She groaned.
“I’ll buy you a new one.”
“That’s not very helpful at the moment,” she told him. “I was using that to navigate.”
He looked out the front of the boat. There were a few sailboats in the distance, and a motorboat toting a water-skier, and to the left, nearer to the shore, the harbors were speckled by buoys, each one capped by a resting seagull. The town he’d so desperately wanted to move to only a moment ago had slipped behind them, lost for now.
“We’ll be able to see it from here, though, right?”
Ellie shrugged. “It’s not like a train stop,” she said. “The towns aren’t labeled. I’m not sure how we’re gonna figure out which one it is.”
“I’m sure it’ll have a bunch of big houses.”
“I guess so,” she said, but the corners of her mouth were turned down, and her eyes gave away her worry.
“We can always ask someone.”
“How?” she asked. “By smoke signal?”
“We’ll wave them down.”
She glanced at her watch with a sigh. “It’s only eleven,” she said. “It’ll probably still be a while, anyway.”
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll just keep an eye out, then.”
“Okay,” she repeated, and above their heads, a seagull let out a long cry. Graham tipped his head back to watch, wondering what they must look like from the sky, dozens of boats spread far along the water, a mirror image of the birds fanned out across the sky. And in the middle of it all, the Go Fish, moving steadfastly past a series of identical towns as it carried them farther and farther up the coast, leaving only a trail of foam in its wake, like bread crumbs meant to guide them home again.
–Know any good sailing jokes?
–I’ve got one about seagulls.
–Okay.
–Why do seagulls fly over the sea?
–Why?
–Because if they flew over the bay, they’d be bagels.
The sun followed them like a spotlight, making everything shimmer under the intensity of its glare. Ellie could feel the warmth across her shoulders and on the back of her neck, the tip of her nose, and the pale line of scalp that was visible against her red hair. It had been more than two hours now, and still they were drifting.
Graham scratched at his forehead, which was already starting to burn. He’d forgotten to pick up sunblock earlier, and they were now out of water too. Every so often, they shifted to a lower gear, slowing enough to wave at a passing boat and then shouting their question across the blue space between them. Sometimes, an answer was lobbed back at them—probably another half hour at most, or four more towns, tops—but other times, they were met with only blank stares or helpless shrugs.
Ellie tried to tamp down the anxiety that rose and fell like a parachute inside her. She wanted to be back in Henley, drinking pink lemonade out of star-spangled plastic cups. But if she was going to do this at all—and she had to, not just for the money, but for other reasons too, for all the things that had been left unsaid all these years—then she wanted to do it now.
Behind her, she heard a tapping sound, and she turned to see Graham with one hand on the wheel. He was frowning down at the little dials that dotted the dashboard, and as she watched, he lifted a finger to drum at one of them again. Beneath her feet, Ellie could feel something deep within the boat groan in resistance as they slowed down.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, walking over to join him. She put a hand on the throttle and tipped it forward, but rather than the expected surge, there was a soft sputtering, an alarming rattle, and then the engine cut out entirely, and the needle that Graham had been studying so intently—which Ellie now realized, too late, was the gas gauge—fell onto the E with a stiff-armed finality.
Graham looked over at her, his mouth forming a little o of surprise, and for a brief and fragile moment, Ellie felt a lump rise in her throat. Her eyes stung from the salt and she could feel a sunburn setting in, so hot it made her shiver. Here they were, floating up the coast with not a drop of gas left in their stolen boat. Behind them, there were reporters and photographers and consequences. There was Ellie’s mom and Graham’s manager and the awful memory of last night. But what lay ahead of them wasn’t much better, and now they were stuck somewhere in between, and her eyes burned with tears at the helplessness of the situation.
Beside her, she could feel Graham waiting for her reaction, holding himself perfectly still, like a deer caught between crosshairs. But when she finally gathered herself enough to look back at him, she was astonished to discover that he was trying not to laugh.
