Safe Harbor

by Luanne Rice

FINALLY, HOT DOG DAY ARRIVED. ALLIE WAS SO excited, you’d have thought it was Christmas morning. Quinn watched her change her clothes twice, trying to decide on the perfect thing. When she dragged their mother’s “kiss the chef” apron out of the pantry, it took everything Quinn had to keep from reading her the riot act, telling her to pull herself together.

  “It’s just a hot dog stand,” Quinn said calmly. “And you’re not even cooking.”

  “I know, but it’s my first job,” Allie said. “I want to look right.”

  “You look great,” Aunt Dana said. “Just like a real entrepreneur.”

  Quinn didn’t know what that meant, but she didn’t let on. Silently, she piled the hot dogs, buns, mustard, ketchup, and relish into the big wicker picnic basket. The night before, when the rain had stopped, Aunt Dana and she had ridden their bikes around the beach, putting up new signs.

  HOT DOG ROAST TOMORROW!

  FOLLOW YOUR HUNCH, TIME FOR LUNCH,

  BRING A BUNCH, COME TO MUNCH!

  99 Cresthill Road, noon till one (or until we run out)

  Looking at the clear, starry sky, Quinn sent a silent message to Sam. Although she was pretty sure he’d figure it out on his own, she picked up the phone and called him—just in case. She got his voice mail, so she left a message: “Hey, Sam. It’s Quinn. I’m getting the money to pay you, having the hot dog stand. Come have one, okay? I’ll only charge you half price. Nah, since you’re driving so far, I’ll give it to you free. See you tomorrow.”

  Now, as Aunt Dana set up the grill down by the road, Quinn settled the soda cans into the ice-filled cooler. Charcoal rattled into the kettle. The sound of a match, the smell of smoke: Quinn felt her chest tighten. Would everything always remind her of her parents? Her father had always been the one to start the grill for family cookouts. Trying to put that out of her mind, Quinn concentrated on her work.

  “What if no one comes?” Allie asked, sounding anxious.

  “They will,” Aunt Dana promised.

  “How do you know?” Quinn asked. In spite of her older-sister status, she was just as nervous as Allie. She’d never done anything like this before. Her mind filled with images of sad lemonade stands on the sides of roads traveled by practically no one, lonely children desperately waving after stray cars that would never stop.

  “Because I did this myself once, remember?” Aunt Dana said confidently. She wore shorts and a white shirt, and her hair was still damp from her morning swim.

  Quinn stared at her without saying anything. If her mother were here, she’d be wearing a flowing sundress and straw hat. She’d have decorated the folding table with roses from her garden, and she’d have baked corn bread flavored with rosemary and thyme. Aunt Dana turned from the grill as if waiting for Quinn to speak, but Quinn just resumed burying cans of soda in the ice. There weren’t really any words for what she was thinking.

  Their first customer was Quinn and Allie’s grandmother. She pulled up in her little Ford wagon and did one of her classic parking jobs: with the rear end sticking straight out in the street.

  “Good thing we live on a dead end,” Quinn muttered.

  “Quinn …” Aunt Dana said warningly.

  “If we have any real customers, they won’t be able to get by!” Quinn protested, but Aunt Dana was too busy popping the first frankfurter onto the grill to comment.

  While Grandma took four—Quinn couldn’t help timing her—entire minutes to doctor her hot dog with mustard and relish, the McCray clan came across the street. Marnie McCray Campbell and her daughters, Cameron and June, and her mother, Annabelle McCray, walked over and placed their orders.

  “Well, Martha,” Old Annabelle called out, “doesn’t this just bring back memories!”

  “Mmmm … I … gwuas … tinking … ame … ting,” Grandma said with her mouth full.

  “Girls, this is like one big old déjà vu,” Annabelle said. “How many years ago was it now? Twenty? My God, it has to be thirty! That’s right, more like thirty! Well, anyway. There were Dana and Lily, proud as punch, selling hot dogs just like you girls are now.”

  “Proud as punch?” Allie asked, playing right into her hands.

  “Yep,” Annabelle said. “With nice homemade signs just like you girls hung up, all dressed up in Martha’s aprons—Lily pretty as a picture—serving up frankfurters to anyone with fifty cents to spend. Lunch for fifty cents! I fed Marnie, Charlotte, and Lizzie for less than two dollars. Those were the days… .”

