The Final Judgment

by Richard North Patterson

  Warmed by the memory, guilty at her willfulness, Caroline set sail.

  The sky was cloudless, the breeze stiff and constant. She did not check the weather.

  The sail to Tarpaulin Cove was brisk and sure. Caroline felt a sense of her own mastery. Running before the wind, she headed toward the lighthouse.

  At the head of the cove, Caroline moored the catboat, turned to measure the expanse of ocean she had crossed with such ease. On this sparkling day, she still could see the Vineyard.

  She would take her time, Caroline told herself, do everything she would have done had her mother not deserted her. She ate her sandwich, drank her Coke, legs dangling over the bow. Only when she had finished did she jump into the bracing water and swim confidently to shore.

  The beach was empty, the sand warm. She lay there lost in her own thoughts, the ocean lapping at her legs and feet.

  She should not be angry at her mother, Caroline decided. Things that Nicole could not avoid or help had happened well before Caroline was born. Caroline would take the good days as they came, fight the disappointment when her mother slipped away. She wished it seemed that simple for her father.

  When at last she looked at the ocean, a long finger of fog crept the line between sky and water.

  Caroline sat up, surprised. Knew at once that she must leave long before she had planned.

  Forgetting her parents, she swam quickly to the catboat. As she clambered up the stern, the fog was darker, a dense bank rising from the water between Caroline and home.

  She set sail toward the fog. The varnished deck of the catboat still glistened in the sunlight; she would sail through the fog, Caroline assured herself, and see the Vineyard through the sunlight on the other side.

  Sails creaking, Caroline reached the first seeping mists. The water was suddenly gray, and then fog and solitude closed around her.

  Her face was damp and chill. The catboat plowed forward, knifing the water Caroline could scarcely see. But she was on open sea, she told herself; unless someone rammed her, there was little danger.

  Suddenly, the fog was no longer sitting on the water but whistling past her, breaking up before her eyes. Startled, Caroline tried to remember what Channing said this meant.

  Just before she saw the black line of clouds racing toward her on the horizon, she knew.

  A squall.

  She had only minutes. Now she remembered clearly what her father had told her—with the thunderstorm would come a driving rain, savage winds from every direction. She saw no sailboats on the water.

  For an instant, Caroline was paralyzed. Then the other thing that Channing had said came back: the winds could capsize her. Panicky, she crawled along the ledge toward the bow, one hand over the other, clawing at the handrail. As the storm swept toward her, she loosened the rigging and let the sail drop.

  Then the squall hit.

  The first wave threw her from the bow, grabbing at the halyard as she fell on her side. She cried out; rain lashed her face. In a moment, the seventy-mile-per-hour winds would be upon her: already the boat bobbed like a cork, waves swamping the cockpit.

  Caroline threw herself onto the deck, and then the next wave covered the catboat.

  As Caroline grasped the wrought-iron tiller, the surge of water ripped her seaward, turning the boat on its side. Her muscles screamed with pain. There was a quickening surge beneath her, and then the boat righted itself in a spasmodic shiver.

  Blinded by seawater, Caroline felt the primal ocean envelop her. The next fierce wave would tear her hands from the tiller and sweep her out to sea.

  She clenched the tiller in both hands, eyes stinging with salt and tears from the pelting rain that scoured her face. Through half-open slits she saw the rope swirling in the flooded cockpit.

  In her mind, Channing Masters ordered Caroline to lash herself to the tiller.

  She grasped at the line with her right hand. The boat knifed into the air. Caroline fell back, head striking the floorboard. The cracking sound filled her ears, and then everything was black and lost and nauseous in the pit of her stomach. With a will of their own, the fingers of one hand still grasped the tiller.

  Water pounded her face, seemed to throw the line into her hand. She sat upright; from a great distance, her father’s voice told her again to coil the line around her waist and lash her body to the tiller.

  In the whirling boat, she snaked the rope between the spokes of the tiller and around her waist. A knot—the work of instinct—and Caroline and the boat were one.

