Safe Harbor

by Luanne Rice

  I wonder whether they’ll be wearing Mommy’s locket this year.

  Mermaids throwing their nets on the waves, catching boats and fish, wearing other people’s jewelry. Those things don’t sound very nice. Why do I love them anyway?

  Because they belong to Mom, me, and Allie. Because we’ve heard them singing late at night. Because when I look at the waves—right now, sitting by this big rock—I hope I’ll see a mermaid popping up to say hello. I hope she’ll be someone I know.

  I hope she’ll be Mommy.

  With that, Quinn stopped writing to scan the sea. She looked across the trail of rocks that formed the outermost point of Little Beach. The water beyond was quite calm, with small waves breaking on the sandbar. Past the bar, past the shoals and buoys, Quinn watched the blue water all the way to the Hunting Ground.

  Aunt Dana would be home soon. Sam was with her. Even though no one had bothered to tell Quinn, she knew. Watcher of the house, keeper of the flame, she knew all—even more than Aunt Dana, who knew a lot. No one was more vigilant than Aquinnah Grayson. Sticking her hand in the pocket of her shorts, she came out with the present she had brought.

  It was always the same, or as close as she could make it.

  Never once taking her eyes off the waves, she placed the gift on the wet sand between the big rocks and the tide line, and she returned her diary to the plastic bag. She wished she had time to sail. Now that Aunt Dana was reteaching her every day, she had her confidence back. She wanted to get in the boat and head east—maybe she’d go to Gay Head. The mermaids there were probably pretty cool. They might remember her from when she was born.

  But that was just slightly unrealistic. She had more practicing to do before she could go solo all the way to Martha’s Vineyard. Back to a more realistic plan: If she moved fast, she could bury her diary and get home in time to watch her favorite movie, see her parents and their amazing first baby in action—and in private. Casting one last glance at the Sound and then at the present she had left, Quinn turned around to run quickly, quickly home.

  CHAPTER 14

  SAM DROVE AND DANA STARED OUT THE WINDOW . When they pulled under the railroad bridge, past the small guard shack into Hubbard’s Point, he sensed her tensing like a spring. They wound up Cresthill Road, past the cottages on their wooded lots, and stopped at the stone wall at the foot of her hill. Down the street, someone was warbling scales in a soprano voice. Dana catapulted out of the van.

  By the time Sam caught up to her, she had opened the garage door. The space seemed empty with the boat launched, but she went straight for the back wall and crouched down. Standing beside her, Sam watched her take the tiny gold key from her pocket.

  “What are you doing?” he asked as she inserted it into the padlock.

  “Seeing if it fits.”

  Her hands seemed to be shaking so much, she couldn’t get the key in right. Sam fought the urge to take over. Her brown hair fell in her face. She talked nonstop: “I thought this tackle box had to be Mark’s, but then I found the key, and I know it’s Lily’s, and I thought, ‘bingo.’ ”

  “Bingo?”

  “Mark wouldn’t bother locking a tackle box. He wasn’t like that. I don’t know why I didn’t think of Lily in the first place. Of course it’s hers. Only she would buy a cute little lock with a tiny key, take the trouble of hiding it above a window. In her husband’s office, no less!”

  “She liked to hide things?”

  Dana glanced over her shoulder to give him a dirty look—as if he’d just committed blasphemy. In spite of the disapproval she was trying to convey, she looked gorgeous and sexy. Crouched on the damp garage floor, fumbling with the lock, she had a wild look in her blue eyes. Sam really wanted to pull her to her feet, put his arms around her the way he had at Mark’s office.

  “She liked to hide things, yes,” Dana said defensively. “But in a good way.”

  “A good way?”

  “A playful way. A scavenger-hunt, treasure-hunt sort of way. Your brother would understand, wouldn’t he? God, I can’t get this key to turn.”

  “My brother?”

  “Didn’t you tell me he sails the seven seas in search of shipwrecks? A guy after Lily’s own heart. Well, he’d understand.”

  “And you think I don’t?” Sam asked, frowning.

