The Summer I Dared: A Novel

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Kimmie’s twenty-one and tends bar at the Grill. Life hasn’t been easy for her. She was raised by her mother and grandmother. They’re two tough ladies.”

  Julia felt a tug of protectiveness, not only because her own daughter was close to Kimmie’s age, but because Kimmie Colella didn’t look tough at all. Her chin stayed low as she was helped from the boat to the dock, and when a barrage of questions hit her, she recoiled. Huddled into herself, she let the doctor guide her away.

  The boat that had delivered her was already heading back out. “How long can they search?” Julia asked, because it was fully dark now.

  “Awhile. They have floodlights.”

  Julia had been frightened enough out there in daylight; she couldn’t begin to imagine the terror of being in the water at night. Moving closer to Zoe, she tucked her hands in the pockets of the fleece jacket. “Maybe other survivors have been taken to the mainland?”

  Zoe’s eyes were understanding, but she didn’t offer easy comfort. “We’d know,” she said gently, even apologetically. “Someone would’ve called. Are you sure I can’t take you home?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Does your arm hurt?”

  “No.” But she didn’t think she would notice if it did. The emerging horror dwarfed aches and pains.

  “Want something to eat from the Grill?”

  “I don’t think I can eat.”

  “Coffee, then?”

  Julia gave in on that, though she didn’t drink much. She had adrenaline enough in her body without caffeine, but the warmth of the cup in her hands did feel good. As time passed, though, that warmth faded, along with the hope that others would be brought in alive. And still she resisted when Zoe would have taken her home. She wouldn’t be able to sleep, not with the weight of grief on her chest—and not with the rest of the townsfolk still on the docks. As long as they stayed and waited, she had to as well. She had been on that boat. She might not know the names of these islanders, but she was one of them on this night.

  By eleven, the fog had dispersed, and the mood of the crowd lifted with the hope that survivors would be more easily spotted. By midnight, though, when no good news was radioed back from the boats, that hope waned. By one in the morning, those on the dock stood in silent huddles.

  Shortly thereafter, word came back that the Coast Guard had called off the search for the night and would return with divers in the morning—but still the local fleet kept at it. By two, however, even they began to return. One boat after another slipped into the harbor, their engines rumbling in exhaustion. The faces of the men who climbed back on the dock were pale and drawn in the flickering light of the torches; they had little to say and simply shook their heads.

  Julia searched until she saw the man who had helped her right after the accident, the man from the Amelia Celeste. Zoe identified him as Noah Prine. Though he hoisted himself to the dock now with the others, the depth of the pain on his face set him apart. He didn’t look around, didn’t acknowledge any of those who had been waiting there all night, and they, in turn, gave him wide berth as he strode along the planking and off into the night.

  “He was with his father,” Zoe explained softly. “Hutch is still missing.”

  Julia was horrified. She could only begin to imagine what Noah was feeling, fearing that his father was dead but not knowing for sure. Her own father was still alive, as were her mother and her brothers. And her daughter.

  “I need a phone, Zoe,” she said, feeling a dire need, right then, right there, to hear Molly’s voice. The girl was a culinary student, normally studying in Rhode Island, but now doing a summer apprenticeship in Paris. It would be morning there. If Molly had worked the night before, she might still be sleeping, and under normal circumstances, Julia would have waited. But what had happened—and what she felt—were far from normal.

  Zoe produced a cell phone, and Julia quickly punched in the number of Molly’s global phone. As it rang, she moved away from the others on the dock. It seemed forever before a groggy voice that Julia knew well said, “Mom?”

  Julia felt such a swell of emotion that she began to cry. “Oh, baby,” she gasped in a choked voice that, quite naturally, terrified her daughter.

  Sounding instantly awake, Molly asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine,” Julia sobbed softly, “but it’s a miracle.”

  The story spilled out in a handful of sentences, to which Molly injected “Omigod” with rising frequency and fear. When Julia finally paused, her daughter said with a mix of disbelief and awe, “Omigod! Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I am, but there are others who aren’t. I’m sorry to wake you”—she was crying again, though less wrenchingly now—“but with something like this, you need to talk to people like your own daughter. Email doesn’t do it. You need to hear a voice.”

