against my chest while he places his other hand on my cheek, pushing me to look at him.

  His eyes are like water as he stares at me and repeats the words softly but insistently, “It’s okay. You’re safe.”

  For a moment, this is all there is. Me trying to breathe as my blood screams through my body and this guy telling me I’m going to be okay. That I’m safe. I focus on him as though he’s a lifeline.

  Shepherd, I tell myself, as my mind slows enough for rational thought to trickle in. He’s wearing thin cotton pajama bottoms and nothing else. There’s concern in his eyes and something more—worry. Fear.

  I feel the way his palm slides against my cheek and I realize I’ve been crying. My throat throbs, raw and pained. I relax, sinking into the bed, and he loosens his grip.

  “You were screaming in your sleep,” he explains. He’s close enough that I feel his words brush over my face and he stays that way a moment longer before easing back on the bed, putting distance between us.

  “I’m sorry. I was . . .” I’m about to say that I was dreaming but that’s not really true. I don’t dream anymore. I remember. Over and over again, every time I fall asleep I’m trapped back in the ocean.

  My hands tremble and he must notice because he’s still holding my wrists against my chest. Belatedly, he relea
ses me and immediately I miss the warmth of his touch. The comfort of it.

  It’s easy to understand how Libby could have been so in love with him.

  Just then, the storm that threatened throughout the evening finally crashes to shore, a fierce pummeling of wind and rain blowing wide the French doors I’d left cracked before going to bed. Before I can even free myself from the covers, Shepherd leaps up and dashes around the bed. The muscles along his arms strain as he struggles to force the doors shut while I race to throw the lock.

  He turns to face me, damp from the rain, droplets of water sliding down his bare chest. The lights flicker once, twice, and then they blow, leaving us in darkness punctuated by the reflection of lightning against the storm-soaked night.

  I start toward the bathroom to find a towel but his words stop me. “Why, Libby?” He’s panting slightly from the effort of fighting against the doors. “Why didn’t you ever write back?”

  SEVENTEEN

  I’ve been expecting the question and have an answer ready. Something about the therapists’ requirements that I not focus on the past, that I embrace the future. But when I try to tell him this, I realize that I can’t. I begin twisting Libby’s ring around my finger.

  He’d written e-mails, letters, texts. He’d called. There’d been such pain in his words that eventually turned to desperation and anger. He didn’t understand then and clearly still doesn’t.

  His face as he waits for my answer is anxious, both afraid and pleading. I’d hoped that after four years he’d have let Libby go but I should have known better.

  All I can do is say, “I’m sorry.”

  My response is so clearly not the answer he’d been expecting and frustration burns hot in his eyes. I can feel his scrutiny, sense him trying to gather the pieces of who I am now and compare them against who I was then.

  Outside, the wind shrieks around the boom of thunder. He waits for me to say something more. To explain myself better. But there’s nothing I can offer him.