No Ocean Deep

by Cate Swannell

  “Wow,” said Cadie. The clouds were low enough that she felt she could almost reach out and touch them. Behind the leading edge lightning crackled sporadically, illuminating an impenetrable blanket of rain that was fast approaching. But it was the cloud formation immediately overhead that gave Cadie goose-bumps. Ragged tendrils hung down and she could see that there was a slow rotation to their movements. Unconsciously she gripped the wheel even tighter, grateful for the long arms around her waist and the solid frame behind her.

  “You okay?” Jo asked, her breath a welcome warmth against her ear.

  “Yeah, she’s just bucking a little,” Cadie grunted, wrestling the helm as the yacht labored through a bigger than average wave. “Jo, you know I was raised in the Midwest, right?” Cadie said as she flicked her eyes to their course and then back up to the swirling cloud.

  “Yeah,” the skipper replied, her own eyes also fixated on the menacing formation above them.

  “You ever heard of Tornado Alley?”

  Jo tore her eyes away and looked down at her partner’s anxious face.

  “Sure,” she answered.

  “Well, in my part of the world, if you see clouds doing that,” she pointed at a rotating mass hanging from the bottom of the advancing front, “you move the hell away in the opposite direction.”

  Jo nodded, understanding her partner’s anxiety.

  “Tornados are a pretty rare thing in this part of the world, love,” she reassured, fascinated by the activity above them. “Besides which, we’re so far under it now, any direction we go is away from it.” She grinned.

  “Oh thanks,” Cadie snorted. “That’s reassuring.”

  Large drops of rain began to splosh onto the deck and both women flipped up the hoods on their wet weather gear.

  "Keep your fingers crossed that we don't get hit by hail," Jo muttered close to Cadie's ear.

  "Wonderful."

  Jo spotted a bullet of faster-moving air rippling across the water and she scooted past Cadie.

  “Bear away!” she yelled as she dove for the winches, trying to bleed some air out of the taut sails. Cadie didn’t ask questions, just swung the yacht starboard until the wind was coming from directly behind her. She held the Seawolf steady while Jo reefed the mainsail, reducing the big boat’s sail area and lessening the risk of damage to the rigging in the blustery winds. “Okay!” the skipper shouted, waving. The blonde leaned her weight against the wheel, fighting the inertia. Slowly the nose turned to port again and the sails refilled. Now the yacht felt more manageable, less inclined to fight Cadie’s control.

  “How’s that?” Jo asked as she came back to the helm, wiping the water from her face.

  “Better,” Cadie acknowledged even as she kept her focus firmly on their final destination, the safe haven of Hayman Island’s sheltered marina. She shook the rain out of her eyes.

  “We’re gonna make it, love,” Jo said, blinking happily at her through the downpour. Cadie couldn’t help grinning back.

  “You’re loving every minute of this aren’t you?” she yelled.

  “Oh yeah! Woooohooooooooooooooooooo!”

  Naomi slammed the phone down, the sound reverberating around the empty office. It was late and she was alone, the rest of her staff having left for the night. She had just tried calling Cheswick Marine but had gotten nothing but a busy tone, a frustrating beginning to her quest to contact her ex-partner.

  No. Not my ex-anything, she thought grimly, feeling the burning anger gnawing at her gut. My partner. My goddamn, lying, cheating, slut of a partner. For the first few weeks after she'd returned without Cadie, it had been easy for the senator to carry on as usual. But as the time approached for the blonde to come home and the press started to ask difficult questions, Naomi had found it harder and harder to contain her anger.

  She placed her forehead on the back of her hands as they rested on the heavy oak desktop.

  She’s not going to get away with humiliating me like this, Naomi thought. Nobody jeopardizes my career and my happiness this way. All I need to do is get her back here, then I can make her see that this is where she belongs. There isn’t anything she needs that I can’t give her.

  She lifted her head again and reached for the phone.

  “And there isn’t going to be anything that tall bitch can do about it,” she muttered. But first we try the easy way, she thought.

