“Solange ...” I stopped in the middle of the living room, set her on her feet, and knelt next to her. She looked at me with questioning eyes. She did not recognize this woman, but she sensed I wanted her to try.
Celeste’s head had snapped up at the sound of my voice, and she watched the child, hungry for some reaction.
“Solange,” I said, and raised my hand to indicate Celeste. “This is your mother.”
At first the kid didn’t move. I watched her face, the lines of concentration etched in her little forehead as she tried so hard to remember something from a life she had once known but had long forgotten.
Then, in a soft voice, Celeste began to sing:
Dodo ti pitit manman’l
Do-o-do-o-do ti pitit manman’l
Si li pas dodo
Krab la va manje’l
“Maman!” Solange cried out, and she ran into her mother’s arms.
XXXII
When we still hadn’t heard anything from Pit or B.J. by that afternoon, I called my brother Maddy, and he offered to run me over to Bimini on his charter sportfishing boat, the Lady Jane. I met him at the fuel dock, and I was surprised to see his hair had gone completely gray in the few months since I had seen him last. The size of his beer gut hadn’t changed, and I wondered if I would believe he was only thirty-two if he weren’t my brother.
I spent most of the four hours of that crossing slumped in a chair up on the fly bridge, my feet on the dash, looking out to sea, trying to figure out why the world was such a shitty place. Yeah, I know the world is full of ugliness. I didn’t need Joe D’Angelo to tell me that. But I still couldn’t fathom a father who didn’t love a kid as great as Solange. We’re not talking about a crime against strangers here, she was his own kid. I thought of the way the little kiddo had looked up at me all the time, the way her serious face would be transformed when her lips parted and those small, perfect teeth showed in her shy, tentative smile. I thought of her hand, how it slipped into mine and squeezed with a slight pressure that asked me to love her. And oh, damn, how I did.
The June storm had passed several days before, and any traces of that wind and swell were long gone now. As we charged across the Stream at over twenty knots, we created our own wind up there on the bridge. I was wearing a baseball cap to tame my hair and as protection from the sun, and I kidded myself as I tugged the brim lower that the tears on my cheeks were caused by the wind burning my eyes. The still water out in the Stream was back to the familiar luminescent inky blue strafed with golden shafts of sunlight. The current looked both beautiful and benign, though it had been neither when I’d watched the sun set the night before, assuming that sunset would be my last.
On the drive down to Maddy’s dock in Surfside, I had learned from Jeannie that Rusty was still over on Bimini, working as a liaison with the Bahamian government to deal with the illegal immigrants who had been at Joe’s camp on South Bimini. They had reportedly found over four hundred people living there in squalor.
Rusty told Jeannie he had been hiding in the mangroves that night, trying to spy on Malheur, when Solange and I had surprised him by taking his boat. There he was in the mangroves, his binoculars trained inland, trying to figure out how to rescue us from the clutches of Malheur, when we tore past him on our way out of the cut. He saw the smugglers go out the canal shortly thereafter, and he wound up swimming across the harbor back to Alice Town.
“He called me this morning,” Jeannie said, “before I heard from you. I told him not to worry, you were a survivor, and he asked me to call him if I heard anything. He said he was staying at the hotel that has all the Hemingway stuff, what’s it called?” Then she snapped her fingers. “Oh yeah, the Compleat Angler,” she said. “He sounded pretty damned upset, girl. Both that nobody’d heard from you, and that there was no report of his boat showing up at any ports along the Florida coast.”
I had been watching the road outside my window flying past in a dizzying blur of asphalt, cars, and strip shopping malls. “I hope he cares enough not to kill me when I tell him what happened to his boat.”
We got into Bimini just before dark, and Maddy tied up the Lady Jane in a slip at Freddie Weech’s Bimini Dock, moving easily around the boat in spite of his size. The little fifteen-slip marina was where he usually brought his long-term charter guests. Freddy rented the guests rooms, so he offered captains, like my brother, a discount on the dock rental. Maddy took care of Immigration while I hosed the boat down.
