Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady)

by Vanessa Grant

  “Come on! I need help outside. I think there might be a boat wrecked on Grey Islet!”

  “What?” He was sitting now, coming alert quickly. “A wreck?” He took his pants from Lyle’s hands and started dressing. “What kind of a boat? How many people on board?”

  “I’m not sure there’s a boat at all, but I saw something over there. Get your things on and come down to the north end of the island.”

  Scruff pushed his nose into Russ’s lap and earned a hefty shove from Russ’s muscled hand. “Get out of here, you mongrel,” muttered Russ without any heat.

  The wind had shifted to beat on Lyle’s back as he walked down the boardwalk with Scruff. Once he reached the helicopter pad, he used the flashlight beam to find his way over the rocks. He didn’t use the spotlight. Not yet.

  He stopped at the water’s edge, looking down to where the water moved sluggishly, angrily, in the lee of the island. He switched the brilliant spotlight on, lifting it, trying to settle the beam above the water, onto the rocks of Grey Islet.

  “Looks like part of a sail,” said Russ as he came up behind Lyle.

  “That’s what I thought. Hold the spot, will you? I want to try the binoculars. I tried earlier in the beam of the tower light, but it sweeps too fast for a good look.”

  Russ braced himself sturdily against the wind and held the spotlight fairly steady, the beam spreading as it crossed the water to Grey Islet.

  “It is a sail!” Lyle’s voice was thrown away by the wind. “A mast, broken on the rocks, and what looks like the bow section of a boat. It’s smashed to bits – a real mess!”

  Russ lowered the light. “If anybody was on it— in this storm, any loose wreckage, any bodies, would be blown north.”

  North. Deep water. No towns. No villages. No islands until the Alaska Panhandle.

  Lyle turned away from the water. “I’m going to launch the inflatable and take a look out there.”

  “In the dark? In this storm? You can’t go out there!”

  “I’ll tie a rope on and leave one end on shore here in case I can’t get back under my own power.”

  Russ followed across the rocks, grasped Lyle’s muscular arm with his own hard hand. “You’re crazy, Lyle! You’ll see as much from shore here as you could—”

  “Maybe.” Lyle ignored the attempt at restraint, freed his arm and walked swiftly away, throwing back, “Get the polyprop rope from the engine room, will you? I’ll bring the inflatable down.”

  Six hundred feet of rope. Lyle knew it wouldn’t let him get even half way to Grey Islet, but he had to get out there on the water. Why, he wasn’t sure.

  He took a minute to return to the radio, to tell Murray, “I’ve spotted wreckage of a sailboat on Grey Islet. We’re still looking for signs of survivors.”

  Murray’s response was the practiced calm of a man accustomed to emergencies. “I’ll notify RCC. We’ll put out a request for mariners to come to your assistance. Can you get over there?”

  “Not in this storm. I’m going to look around in the calm area, in the lee of the island, but that’s all I can do.”

  Murray’s voice was ringing out over the international distress frequency on Lyle’s marine VHF radio upstairs, as Lyle dragged the inflatable out of the basement and threw it into the trailer behind a small tractor.

  “…Relay. Mayday Relay. Mayday Relay. An unknown sailing vessel is reported wrecked on Grey Islet, one mile north of Green Island Lighthouse. Mariners in the area are requested to…”

  Lyle doubted if many other mariners were foolish enough to be out in this storm. Certainly most of the fishermen knew better. The fool at the helm of this sailboat obviously hadn’t had the sense to stay safely in harbor until the storm abated.

  The fishermen and tugboat crews knew the dangers, but Lyle had seen too many ill-prepared pleasure boats setting sail for Alaska as if it were a weekend picnic.

  The roar of the tractor’s engine was swallowed by the wind. He had to drive slowly on the boardwalk. The wind was catching at the bulk of the tractor and trailer, threatening to push him off the boardwalk onto the rocky beach below.

  They fastened the rope to a surveyor’s tripod on the shore, then Lyle inflated the dinghy and climbed into it.

