The Cove (41 page)

Tom stared at her, his mouth gaping in surprise as if he didn’t believe he’d heard her correctly. He looked like she had slapped him across the face, and he visibly shriveled right there in front of her eyes. He looked like a heat-blasted plant, withering in the sun without water.

“You’re not gonna fool me with your bullshit,” she said in a low, controlled voice. “Never again. As soon as you get out of here, you’re going straight to jail and then —” She clasped her hands in front of her chest and shook them. “And then — Oh, I pray to God that then you get convicted and sent to Warren for the rest of your miserable life. As far as I’m concerned, you can rot there.”

Her stomach was knotted with tension when she turned her back on him. She expected him to pick up something close to hand and hurl it at her as she walked toward the door, but she made it to the door without incident.

As she flung the door open, she looked back at him one last time and almost laughed out loud when she saw him lying there in the hospital bed and staring at her in stunned silence. His eyes bugged from his head, and his mouth was hanging open. He was making a low sputtering sound like cold water hitting a hot stove. She thought he looked like a codfish that had been hooked and dragged up onto the deck, but he sure as shit wasn’t a “keep-ah.”

“Thank you,” she said, nodding to the cop who was standing outside the door in the hallway. “I’m all done.”

Letting Go

T
he money … to hell with the money … but the IDs … that stuff is gonna be a royal pain in the ass to replace.

Ben was surprised how, with his life still very much in the balance, he could dwell on such mundane things like losing his wallet, which had sunk to the bottom of the ocean when he peeled off his pants.

He would die of exposure long before another fishing boat or the Coast Guard saw the wreck in the morning. He wasn’t sure what time it was. It had to be well past midnight. No matter. It was going to be a hell of a long time before the first rays of light streaked the Eastern horizon.

Forget about the IDs and money … His father’s new boat — the
Abby-Rose
— was “a goner.” It would eventually fill with seawater and sink, and — as far as he knew — his brother had already drowned. Treading water, Ben stared at the overturned hull some distance away. Either he had been thrown far on impact or else he had drifted while trying to find the surface. He thought he detected a current, pulling him away from the wreck. It took his stunned brain a long time to figure out that his best chance of survival was to stay with the boat. He sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to tread water until someone showed up.

Moving stiffly, the cold penetrating his bones like nails, he started swimming toward the wreck. After a few seconds, filled with a surge to survive, he started taking strong, powerful strokes and kicking evenly. The current sweeping him away from the boat was also moving the boat toward him, so he closed the distance faster than he thought he would. Still, his muscles were burning with exhaustion by the time he got to the boat and, reaching up, slapped his hands against the stern and clung to it.

Okay … Now what?
he asked himself as he looked around at the debris floating around him.

Somewhere in the wreckage, there
had
to be a box of distress flares, but finding them or a life jacket would be next to impossible. Then he remembered that his father kept the flares in a closed cabinet in the wheelhouse — at least he had on all his other boats — but Ben decided that he wasn’t about to dive under the boat and come up inside the overturned hull. It’d be pitch black in there, and he’d probably bang his head on something and go under again for the last time.

So what do I do now?
he wondered.
Hang on … and pray someone finds me … before I drown or die of hypothermia?

There didn’t appear to be any other options. Even if he had a cell phone, if he hadn’t already thrown it away, it would have sunk to the ocean floor with his pants. He hadn’t been thinking. But he doubted he’d be able to pick up a signal this far out to sea, anyway, and the boat’s radio was useless now.

A sudden loud thump from inside the boat made him jump. His first thought was that some piece of wreckage had come loose and banged against the inside of the hull. When the sound came again, though, a faint spark of hope stirred in his chest.

“Pete?” he called out, his voice a ragged croak.

Trembling and shivering deep inside from the cold, he made a fist and deliberately pounded on the hull three times. Then he paused and listened, hoping to hear his signal repeated above the steady slapping sounds of waves breaking against the boat.

His heart skipped a beat when, from underneath the boat, came three identical thumps that resonated in the night like a kettledrum.