“It’s not funny,” she said. He tried to compose his face, but he couldn’t help himself, and a laugh escaped him. He looked like a movie star then, with eyes as blue as the water that surrounded them, his head crowned by the sun so that he seemed as wavy and indistinct as all the rest of it. She had a sudden urge to stand on her tiptoes and kiss him, and she could feel her panic melting beneath his gaze. After all, it seemed to be saying, what better excuse was there to stay out here for hours, just the two of them, at the whim of the tides?
“It’s a little funny,” he said, and she moved closer, taking his hands in hers.
“Maybe a little,” she admitted, but just as he lowered his head, just before she could rise up and kiss him, the air was split by the sound of a nearby siren, and they both turned to see a coast guard boat barreling in their direction.
Graham dropped her hands, and Ellie staggered over to lean against the side, her eyes wide as she watched its approach, the prow raised high in the air as the water churned all around it, alarming in its rush.
“What are the odds,” Graham said, “that they’ve realized we’re out of gas and are just coming over to help?”
“Slim,” Ellie said, her heart thumping hard. She’d never so much as stolen a pack of gum before, never sneaked a cigarette or cheated on a test, and now here she was, about to get caught stealing a boat. It wouldn’t matter that she wasn’t the one to have stolen it. She’d gone along with the plan. Because Graham had stolen it for her, and she could almost feel the guilt scrawled all over her face as she watched the gap between the two boats grow smaller. Theirs was more of a ship, really, huge and white and angular, with blaring red lights along the top. When they were close enough, a man in dark sunglasses and a bright orange Windbreaker raised a megaphone.
“Please remain where you are,” he said, the words crackling. “Do not move your vessel.”
“We couldn’t if we tried,” Graham mumbled.
“This is bad,” Ellie whispered. “Isn’t it?”
“It’s not good,” he admitted, but when he saw her face, he forced a cheerfulness into his voice. “It’ll be fine, though. It’s just a misunderstanding. We’ll work it out.”
When the coast guard ship drew up alongside theirs, the man lowered the megaphone. “This boat has been reported missing,” he called out. “Know anything about that?”
Graham cupped his hands around his mouth to call back. “It’s my fault, sir,” he said. “I was only borrowing it.”
The officer took off his sunglasses and squinted at Graham. “You’re that guy,” he said, looking perplexed. “From those movies.”
“Exactly,” Graham said, bobbing his head encouragingly. “I’m up here filming a new one, and we’ve been using the boat—it was a production guy who called it in, I bet, right?—and I guess I just forgot to let someone know.”
Ellie marveled at the ease of his explanation, the nonchalant way in which he chalked the whole thing up to a misunderstanding, and the reaction of the officer, who seemed to be absorbing all this with a thoughtful air. If it had been Ellie, she would have been stumbling through the story, flustered and nervous. Even if she were telling the truth, she would somehow manage to appear guilty.
“Give me a minute,” the officer said, holding up a finger. “I just need to verify this.”
He disappeared back into the cabin of the boat, a
nd Ellie turned to Graham. Before she could say anything, he gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “It does come in handy sometimes, this whole being-recognized thing.”
Even so, they waited in tense silence. A few Jet Skiers streamed past, their yellow life jackets bright against the water, and a plane flew low overhead. Ellie wasn’t wearing a watch, and her phone was now somewhere on the bottom of the Atlantic, so she had no idea what time it was, but the sun had crossed the highest point, and she imagined it must be well after noon by now.
When the man returned, he took off his sunglasses and rubbed the back of his neck. “I spoke with the guy who called it in,” he said, then glanced at a piece of paper in his hand. “He didn’t realize you were the one who’d taken it. He said it’s no trouble at all, just to bring it back in one piece.”
Graham flashed a smile and lifted his hand in a little gesture of gratitude. “Thanks, sir,” he said. “I’m sorry to have caused any confusion.”