  “Yeah, the olden days,” Quinn said.

  Annabelle laughed. She was from the South, and she was polite and good-humored about everything. If she heard the tone in Quinn’s voice, indicating that she didn’t really feel like standing around talking about her mother, she didn’t let on. Aunt Dana just stuck more hot dogs on the grill, and when they were done, Quinn slid them into the rolls.

  “What are you saving up for, if I might ask?” Annabelle asked.

  “It’s a big secret,” Grandma announced. “She won’t tell anyone.”

  “I’ll get Cameron to get it out of her,” Annabelle laughed. “Right, Cam?”

  Quinn shot Cameron a look of daggers. She didn’t want her getting any ideas. Quinn would go to the grave with her plan, and she didn’t need any interference from the McCrays.

  “Sure, Grammy,” Cameron said, rolling her eyes.

  Allie straightened her apron. To keep it from dragging on the ground, Aunt Dana had rolled it up around her waist. It now said just “kiss the,” with “cook” bunched up in the folds. “My money’s for white flowers,” she said.

  “White flowers?” Annabelle asked, dimpling as if Allie had just said the most enchanting thing possible.

  “Why white flowers?” Aunt Dana asked.

  “For Mommy,” Allie said. “If we had a grave, I’d put white flowers on it. You know, Grandma, when we visit Granddad at the cemetery, how you always put geraniums there?”

  No one was talking and no one was eating. Quinn felt her stomach start to churn. Grandma nodded yes to Allie’s question, but she didn’t say a word.

  “Mommy loved white flowers,” Allie said. “Daddy wouldn’t care. He didn’t like the garden much. But Mommy did—”

  “I’ve always said,” Annabelle began in that low-voiced southern way of hers, “that not having a grave is a mistake. The children need someplace to visit. Now, cremated or not, there’s no reason why the remains can’t be buried, a headstone set in place.”

  “Quinn tried to take her parents’ ashes on the plane,” Cameron volunteered.

  “Well, naturally,” Annabelle said kindly. “She needs to know where they are!”

  Something yowled like a cat. The sound was fierce and guttural, and it seemed to come from a cave beneath the earth. Suddenly, to her shock and horror, Quinn realized it had come from her.

  “They’re not going to be buried …” Quinn said through gritted teeth.

  “Darling, I didn’t mean to say anything hurtful,” Annabelle said.

  People had started to arrive for the hot dog stand. One family parked its car behind Grandma’s. Three children rode up on their bikes.

  “They’re not going to be underground,” Quinn moaned.

  “Quinny,” Aunt Dana said, holding out her hand.

  Quinn clenched her eyes shut. She tried to see her parents’ faces. She wanted them so badly right now, her blood felt like ice water in her body. People were talking, and she tried to block it out. Her parents were safe, as safe as she could make them, on the mantel. She had to keep them there until she found out what had really happened, whether they had left her on purpose.

  Suddenly, she heard a familiar vehicle: Sam’s van came rumbling down the street. He had barely parked, stepped out of the driver’s seat, when Quinn ran over to him. Tears were rolling down her face, and she couldn’t stop them.

  “Take me out there now,” she said in a hot whisper.

  “Now?” he asked, his eyes wide behind his gold-rimmed glasses. “I don’t have
my boat here.”

  “We have the Mermaid,” she said, pointing at the old sailboat—its paint newly dry—sitting on a trailer in front of the garage. Quinn, who hadn’t wanted to sail since last summer, now couldn’t wait to go aboard.

  “I know we have her,” Sam said, touching the gunwale but staring at Quinn, “and I think it’s time to launch her. But we have to do something else first.”

  “What?” Quinn asked.

  “Have lunch,” Sam said.

  “How can you think of eating at a time like this?” Quinn asked, feeling a black hole where her heart used to be.

  “You invited me, and I drove all the way from New Haven. Besides, you’re going to owe me big-time. My services don’t come cheap.”

  Quinn peered at him through her tears. Slashing angrily at her eyes, she gave him a long, hard stare, letting him know that if he wanted it to be all business, that’s what he’d get. She knew plenty about give-and-take, about getting what you paid for.

