by Toby Neal
“But you want to be out here more.” She said it as a statement, and her small hand, warm from the chocolate mug, takes mine. She tucks it under the blanket, in her lap.
I’m aware of how close my hand is to her box of secrets, but I just hold her fingers, relishing the fact that she’s reached out to me.
“Tell me more about your dad,” I say. I know she needs to talk about him to begin to let go of the pain inside. “You know I always meant for us to have a whole summer with your family in the Virgin Islands.”
“I know. You always said that, but we never took the time.” She sighs, sips the chocolate. “You knew him pretty well.” I worked for Peter and Kate for a whole season in their vacation-rental management company before Ruby and I married. I’d liked and respected them, my inappropriate attraction to their daughter aside.
“I did know him a bit, but not what it was like having Peter as a dad.” I press her a little.
She doesn’t answer for a long time. The wind fans her hair back, and I see her skin’s begun to go that tender golden shade it picks up, like the beginning of toasting a marshmallow. She has new freckles on her arms.
“Dad was one of those parents who always had time for you. Whatever I had to tell him or show him, he’d stop whatever he was doing to give me his full attention.” Ruby sips, her eyes on the horizon. “He was so clear about everything—what was right, what was wrong. I feel like I’m not sure about anything anymore without him here.”
I squeeze her hand. “Do you think he’d want you to feel that way?”
“No. I know he’d say I’d put him in the place of God, and he was never anything but a guy who tried to live the truth as he understood it.”
The fact that Peter Michaels had been a career missionary was definitely something to do with this definiteness Ruby referred to; I had always been looser in my interpretations of things, but Peter and I had understood each other.
“We never got to have that summer with them. And even though you tried to fly them out to visit us, he never accepted your help.” She was still ticking over all the coulda, woulda, shouldas. I know all about that. My parents died when I was close to her age, and it had thrown me so far off my game, I’d farmed out the businesses and taken to the sea for three years.
I hope it isn’t going to take Ruby so long to grieve the loss of her father, but having been through it myself, I know it might be a while.
“It was what it was, and it will be what it is,” I say, as much to myself as to her.
As suddenly, as if conjured, dolphins erupt around the bow. These are little dark gray spinner dolphins, and they begin water acrobatics as they surf the bow wave, leaping and flipping, spinning as their name implies.
“Oh!” Ruby exclaims, and gets out of her chair. She goes to lie on her belly as far out on the bowsprit as she can, and stretched out there, her red hair flying like a flag, she reminds me of a figurehead.
Ruby loves dolphins. She told me once she thought they were her spirit animal. I know they’ll do much more to cheer her up than reminiscing about her dad.
I stand up, and Sven catches my eye at the cockpit and waves me back to take a look at something.
His brow is knit with worry. “I know we’re not supposed to have heavy weather in September, but there’s a hurricane forming about two hundred miles from us, according to the weather report.”
“How close are we to Bermuda?”
“Still a couple of days out.”
“Let’s put up all the sails and see if we can outrun it.”
“Aye, Skipper.” Sven got on the PA that piped into the interior of the ship. “All hands on deck. Putting up sail to get ahead of a storm. Check with me for assignments.”
I glance up at the bow. Ruby is still lying on the bowsprit, mesmerized by the dolphins below. Let her enjoy them as long as she can.
A hurricane is coming, and we are in its way.
Chapter 24
Ruby
I’ve been out on the deck for a lot longer than usual without a hat. I’ve been doing a little tanning on the voyage, just so I don’t get sunburned so badly when we are back in Saint Thomas, but I can feel my nose getting hot. I can’t stop watching the dolphins.
Dolphins and I have always had a special bond. Growing up on Saint Thomas, I’d go swimming in the ocean and they’d appear, circling around, leaping over me, even letting me touch them a couple of memorable times.