“
Pete!
” he yelled, and he hit the bottom of the hull three more times.

He paused, waiting …

Then two times.

Again, the pattern repeated.

Three thumps and then two.

His brother was alive. He was in the air pocket beneath the overturned boat.

“Jesus Christ, Pete!” Ben shouted, bringing his face close to the hull and hoping his voice would transmit through the fiberglass.

In reply, his brother said something, but his voice was so muffled Ben couldn’t make out the words. It sounded like he was yelling from the bottom of a canyon. Warm tears of joy streamed down Ben’s face. Without hesitation, he pushed away from the boat, tread water for a second or two until he got oriented, and then did a smooth surface dive and went under.

Darkness swallowed him immediately, but he felt and fumbled around until he found the gunwales and then pulled himself down and under and then inside the boat. He clunked his head hard on something when he broke the surface and took a breath of the air inside. The waves still slapped against the boat outside, but the sound was thin and distant.

“Mother
fucker,
Pete” he said, sputtering and panting, his arms flailing to keep him up. His voice echoed oddly in the dark, enclosed space. “Sure as shit, I thought you drowned.”

“You’re not that lucky,” Pete replied.

Under the circumstances, Ben didn’t stop to think what a strange comment that was.

“Are you stuck on something?”

Ben reached out, groping around in the darkness until his hand brushed against his brother’s shoulder.

“Hell, no. I’m trying to find the goddamned flares, but damned if I can see for shit down here. My lighter don’t work, ’n I figure the air won’t last long, ’specially now that you’re down here sucking it up.”

“Get bent,” Ben said. “I thought I was saving you.”

Pete didn’t say a word, so Ben was silent for a while until finally he made a decision.

“Forget about the flares,” he said. “We gotta get our asses out of here. Someone’ll see us if we can hang on ’till morning. You got any idea what time it is?”

Pete raised his arm and pressed a button on his watch. The dial glowed a faint phosphorescent blue that illuminated his features for a moment, and then the light winked out.

“A little past one,” he said flatly.

“What d’yah say we get the fuck out of here?”

Pete didn’t reply to that, either, but then Ben heard a loud splash as his brother dove under. A second later, Ben did the same. Swimming down perhaps deeper than was necessary so he wouldn’t bump his head again, he swam until his breath burned in his lungs, and then rose to break the surface. A few feet to his left, his brother — little more than a black silhouette cut out from the night sky — was clinging to the boat as it rocked in the waves.

“Damn, that hurts!” Pete yelled.

“What?”

“I cut my hand on something.” He held up his hand, but in the darkness, Ben couldn’t see if there was any blood. “Salt water stings like a bastid.”

“Probably good for it, though,” Ben said. “It’ll clean out the cut.”

“Fuck you!”

“No … fuck
you
,” Ben snapped back. “I’m not the
mo
-ron who ran us aground, you know.”

“Goddamned
nav
system doesn’t work for shit.”

“I thought you said you knew the ocean like the back of your —”

“Shut the fuck up, ’
kay
? You’re not helping.”

“And you are?”

Both brothers were silent for a long while until Ben said, “Nice night for a swim, though, huh?” His attempt to inject a touch of humor into the situation fell flat. Pete had no response.

W
hy the hell hasn’t Ben called?

Julia was sitting in the living room, periodically standing up and pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace before sitting back down again. When she sat, she bounced both legs up and down like a little girl who was desperate to go to the bathroom and was trying to hold it in.

He should have called by now … Something’s wrong …

She was utterly exhausted and knew she should go to bed. It had been an incredibly draining day — a day from Hell, emotionally and physically — but the house felt too quiet … too empty. Knowing that her father was no longer in it … and never would be again … filled her with a dull, aching sadness.

She had stayed at the hospital while Dr. Robbins ran through the paperwork with her, and then they removed the life support from her father. She had sat by his bedside, tears streaming from her eyes as she held her father’s hand and kissed him repeatedly on the forehead and cheek as his vitals gradually slowed.

Finally, a little past one A.M., he was gone.