  A wall of ocean hit. Caroline wrenched upward, was caught by the rope, ribs cracking against the wheel. She prayed that her knot would hold, that the catboat would not capsize and trap her beneath the ocean, a captive, lungs filling with water until she drowned. A bolt of lightning struck the mast, the roar of thunder deafened her. Caroline shut her eyes and prayed to no one. The boat surged and plummeted at random, wind singing in her ears, rain driving sideways into her face.

  And then it stopped.

  Caroline opened her eyes.

  A last thin darkness passed over her, and then the air was crisp and sparkling. Caroline began to cry.

  No, she told herself. With clumsy hands she freed herself. Her head throbbed, her rib cage felt raw.

  Then she could not seem to move. It was as if, in some deep trauma, she was helpless.

  Straining, she rose from her paralysis and moved haltingly to the rigging. As the sails rose above her, a fresh wind made the canvas crackle and then fill. She could see the Vineyard ahead of her.

  Numb, Caroline took the tiller again. Her eyes were swollen with salt.

  A second fog was seeping across the sound.

  Caroline sailed toward it in the southeast wind. The fog moved slowly, spreading across the water. This time, Caroline sensed, there would be no storm, no sound.

  Breathing deeply, she made the most of her last ten minutes in sunlight, and then entered the fog again.

  It was different. Silent, still, windless. Her sail flapped and withered on the mast.

  Blindly, Caroline drifted with a tide she could only feel.

  The tide could sweep her to shore, she knew, break the catboat on the rocks. Through the fog came the haunting toll of the first bell buoy. She was not sure where she was.

  Bearings lost, she drifted.

  All that she could do was listen to the eerie sound of the buoys slowly clanging, nearer and nearer, until she knew that she was inside them, closer to shore. She sat at the helm in the rear of the cockpit, trying to keep the catboat from the shoals of West Chop, hoping for the breezes that came in midafternoon.

  She could sense the cliffs coming closer, feel the choppiness of shallow water. And then—it seemed on schedule—her sails flapped with a gust of wind.

  Caroline grasped the tiller. Tilting leeward, the catboat sailed into sunlight, clearing the promontory of West Chop.

  It was as though the Vineyard had appeared by magic through a sheer curtain. She could see the mansions of West Chop, the distant masts spiking the harbor at Vineyard Haven. Faint and exhilarated, Caroline grinned as if she would never stop.

  She could not wait to tell her mother, to see her mother. All memory of anger had been swept away by the storm, the wind, the enormity of survival. The sail home was endless, a blur.

  Docking, Caroline forced herself through the rituals of seamanship, bursting with all that she would say to Nicole. Then she hurried stiffly to the, house, sore and bruised and filled with love and gratitude.

  “Mother,” she called out.

  The house was silent. “Mom,” she called again.

  Perhaps she was asleep. Turning, Caroline crept down the hallway to her mother’s bedroom. It was only as she turned the knob, too late to stop, that Caroline suddenly knew what she would find.

  Next to her mother’s face, wide-eyed and startled, the head of Paul Nerheim stared at Caroline.

  Their bodies were frozen. Nerheim on his elbows, sheets to his waist; Nicole
beneath him, legs apart, the tips of her breasts still touching Nerheim’s chest. Their stillness seemed so fragile that Caroline could not move.

  “Please.” Nicole’s eyes were pleading. “Leave us now.”

  Caroline’s legs felt weak beneath her. “My father…”

  Nicole’s eyes shut. “Please.”

  Caroline backed slowly from the door.

  Wandering to the living room, she slumped in a chair and waited. She did not know whether the nausea she felt was for herself or for her father.

  In front of her stood Paul Nerheim.

  His hair was mussed, his clothes not right. His voice was soft, tentative. “I’m sorry, Caroline. And so is she.”

  Caroline simply stared at him.

  He shrugged, helpless. “Your mother wants to see you.”

  Caroline straightened in her chair. With a coldness she did not know was hers, she said, “Get out. Now.”

  Their eyes met. Slowly, Nerheim nodded, and then he turned and left the house.

  Three

  Moments later, Nicole appeared.