  The senator flipped over the card with Cheswick Marine’s number on it and redialed. This time she heard the double ring tones of the Australian phone system and then someone picked up.

  “Cheswick Marine,” said a cheery female voice with a broad accent.

  “This is Senator Naomi Silberberg,” the American answered. “Please give me a phone number for Arcadia Jones.”

  There was a pause as the woman on the other end of the phone processed the abrupt request.

  “I’m sorry, Senator,” she finally replied. “Cadie is out on the water at the moment and out of contact.”

  “Don’t give me that,” Naomi growled. “I’ve been on that boat. I know that they’re never out of contact. They have a cell phone. They have a radio. Now give me the goddamned number.”

  But Doris Simmons, faithful office manager of Cheswick Marine was not going to budge – not when it came to company policy, and certainly not when it came to the well-being and happiness of her boss and her boss’ partner.

  “There’s nothing I can do, Senator,” Doris insisted, her voice firm and unyielding. “It’s not company policy to give out cell phone numbers of our employees. The best I can do is take your number and pass the message on.”

  Naomi closed her eyes against the rising frustration and fury building in her head.

  “Fine,” she grunted through clenched teeth. “You tell Arcadia to contact me, urgently, in Washington DC. I’m sure if she thinks hard enough, she will remember the numbers.” She crashed the receiver into the cradle, jamming her finger in the process.

  “Fuck.” She sucked the offended digit. “Fuck, fuck, FUCK!!” Finally she let the anger out, sweeping her arm across the desktop, knocking phone, rolodex, diary and pens flying onto the floor.

  Cadie peeled off the rain slicker and slumped onto the sofa in the main cabin. Jo took the wet weather gear from her as she passed into their berth, where she hung the damp garments in the head to dry out. When she walked back out Cadie’s eyes were closed, her head resting against the back of the sofa.

  “You okay, sweetheart?” Jo asked quietly, settling into the seat opposite.

  Cadie grinned and lifted her head, looking at her damp and wind-tossed lover affectionately.

  “I’m great,” she said. “Just pooped. My arms are killing me.”

  Jo nodded and reached out with a long leg, bumping Cadie’s knee with her bare foot.

  “I’m not surprised. You just did a whole lot of hard, physical work, my love. This is a big yacht, and you’re…”

  “I’m what?” Cadie asked sharply, raising a challenging eyebrow. “So small?” Her mouth quirked into a wry smile.

  “Noooo,” Jo retorted. She dropped onto the floor and slid between Cadie’s legs, wrapping her arms around the blonde’s waist. “If you’d let me finish, brat, you would’ve heard me say that you’re not used to manhandling something as big as 50-foot yacht in a thunderstorm.” She kissed the tip of Cadie’s nose. “The first time I had to do it I strained my rib cartilage. Couldn’t lift my arms above my shoulders for a month.”

  “Wow, really?” Cadie smirked. “I’m impressed with myself.” She leaned down and kissed Jo softly. “That was fun. Can we do it again?”

  Jo groaned.

  “Seawolf, Seawolf, this is Cheswick Marine,” crackled the radio.

  Jo pushed herself up.

  “Did we switch off the cell phone?” she asked, surprised to hear Doris’ voice on the two-way.

  “Yeah, the storm knocked out the network anyway,” Cadie replied, reaching for the phone, which she’d left in the recess on the
cabin table.

  “Cheswick, this is Seawolf,” Jo said into the handset. “What’s up Doris?”

  “Hi Jo-Jo,” came the office manager’s voice. “Trouble, I think, skipper.” Cadie walked over and leaned against the taller woman, listening to the conversation. “Senator Silverberg called in, wanting to talk to Cadie.”

  Ah shit, thought Jo, feeling the blonde stiffen against her. She wrapped an arm protectively around her partner’s shoulders. Cadie reached up and took the handset from her.

  “Did she say what she wanted Doris?” she asked her voice quiet and uncertain.

  “Hi Cadie. No, not really. She said it was urgent and that you should call her in Washington.”

  Cadie didn’t seem to know what to say to that, so Jo gently took the handset back and keyed the transmitter.