  Within moments he found a floating orange life ring. He hooked it with the boat hook and brought it aboard. The words Lady Harriet were painted on the round ring.

  He glanced back to shore. Russ, as instructed, was searching the water with the binoculars and spotlight. Lyle had a smaller spotlight and he was making his own search from water level.

  A plastic dinner plate floating upside down. He didn’t try to retrieve that.

  Surprising that any of the wreckage had floated this way, with the wind so strong from the south. It must be some combination of tidal current and back eddies from the wind as it bent around the islands.

  His radio crackled urgently. Lyle pulled the portable off his belt, holding it close to his face.

  “Go ahead, Russ!”

  “Something yellow in the water to your right!”

  Lyle moved his spotlight, sweeping the wave tops. As his dinghy rose on the swell, he spotted a flash of reflective yellow, then lost it again.

  Yellow. It was a color commonly used for life jackets and survival gear.

  It took a long time to get the dinghy over to the floating yellow. The rope dragged back, pulling against him, making the rowing difficult. He considered untying the rope, but decided against it. Even in the shelter of the island, the water was getting wilder. A fourteen-foot inflatable was no vessel to take on the high seas in a gale.

  The body was floating face up, sprawled in the water, wearing the anti-exposure flotation coveralls that were so popular amongst the fishermen.

  Lyle thrust hard with the paddles. The rope pulled tight. He tried to reach the yellow sailor with the boat hook, but missed by several feet.

  “Russ, give me more rope!”

  “Hold on!” cracked the radio. “Don’t pull on it for a minute!”

  Lyle sat helpless in the dinghy as he drifted farther away from the floating yellow body.

  “Okay, go ahead, but for God’s sake, don’t pull too hard! I’ve got it wrapped around a log! I think it’ll hold!”

  The wind was against him now, swirling up in a back eddy, pushing the dinghy away from the yellow body. Despite Russ’s warning, Lyle pushed hard with the oars, swift, powerful strokes that drove him closer. He still couldn’t quite get there, but— He timed his strokes carefully, getting the dinghy surging forward, dropping the paddle and swinging the boat hook out over the body.

  The water surged unexpectedly. The boat hook swung frighteningly close to the floating man’s head. Then, for a miraculous second, everything turned calm and still. Lyle slipped the hook across the middle of the suit, managing to catch it in the belt.

  He pulled slowly on the hook, not wanting to destabilize the floating body. God knew, it didn’t look alive, but if he pulled too hard it might turn face down. Those cruiser suits were comfortable, warm, and they floated – but they did nothing to keep an unconscious person’s head out of water.

  The body swung against the side of the inflatable, dislodging an oar which promptly drifted away.

  The radio crackled. Lyle couldn’t spare a hand for it, so he ignored it. He had to get a better grip. He reached over the back of the suit, managed to close his numbing fingers over the belt. Thankfully those belts were designed for this sort of thing. The tough nylon webbing would hold.

  With one hand on the belt, the other slipped under an inanimate arm, he leaned back and pulled hard.

  At first nothing happened, then the suit started to slide over the edge of the dinghy. As it came free of the water, he was suddenly pulling too hard. The body was pushing him, throwing him onto the floor of the dinghy.

  He landed, gasping, pinned down by the yellow suit and the body in it. Water poured out of the suit, drenching the parts of him that weren’t already wet.
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  He closed his eyes for a second, taking a breath for strength, getting ready to push the man off him and try to start some form of artificial respiration.

  Then he felt the warm breath on his face.

  The body was alive, but the skin deathly cold.

  Hypothermia. In these waters a man without protection could die of the cold in less than twenty minutes.

  But this was no man.

  The face was fine boned, heart shaped, the long lashes fanning out over pale cheeks, full lips blue with the cold.

  Was the cold numbing his brain, creating delusions?

  No. It was the same woman he’d seen last year, her lively face now pale and lifeless.

  He turned to lift the radio, to tell Russ he’d lost an oar and ask to be pulled in. Then he realized that Russ had been watching, was already using the rope to pull the inflatable back towards shore.