Now I feel them almost trying to tell me something, send me some sort of reassurance. I could swear some of them are leaping up so we can lock eyes with each other. One is a little bigger, and she has a scar on her sleek, gray leather back. She catches my eye, and I hear something in my mind. “Go fast.”
Did she send me a message? I must be imagining things.
I realize there’s a lot more activity than usual going on behind me.
Rafe and the crew were putting up all the sails. Rafe has tried to teach me all the names and functions of the sails, but I’ve never bothered to memorize them. The front little one is going up, the big main one is being let out, and they’ve even hoisted the spinnaker, a huge balloon-like sail. It seems like they’ve adjusted the heading, too, so we are running downwind.
I look around, but I can’t see anything to be concerned about. The sun shines bright, poufy popcorn clouds dot the horizon, and the sea is calm but for whitecaps generated by the moderate twenty-knot breeze. I am getting better at judging the wind speed, at least, and I don’t usually start getting seasick until it’s around thirty knots.
I say goodbye to the dolphins and scramble backward to see what’s going on.
Rafe’s got the tiller. He’s wearing a nylon ball cap, as much to hold down his shoulder-length hair as for sun protection. Even after he came back to his companies and put on a suit, he refused to cut his long blond-streaked hair. “It’s my rebellion,” he said. “I won’t be a corporate stooge even if I have to go to board meetings.”
I love him for that rebellious streak. I have a little rebellion in me, too—it’s what made me take a chance and get married at a ridiculously young age.
He’s not wearing sunglasses at the moment, and his cobalt eyes are sharp on the horizon, fans of sun creases setting off those eyes. I can see we’re going a hell of a lot faster than before, and the motion of the Maid is brisk and efficient as her aluminum hull, tapered for speed, slices the water. The sea peels up and flies back around us, and spray hits my face.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“We’re trying to outrun a storm. Once it hits, I want you to stay below. It’s the safest place for you. Report to Freddie and see what help he needs securing everything below decks.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” I say, and when he glances at me, we both grin at the inside joke.
Sometimes I address his equipment that way in playful fun, and I can see the memory of it turning him on even at this inappropriate moment. I waggle my tongue at him and take off, knowing I distract him, and none of us need that during pre-storm prep.
As I go down to the galley level, I realize I’m apprehensive. I’ve never been through a storm on the Maid before, and the dolphin told me to “go fast.” This is going to be a big one.
I’m nervous, but I’m also excited. We have a great ship, an experienced crew, and the fog that’s surrounded me since Dad died seems to be lifting with this new situation.
Freddie has his cupboards open. He keeps his supplies in zippered bags for the most part, but he is pulling up elastic nets inside the cupboards and tucking everything inside so they don’t move.
“Captain told me to report to you to help stow everything below decks. Thanks for the chocolate; it was delicious.”
“Good. I need the help. Go do the heads and bedrooms. We have these security nets inside the cupboards and slots for everything, but we’ve been getting lazy with how mellow our trips have been.”
“How bad of a storm do you think this is?” I ask, handing him some items he had p
iled on the floor.
“I believe the word ‘hurricane’ was mentioned. It’s still two hundred miles away, so we have a good chance of outrunning it. The captain and Sven have done this route and this scenario before. It’ll be a fun story you can tell your grandkids.”
“Hope so,” I say, and go to the crew’s head. Shaving cream and a bottle of shampoo are already rolling around in the shower just from the increased motion of the ship, and I get busy stowing, tucking, and securing.
A story for our grandchildren. Now, that would be something, I think, tucking a bungee cord around the cleaning supplies under the sink.
And then it hits me.
I stopped taking the pill after I heard the news about Dad. Just clean forgot. And then Rafe and I didn’t do it for a month. And now we had, not once but several times, and I hadn’t even remembered to bring my pills when I’d packed for the trip.
There is a chance I might be pregnant even now.
“Oh damn,” I mutter, rocking back on my heels. “Oh boy.”
And what if I were? Would it be so bad?
