Reluctant Housemates

by Linda Barrett

  But one day, we stood on the stage of our high school auditorium wearing caps and gowns. For the first time, reality began to sink into my brain: childhood was over. But I didn’t feel any older or smarter or more mature. I simply felt weird about going off to college when I really wanted to stay on the boat with Kevin and John McCarthy. And Kevin thought I was nuts. He wanted to trade places with me. But that’s not what happened.

  It wouldn’t have happened, thought Rachel. Not in their situations. The parents of these kids had definite ideas and a strong influence on the choices their sons made after high school. She read about Jack’s first months in college and how he had kept in touch with Kevin. She read how Kevin managed to spend a weekend on campus with Jack. How they both got blitzed at a fraternity party. How they woke up the next day holding their pounding heads and laughing through the pain, their arms around each other. They’d reconnected in their guy way, assuring themselves that their friendship had remained strong.

  And when Kevin left to go back home, we were both in the best of spirits. We’d made plans for my Christmas break. I’d be home just in time for the last lobster outings of the season. How could I have known that we wouldn’t keep that date? That I’d never see Kevin again?

  Rachel’s fingers tightened around the pages in her hand. She knew what happened next. It was all in the dedication. Somehow Kevin would be lost. She took a breath, feeling Jack’s pain, not sure she wanted to read further. But how could she not? He’d given her this story as a gift. A piece of himself he’d wanted to share with her.

  I had two flat tires on my drive home, and I got into town late. So late that I overslept the next morning. I couldn’t believe I’d messed up so bad. Of course, Kevin and his dad had left without me. A lobsterman starts his day about four in the morning, is on the water by five and doesn’t come in until four in the afternoon. But on the day they left without me, the routine was broken. On that day, an unexpected thunderstorm charged in about one, and Kevin’s mom expected them to return sooner. The rain came down in torrents, and one by one other boats arrived home. The storm kept getting worse. The men crowded in the harbormaster’s office and talked about sudden squalls coming out of nowhere. Then they roamed the docks peering out to sea as if they could wish them home.

  Everyone thought Kevin and his dad would pull in any minute, or at least make their way to the closest dock wherever they were. No one had heard from them by radio and they would have made contact if they were in trouble. That’s what we all kept telling ourselves. The McCarthy family knew the water and the weather better than anyone!

  Kevin’s mom waited at the phone. I went back and forth between the house and the dock from the time the rain started. At some point, we called the Coast Guard, but it was almost full dark by then.

  The fingers on Rachel’s left hand drummed the table while her right hand kept turning pages. She glanced up briefly when the rain started hitting her kitchen window. It was pretty dark outside Sea View House, too. A good day to stay indoors with a book. She glanced down at Jack’s manuscript both dreading what happened next, yet wanting to read more.

  As I looked out the window into the night, a terrible feeling slammed into my gut and stayed there. I choked on my own saliva, then started to sweat. I could barely breathe.

  Fear has no taste. Fear is when your tongue goes dry and everything around you disappears because all you can see is what’s in your mind. I knew that ocean. I knew what ten-foot waves could do. How they can toss a boat high or fling it sideways like it was made of paper. And I knew my friends should have been back by now. I left the house and walked down to the dock, my tears mixing with the rain. Kevin and John McCarthy weren’t coming home.

  In the end, two flat tires had changed my life. Or possibly had cost them theirs. Could I have made a difference had I been with them? Or would the death toll have been three?

  The Coast Guard found them. Kevin was tangled in the lines, floating twenty fee down. It took another day to find his dad. He’d been washed up to shore—a heart attack had killed him. The best guess was that Kevin’s ankle had been caught in a coil of rope, and he’d been pulled overboard. His dad had jumped in after him, but the strain of trying to free his son combined with the shock of the cold water were more than his system could take.

  All our lives hang by tender threads, and theirs had broken. Mine could have broken, too. Each of us lives on borrowed time, and I was going to make the most of mine.