  “I think you do,” Dana said, looking up and tugging the lock. “I guess I wanted to bring your brother into this. You and I are here, doing this for Lily. Joe’s the only one left out… .”

  Sam immediately crouched down, moved by Dana’s wish to include Joe. Something had changed back in Mark’s office. After Sam had pointed out the words on the wall, Dana had started to trust him. She really did value family connection almost as much as Sam did himself. Right then he wanted to hold her, but she was so intent on the tackle box. He felt distracted by the shape of Dana’s body under her big T-shirt, the way her cheekbones looked in this mysterious, shadowy light.

  “This can’t be anything, can it?” Dana asked, sounding scared as she tried to get the key into the lock.

  “You know what Joe would say?”

  “What?”

  “That treasures sometimes come in strange packages, even old tackle boxes. Keep trying.”

  Suddenly, she stopped working and stared at the key. “It doesn’t fit.”

  “Are you sure?” Sam asked, giving it a try. She was right: The key was all wrong for the lock. But it felt so good to be this close to her, their bare arms touching, her tan legs crossed as she sat on the floor, he kept at it.

  “Damn,” Dana said. “It must go to something else. But what’s in the tackle box?”

  “You think it’s Mark’s?” Sam asked.

  “Probably. Lily didn’t fish, but on the other hand, Mark didn’t lock things up. Unless he had secrets we didn’t know about. It’s crazy—Quinn has me thinking like a Shakespeare tragedy. Whispers and threats—evil doings at the goddamn Sun Center. Let’s break the lock.”

  “Break it now?” Sam asked, holding the tackle box in both hands.

  “What would Joe do?” Dana said, and Sam loved the way she made a connection with his touchstone.

  “Whatever it takes,” Sam said. He hugged her, and she hugged him back. Then the challenge was on. Sam shook the box, hearing the contents shuffle around: They sounded more like papers than metal lures and sinkers. Glancing around for a place to bang the hasp, he felt Dana’s hand on his cheek.

  “You’re a good sport,” she said as his heart pumped harder. “And as good a treasure hunter as your brother.”

  “He’d be surprised to hear you say that.” Sam grinned, noticing she didn’t take her hand down. It felt soft, and he wished he had shaved that morning. Their eyes were locked. Their siblings were in the air, but in that moment, staring into Dana’s eyes, Sam felt all alone with her. He reached for her hand to hold it for a minute.

  The amazing thing was, she let him. They were sitting on the cool, damp floor of her family’s garage, about to break into a locked tackle box while the summer day went on outside.

  “You don’t have to do it,” she said. “It’s my sister. I will.”

  “I’d do anything for you, Dana.”

  She held his hand lightly in hers, and then she turned it over. Staring into the palm, as if she were a fortune-teller and she wanted to read his future, she didn’t speak at first. She tapped the back of his hand, just keeping it there in her loose grasp. He wondered whether she was thinking of what they’d been through this summer: her art show, the drive to JFK, painting the boat, sailing, finding the key. Sam was; he couldn’t help it.

  “You know what, Sam?” she asked, still looking at his palm.

  “You’re about to tell me I’m going to live long,” he said.

  “I’m about to tell you thank you,” she said, raising her eyes to meet his. Her expression was solemn and grateful, and he wanted to see her smile almost as much as he didn’t want her to let go of his hand. But she did, pointing at the box. “Do
it,” she ordered.

  And Sam was about to. He really was. While breaking into other people’s property wasn’t his thing—in that way she was right, this job was more up Joe’s alley—he had meant what he said: He’d do anything for her. So he pulled his hand away, got to his feet.

  Finding a rusty old pry bar on a shelf, he set the box on the floor and prepared to break it open.

  “Oh, Lily, don’t let it be bad,” Dana said as Sam inserted the bar.

  Just then they heard laughter, the voices of children. People were coming down the street. Dana had barely enough time to return the box to its shelf while Sam hid the pry bar. They were standing together, trying to look innocent in the dark, empty garage, when the open door filled with the faces of Quinn, Allie, two of their friends, and a pretty, dark-haired woman in a dripping bathing suit.