  She was wearing a silk bathrobe and an air of composure that, to Caroline, seemed fragile. Her mother sat across from her, studying her closely, and then Caroline’s disarray seemed to register in her eyes.

  “What happened to you, Caroline? Your face is bruised.”

  Caroline folded her arms. She said nothing; it was too late for Nicole’s concern, and the idea that she could be so cheaply bought filled her with contempt and anger.

  Nicole seemed to know this. “All right,” she said softly. “You wish me to explain myself.”

  Caroline was unsure of this: what she wanted most was for the last half hour to vanish like the nightmare that it seemed. But she had no words to say this.

  Nicole crossed her legs, arranging her robe with a distracted air. In the light through the window, her face looked thin and pale. “What I did was wrong,” she said at last. “More than anything, because you saw it.”

  Caroline’s voice was cold. “I’m sorry I surprised you, Mother. I know you weren’t expecting me.”

  Her daughter’s words seemed to strike Nicole like a slap. Her eyes flew open, and then she sat back, folding her hands. “Do you expect me to flay myself, Caroline? Would that make things better?”

  It left Caroline without words again.

  “No?” Nicole’s voice held gentle irony. “Then perhaps I can trouble you to listen.”

  Caroline shrugged. But she felt her heart race.

  “I did not expect this moment,” Nicole continued softly, “and I have no speech prepared. Especially for a daughter who loves her father as much as you love Channing. So if I am tactless, or inartful, please forgive me.”

  Caroline filled with a kind of dread. Her face was stone.

  Pausing, Nicole seemed to swallow. “There is nothing wrong with Channing, Caroline, but that he married me. Perhaps it was his mistake to ask. Certainly, it was my mistake to accept.”

  Caroline stiffened in her chair. “He gave you a life, Mother.”

  There was a first glint pf passion in her mother’s eyes. “He gave me his life—” She stopped herself abruptly, forced her voice to lower. “I saw a gentle man, Caroline. Perhaps paternalistic, but kind. What I did not see was the frightened man. Frightened of women. Frightened of whatever he could not control—”

  “Father’s not frightened.” Caroline felt her mystification become anger. “People look up to him. Everyone I know.”

  Slowly, Nicole nodded. “In his world, yes. That is his strength.”

  Caroline gave her mother a look of cold rejection. Nicole’s voice was soft again, as if she was willing herself to ignore the evidence of Caroline’s eyes. “I was the choice, Caroline, of a frightened man. Young and rootless, an alien in my own country, shattered by what I had lost. Not just a family, but a world that once made sense to me. I no longer had any world of my own….”

  Nicole paused. Her voice was stoic; it did not ask for sympathy. But part of Caroline, just by listening, felt dirty and complicit. She watched her mother in silence.

  “Channing,” Nicole continued quietly, “believed in his own kindness. But he also believed that I would never defy him, or leave him, or even question him.” Nicole looked down. “As a man, or as a lover.”

  Caroline stiffened, and then Nicole gazed at her directly. “On all counts, Caroline, I have been a disappointment. So perhaps you could say Channing healed me.”

  Buried in her voice was a trace of bitterness so faint that Caroline could not detect whether it was directed at her father or at Nicole herself. But Caroline seized on it. “Quit trying to turn me against Father.” Her voice rose. “You don’t deserve him—”

  “Don’t I?” Nicole burst out. “With his fear, possessiveness, and anger? I would think you would find me more than deserving.”

  Oddly, the sudden outburst changed the balance between them; Caroline felt her confusion become a chill self-control. “I would never have said that, Mother. Not until I saw you in bed with him. So I guess Father has always understood you better.”

  Nicole seemed to flinch. “I know,” she said in a husky voice, “that I’ve been no great mother to you. But please take the good from your father without letting him control you. Because the danger is that he will—your life and your thoughts.”

  At once, Caroline felt the sudden desire to lash out so that her mother would stop. “Damn you,” she screamed. “Do you think I need Father to tell me that I just found you fucking Nerheim—”

  “Caroline, please.” White-faced, Nicole stood. “If this is what we must discuss, at least understand me as a woman. I know you must have begun to feel these things yourself.”