  In the kitchen, Rachel brushed her tears away. Everything she knew about Jack made more sense now. He’d spent his life at sea teasing the ocean, tempting the Fates and communing with the soul of his dead friend. And just as he flirted with death, he flirted with relationships. Not only afraid to lose someone he loved, but perhaps also afraid that someone could love and lose him. Before yesterday’s fiasco, Rachel had thought there might be a future for them. But now she had more questions than answers.

  One thing she’d learned for sure: Jack had many talents. He couldn’t be forced into a mold. He’d reach more youngsters with his book than with her curriculum. Teaching young people to respect and appreciate the environment had always been his goal.

  She stood up and stretched, then went to check the driveway again. The rain had continued, and she opened the door to a dark, wet and raw day. The temperature had dropped while she’d been reading. She dashed around the side of the house, but Jack’s truck wasn’t there yet.

  Maybe he wouldn’t return that night, either. Her heart sank at the thought, but then she shook her head. No, he’d be back or he wouldn’t have left her the manuscripts. She walked back to the kitchen and reached for the second manuscript.

  This one was untitled, but it was another story of the ocean, this time focusing on pollution. It wasn’t finished, but Jack’s research notes were clipped and organized.

  A flash of lightning split the air. Startled, Rachel jumped and ran to the window just as a roar of thunder shook the house. The wind whipped the rain against the panes, adding to the loud cacophony. When she looked outside, she could barely see the width of her porch. And where was Jack?

  She turned her radio to the Pilgrim Cove weather station. Strange how after all this time, she remembered exactly where on the dial it was. But what she heard did not reassure her. The storm had started at sea and was hitting the coast with a wallop now. Waves were cresting the sea wall, which meant they were over thirteen feet. Craft warnings had been given for the last two hours. Two hours!

  Rachel grabbed the phone book, found the number of the marina and dialed. Jack’s boat hadn’t returned. He’d motored in around nine that morning and docked for a while. Came back, filled his tank and left. Said he was meeting a lobster boat. “In this weather?”

  “Wasn’t stormin’ this mornin’. And you know that lobstermen like fall and early-winter fishing best.”

  Well, she didn’t know and didn’t care right now. “So, he’s out there floundering in the open water?”

  “Not necessarily. No, no. Could be he docked somewhere else to ride out the storm.”

  “Yes,” she replied, her heart lighter. “Maybe he did.”

  “But he was acting strange, too. No ‘good morning’ or the like.”

  She blinked back sudden tears. His mind wasn’t on what he was doing. He was thinking about her and their terrible argument. No, not an argument. A monologue. She’d done all the arguing while he just listened and offered to resign. Quietly.

  Oh, God! He was a wonderful man. The best. And she loved him so much. If anything happened to Jack, it would be her fault. Definitely her fault. Blinded by her own needs, she’d hurt the person who’d stood by her side from the moment they’d met. And she’d never, ever forgive herself if he met the same fate as his friend Kevin.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THUNDER BOOMED. Rain pelted him with the sting of razor blades against his skin. The wind roared, then merely gusted, tossing The Wanderer about in the raging sea.

  Jack peered
through the downpour, cursing under his breath as he fastened his life jacket with numb fingers. Caught in a damn thunderstorm like an untutored landlubber! Lightning crackled, illuminating the grayness around him for a moment, but he could identify nothing. No coastline. No lighthouse. No other boats. No horizon. And certainly no stars to steer by. He stroked the control panel. Hopefully, the lightning wouldn’t have affected his instrument readouts.

  He cursed as the wind gusted hard again, and he hoped his lobsterman buddy had made it back to his harbor in Maine by now. Common sense told him the guy was fine since he’d been only three miles out from shore. Jack estimated they’d parted company about an hour ago. Plenty of time for the fisherman to moor his boat. Enough time for Jack to be closing in on Pilgrim Cove. On a good day, maybe twenty more minutes.

  Rain dripped down his face as he fought the wind to keep his seat at the controls of The Wanderer. The electrical system still functioned, and he set the bilge pump and blower to get rid of the water he’d taken on. Something to be thankful for. He tuned his VHF radio to the Coast Guard broadcast channel, but static obscured the broadcast.