  Lyle bent close to the face of the woman in his arms, checking again that she was still breathing.

  She’d been staying at the Holiday Inn last year. Lyle had been there too, on the same floor, staying at the hotel and visiting Robyn twice daily in the nearby Vancouver General Hospital.

  A small blond woman, perhaps in her late twenties, full of lively energy and confidence, with a hint of the vulnerability he’d sensed behind the smiles and the laughter.

  She’d had one white streak of hair at her temple. He’d pondered that lock of white hair interrupting the blond. It had the stylish look of a hairdresser’s salon, yet he couldn’t see those lively blue eyes belonging to a woman who needed the vanity of an artificial dye job.

  They’d passed in the hallways. He’d said hello and she’d responded. Friendly enough, but her eyes and her voice had acknowledged his attraction to her and rejected it.

  A brief fantasy. Ships that passed in the night. He’d laughed at himself then, for dreaming dreams and thinking in clichés. The reality had been Lyle and Robyn returning to this lighthouse haven, Robyn recovering from yet another surgical invasion on her body.

  The reality had been Cynthia McLeod, a rather futile attempt to find romance where none existed. In some unfortunate way, Cynthia had reminded him too much of Hazel.

  Lyle stared down at the unconscious woman.

  How had she come to be here, a victim of shipwreck on his island? He’d thought her a restless city girl, far too civilized for the high seas.

  The coveralls had protected her, preserved some of her body warmth.

  What other injuries? A gash on her face testified that she had been battered against something – a rock, a log? As the lighthouse beam swept over her, Lyle found evidence that more than her face had taken a beating. The suit was torn in several places.

  What damage had he done to her, roughly yanking her into the dinghy?

  He couldn’t tell, but he would have to move her again, to carry her across the rocks, put her into the back of the tractor.

  There was a frightening, awkward moment as Lyle passed the unconscious woman to Russ. A wave pulled the dinghy away from shore. Lyle started to lose his balance. Russ caught at the woman and somehow lifted her out of Lyle’s arms just in time.

  Then he jumped out of the dinghy himself and got her in his arms again, carried her over the rocks and laid her gently down in the trailer.

  “I’ve got to warm her up!” he shouted to his brother as he started the tractor. “Get word to coastguard – the boat was the Lady Harriet; I found a life ring – then see if you can spot any other survivors— oh, but tell the coastguard we need a doctor on the radio!”

  If only there was a doctor here!

  Don’t move an accident victim. Call for the doctor, the ambulance. She might have broken ribs, perhaps internal injuries.

  Hypothermia kills. He had to get her warm.

  He put her on his bed, stripped off the padded nylon suit and the clothes below, cursing himself for his masculine reaction to her small, beautifully formed body, the unexpectedly full thrust of her naked breasts, the woman’s curve of hip and buttocks.

  He found his fingers lingering on the full curve of her torso, the thrust of her hip.

  Stop fantasizing!

  He took his hands from her body, but couldn’t stop his mind. From the first time he’d seen her, he’d been able to imagine this woman in his arms, their bodies twisted together in a dance of love. She’d be warm, passionate. Right now she was motionless as death, but he knew she was a warm, passionate, loving kind of woman.

  A woman who belonged to another man.

  On her left hand she wore a broad gold wedding band.

  He should have expected that. How could a woman like this be free, not claimed by some lucky man? He wouldn’t be the only man who had felt this way about her.

  Without even knowing her.

  Crazy, that’s what he was! A crazy lightkeeper.

  “Where’d she come from?” whispered a small voice behind him as he lowered the unconscious woman into the warm water of the bathtub.

  “The water,” he answered absently.

  “How’d she get in the water?” He glanced up and found Robyn standing beside him, idly rubbing her weak leg with the palm of her hand.

  “Her boat smashed on Grey Islet.”

  “There’s blood on her. Is she dead?”

  “No… No!”