We’ve never talked specifics. I knew we both wanted a family, in that far-off “someday” that my goal of getting through school and starting my career had pushed out into the future.
A future I’d thought I’d have a lot of time for. A future I’d pictured sharing with my family, maybe when my parents were retired and ready to be grandparents.
But Rafe’s parents are gone entirely, my dad has died, and now there is only my stressed-out mom, dealing with my teenaged sisters. While I’m done with school and the dreaded bar exam, I don’t even have a job yet. None of this is the rosy scenario I’d imagined.
The ship lurches, and it flings me forward into the corner of the bathroom cabinet. “Ow!” I exclaim, even as the reverse direction lands me on my ass.
Oh well. Whatever is going to be with getting pregnant has already probably happened. I won’t have access to more birth control until Saint Thomas, and who knows if I can get a prescription filled there. Rafe can start using condoms, but why bother?
Maybe the timing is perfect to get pregnant. I can still get a job when we got back to the States, or even do what I’d been refusing to do and work for McCallum Enterprises. Then I can make a flexible schedule.
Another heave of the ship brings me back into the present, perilous moment, and I hurry along, latching the cabinetry in the hall and ending up in our stateroom.
We’ve gotten sloppy. Water bottles roll back and forth on the floor, and the telescope has fallen over. I continue with the securing process in our closet, cabinets, and head.
Through the double row of portholes alongside our built-in bed in the bow, I can see the plunging motion of the ship. The portholes are around five feet above the surface of the water when we’re in port on an even keel. Now we fully submerge, so I can see beneath the ocean’s surface, and then lift so high I can see the sky.
It’s mesmerizing, and I thank God I have a pretty strong stomach.
I go back to the galley and check with Freddie. He’s sitting, strapped into his bolted-down chair, watching a soap opera on the tiny combo TV/VCR player at his work area. “All set below,” he says. “Don’t go above without safety lines.”
“I don’t know where those are.”
“Here.” He shows me the webbed nylon belt with its clip-on rope. “They’ve got safety cables all over. You clip your rope to the cable in case you get swept overboard.”
“Oh cripes,” I say. “Rafe told me to stay below, but I want to see what’s going on above. See what the storm looks like.”
“Look through the skylight.” He has a big plastic skylight above the galley, and he points. All I can see is gray, and I frown. “I need to at least get a look at what’s above.”
And before Freddie can stop me, I grab one of the ropes and nylon belts and head up the ladder leading topside.
Rafe
The weather is hitting us now. I can see the leading edge of the hurricane behind us, and it looks like a purple wall shot through with lightning bolts. We’ve made good time with full sail, but it doesn’t look like we are going to make it to Bermuda before we’re engulfed by that thing behind us.
I still have hopes of making it to one of the atolls outside of Bermuda. There’s one roughly an hour away, and if we can make it into a cove there, or even into the lee of the island, we’d be better off than bouncing like a cork in the open ocean.
The guys and I have our full weather gear and safety lines on now from the aft storage locker because, even though the rain hasn’t hit yet, the spray and waves off the bow are fully engulfing the Maid from stem to stern every few minutes.
I spot Ruby when her head comes topside, because the minute she opens the hatch, light streams out and water streams in, and I see a gleam on her red hair. I feel something new and terrible: fear.
Does my wife have a safety harness on?
“Get below!” I bellow, but the wind whips my words away, and I have both hands full with the big wheel of the tiller and can’t let go. Sven spots her, too, and he runs down the length of the deck to stop her, but she’s already up on deck and has clipped a safety line onto the cable. I sigh with relief as my second reaches her.
She’s wearing the same outfit she had on before, and she and Sven are instantly doused as a wave engulfs the starboard side. The big blond Swede has a grip on her arm and is arguing with her, but I am somehow not surprised when she yanks away and comes toward me, clutching the rail, all the way to where I hold the tiller in the sheltered hollow of the cockpit.