  “I’m glad you called. Omigod. Mom, that’s just so awful! Here I am, pissed off that the chef at the restaurant won’t give me the time of day, and there you are dealing with life and death. When’ll they know about the others?”

  “The morning, maybe.”

  “That’s so bad. And you—you’ve been looking forward to this for months. It was supposed to be your vacation. Are you going right home?”

  The question startled Julia. “No,” she said. Odd, but there wasn’t a doubt in her mind. She couldn’t list her reasons, because her thoughts were too disordered. But leaving wasn’t an option. “I’ll be at Zoe’s. You have her number.”

  “Are you sure you want to be there after all this?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Do you want me to come?”

  “No. You have a job. You need the experience.”

  “Is Dad coming?”

  Julia was startled for a second time. In all that had gone on, she hadn’t once thought about Monte, which was odd, too. Or perhaps it wasn’t. Monte had no place here on the island. She had visited Big Sawyer three other times since her marriage, and he had opted out each time. Nor had he shown any interest in coming this time. She was sure that he had made other plans for these two weeks, well beyond those he had shared with her; she was as sure of that as she was that she couldn’t leave the island and race back home.

  Unable to explain all this to Molly, she hedged. “Honestly, I don’t know. We’ll probably talk about it in the morning.”

  “Let me know?” Molly asked and rushed on. “Email me later. And call again whenever you want. I love you, Mom.”

  “Me, too, baby, me, too.”

  Alone, Noah Prine tromped down Main Street, turned left onto Spruce, and began the short climb up the hillside to the house he shared with his dad. It was a fisherman’s cottage in a neighborhood of other fishermen’s cottages, clapboards weathered gray by the salt air, blue shutters in need of paint—always in need of paint, because the wind was abusive to everything, and boats and buoys came first. It wasn’t a big place, a fraction as large as the monstrosity Artie Jones owned down on the shaft, but it was honestly come by, the product of years of hard work, and it was paid for in full.

  He bet Artie’s place wasn’t. He bet there were hefty mortgages on both the house and The Beast. He bet that the guy didn’t have an ounce of insurance either, because guys like that didn’t think past the moment. What that meant was that if eight people turned out to be dead, all the lawsuits in the world wouldn’t produce enough money to adequately compensate two orphaned Walsh kids, Greg Hornsby’s wife and kids, Dar Hutter’s fiancée, Grady Bartz’s parents, and whomever Todd Slokum might have left in the world.

  Money certainly couldn’t bring back his dad—not that Noah was convinced he was gone. Hutch had spent his whole life on the water and had done his share of time in the drink. He had survived storms that might have killed another man—and besides, it wasn’t like it was the middle of winter, with water almost at the freezing point. This was June. Hutch could do it. A night in the sea might even slow the growth of cancer in his blood.

  The
problem, of course, even beyond that of the initial crash and whatever those mammoth propellers had chewed, was the explosion. Who knew what damage it had done? Noah would be out there still searching if he had floodlights on the Leila Sue. Radar alone wouldn’t have helped, not in the chop. He would go out again at first light. In the meantime, he didn’t know what to do with himself.

  He turned in and went up the short path. His mother’s lilacs were in bloom. He could smell them as he went past, though he couldn’t make them out in the dark. There wasn’t even a light on out front, because he and his father had planned to be back well before nightfall. Noah had intended to cook the bass that had come up in a lobster trap the day before. Hutch loved bass, and, sensing that their day at the hospital would be a disaster, Noah had wanted to please him.

  Noah hadn’t had a clue what the real disaster would be. He had always seen the island as safe and low-key and familiar. Yes, death came. They had been through it with his mom three years before, but not with this kind of violence, not with this kind of… stupidity, this kind of preventability.

  Bursting with anger, he opened the door, and a forty-pound creature raced past him and out into the small yard. “Lucas,” he said with a mixture of dismay and guilt, anger draining instantly away. He had forgotten about the dog, shut in all day. Like the bass he had intended to cook for Hutch, he had planned to be back for Lucas, too. Leaving the front door ajar so that the dog could return, he went inside.