  She had listened to her father on the phone more than once. He had been a businessman, a real estate developer, and Quinn knew about tough negotiations. She understood about people demanding to be paid—including her father. Ideals are nice, sweetheart, her father had once told her, but money is how the world works.

  “Quinn?” Sam asked, smiling as if he’d thought she would be laughing at his joke by then. Aunt Dana had walked over to stand silently beside her. Quinn felt them watching her, as if she were an egg about to break.

  “I have to get back to work,” she said harshly. “People came to my hot dog stand, and I’d better earn my money.”

  DANA HADN’T EXPECTED to get the boat launched this way, on the same day as the girls’ hot dog stand. As soon as the supplies had run out and the money was divided between Quinn and Allie, Quinn began dragging the trailer toward the hitch on the back of Sam’s van.

  “Whoa,” Sam said, going over to help her. He asked Dana; she said it would be okay to launch the boat. So they all took a ride down to the end of the beach, lifted the old Blue Jay over the seawall, stepped the mast, and prepared to sail.

  Standing in the shallow water, hooking on the jib, Dana felt the small waves licking her ankles. Memory tugged her back to her own childhood, days of sailing with Lily, but she was brought straight into the present by the determination on Quinn’s face.

  “I didn’t think you liked to sail anymore,” Dana said quietly while Sam and Allie worked on sliding the rudder into place. Her heart was still pounding from the ruckus on Cresthill Road, Quinn’s outburst and subsequent stony silence.

  “That’s beside the point,” Quinn said.

  “You don’t have to snap at me, Quinn. Just because Annabelle had an opinion you didn’t like, it’s not my fault.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. And thank you for cooking the hot dogs. We made a lot of money.”

  “You’re welcome.” Dana smiled, feeling happy to be thanked and apologized to at the same time.

  When Sam had checked the rudder and centerboard and Dana was satisfied with the sails, the two girls slipped into orange life jackets and climbed into the bow. Dana went next, and Sam—with his pants rolled up above his knees—pushed the boat into deeper water before hopping over the stern. He looked strong and capable, and she felt quietly touched that he had come back.

  The girls, once proficient sailors, huddled together in the bow while Sam held the tiller and Dana worked the jib. Two quick tacks were necessary to sail through the narrow channel between the swimming area and the rocks at Little Beach, and Allie cried out as the boat heeled.

  “We’re fine,” Dana said, holding one girl in each arm. “Don’t worry.”

  “I don’t like tipping!” Allie said.

  “The boat knows what it’s doing,” Sam said. “She goes over just far enough, then rights herself.”

  “Aaaah!” Allie cried, clutching Dana.

  “Shut up,” Quinn called.

  “This is Quinn’s fault,” Allie choked out, terror in her eyes. “I didn’t want to come, but she said I had to, that I owe it to Mommy and Daddy. Take me back, I don’t like sailing, please take me back to the beach… .”

  “Okay,” Dana said, holding the girls tighter. The sun was bright overhead, and the Sound was flat calm. Still early in the season, there wasn’t much boat traffic. A light breeze blew offshore, and the hull sliced the water with a gentle whooshing sound. It was a perfect sailing day, and both girls were excellent sailors, but Dana knew they feared the same fate that had befallen their parents would take them down too. “Sam?”

  “We could go back,” Sam said, holding the sailboat on a broad reach, the boom swung out wide and the hull nearly flat on the surface as Dana tried to imagine Jonathan in this same situation. “But …”

  “No buts,” Allie gasped. “Please, oh, please!”

  “Let him talk,” Quinn said through clenched teeth.

  “You’re good at this, Quinn.”

  “I used to be.”

  “Sailing’s like riding a bicycle. You don’t forget.”

  “I don’t want to …”

  “He’s right, Quinn,” Dana said, reaching out. “You can do it. Your mom said you’re the best sailor she ever saw. Including her or me …”

  “And that’s saying a lot,” Sam agreed.

  Dana laughed, and Quinn almost smiled. Dana could see her smelling the wind, feeling the tiller in her hand. “Go ahead, honey.”

  Very slowly, with total ease, Sam loosened the main sheet and let go of the tiller. He stopped sailing. The boat drifted slowly, nose into the wind, and sat still one hundred yards off the beach. Both girls relaxed; Dana could feel the tension leave their bodies—and hers.

  “Do it, Quinn.”

