Full Fathom Five
A Sasha and Leo Novella
Melissa F. Miller
Brown Street Books
Copyright © 2020 by Melissa F. Miller
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Full fathom five thy father lies.
Of his bones are coral made.
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, Scene II
1
Pittsburgh, PA
Monday, December 28
* * *
The snow arrived overnight, stealthy and sudden. A thick, silent blanket that dropped over the city without warning.
At six-thirty a.m., Sasha McCandless-Connelly padded barefoot to the kitchen to begin her morning ritual: Curl up under a warm blanket beside the fireplace with a mug of fresh, strong coffee and read through the emails that had hit her device overnight.
She was halfway to the living room when she paused in front of the dining room window to frown. The light was all wrong.
It was wrong because it was there at all. Sunrise wasn’t for another hour, and the sky should just be turning from deep purple to a dusky blue. But bright, jarring light poured through the window.
She rested her coffee on the built-in bookcase and stretched onto the tips of her toes. No dice.
Rather than drag a chair across the floor and risk waking Leo or one of the twins, she backtracked to the kitchen and raised the blind covering the window over the sink.
“Holy, freaking … snow,” she breathed.
The streetlights were reflecting off enormous piles of snow. The banked snow had to be at least three feet high and was growing by the moment as fat flakes pelted down from the sky, fast and furious.
She thumbed her phone to open the weather app. Cyclone bomb … polar vortex … winter superstorm veers inland unexpectedly and meets lake effect snow in unprecedented weather event. State of emergency.
A row of local weather warnings lined the top of the app like bright red sentinels, or portents of doom. But Sasha wasn’t alarmed. She closed the app and stood at the window, watching the snow fall, a smile playing on her lips.
A snow day, conveniently timed for the quiet, slow workweek between Christmas and New Year’s Day. It was the perfect chance to play with the twins and hang out with her husband.
Today, they’d make memories that Fiona and Finn would remember forever—sledding, snowmen, forts, and snowball battles.
Three hours later, Sasha crouched miserably in the wet snow piled on her back deck. The flakes continued their onslaught. The kids scooped snow into their mittens and flung it at one another halfheartedly. They were both rosy-cheeked despite the scarves, hats, and hoods she’d layered over them. And Fiona’s nose was running like a faucet.
Sasha had abruptly axed her grand plan to build a snowman in the yard when she’d realized that some of the drifts stood taller than she did. The image of one of the twins sinking under five feet of snow was seared in her mind. Connelly had shoveled out a path so Mocha could do her business near the fence, but Sasha didn’t want the kids playing in the dog’s bathroom area. So they stayed on the deck.
As if she’d summoned him, the kitchen door opened, and Connelly clomped out onto the deck in his heavy boots.
“They’re still at it?”
“I think it’s time to come in,” she answered. “We can put on some dry clothes and have a snack.”
Fiona frowned. “We want to keep playing in the snow. Right, Finnie?”
“That’s too bad. I made hot cocoa,” Connelly countered before Finn could pledge his allegiance to his sister.
Finn scrambled to his feet and lurched toward the door, his gait awkward in the weighty boots. Fiona stayed where she was and squinted at her father.
“With marshmallows?”
“Do you take me for a heathen? Of course, with marshmallows.”
“What’s a heathen?”
Sasha arched a brow and waited for her husband to field the question.
‘Help me,’ he mouthed.
She sighed. “A heathen is someone who isn’t religious—”
“What does church have to do with marshmallows?” Fiona demanded.
“Nothing. You interrupted me. A heathen is someone who isn’t religious or someone who is uncivilized, crude, or unmannered.”
Fiona’s mouth twitched from side to side as she ran the answer through her five-and-a-half-year-old BS detector. Evidently satisfied, she popped to her feet and slowly followed her brother’s footsteps to the door, careful to place her boots inside the prints he’d already made.
Finn rolled his eyes. “Come on, already. Don’t dawdle.”
“Dawdle?” Connelly laughed. “Where’d he pick that up?”
“My mom, probably.” Sasha stood and brushed the snow off the seat of her pants.
He held out his arm, and she looped her elbow through his. As they crossed the deck, she looked up at the white sky. “I can’t believe it’s still snowing. This is plenty; it can stop any time.”
“Careful what you wish for,” he warned. “It’s supposed to turn into ice. They’re calling for up to three inches.”
“Three inches of ice?” She blinked. That would turn the messy roads into a disaster scene.
“Yep. Roads are closed, and a curfew’s been instituted. First responders and providers of essential services are the only ones allowed out.”
“Yeesh.”
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “We have plenty of food and—”
“Coffee?”
“And coffee,” he promised.
The twins, tired of waiting, burst through the door into the kitchen.
“Take off your wet clothes,” Sasha called after them.
“And hang them by the fire,” Finn called back. “We know, Mommmm.”
“That one’s five going on fifteen,” Connelly observed.
“Bite your tongue.”