When he got back with our papers, Maddy said he wanted to eat dinner on the boat first, but there was no way I could sit still knowing that Pit and B.J. were out there somewhere, worrying that I might be dead. I convinced him that we should go out and have a look around, see if somebody couldn’t tell us where we might find a crazy American windsurfer and his big Samoan friend, maybe spot the Chris Craft B.J. had brought over.
The sun had set behind the island, but the sky above the collection of concrete-and plywood-buildings was filled with salmon-colored furrows of cloud, the sky behind the clouds, a washed-out, waxen blue. The precision of the formation reminded me of the ridges in the sand bottom back at Hillsboro Inlet, and I remembered B.J. standing on Gorda's deck, the water dripping off his bare chest where he had unzipped his wet suit. Was it really possible that was less than a week ago?
We stopped in at the Compleat Angler, and while Maddy was playing at big game fisherman, asking the other American yachties in the bar if they had seen anything, I spotted two Biminite ladies working the barbecue in the courtyard, turning the blackening chicken quarters with large tongs. I admired their cooking and asked after the health of their families, and soon I was on a first-name basis with Charlotte and Liz. When we got around to what I was doing there in Bimini, they told me that they had heard that there was an American camped out on the beach at the north end of the island, off Paradise Point.
“There is an old house out there, we call Rockwell House,” Liz told me. “Nobody live there now. They say he sleep in a tent,” she said, and she chuckled softly, shaking her head as though this were something only an American would do. She said that her son worked on a fishing boat, and he’d told her that the American had been inquiring on the docks about the whereabouts of a young woman who fit my description. Her son told her that this American traveled everywhere on his sailboard, she said, sneaking a nod to Charlotte, confirming this wild report. Whether coming to town or visiting South Bimini, he treated the sailboard like it was his dinghy.
I headed back into the bar to find Maddy and in the entry of the old inn, I literally ran into Rusty.
“Sey!” he shouted, and scooped me up in those football player arms of his, squeezing me in a breath-stealing hug. After holding me just long enough that I was beginning to think I might suffocate, he kissed my ear through my hair and dropped me back to the ground. He was wearing a long- sleeved white T-shirt and worn blue jeans, and he smelled of shampoo and shaving cream. From his days over on Bimini, his tan was even darker, making his deep blue eyes look electric. When he cupped his hands around my face and kissed me gently on the mouth, he fired up all the same tingles as on our first kiss, and I gave in to it, tasting his minty mouth and reaching up and over those strong shoulders of his.
“I was so worried,” he said when I pulled my mouth away and placed both hands on the center of his chest. Brushing his hand against the hair on the side of my head, he said, “I thought I’d lost you.”
I looked around the room at the hundreds of black-and-white photos hanging on the walls from years of Bimini fishing, gray, blurry images of men standing next to their hanging catch. There was a lot of history in that room.
I shook my head. “Rusty, I’m really sorry. Your boat... I shouldn’t have taken it... that was yours, and it really is lost. Gone, sank.” I thought about how to say the rest, and there didn’t seem to be an easy way.
“Hell, Sey, I can replace the boat, but if I were to lose you—” He wrapped his arms around me again and squeezed. I
couldn’t breathe, but it wasn’t because of his embrace.
“Rusty?” He let go and held me at arm’s length, staring at my face. “I spent a long time treading water out in the Gulf Stream, yesterday. Had lots of time to think about my life and, you know, think about the big questions, like why are we here and all.” I paused and took a deep breath.
He hugged me again before I could go any further. His lips were next to my ear, his breath hot on the side of my head, when he said, “You’re trying to tell me I never had you.”
I squeezed him tight, thankful to him for saying it for me. I broke the embrace so I could see his face as I said, “Rusty, I’m so sorry.”