  “We didn’t catch any crabs, but we got lots of mussels,” Allie called.

  “I hate mussels,” Quinn said. “Don’t expect me to eat any.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dana said, bending over to admire the catch.

  “Hello, I’m Marnie Campbell,” the woman said, coming over with her hand out, barely looking at Dana, homing in on Sam as if she were a seagull and he was a clam. “I’m Dana and Lily’s oldest friend; my kids are best friends with Quinn and Allie. You must be Sam.”

  “That’s right,” Sam said, shaking her hand. “I am.”

  THAT NIGHT, for reasons unconfirmed but suspected by Dana, Marnie insisted the girls accompany her, Cameron, June, and Annabelle for an evening of pizza and miniature golf. As eager as she had been to open the box before, now with the coast clear and the luxury of time to think, Dana felt reluctant.

  Sam stayed for dinner. Dana filled a large kettle with butter, garlic, shallots, herbs, and the mussels. She fixed a plate of cheese and crackers, and she and Sam went to sit on the terrace.

  The sun was going down, spreading lavender light across the Sound, edging the waves with gold.

  “You make it seem so easy,” Sam said.

  “What?”

  “Cooking mussels. The way you just threw everything into a pot. And you made the girls feel so good—did you see their faces when they realized we were actually going to eat their catch?”

  Dana laughed. “They were just happy they’re having pizza instead. The truth is, I can’t cook anything I have to measure or time.” Watching Sam eat, she felt happy she’d made something he liked. They ate the mussels, and as the wind picked up, she hoped the girls would remember to put on their sweaters.

  “When you look at that,” Sam said, pointing at the beach and the waves, “doesn’t it make you want to paint?”

  Dana looked down at her bowl.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Seeing Lily’s painting today—the white flowers and vines—I started thinking about your talent. How awful it is you don’t use it anymore.”

  “I’ll use it someday.”

  “If you were painting that scene, what would you use?”

  “That scene, right there?” Dana asked, watching the sun behind the horizon, the rays of gold shooting into dark clouds. As always, her attention was pulled by the water, by the movement and mystery of the sea, and she began to imagine the water column just past sunset. “I’d use Winsor and Newton’s royal purple mixed with dark blue; for the gold, I might use actual gold leaf,” she heard herself say.

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I can’t, Sam. Don’t ask me anymore.”

  “I won’t ask you—I’ll tell you. I think you should. I saw your paintings at the gallery. They’re great, amazing! I’m an oceanographer, and you made me feel that I was right there, under the surface in the euphotic zone.”

  “The what?”

  “The euphotic zone—down to two hundred feet, the depth to which light penetrates.”

  “That’s what I paint,” she said. “I never knew the name before.”

  Sam nodded, letting it alone. She felt the silence between them and thought about Jonathan. He had nagged her to paint till she couldn’t take any more, and then he’d get quiet, poisonously silent, as if he were thinking she was the biggest jerk alive. Sam’s silence didn’t feel like that.

  “You ready to crack the safe?” he asked after they’d finished all the mussels.

  “Almost. Not quite.”

  “Want to go sailing?” he asked. “The moon’ll be up soon.”

  Dana smiled.

  “We could sail over that royal purple with a little dark blue sea, edged with gold leaf,” Sam said enticingly. He pretended one of the empty mussel shells was their boat, and he sailed it from his hand onto hers.

  Holding the empty shell, looking at its mother-of-pearl interior, Dana lifted her eyes to his. “I want you to tell me what you meant the other night—when you said I should let Quinn keep vigil on her rock.”

  “Just that—you should let her.”

  “Why do you say that? What if it’s bad for her—encouraging her to watch for who knows what, hope for people who are never coming home? What do you know about it?”

  “I know a lot, Dana.”

  “Tell me, Sam. Because I feel as if I’m in the dark on too much already.”

  “My father died when I was eight,” Sam said. “The winter before you taught me how to sail.”