  “We’re not tipping,” Allie said in wonder, craning her neck like a bird peeking out of its nest.

  “Look, you’ve got the world’s best sailing teacher onboard right now,” Sam said. “I know, because she taught me.”

  “Me too,” Quinn said. “She and Mommy taught me.”

  “And me,” Allie said.

  Catching Dana’s eye, Sam smiled. He had such a kind and handsome face, she thought. His eyes were so bright behind his glasses, blue-green from reflecting the sea. But she shook her head to let him know it wasn’t going to work—Allie was gripping her wrist so tight, Dana thought she’d never get her to let go.

  “Quinn, take over,” Sam said.

  “Right now?”

  “Sure. Why not? Allie, you can have a turn too.”

  “What good will that do?” Allie asked, nails digging into Dana’s skin.

  “I’m not so scared when I know how to do something,” Sam said. “When I feel a little more in control.”

  “Today might not be the day,” Dana said, looking down at Allie’s fingers around her wrist.

  “I’d like to try,” Quinn said slowly. “You want to, Al?”

  “I don’t know… .”

  “Sure,” Sam said. “Your aunt is the best, and I mean the best. If she could teach me to sail, she can teach anyone.”

  “We were on the big boat, Daddy’s boat,” Allie said. “But that was too huge for us to sail. And it tipped a lot.”

  “Heeled, Allie,” Quinn said. “You’re saying the wrong thing.”

  “We won’t heel much today,” Sam said. “Unless you want to.”

  Dana felt herself settling down. Being on the water had always calmed her, touched her deep, deep inside. Sam’s voice was so quiet, as if it were part of the breeze, and she admired him for coming up with this way to help her nieces, encouraging them to sail where she’d been unable to. She felt Sam—just a little—chipping away one of the high walls she’d built.

  “I’ll try,” Allie said in a tiny voice.

  “Me too,” Quinn said, and Dana saw that she was staring out into the Sound, in the direction her parents had sailed that last night.

  Without anyone changing places, Dana began to refresh their memories. Sam watched he
r steadily, offering an invisible lifeline she never had to let go of. She showed the girls the sails, told them the difference between the jib and the main. She talked about running and standing rigging, let them touch the halyards and hold the sheets. Allie practiced sliding the jib sheet in and out of its block, while Quinn sat beside Sam and pushed the tiller back and forth.

  When the time came, they rearranged themselves. Sam made room for Dana at the helm. Their hands brushed as they passed, and Sam caught Dana’s eye.

  “All yours, skipper,” he said.

  “Thanks, Sam,” she whispered, and she didn’t just mean his deference. Her heart swelled to be sailing again. It was the first time all summer, the first time since Lily’s death. It filled her with peace to be sailing in her sister’s beloved boat with her sister’s two daughters, and she knew she had him to thank for it.

  Sunlight glittered on the blue Sound as the girls settled into place. With Allie beside Sam in the bow and Quinn next to Dana at the tiller, very slowly they began to sail.

  Allie cried out once as the boat caught the wind. Sam put her hands on the jib sheet, pointing up the mast as he taught her to trim the sail. Dana held her hand over Quinn’s, letting her get a feel for the tiller, the boat pointing into the wind and over the calm sea. Then Dana slid away, and Quinn took over.

  “We’re sailing!” Allie called.

  “We’re doing it!” Quinn yelled.

  Catching Dana’s eyes, his face shielded against the sun, Sam nodded. Dana saw him grinning, and she knew she was doing the same thing. She tried to conjure that small boy she had taught to sail in Newport, Rhode Island, so many years before, but all she could see was a wonderful man.

  His glasses might have been the same, and she thought she recognized a few freckles and a cowlick. But the wind was blowing her own hair, clearing the cobwebs out of her head and heart, making her nieces sing out loud.

  “Lily,” Dana said under her breath. “They’re born sailors, just like us. We’re doing it, Lily. Doing it for you.”

  CHAPTER 12

  BACK AT THE HOUSE, QUINN PRACTICED TYING knots and Allie drew pictures of their sailing adventure. Sam and Dana drank iced tea under the white umbrella. The sun had started to set, turning everything golden. Sam looked over at Dana. Stretched out on the teak bench, her legs seemed to go on forever. Her eyes crinkled, staring over the Sound, and he felt incredibly content to see her looking so happy.