He smiled. “I’m gonna miss you, Sullivan. And what might have been.”
“No doubt about it, Elliot. We would have been great.”
The walk to the north end of the island was only just over a mile, but Maddy complained all the way out there. It was past nine o’clock, and he had neither eaten nor had his evening quota of beer. I tried to tune him out. The slender new moon had already set, and the walk through the Australian pines was dark. Little animals scurried in the underbrush, lizards probably.
We smelled the campfire first. The abandoned house loomed dark at the end of a driveway that once had been paved but now was a mass of weeds and broken concrete. Liz had told me this place had been built in the forties and fifties as a private home for an American from Detroit who invented car bumpers. Three stories high with a small tower up top, it looked like a ferryboat perched out there on the limestone bluff. The east side was lit by the firelight from Pit’s camp, and as Maddy and I approached, he looked up from the flames.
“Sis!” He jumped up and trotted over to me and threw his arms around me, lifting me off the ground and twirling me around. When he put me back down, he looked up and nodded at Maddy, who stood off to one side of us. “Cool,” Pit said. “A regular Sullivan family reunion.” Then he collared Maddy in a hammerlock, bringing him into our little circle. We stood there in the firelight together, arms over one another’s shoulders, the tops of our heads touching, each of us lost in thought about those who weren’t there.
Maddy pushed away first. “Okay, enough of this mushy stuff. You got any beer, bro?”
Sitting around the fire, I told my brothers about the camp on South Bimini and Solange and my hours out crossing the Gulf Stream. I told them about the picture in the trunk and what Gil had said about our dad and what he had done, and not done, down in Colombia. I was able to tell the whole story without breaking down, but telling the end about the kid and her mother, and how Agent D’Ugard had said they would probably both be able to stay since Celeste had her green card—that part made me miss Solange even more. Pit said B.J. had left that morning, taken the Chris Craft down to South Bimini and Gun Cay to continue searching for me. Maddy promised to take the Lady Jane down there to find him in the morning.
I’d left my brothers chattering around the fire then, told them I was going off to explore the big vacant house, but really I just needed to get away.
The Bahama Islands are made of old coral reefs that once were beneath the sea, but when the sea level changed, these reefs dried out. They are limestone islands, made of the skeletons of long dead animals, and now with a thin layer of soil, a few struggling plants eked out an existence in the salt spray. Out along the edge of the bluff they’d named Paradise Point, the bumper man had built an iron-and-concrete walkway around three sides of his elaborate island home. Salt and rust, and perhaps even hurricanes, had eaten much of it away over the last fifty years, but I wandered out onto one of the remaining sections of concrete and looked down the fifteen feet or so at the ocean that was rising and falling around the rocky bluff. There must have been a small cavern below me, because when the swells came in, the air was expelled with a loud rush.
I didn’t even hear him walk up behind me, but in an instant the scent of coconut soap mingled with the iodine smell of the sea, and I sensed the size of him standing next to me. There was a comfort in his presence. I didn’t need to look to know he was there, leaning on the rail, looking out at the ocean as I was. We stayed like that for the longest time, not saying anything, not knowing what to say, but comfortable in the silence.
In the end, I was the first to speak.
“I found her mother,” I said, breaking through the weight of the humid night air that seemed to be pressing down on me. “They say she can stay in the States now.” The rocks below exhaled with another powerful whoosh. “That should make me feel good, shouldn’t it?”
“Sure,” he said. “That was a great thing you did.”
We both watched as a local fishing boat motored by, her running lights lit, her outriggers heavy with nets.
“So tell me, why does it hurt so much?”
“Because you love her.”
“And I’m going to miss her.”
Neither of us said anything more for several minutes. We stood there watching the stars and their reflections on the blackened swells, listening to the rocks’ rhythmic breathing.
“You’ll still get to see her,” he said. “You know, families come in lots of different shapes and sizes these days. You decide what feels right for you.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts and took a deep breath. “You could be Auntie Seychelle. Make Solange and her mother part of the family.”