  The emptiness was overwhelming. He put his hands on his hips and hung his head. After a moment, he raised it and pushed a hand through his hair. What to do? he asked himself. Was Hutch dead or alive? He just didn’t know. No one knew anything for sure. How could they know without proof? He felt the need to talk to someone, but whom could he call? Most everyone who meant anything to Hutch was here on the island.

  Ian ought to be told. Noah went to the phone. He lifted the receiver, punched out the number, but hung up before the call could go through. Ian was his son, seventeen years old and difficult. Noah had trouble communicating with him in the best of times. He didn’t know what to say now.

  Still in the dark, he went down the hall to the bathroom, stripped off clothes that had dried stiff with salt, and turned on the shower. One hand high on the wall and the other limp by his side, he let the water course over his head, though he barely felt its heat or its pulse on his skin. He scrubbed every inch of himself to erase the smell of fish, a habit that was unnecessary today, since he hadn’t been fishing. He was going through the usual motions—come home, shower, put on dry clothes, fix something to eat.

  He got on the dry clothes, still without lights, but wasn’t up for eating, and knew enough not to even try to sleep. Lying in the dark, with his mind having nowhere to go but back on the water, he found himself staring down at the sneaker of a one-year-old child. No, he couldn’t do that. But he had two hours to live through, before he went back out in the boat, back to the search. Not knowing what else to do, he did the one thing he did best.

  Grabbing an anorak from the coat tree, he went out the door. Lucas was beside him—a surprising comfort—before he reached the end of the walk and raced on ahead, while Noah strode back down the hill to the small shack by the water’s edge where he kept his traps. He had already set several hundred, mostly in the warmer water of the shallows, because this was June, and the shallows were where lobsters would hide before molting. Come July, once the molt was done, they would move to the shelter of deeper water to let their new shells harden. The traps he set now would head in that direction.

  Most were ready to go, stacked in eights from floor to ceiling. Over the winter, he had repaired those in need of attention, but there were a few last casualties, victims of marauding seals, hidden rocks, or plain old wear and tear. His wire mesh traps were more hardy than the old wooden ones, but they weren’t invincible.

  He set to repairing them now, working by the light of an old oil lamp, because there was no electricity in the shed. He didn’t mind the smell of the oil, or that of fish or ocean air. Or that of fresh paint, drying on buoys that hung in bunches from the rafters. Or that of old gloves that had handled their share of fish bait. These scents were part of his history, part of who he was.

  He worked on the wire with his pliers, twisting one piece around another to close a gap, reattach the netting inside, or repair a door. He replaced hog rings and attached trap tags. When he finished with one trap, he went on to the next, then the next. By the time he was done, he had a tall stack of traps ready to go, as well as a sore back. But the two hours were nearly up. He could see it in the whisper of light that came through the window, could feel it in bones that screamed to him, Get on out there now, man, right now!

  He blew out the oil lamp, left the shed, and, with Lucas still full of energy, running every which way ahead, he set off for the harbor. Lights were on up the hillside; Noah could pick the homes where they had probably been on all night. Those people would be down on the dock soon, resuming the vigil while they waited for word. Until then, the gulls had free access, swooping through the predawn light to perch on pilings, deck rails, and wheelhouse roofs, sitting statue-still, then setting off with a cry.

  He reached the Grill. Inside its door, his thermos was filled with hot coffee and waiting in its usual spot alongside those of the other lobster-men. This time, though, the owner of the Grill was waiting too.

  Rick Greene was a man with a large body, a large mind, and a large heart. He had single-handedly turned the Harbor Grill into a destination eatery; come summer, day-trippers planned expeditions to the island around lunches of mussel salad, lobster chowder, or curried cod, all fresher than they would find anywhere else.

  Now he pressed a bag into Noah’s hand. “You gotta have food.”