“Sorry, Rafe. I just had to see this,” Ruby says. Her eyes are sparkling, her cheeks pink, and her hair is flattened to her skull like a drowned rat. Sven, having delivered her to me, moves on.
“You disobeyed an order,” I snap, the fear I felt at seeing her replaced by anger. “This is no place for you.”
“Wherever you are is the place for me,” she says with perfect composure. “Don’t worry. I’ll go below. But I want to know what’s going on.” She turns to look behind us, and her eyes widen. “Oh my God. Is that the storm?”
“Hurricane Shellie,” I say, still pissed, and now thinking about spanking her. She deserves it for scaring me like that. The thought makes me hard, and that’s distracting, too. “You need to get below. Seriously.”
“Shellie will like that,” Ruby says, smiling. Her former roommate, Shellie, has remained one of her closest friends. “But that storm looks serious.”
“It is. Very. I’m hoping we make it to this atoll.” I point to the location on my laminated sea chart. “We have a good chance of getting into this cove on this side of the atoll and dropping anchor.”
“Then I won’t distract you any more, Captain,” she says, and presses a kiss on me with her wet, cold mouth, which tastes of the sea and makes me think of tasting it more. But then she’s creeping along the rail, her nylon safety line trailing her, and going below. I sigh with relief as she disappears and the hatch is secured by Sven from the outside.
“She had a belt on,” Sven says, reaching me, his expression apologetic in the bright yellow hood of the slicker. “She said she had to see the storm.”
He’s defending her, the sod.
“I’ll handle my wife,” I said frostily. “No thanks to you, letting her come up here.”
He shrugged. “It’s Ruby. What was I going to do?”
What indeed? Now, at least, I believe she’ll stay below, where it is safe.
The next two hours are a blur of fighting the wheel to keep the compass heading for the atoll with all sail out and the seas, churned up by the hurricane, getting bigger and bigger while the wind gets gustier and smacks us around like a giant cat’s paw.
I’m about ready to call for the sails to be pulled in, giving up our run before the storm. Sven, hanging in the rigging, spots Atoll 57, too small to even have a name, ahead. According to the charts, it has a bay on one side, really its only geographic feature. I have t
he guys pull in the spinnaker and tighten us up, and we tack around the islet in the waning light. Purple is the color of Hurricane Shellie, I’ve decided, as the sun shuts down into a deep violet gloom.
The crew is perilously hanging off the bow and sides, looking for shoals and reef, as Sven, wiping his binoculars constantly, scans the atoll for the opening of the bay.
“There!” he yells, pointing, and I can see a slight break in the tropical landscape of rugged black rocks and palm trees whipping so hard in the wind they look like feathers beating the air.
I clock it a few degrees, but I can’t tell if we’re coming around fast enough. “Reef all sails!” I yell, and Sven passes it on. The guys move like a well-oiled machine, dropping and furling the sails while three of them still watch for hazards in the water. “Sven! Give me headings!” I shout into the teeth of the wind, and Sven, an even better sailor than I am, calls out degree headings for the turn.
I fire the engine to counteract the momentum from the sails, and slowly, carefully, nose the Maid into the sheltered bay.
The bay turns out to be deeper than it at first appeared. Tall volcanic-rock cliffs rise around us, and I feel a tremendous sense of relief as we pull all the way in, and there’s at least a hundred yards on every side before the rocks.
The rocks are bad, though. Black as sin and twice as jagged. But if we can just keep from losing anchor, we should ride out Shellie just fine.
Sven is already calling for two anchors, aft and stern, and I have the guys put out a couple of sea anchors off the port and starboard, too, in case we pull a chain.
Finally, I can let go of the tiller. I find myself trembling all over, my muscles locked, my hands in the shape of claws from gripping the wheel so long and hard.
Sven takes a look at me. “I’ll take the first watch, Captain. Go below and get some rest.”