I leaned back and looked up at the broad bright band of the Milky Way. “I like that: Auntie Seychelle,” I said, trying out the sound of it. “Come on, we’d better get back,” I said, slipping my arm into his and starting to walk down the concrete toward the campfire. “And what about you?” I asked, turning my face up toward his.
White teeth glowed against his dark skin. “Uncle B.J. works just fine for me.”
THE END
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CROSS CURRENT
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BITTER END (Seychelle Sullivan #3)
Bitter End
I
The sun wasn’t up yet when I rounded the bend in the river and came upon the fifty-foot Hatteras Mykonos, the yacht that belonged to the ex-husband of my ex-best friend, idling in front of the Andrews Avenue Bridge. The sky was a pale, washed-out blue, cloudless, promising a warmer day once the sun rose. But at that hour the morning was cold enough that wisps of steam rose off the surface of the dark river. Nikolas Pontus, the ex-husband himself, was up on the motor yacht’s flybridge. He was alone, which surprised me, because now that he was a gazillionaire, I didn’t think he ever did anything for or by himself. I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt up over my ponytail to drive off the chill that suddenly danced along the back of my neck.
Up on the Andrews Bridge, the bells were ringing and the bridge tender had started lowering the traffic gates. I shifted into neutral, not wanting to get too close to Nick or his boat and hoping the bridge would open soon so the Mykonos could disappear upriver, out of my way and out of my life. Nick was the reason my friendship with Molly had come to an end, and a thing like that you can’t ever forgive.
It was quiet on the avenue for a Monday morning, especially compared to what it would be like an hour from now when the worker bees started filing over the bridge on their way to the courthouse. On the south bank of the river, the Downtowner, my favorite Fort Lauderdale restaurant and bar, stood silent and shuttered. Several white plastic beer glasses littered the tables out front, leftovers from those who had partied past closing last night.
An old woman pushing a baby stroller full of clothing and plastic trash bags emerged from the courtyard next to the restaurant and, after studying my boat for several seconds, turned away from me, passing under the bridge. I of
ten saw her bent body walking the streets downtown, especially along the riverfront, her bones showing through the thin cotton of the plain white blouse she always wore, her white hair neatly pinned up off her neck. This morning, she hugged the ends of a bright red shawl wrapped tight round her shoulders. Beneath her skirt, her bare ankles looked frail above her dirty sneakers, and I wondered where she’d slept during the night.
I was traveling up the river onboard my forty-foot salvage tug, Gorda, bound for Summerfield Boatworks, where I had a 7:00 a.m. appointment to pick up a jittery new boat owner and his recently purchased fifty-seven-foot ketch. The job was a referral from George Rice, a broker friend of mine, who had called and pleaded with me, saying, “Seychelle darling, this is such a goddamn beautiful boat, and this buyer has never even driven a dinghy. The owner says he feels like he’s turning his sixteen-year-old daughter over to a Hell’s Angel, for God’s sake, and he’s refusing to sign unless this newbie gets help getting down the river.” I’d quoted them a ridiculous price, and when they’d said okay, I couldn’t turn it down.
Up ahead, the bridge span began its slow climb. The Mykonos had drifted side-on to the bridge, and Nick began trying to horse her around with alternating heavy-handed squirts to the big twin diesels. He was a lousy boat handler and, to my mind, an even worse human being. I wondered how such a creep could have made it so big in so short a time. When he’d married seventeen-year-old Molly and taken her out of our lives, he’d owned a greasy Greek sub and gyro take-out place on the boardwalk on Hollywood Beach. Now, he was the owner of a chain of high-end restaurants, as well as a fleet of casino gambling boats. I watched as he finally got his yacht lined up with the bridge opening, then gave her too much throttle and flew through the gap on the rising tide. Money hasn’t changed much, I thought. He’s still a jerk.
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