  Suddenly, the wind blasted against his back. The boat sailed up on a wave as though it were no heavier than a leaf. He clenched his muscles as he waited for the slam back into the sea. The jarring impact came seconds later, and only his own strength saved him from hitting the windshield of the cockpit.

  “Damn, damn, damn it!” he rasped. “Of all the lousy luck. I’m in a friggin’ downburst.” The original storm had spawned a powerful, hard and fast wind, probably gusting to one hundred and thirty miles per hour.

  He checked his life jacket for a tight fit, then turned the wheel hard, trying to face the bow into the wind to lessen resistance. “Come on, baby. Turn. Turn.” Little by little, The Wanderer obeyed, and now the rain sluiced directly against his face. If his compass was correct, The Wanderer was now turned toward the open ocean when all Jack wanted to do was head toward land. He had no choice but to ride out the storm. Or die trying.

  SHE’D WEAR OUT THE FLOOR with her pacing if she continued any longer. Rachel glared at the darkness outside. It was barely five o’clock in the evening, but it might as well have been midnight. Now she knew what it must have been like for the sailors’ wives in the old days, waiting for their husbands to return.

  On that thought, she grabbed her keys and ran to the door next to hers and climbed upstairs. She had no idea if Jack had replaced the floodlight for the lantern on the third floor, but she’d find out now.

  At the top of the last flight, she turned on the overhead light, then scanned the wall for the switch that controlled the lantern. After spotting it, she raced over, lips moving in prayer to the gods of the sea as well as to the loving God she knew. She pleaded; she made promises.

  She held her breath, reached for the switch and flipped it. Bright light filled the lamp. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she opened the shutters over the picture window so the light could be exposed to the world. As she watched, the light rotated and was reflected by the prisms just like a real lighthouse lantern. When she bent down to examine it closer, she saw that the light was stationary, but the mirror turning around it provided the rhythmic pattern.

  Rachel stared, mesmerized for a moment, and then felt her mouth curl into a smile. For the first time in many long hours, she felt hope.

  Encouraged, she opened the door to the roof. The widow’s walk beckoned. She rushed up the stairs and stepped into the fury of the storm. Drenched in seconds, hair plastered against her head, she gazed through the rain toward the Atlantic.

  The stygian darkness scared her. She could see nothing in any direction. How could one man, in one small boat, survive in the darkness over an enormous, angry ocean? Her hopes crashed, and her tears blended with the rain running down her face. She stood on the roof of Sea View House and sobbed.

  DROWNING WAS NOT AN OPTION. “You’ve already got Kev. You’re not getting me!” Jack gripped the wheel with one hand and the grab bar with the other. He shouted into the night.

  The tremendous wind had lessened—the downburst had petered out—but gale-strength air masses still blew. As long as his engine ran, he could maintain some control. He glanced at the fuel gauge. The motor was working hard, using up fuel faster than it would at a normal cruising speed, but he should have enough to get home.

  What he wanted to do was turn the craft around and head for land. For a coastline he couldn’t see. He’d have to trust the readings on his instrument panel to be accurate despite the storm.

  If only he wasn’t so cold! If only he could feel his fingers, his feet, his ears. His nose was frozen, too. He wished he were back in Sea View House with Rachel. Had she read his book? The book he hadn’t shown anyone else except for her dad, whom he trusted. Did she understand? Did she care?

  He began to inch The Wanderer around. In the boat’s headlights, the waves were high and the rain still pelted the ocean. He rode the rise and fall like the sailor he was, grateful for all the years of experience. Grateful for his sea legs. Grateful for a childhood working lobster boats with Kevin and his dad, John McCarthy. They’d worked hard, and they’d played hard. They’d been a family on that boat just as surely as Kev had been a part of Jack’s family on shore. Kevin had hung around the Levine house so much that Jack’s dad had called him a “piece of furniture.” Jack and Kev—they’d had the best of two worlds.