“Sounds painful. Isn’t there a gentler way to silence me?” he teased.
She grinned and stretched up to kiss him. He lowered his head to meet her halfway, then jerked back almost as soon as their lips met.
“Yikes! Your nose is like ice. Let’s get you inside and get you warmed up.”
“I like the sound of that.” She smiled, then turned to survey the yard one more time. Her winter wonderland was looking more and more like a natural disaster.
By afternoon, the promised switch-over from snow to ice was well underway, and the entire household was feeling cranky and cooped up. Sasha’s genius plan to get family memberships to the zoo and a handful of museums instead of a pile of toys for Christmas was still, she knew, a long-term win. But in the short term, stuck in the house and bored, she wished she had something shiny and new to occupy them.
Instead, she steeled herself and said, “Who wants to play Chutes and Ladders? Again.”
Connelly barely suppressed a groan.
“I know, let’s play hide and see
k!” Finn suggested.
“Yes!” Fiona agreed.
Sasha shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
“Not you,” Fiona said. “Just us. No grownups.”
“Okay. But remember—”
“Dad’s office is off-limits. We know,” Finn shouted over his shoulder as they tore up the stairs.
Sasha watched them race off, then turned to see Connelly giving her a slow smile. “How does a hot toddy in front of the fire sound?”
“A heck of a lot better than Round 704 of Chutes and Ladders.”
“Could be worse. It could be Candyland again.”
“I know you cheat at Candyland, by the way.”
He chuckled. But she noticed he didn’t deny the accusation before he walked into the kitchen to make their drinks.
* * *
Sasha leaned against Connelly’s chest, enjoying the warmth of the fire, the sweet heat of the drink, and the silence, punctuated only by distant squeals and shouts of ‘ready or not!’
He traced a slow pattern up and down her arm with his left hand and scrolled through emails with his right. She swiped the pages of her ebook. Java slept curled up in Mocha’s cozy bed. Mocha lay on the floor beside him.
And then the screaming started.
“Mommy! Daddy! Hurry!”
Sasha sprinted for the stairs with Connelly on her heels. Her heart thudded in her chest as the twins’ high-pitched shrieking grew louder. Mocha barked and streaked past the humans, ears flattened, running toward the sound.
By the time she reached the top of the attic stairs, Sasha’s hands were shaking.
“What’s wrong? Who’s hurt?” Connelly demanded as he entered the pitched attic room, ducking his head at the top of the stairs.
Sasha scanned the room for broken glass, blood, or gargantuan spiders but saw nothing to explain the hysteria, which continued unabated.
Fiona jumped up and down, shrieking incoherently. Finn held a metal box in his hands and shouted, “We found hidden treasure! Look—a treasure chest!”
He zipped across the attic and thrust the metal box into Sasha’s hands. Connelly and Fiona moved in closer. She studied the dented, dusty tin. It was roughly the size of her toolbox but didn’t have a handle.
A padlock secured the lid shut. And someone had scrawled across the smooth top, “PRIVATE. DO NOT OPEN” with a thick black marker.
She didn’t recognize the printing but turned to Connelly anyway, “Is this yours?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen it before.” He eyed the kids. “Where did you find it?”
Finn pointed to a small cabinet door built into the paneling that ran along the exterior wall. It was about three feet wide and two feet high. It was ordinarily latched with a hook and eye latch, but, at the moment, it hung wide open.
“I was hiding from Fee-fee in there. I crawled way back. I reached down and felt something cold and smooth. It was the treasure box!”
Sasha peered inside the cabinet. “Is there anything else in here?”
Connelly leaned forward and shined his phone’s flashlight app into the space. “Just some cobwebs and dead spiders.”
The family crowded back around the box. The dog wandered back downstairs, bored.
“What do you think is in there?” Fiona asked, her eyes shining with wonder.
“It could be anything,” Sasha told her. It was probably nothing exciting, but she wanted to encourage the kids’ flights of fancy.
“Like pirate gold,” Finn offered.
“Or jewels,” Fiona countered.
“Oh! Or a magic wand.”
“Or a spellbook.”
“Or a pet hamster!” Finn suggested.
“Let’s hope not,” Sasha deadpanned.
“Well, there’s only one way to find out. Let’s go downstairs and crack this bad boy open.” Connelly closed and latched the little door in the wall.
The twins bolted for the stairs, and Connelly followed. Sasha brought up the rear, clutching the mysterious box to her chest.
2
Sasha watched her husband examine the padlock from all angles, shaking his head.
“Well?”
He tossed the two L-shaped pieces that he’d fashioned from a large paperclip on the kitchen table in frustration. “The locking mechanism is rusted over. I can’t pick it with this.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you have some sort of secret agent tool you could use?”
“Yes, Sasha. I have a lock-picking kit. But it’s at the office, and I don’t think I’ll be running out in this weather to get it.”
“Well, Aroostine showed me how to pick a lock with bobby pins. I could try that?”