  “Thanks Doris. You did the right thing. How did you guys survive the storm?” Cadie burrowed deeper into her embrace and Jo held her close.

  “Oh, no problems. Bit of wind and water, that was about it. How about you?”

  “We’re fine. Do me a favor and call Mike at the Coastguard? Let him know we made it to Hayman okay.”

  “Will do. You’ll be back here tomorrow, yes?”

  “Yeah, sometime in the afternoon. Thanks for letting us know, Doris. Seawolf out.”

  The contact broke and Jo freed up her other hand, wrapping it around Cadie.

  “This sucks, Jo-Jo,” came a muffled voice.

  “I know love, but it was bound to happen sometime. She was never just going to let you go.”

  Cadie nodded against her chest.

  “I know, but why did it have to be this weekend?”

  “Do you want to call her back?” Jo asked. She slid her hand up and scratched the back of Cadie’s neck comfortingly.

  “Unnnnnnnnghhhh that feels good,” the blonde muttered against her shirt. “No, I don’t want to call her back, but I guess I don’t really have much choice. She said it was urgent.”

  Jo felt supremely skeptical about that. Her brief experience with the obnoxious politician had taught her that Naomi did nothing that wasn’t guaranteed to benefit herself. But she also knew Cadie had a lot of loose ends left in the US.

  “What time is it in Washington, right now?” she asked quietly.

  Cadie glanced at her watch. It was almost 5pm.

  “Um.” She did a quick calculation of time differences in her head. “Coming up to 2am.”

  “So let it go for now,” Jo said, looking down into a pair of anxious green eyes and smiling. “Let’s go enjoy an evening with Rosa and the family and then maybe tomorrow morning we can kill two birds with one stone. You can call the senator and I’ll call my parents.” She blew out a ragged breath at the thought.

  “Oh boy,” Cadie murmured. “Sounds like the morning from hell.” She managed a weak smile.

  “All the more reason to keep our strength up with Rosa’s cooking,” Jo answered, mustering a grin from somewhere.

  “God, that sounds wonderful,” the blonde groaned. “Let’s go.”

  Maggie Madison straightened up and pushed her hands into the small of her back, wincing as she stretched out muscles that had been hunched over the flower bed for the past hour. She adored to work in the garden but her beloved plot was a shadow of its former self thanks to the drought. The truth was they couldn't spare the water for the flowers, not when there were cattle and sheep dying out on the property. She sighed and brushed a strand of her long, grey hair away from her face with a gloved hand.

  These days she only really had time to spend an hour or so in the garden at the end of the day and even that wasn't enough to save a lot of her favorites from withering in the dust. Maggie poked at one forlorn specimen with her trowel, loosening up the crumbling soil before adding a handful of fertilizer and a cup of precious water.

  It was late in the day and thankfully the sting of the heat was less now as the sun dipped lower over the modest homestead. She had dinner on the go and was just waiting for her husband and the two jackaroos they employed to come home from whatever far-flung paddock they had worked today.

  She put the finishing touches on the last of the struggling plants, then pushed herself up off her knees with a groan.

  "I'm getting too old for this," she murmured, wincing as the arthritis in her left knee made its presence known. Away to the west she could see a dust cloud trailing up from a gap in the trees she knew to be the main track up to the house.

  "That'll be them," she decided, pulling her gardening gloves off and stuffing them in the back pocket of her jeans. She walked through the homestead’s back door and on into the large, airy kitchen. Before too long she was assembling the evening meal, laying the food out on the wide wooden table in the centre of the room. The sound of the truck pulling up out front, followed by boots on the floorboards told her the men were home.

  “Wash up before you come in my kitchen,” she called out, hearing the footsteps immediately divert to the two bathrooms in the house. A couple of minutes later her husband walked into the kitchen.

  “G’day darl,” said the familiar voice.

  Maggie smiled as she turned from the stovetop and accepted his light kiss on the cheek.

  “H’lo love,” she replied as she spooned vegetables onto a plate. “How was your day?”