  She must have been swept up against the rocks at one point. Her leg had a deep gash that was starting to bleed in the warm water. There was a big scrape on her side that might mean broken ribs, and a cut on her face that would be painful healing.

  If only she would open her eyes!

  Chapter 2

  The warmth came slowly, like pain returning with wakefulness. With the warmth came the dreams. George shifted, rolling, trying to escape the voices that echoed both inside and outside the dream.

  Scott’s voice, firm and sure and loving.

  No, that was wrong. Not Scott. She’d been sailing, hadn’t she? Alone?

  Collections of odd words isolated from reality.

  “…issued a notice to mariners, but with the storm and the dark… gale warning, building to a storm. No letup…”

  “…no identification on her. No idea… must have been others on board… still unconscious… hypothermia and lord knows what else! …don’t think any actual broken bones, unless the ribs…”

  “…vital signs… breathing better…”

  Men’s voices. Who were they talking about? Her?

  No, she was dreaming. She had been sailing, but she was at anchor now, dreaming the voices.

  She felt the water surging under Lady Harriet, sweeping her away from the pain.

  Today… Funny, mixing up the days. Today was… Prince Rupert this morning. A fisherman warning her, “Storm coming. Southeaster.”

  She’d laughed, shaking her short blond curls. “There’s no storm forecast.”

  “Gales in Chatham Sound before night,” he’d insisted.

  She hadn’t told him that she didn’t really care if there was a gale.

  A ferry had passed her in the harbor entrance. Someone on the bridge had looked down at her small sailboat, hailing her with a friendly greeting.

  “You’re looking pretty down there, Lady Harriet!”

  The ferry had turned south. George had sailed her little ship off to the north once she was clear of the dangers.

  It had been one of the better days, with the sun high in a cloudy sky and the water blue and exciting. Scott’s memory was a gentle sadness, not paining her.

  Sailing alone was hard work; it had kept her from thinking.

  When the wind had freshened and the clouds drew together, she’d scrambled out on deck to take down the Genoa, putting up a smaller sail in its place, hanging on desperately as the deck heaved violently underfoot.

  She’d crawled back to the cockpit, scared, but feeling a wild surge of triumph that she’d managed a difficult job alone.

  When the wind picked up even more she was singing, riding wild, north to
Alaska…

  “Wake up! Hey, sweetheart, you must wake… have to know about…”

  The pain surged back, covering her until she could hardly hear the voice trying to pull her back. Not Scott’s voice.

  Silence.

  She rested, letting her body sag against the mattress. In her mind, she heard music. She let the hurt seep away, drifting until the bright light penetrated her eyelids.

  She moved her head, trying to escape the brilliance. Waves of pain from her chest shocked her into immobility.

  Something on her head. She lifted a weak hand, felt some barrier of metal.

  Hands on her hair.

  She opened her eyes, saw headphones in small hands. A light voice whispered, “You’re ‘wake now?”

  A small girl, long blond hair floating around her shoulders, pale blue eyes staring.

  A dream?

  Where was this?

  …sailing, riding the waves as the wind freshened to a storm, then…

  “Did you like the music?”

  “Music?” She focused on the girl. How old? Nine? Ten?

  “It’s my Walkman.” She held a disk player cradled carefully in her hands. “I like the music when I don’ feel good.”

  Talking seemed so complicated. She nodded. Her face hurt.

  Where was she? Lady Harriet?

  The girl bounced slightly on the bed. George tried not to wince at the motion.

  “What’s your name? I’m Robyn.”

  What had happened to her? She felt as if she’d fallen down a flight of stairs.

  “Your name?” asked the girl again.

  “George.” Her tongue was swollen, her throat scratchy.

  “That’s a boy’s name.”

  George smiled and found that even her lips hurt.

  When she closed her eyes, the pain receded.

  The next time she opened her eyes, the light from the ceiling seemed dimmer. The little girl was gone. In her place, two men were standing at the foot of her bed. They were both fair and broad, both wearing orange Mustang jackets, and both staring down at her.

  She tried to resolve the image into something that made sense.

  “Delirious,” she muttered.