The officer nodded, and was about to turn around when Ellie called out to him. “Actually, we’re out of gas,” she said quickly, and he raised his eyebrows, looking weary at the prospect of another problem from the movie star on the borrowed boat. He didn’t offer any suggestions, just stood there looking at her, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “What should we do?”
Forty-five minutes later, the coast guard had towed them into a marine gas station in the small town of Hamilton. The two officers had been cordial about the whole thing—though Ellie suspected that underneath their professional veneers they were both thinking about what an idiot you’d have to be to run out of gas—and Graham even signed an autograph for one of their daughters.
They left them in the hands of a mustached man who set about filling the tank, bidding them good-bye with a smart tip of their coast guard caps. Ellie watched them go back out to sea, relieved to be on dry land, her stomach still flopping around like a beached fish.
“How far to Kennebunkport?” Graham asked while the attendant came around to examine the gauge, his wrinkled face pressed close to the dial.
“Ten minutes by bus,” he said without looking over.
“Why would we take a bus?”
“Because your gauge is busted,” the man said, straightening up. “I just filled you up and it’s still showing you’re empty. I need to fix the dial. Shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
Graham handed over his credit card, and they agreed to return later in the day. There was a local bus that arrived every half hour, stopping at each town along the coast, and the attendant crooked a finger up a tree-lined road to where they could apparently find the stop just in front of the town’s tourist center.
Their legs were rubbery after so many hours on the water, and they made their way across the street unsteadily. Ellie was relieved to see that the tourist center wasn’t far—a narrow wooden building that looked more like a tree house than any kind of office—and the bus stop was directly in front of it, nothing more than a red plastic bench and a nearly unreadable schedule tacked to the back of a stop sign.
Graham squinted at it. “Twelve minutes,” he said, then glanced at the tourist office. “Let’s check it out.”
Inside, an older woman with a halo of wispy hair was hunched behind the desk, her head bent over a thick book. Ellie began to wander around the periphery of the small space, which was lined with brochures about everything from sailboat rides to whaling trips to blueberry-picking expeditions, but Graham walked right up to the desk.
“Happy Fourth,” he said brightly, and the woman glanced up, her face registering no recognition. If there was an element of the job that required a welcoming demeanor, then she was certainly out of her depth. She made no move to ask if they needed help, only pursed her lips and stared at them over her glasses.
Graham pointed at the computer behind the desk. “We’ve had kind of a rough morning,” he said, his voice a little too saccharine, “and I was just wondering if it might be possible to borrow your computer to check in about something. Just for one quick minute.”
From where she was standing before a panel of brochures about lobster-related activities, Ellie smirked. She had no idea what he wanted the computer for, but it was obvious the woman—staring up at him with a befuddled expression—had no clue who he was, and even Ellie didn’t believe he could make this happen on charm alone.
But he flashed her a dazzling smile, uttered a somewhat sheepish “please,” and just like that, without a word, she was moving aside, tucking the book under her arm and clearing a space for Graham to sit beside the counter, like he was in charge of all tourist-related information for the town of Hamilton.
Afterward, as they walked out to wait for the bus, she rolled her eyes at him.
“What?” he asked. “Didn’t think I could pull it off?”
She shook her head in amusement. “What’d you need to look up anyway?”
“I just wanted to make sure there was nothing new,” he said. “Before we go see your father.”
Ellie blinked at him, impressed that he’d thought of it. “And?”
“Just the same old stuff,” he said. “Graham Larkin’s a brute, Graham Larkin’s a thug. Nothing you didn’t already know.” He said this jokingly, but there was a tightness to his voice too, and she remembered that he hadn’t checked the news before they’d left. That he’d done it for her—to make sure she was fully prepared before approaching her father—touched her deeply, and as the bus came squealing around the corner, she laid a hand on his arm.
“Thanks,” she said, and he nodded. As they climbed aboard, Graham produced a few bills for the driver, and they found a seat near the front, far enough away from the few other passengers, who gazed out the windows toward the back.