  “Pretty bloody grim,” he said wearily. He tossed his wide-brimmed felt hat onto the hook on the door and sat down on the nearest chair. “We went out to the No.2 bore up in the back paddock. Had to pull three carcasses out of the trough.”

  Maggie walked over and slid a plateful of food in front of him.

  “Ewes?” she asked quietly, noting the dark circles under her husband’s grey eyes.

  He nodded.

  “Two lambs orphaned,” he replied. “Damn near dead themselves. But we brought them back. Hughie’s gonna hand rear them till they’re weaned.”

  As he spoke two other men walked into the room. The first was Hughie, a young aboriginal man in his early 20s. He’d been working for the Madisons since he’d left school at 15 and Maggie was very fond of him. Maybe it was because he was quiet and reliable, or maybe it was just that he worked hard and had stuck by her and David even when the drought had bitten deep and they’d had to pay him less. She smiled at the young man and got a shy grin back.

  Maggie hadn’t made her mind up about the other man yet. Jack Collingwood was lean, tall and carried a constant scowl. He’d only been with them a few months and her husband seemed to think he was a good worker, but there was something about him that made Maggie’s skin crawl. And she suspected that away from the big house, Jack was less than gentle with his younger coworker.

  And if I ever catch him at that, he’ll hear about it, she thought to herself as she prepared plates of food for the two men.

  “Evening, missus,” Jack muttered as he followed Hughie into the room.

  “Jack,” she acknowledged. “Are you two going to eat with us tonight?”

  “No thanks,” he replied. “We want to get those two lambs settled and fed, don’t we Hughie, mate?” He roughly clipped the younger man’s shoulder in a playful gesture but Maggie didn’t miss the slight wince on Hughie’s face.

  “All right,” she said quietly. She placed covers over the two plates she’d made up for them and handed them over along with two sets of cutlery. “There you go, fellas. Have a good evening.”

  “Thanks missus,” Jack said gruffly, taking his plate and walking out the back door towards the worker’s cottage 50 yards away from the main house.

  “Thanks Miz Maggie,” Hughie said quietly, smiling at her as he took the plate from her hands.

  “Hang on, Hugh,” she said, touching his arm to stop him leaving. She reached over to the fruit bowl on the table and took out an apple and an orange, placing them in his other hand. “For afters,” she said.

  A big grin creased his face, and she brushed his cheek gently with her knuckles.

  “Go on,” she said. “Make sur
e those lambs get enough milk, okay.”

  “Yes, missus. No worries.” He beamed at her and then followed Jack out the back door and into the rapidly descending darkness.

  “You spoil that boy,” growled her husband from his seat at the dining table. She put together her own dinner and then sat down opposite him.

  “He works hard, David, and we’re his only family. He deserves to be spoiled every now and then. I just wish we could do more for him.”

  David grunted his response, concentrating instead on his food. Maggie watched him, noting his stooped posture, and the bone weariness that colored every movement and gesture.

  He’s aged so much over the last couple of years, she realized. His large, weather-beaten hands still fascinated her, as they always had, and she smiled as an incongruous memory of his hands touching her floated through her consciousness. Where did that come from, she wondered.

  “David,” she said tentatively.

  “Mmmm?” he responded, not looking up from his dinner plate.

  “Next week is Jossandra’s birthday.” His hands stilled for a couple of seconds and then resumed cutting up his steak. “I was thinking maybe we could send her a card this year.”

  He swallowed a mouthful of food and glanced up at her.

  “You do what you want,” he muttered, stabbing a baby potato with his fork and shoving it in his mouth.

  Maggie sighed. It was always the same with him when it came to their daughter. He’d never gotten over her abrupt departure, never forgiven her for leaving them in the dark for so long. And after the heart attack debilitated him to the point of not being able to run the farm the way he wanted to, she had found it hard to forgive Jossandra as well.

  But she had found a way. Mothers always do, she thought. She’s my daughter and whatever she’s become – and god knows, I have no real idea what that is – I love her, and always will.

  She watched her husband for a while longer.