  Dana sailed the small shell boat across her knee. It made her uncomfortable, remembering how young Sam had been, how young he still was. Sometimes he seemed like her friend, her equal, and other times being with him brought up the hard knot of all her feelings about Jonathan.

  “I know he did,” she said. “Your mother told me when she signed your permission slip.”

  “Bet she wasn’t too sad when she told you,” Sam said. “I don’t think she was very sorry to lose him. See, she married him fast, without knowing him very well. She was a widow with a kid—my brother, Joe—to raise. My dad delivered lobsters for the co-op, he asked her to marry him, and she thought she was going to live happily ever after.”

  “But she didn’t?”

  Sam shook his head. “She’d been in love with someone else—an artist who pretty much led her on and left her. I think you know the name—Hugh Renwick.”

  “Of course I know him—from Firefly Beach,” Dana said, shocked. His family had been at her opening. He had been married to Augusta, and it sounded as if Sam’s mother had been married as well.

  “It’s a long, sad story,” Sam said, taking the mussel shell as she sailed it back into his hand. “But she ended up married to my dad, Liam Trevor. Joe used to call their marriage World War Three.”

  “I’m sorry, Sam.”

  He looked out to the Sound. Rangy and lean, he slouched at his end of the teak bench. His blue shirt was open at the neck, his skin smooth and tan. The look in his eyes, behind his gold-rimmed glasses, made him look weary and older. But the memory that tugged Dana’s heart was him as an eight-year-old boy grasping on to sailing lessons as a way of forgetting his father had died the winter before.

  “He did yell at her and Joe,” Sam said quietly. “He’d explode at them, but he never yelled at me.”

  The waves splashed the shore as Dana waited for him to go on.

  “I felt guilty sometimes. Why did they get it and not me? Sometimes I listened, like Quinn did, trying to figure it out. I heard the whole thing about Joe’s father and Hugh Renwick. I’d hear Joe defending his mother, my father slamming his fist down, throwing things around. After a while, he’d come in to find me.”

  “Joe?”

  “No, my father.”

  “What would he say?” Dana asked.

  “He’d tell me stories,” Sam said, sitting on the cool terrace. “He’d sing me songs. He was just the dad, and I was just the kid. It was exactly the way it was supposed to be—if I could block out the other stuff.”

  “What kind of stories?” Dana asked.

  “About the lobsters he drove to market. About the places he saw, about his own childhood grow
ing up in Ireland—the rocky bays and huge tidal pools. Joe says it isn’t true, but to this day I think one of the reasons he became an oceanographer was because of things he overheard my father talking about.”

  “What happened to him, Sam?”

  “He drove his truck off a bridge.”

  “Sam—”

  “Christmas Eve. On his way back from New York, his truck empty after delivering a full load of lobsters to the Fulton Market, he hit an ice storm and went off the Jamestown Bridge.”

  Dana pictured the span over the west passage of Narragansett Bay—high and narrow, its iron towers a landmark from miles away. She had been afraid to go across the Jamestown Bridge as a child—it had always seemed so tall and menacing.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, wanting to reach for Sam’s hand. She had taught him to sail in Newport, in the harbor and the east passage of Narragansett Bay, just a few miles away.

  “I was eight,” Sam said. “Old enough to wonder why no one else in my house was as upset as I was. I walked out the door into the storm, and I walked over the Newport Bridge and Conanicut Island to get to the Jamestown Bridge.”

  “Why did you want to go there?”

  “For the same reason Quinn wants to go to the Hunting Ground and locate her father’s boat—to make sure he didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “Why would you think he’d do that?”

  “Because Joe’s father shot himself,” Sam said. “My mother had broken his heart with Hugh Renwick. In some ways, she broke my father’s heart with Hugh Renwick’s ghost. I started thinking, maybe he drove off the bridge on purpose.”

  “But he didn’t, did he?” Dana asked, taking his hand now. She wanted to comfort him, and she wanted to be reassured that such terrible things didn’t really happen. Accidents were bad enough—real tragedies. But for a parent to know what he was doing, leave his child in such an awful way … Dana’s hand was shaking as she waited for Sam to look at her.