Shattered and shaken and riddled with guilt, she had driven home alone, thinking the whole time how desperately she needed someone to talk to.

She had called Ben’s house and left a message, like he’d told her to do. She had been surprised when no one had answered.

By the time she got home, she was too exhausted to be angry. All she felt was hurt and loneliness. She couldn’t stop wondering where he was. What was he doing that was so damned important he couldn’t be there to comfort her?

Never in her life had she felt so utterly alone. Even in the midst of her divorce, she’d had plenty of support and advice — not always helpful, but advice nonetheless — from her parents and several close friends. Since moving to Catawamkeag Cove, she had never felt so isolated. E-mails and phones calls to and from friends back in Waterbury and around the country hadn’t quite cut it. She thought she had found what she was looking for and needed in Ben Brown, but now …?

Now, she wasn’t so sure.

She was on her own.

Tears gushed from her eyes, blurring her vision as she looked around the living room. It was all so empty … so devoid of life. Her father’s presence lingered everywhere she looked, and she decided that, as soon as his affairs were settled, she was going to put the house up for sale and get the hell out of The Cove.

“With or without Ben Brown,” she whispered as more hot tears flooded from her eyes.

She stared at her cell phone, which was lying on the coffee table where she had dropped it earlier. It irritated her that she was carrying it around like a goddamned ball and chain, waiting for Ben to call.

As if anything he said or did would help now.

She was alone in this town, and now — the aloneness was suddenly unbearable.

Galvanized by an irresistible urge to get the hell away from this place immediately, she got up from the couch and went upstairs. She knew she wasn’t thinking straight, but what did it matter?

In a flurry of activity, she fetched two travel bags from the bedroom closet and began packing, moving quickly, flinging clothes and underwear into a heap that, she told herself, she would sort out later. Once she had the clothes she needed, she went to the bathroom, grabbed an armful of toiletries, and threw them in on top of one of the piles of clothes. As she worked, her grief shifted into anger. Trembling with rage, she closed the travel bags, jamming the clothes down, and zipping them shut. She didn’t even care if some of the toiletries leaked out onto her clothes. She’d buy new ones once she was in Connecticut.

After she was finished packing, she dragged the travel bags downstairs, bouncing them on each step as she went down. She was exhausted by the time she got them into the entryway by the front door. Pausing to rest, leaning on the doorjamb, she knew what she was doing was foolish, but there was no turning back now. She considered leaving her cell phone where it was on the living room coffee table. If Ben finally decided to call, he’d get no answer.

Then she thought better of it and went and got her phone. After checking her purse to make sure she at least had enough cash for the turnpike and food along the way, she lugged her suitcases outside and heaved them into the trunk of her car. After a quick run back into the house to turn off all the lights and make sure the doors were locked and the appliances were turned off, she went back out to her car and got in.

The tangle of emotions inside her was intense. She spun from the grief of her father’s death to her fear of being alone in the world to the guilt of all her sins of commission and omission while she lived with her father in Catawamkeag Cove. And Ben … Ben … She tossed between anger at him for letting her down when she needed him most and her love for him. She knew now that she was never going to commit to him … at least not until he started to do some of the difficult work he needed to do on himself.

“Screw it,” she screamed. She pounded the dashboard so hard something inside it rattled. Clasping her key ring tightly in her hand, she slipped the key into the ignition and turned it.

A thick sourness filled her throat and churned in her stomach. She was afraid she was going to throw up, but she steeled herself to do what she had to do.

She would call the hospital tomorrow morning and arrange to have her father’s body shipped down to Connecticut so he could be buried in the family plot in Waterbury with his wife. Once she found a place to stay in Connecticut, she would have her furniture and things shipped to her. That way, she would never …
never
have to see this godforsaken house in Catawamkeag Cove ever again.

She shifted into reverse and backed around and had shifted into
drive
when her cell phone chirped in her purse.

Gritting her teeth, she slammed on the brakes. The car skidded on the asphalt before she put the car into
park.
The phone rang a second time … and a third … and then she grabbed it from her purse and glanced at the Caller ID.