  “Help me out here, bro,” whispered Jack as he continued to ease the craft around. “Because something great happened to me. I met this girl. No, not a girl—a woman. I know you’d like her. She’s wonderful. Smart. Sassy. And legs! Boy, does she have legs.” His throat closed, and he gulped for air. “I want to live, Kev! But I don’t want to party all night anymore. I played hard for the both of us, bro. A drink for me. One for you. A girl for me. And a girl for you. But…” He shook his head. “Fifteen years…it’s enough.”

  Lightning spat out of the sky, and in the distance before him, Jack discerned a wide swath of irregular lights. His heart rate sped up; he didn’t care about the cold, didn’t care about the rain. Those lights had to be the coastline. Had to be land. And somewhere—God only knew where—along that coast was Pilgrim Cove. And Rachel.

  “Okay, sweetheart,” he whispered, patting the railing of the cruiser. “We’re heading for home.”

  Now, with his bow facing land and the wind at his back, he could make it to shore. Eventually. First, he needed to ride out the storm right where he was until the weather eased. The Wanderer didn’t have the power to overcome the force of this current and race to shore.

  They were lifted and thrown forward by the next wave, then flung sideways. Again, Jack clutched the wheel, angry at himself for rejoicing too soon. The boat was caught in the crosscurrents of the storm, and there were no rules. Just survival.

  As he focused on his surroundings, a strange silence enveloped him. He felt no vibration under his hands, under his feet, and the rhythmic sound of the bilge pump had ceased. Jack’s insides shriveled as he checked the now-darkened instrument panel with his flashlight. The electrical systems were out. The engine was out. He had no motor, and no control of the boat at all.

  He shook his head in disbelief and raised his eyes toward land once more. So close and yet…What was that? He blinked hard and squinted through the rain. Was that a light? To the left. He squinted again and stared at beams of light dancing in the dark, maybe…two miles away.

  For the first time since he’d begun to fight the storm, tears filled his eyes. Rachel. His light was Rachel. He closed his eyes and allowed tears to run down his cheeks. “Thank you, God.”

  RACHEL MIGHT HAVE STOOD on the widow’s walk for a minute or five minutes or thirty. She didn’t know. Didn’t care. Only cared that Jack was somewhere on that enormous ocean, alone, and in the dark.

  He’d be wet and cold, colder than she was. With that thought, a shiver ran through her entire body, but whether it was caused by the falling November temperatu
re or by fear, she couldn’t tell.

  She’d call the marina again when she returned to her apartment. Maybe they’d heard from him. And if not, why not? With all that equipment on board… Her imagination erupted.

  Maybe nothing was working. Maybe he’d fallen overboard. Now she hugged herself and started to turn toward the door when, from the corner of her eye, she saw an orange light flash in the sky like a rocket. Staring at the spot, she held her breath and waited. A second flare followed the first, and then a third.

  Someone was out there in need of help! Coast Guard regulations called for three orange flares to signal distress. She ran through the door, down the never-ending stairs and back to her own kitchen. In her heart, in her soul, she knew that Jack was signaling for help.

  She grabbed the phone and within a minute was speaking to the Boston branch of the United States Coast Guard.

  “What color was the flare? How many flares did you see? What’s your position? How big’s the boat?”

  She answered the best she could. “We’ve got a harbor in Pilgrim Cove,” she added. “A good one.”

  “We’ve got a cutter out on patrol along the coast, not too far away. They’ll start searching. If they find him, we’ll send out our biggest motor lifeboat to tow him into your harbor.”

  “I’ll call the harbormaster and tell him to expect you. Please hurry.”

  She disconnected and made her next call. “I’m going down there,” she said to herself after she hung up. But first, she climbed back up to the roof and looked out. Maybe he’d signal again, and she’d get a better fix on his position. The rain had lessened, but no more flares pierced the darkness.

  “I love you, Jack,” she whispered. “Please hang in there. Please.”

  Back in her apartment, she changed into dry clothes and stripped the house of blankets. Jack would be cold when they brought him in. She wished she owned a bottle of whiskey. She wished she had the key to his apartment to get him a change of clothes. Heck, who locked doors in Pilgrim Cove? It might be open.