  Caroline felt herself flush. Pausing, Nicole looked down at her intently. “I have little that is my own, Caroline. But I remain a woman, with a woman’s needs.” Her voice was calm now. “It is a fact in which, as a man, your father has little interest. Whatever his flaws, Paul Nerheim does. And that, to Channing, is the mirror of his own inadequacy.”

  The sound of her mother speaking Nerheim’s name made this dispassionate shaming of her father unendurable to Caroline. “Don’t talk like that. Not about my father,” she cried out. “He saved you. Do you think what happened to your parents is some kind of excuse? It’s like ‘They were murdered, so I get to hurt anyone I want to hurt—’”

  Abruptly, Caroline caught herself. The look on her mother’s face was too terrible to watch.

  Folding her arms, Caroline looked away. Her mother’s voice, soft and clear, seemed to come from far away. “So I’ve wounded you that badly….”

  Caroline could not answer, or even look at her.

  There was a long silence, and then she felt Nicole’s fingers rest gently on her shoulder. Her voice was softer yet. “I know that you will never tell your father, Caroline. But I won’t make you my accomplice. Paul Nerheim will not set foot inside this house again.”

  Caroline did not answer. It was a moment before she realized that her mother was gone.

  Alone, Caroline went to the porch overlooking the water, and wept until she had no tears left.

  For the next three days, they barely spoke.

  Caroline had no wish to be near her mother, or with friends. She left the house early: on the first day, she willed herself to sail to Tarpaulin Cove and back; for the two days following, she hiked and cycled alone. Nicole made no approach to her.

  Caroline did not know, or wish to know, how Nicole Masters spent her days. From their silent dinners, Caroline had the sense of a woman who seemed to have gone somewhere far away, until she would suddenly catch her mother watching her with veiled curiosity. At night, Caroline could hear her pacing the house.

  In a week, Caroline knew, Channing Masters was due to join them.

  Caroline found the thought unbearable. She could not imagine them dining together, every silence laden with Channing’s ignorance, her mother’s guilt, and the knowledge that Caroline dev
outly wished she could erase. But the only person she could say this to was Nicole.

  Finally, Caroline could not stand their silence. On the fourth afternoon, returning from a bike ride, she went to her mother’s room.

  At the moment Caroline saw Nicole, she froze.

  Her mother sat at her dressing table, her fine-boned face reflected in a makeup mirror. With her left hand, she carefully applied eyeliner to the corners of her bright-green eyes.

  Caroline’s voice was flat. “Going out?”

  “Yes.” Her mother’s expression did not change. “Until midnight or so, perhaps. So you needn’t wait up for me.”

  The moment was strange to Caroline: the irony in her mother’s voice; the intent look in her eyes; the light on her face. Nicole did not turn; to Caroline, it was as if her mother was lost to her.

  “What are we going to do?” Caroline asked abruptly. “When Father comes.”

  Nicole moved the eyeliner a fraction, gazing narrow-eyed into the glass. “I haven’t considered it. What we always do, I suppose.”

  To Caroline, this did not ring true; even Nicole’s tone had the sound of an evasion. “ ‘What we always do,’” she said in desperation, “won’t be like that for me anymore. I don’t think I could stand it.”

  For the first time, Nicole turned to her, asking softly, “But what can I do, Caroline? Now that you know. Tell him for you? Or simply leave him?” She paused. “Which would mean, once Channing was done with me, that I must leave you as well. For he would never let me take you.”

  Caroline felt a tremor in her body. “Then don’t go out, at least. Please.”

  Nicole studied her. “I must,” she said finally. “At least for tonight.”

  Caroline could say nothing.

  Nicole regarded her and then turned to the mirror, more intently than before. It was as if she did not care to look at Caroline’s face.

  Caroline drifted to the sun porch.

  She gazed out at the waves, swelling, lapping, dying on the beach beneath them. There was something hypnotic about water, Caroline realized; as frightening as the ocean could be, its timelessness soothed her.

  Her mother’s footsteps sounded on the porch.