  Noah stared at the bag. He wasn’t surprised by the gesture, but he was by his own need for it. For a man who prided himself on being self-sufficient and independent, he was touched. The heaviness he felt inside was eased, if only briefly, by the sense of another person sharing the weight.

  “Did you sleep any?” Rick asked.

  “Nah,” Noah said and raised bleak eyes to search the harbor. “Anyone else here yet?”

  “The Trapper John left ten minutes ago, and they aren’t heading out to haul traps.”

  Noah was relieved. The more boats joined the search, the better the odds.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go out alone,” Rick said.

  Noah smiled sadly. “Lucas’ll have to do, since I don’t seem to have my sternman.” That would’ve been Hutch.

  Pain crossed Rick’s face. “What can I do?”

  Noah looked out at the sea. The waves were tipped with the same shade of lilac as his mom’s beloved shrubs, a new day rising, though with a sense of dread. “Not a helluva lot,” he said, feeling the kind of despair he hadn’t yet allowed himself to feel, but exhaustion did that— poked holes where holes wouldn’t normally be. “I’ll go out looking again. Could be we missed something. Could be we misjudged the area. Could be there’s a whole crew of them hanging on to a piece of the hull.”

  “Let me know,” Rick said kindly. “You need anything, radio it in.”

  Noah tucked the bag under his arm, hooked his fingers around the thermos lid, and set off down the dock. The planks underfoot were damp as usual, but the harbor chop wasn’t bad. The Leila Sue rocked gently in her slip, flanked by lobster boats of different sizes and states of repair. Each had a buoy pegged to the wheelhouse roof. Noah’s was bright blue with two orange stripes. These were his colors, registered with the state, marked on his lobstering license, and repeated on every one of the hundreds of buoys he attached to his traps. Blue-orangeorange—originally his father’s colors, for the past ten years his own.

  Lowering himself to the deck of the Leila Sue seconds before Lucas leaped aboard, he stowed the food in the wheelhouse, then got the engine going. He didn’t look at the yellow oilskins that hung from hooks, one for Hutch and one for him. His jeans and
sweatshirt would do today. And his Patriots hat. He reached for that and pulled it on. He and Hutch shared their love for the team, and, killer though that had been at times, the wait was worth it. That first Super Bowl season had been something. And the Snow Bowl against the Raiders two weeks before the big game? That had been something! It had been a good day. Driving down to the game that day, he and Hutch hadn’t argued a bit, a rare and memorable thing.

  Noah untied his lines fore and aft, then gave the Leila Sue enough gas to back her out of the slip and turn her. Throttling up, he headed out, but he saw little of the harbor boats, the buoy field, or, passing the lighthouse, the rocks that the gulls made white, now shaded the palest pink with the dawn light. Nor did he see the lime-grape-lime buoys that were out farther, in waters traditionally fished by Big Sawyer lobstermen, because he couldn’t begin to think of the gear war that loomed. The Leila Sue might have been in forward, but his thoughts remained in reverse.

  No, he and Hutch hadn’t argued going to Foxborough that day in the snow, but they sure had bickered yesterday. Hutch had criticized Noah’s driving, his choice of a tuna sandwich in the cafeteria, his inability to answer the questions that—Noah countered—Hutch should have asked the doctor himself. They had bickered about how to negotiate traffic leaving the hospital, about waiting in the toll line rather than producing exact change, about radio stations, about refilling the gas tank of the borrowed truck. By the time they had returned the truck and were boarding the Amelia Celeste, Noah had had it. When Hutch grumbled that he didn’t want to sit after he had been doing nothing but sitting all day long and that he would stand in the bow during the ride to the island, Noah had balked.

  “Sit,” he’d ordered his father in no uncertain terms. “I need air.” He had held up a hand in warning and reinforced it with a warning look. Stay there! it said. Don’t argue! Gimme a friggin’ break! He’d remained where he was long enough to make sure Hutch understood, then marched up to the bow. And so he lived through the crash.

  Guided now by the GPS, he pointed the Leila Sue toward the spot that had been the focus of the search the night before. Other boats would be searching, as would the Coast Guard. With a little help… a little luck… a miracle…