“So the next time that woman opens her computer,” Ellie said, leaning against the window, “her search history is going to say something like ‘Graham Larkin punches photographer.’ ”
He laughed. “I think it was actually ‘Graham Larkin clocks the idiot who got too close with his camera.’ ”
As they wound their way out of town, drawing nearer to Kennebunkport, the houses in the windows grew larger and more imposing, huge beachside mansions with porches that jutted out over the water, all of them topped with American flags that waved crisply against the cloudless sky.
Before she’d left this morning, Ellie had found the address of the house where her father was staying, a feat that hadn’t turned out to be all that difficult. The estate had a long history of being rented by important politicians, and there was a sizable paper trail left behind by the journalists who’d made a habit out of lurking around its edges. She’d sifted through enough images that even now, hours later, she could call up the weathered gray siding and wraparound porch with perfect clarity. But what she couldn’t imagine was walking up the flagstone path and knocking on those red double doors. What she couldn’t imagine was coming face-to-face with Paul Whitman.
She turned to Graham, who was hiding a yawn behind his hand. “Okay,” she said, her voice businesslike. “I need a plan of attack.”
“Going to war, are we?”
“I can’t just waltz up to his house without knowing how this is gonna work,” she said, swiveling to face him more fully. “What if his wife’s there? And his sons?”
“Your half brothers,” Graham pointed out, and Ellie shrugged.
“I guess.”
“Well, have you figured out what you want to say to him?”
“Sort of,” she said, which wasn’t exactly true. She had no idea what she wanted to say. How could she, when she wasn’t even quite sure how she felt? She’d spent years studying his photos and watching his interviews, observing the life he’d built from afar, wondering what it would be like to be part of it. But now that she was this close, the idea that he might not be happy to see her was too devastating to consider.
After all, he hadn’t ever denied that he was her father—at least not in an
y kind of official capacity—but he hadn’t ever acknowledged it either. Which meant that in the eyes of the world, she was still fatherless and he was still daughterless. And there was no way of knowing how he’d react when she showed up at his door. Was it possible that he might recognize her? Would she recognize him? And not just in the way she did in the newspapers, but on a deeper level; she wondered if there’d be some spark of familiarity, of belonging, something to indicate that they were more than just two strangers standing on opposite sides of a doorway. That they were family.
Ellie wasn’t sure. She was grateful to be armed with the knowledge that he wasn’t aware of what had happened last night, that at the very least, she hadn’t yet dragged his name through the papers. But there were still so many other unknowns.
“Practice on me,” Graham suggested, sitting up taller against the back of the seat and puffing out his chest. He dipped one eyebrow and arranged his mouth into an overly serious frown. “Hello there, young lady,” he said, and the imitation of her father was so striking that Ellie gave his arm a little shove.
“Stop,” she said. “Too weird.”
Graham relaxed again, unfazed. “Okay, then what?”
“I guess I’m just gonna knock on the door and see what happens.”
“At least you’ve got the element of surprise on your side,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “He’ll be caught off guard, and it’ll give you a chance to figure out how to play it.”
“I guess,” she said, turning back to the window.
As they neared the edge of the town, the smell of seafood was heavy in the air, wafting through the open windows of the bus. Up ahead, they could see that crowds of people filled the streets, and she felt a pang of regret at missing the celebration back in Henley. Rows of flags were draped above the long picnic tables, and a few curls of smoke twisted in the air above the shops.
Graham inhaled deeply. “Must be a clambake,” he said as the bus pulled to a stop in front of a much grander-looking tourist office, presumably with someone far more welcoming inside. Ellie didn’t relish the thought of passing through the throngs of people with Graham, who would surely attract unwanted attention, and once she stepped off the bus behind him, she handed over his sunglasses, which he’d left on his seat.
Jennifer E Smith Page 20