“That won’t work. It’s the same principle, you form a tension wrench and a pick, but the rust is the problem.”
“So, we can’t open it?” Finn asked.
Connelly twitched his lips from side to side, a clear sign that he was thinking through a dilemma. “I don’t have my lock-picking tools, but I do have a tool that will get the job done. Like I always say, when all else fails, apply more force.”
Fiona and Finn cheered.
“One of your favorite principles,” Sasha said.
“Yeah. But I’ll need something from my workshop. Out … there.” He nodded glumly toward the back door and the garage at the end of the yard.
She grimaced. The storm still raged. The tapping of ice against the windows was a constant background noise, interrupted only by the howling wind.
Better you than me, she thought.
“Good luck with that.”
He threw her a look but said nothing. Then he bundled up and opened the door. A burst of snow that had piled up outside the door whirled across the threshold. He stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door shut behind him.
Java minced across the kitchen floor and sniffed the snow that was already beginning to melt just inside the door. Sasha and the kids watched the cat paw cautiously at the wet, white stuff, giggling at his reaction to the cold substance.
When she looked up again, Connelly was trudging toward the detached garage, listing to the right as the wind pummeled him. She shivered in sympathy as his hat blew off, and he chased it off the path, sinking into snow that rose up past his knees.
Java lost interest in the lump of snow, and Sasha wiped it up with a towel.
When she returned from the laundry room with a clean dishtowel, Connelly was stomping back into the house, clutching his bolt cutters between his gloved hands.
She took the heavy, red-handled tool from him so he could remove his coat and boots. The cutters were crusted with ice from the short journey. She shook the ice off into the sink, then reached up and dusted the ice particles from the bit of Connelly’s hair that peeked out from under his hat.
“Look at you. You’re the Abominable Snowman, and you were only outside for a hot minute.”
“A cold minute, technically. It’s an actual ice storm out there. ”
At the kitchen table, Fiona giggled at the lame joke and nudged her brother. “Get it, Finny? A cold minute.”
Finn rolled his eyes. Sasha knew the feeling. Connelly’s dad jokes seemed to grow lamer by the day. Luckily, his groan-worthy sense of humor was his biggest flaw.
She used the towel to dry the bolt cutters, then she handed them back to Connelly. “Want to do the honors?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. You went on the frosty trek, you should cut the lock.”
He tilted his head toward the kids. “True, but I didn’t find the box.”
Finn’s eyes widened. “Right! I did! I should cut the lock.”
Sasha met Connelly’s eyes over Finn’s head. “Why don’t you and Daddy do it together?”
“Yeah!”
Connelly positioned the cutter’s jaws so that the shank of the padlock sat between the blades and held it in position. Sasha rested Finn’s hands low on the cutter’s handles, and then Connelly wrapped his hands around the handle grips.
>
“Ready? We’ll cut on the count of the three. One, two, three.”
He squeezed the handles, and the blades sliced through the metal lock with a satisfying snap. Finn’s grin stretched across his face as he raised a fist in celebration.
Sasha removed the padlock from the metal box and nodded at Fiona. “Go ahead and open it.”
Fiona stretched across the table, the tip of her tongue poking between her teeth as she slowly lifted the hinged lid. She craned her neck and peered down into the box.
“Is it a treasure?” her brother demanded.
She shook her head, ponytail bouncing. “No treasure.”
The twins’ faces were identical masks of disappointment.
“Well, let’s see what it is.”
Fiona pushed the box toward her mother. Sasha reached inside and removed a newspaper clipping that was yellow with age, a slightly bent black and white photograph, and a pair of oval metal disks on a chain.
She placed each item on the table in turn, and the family leaned in for a closer look.
“What’s that say?” Finn asked, pointing to the article.
Connelly read the headline aloud. “It says ‘Crashed Bomber Vanishes in River, Authorities Baffled,’ and it’s dated December 30, 1955.”
Fiona screwed up her face. “Were you alive then?”
Her father raised an eyebrow. “No, honey, that was sixty-five years ago.”
“Oh. Were you alive?” She turned toward Sasha.
“Exactly how old do you think I am?”
“Sixty-five?” Finn guessed.
She laughed. “Not even close. No, I wasn’t born yet. Grandma Val and Pap Pat were, though.”
“Oh, okay.” Finn pointed to the picture. “Who’s that man?”
“I don’t know, sweetness.”
She lifted the photo from the table. It was a candid shot of a lanky, young man. She guessed he would have been in his early twenties when it was taken—perhaps even his late teens. He stood in profile, his back ramrod straight, his gaze fixed on something out of frame. One of Pittsburgh’s innumerable, ubiquitous bridges stretched across the photograph’s background. The man wore a dark coat with the collar turned up, and one hand shaded his eyes against what appeared to be a bright sky. She turned the photograph over. On the back, someone had printed ‘JCP MI6? 29-12-55’ in neat penmanship.
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