The Summer of Lost Wishes (19 page)

“But how did you even have Seth’s letters?”
I ask, finding my vocal chords again.

Mac looks across the water and then back at
us. “Because I wrote them.”

“Mac-intosh,” Rooks says, shaking his head.
“It was seriously right there in front of us the whole time.”

Literally. He was standing in my yard,
fixing our driveway, boarding up the broken window, and conversing
with me about how he wasn’t here in 1965 when the great Shark
Island tragedy occurred. He’s been right here the entire time,
living among the locals who mourn his death every year.

“How is this even possible?” I ask.

And then all of the speculation and gossip
and theories rush back through my mind. Rooks was always suspicious
of Seth and his motives and what really happened. Maybe he had a
right to be. If Seth got away, everything we ever thought we knew
about that night is wrong. And the guy I’ve been defending from the
day I arrived is actually the man who just saved my life.

“As soon as we’re out of this rain and
somewhere safe, I’ll tell you what you want to know,” Mac tells us.
“But I want to avoid another tragedy.”

“Well, you seem to be pretty skilled in that
department, so I have all the faith in the world you can do it
again,” Rooks says. Even in a moment like this – the biggest moment
in Coral Sands since 1965 – Rooks finds a way to bring wit and
sarcasm to the table.

Not another word is spoken until Mac pulls
into the docks, his boat choking as he kills its engine. Rooks
rushes toward dry land, hoisting me onto the deck with him. But he
doesn’t make a mad dash for his truck. He stays, waiting for Mac to
give us answers.

I shiver from the cold rain that’s been
beating down on us. Mac grabs a blanket from inside the boat and
tells Rooks to wrap us up in it. Instead, Rooks wraps it around me
and pulls me into his arms.

“If you’ll come back to my house with me, we
can talk,” Mac says, motioning toward his truck.

It may not be the best idea to get in a
vehicle with a man who is supposed to be dead, but I trust Seth,
therefore I have to trust Mac. Rooks opens the truck door but gets
in first, making sure he keeps me safe in case his theories have
been right all along. Mac turns on the heater, which is as crazy as
his true identity given the time of year, and drives us back to his
house.

Rooks and I sit at Mac’s dining room table
in the glow of a candle. The power is out, and thunder booms
outside, rattling the window panes. Lightning streaks across the
sky in flashes, giving us brief moments of eerie lighting.

Mac double checks to make sure we don’t want
anything before he guzzles half a glass of water. Then he pulls up
a chair across from us.

“I met up with Hanna that night to end
things, just like I told Rosa I would,” he begins. “I knew it was
going to be bad because our moms had already picked out the wedding
location, and Hanna had been shopping for a dress. I don’t know if
it was love for Hanna or if it was just what was expected of her
and she was content with it. She was a sweet girl, and had I not
met Rosa, I would’ve married her and done all the things that were
expected of me.”

I angle my chair toward him, ready to soak
it all in like the rain that’s still soaking into my clothes
beneath this blanket.

“When did you get the final letter?” I ask,
wanting to better see the timeline.

“That morning,” Mac says. “I knew I could
fix it, though. I just had to prove myself. We walked down to the
docks that night to talk about our future. Hanna was asking me
about the design for the wedding invitations, and I told her we
needed to talk about this wedding.”

He describes the moment her face fell
solemn, the way the color drained from her skin and left her pale
like a fish lying on the pier.

“I might as well have hooked her in the
heart,” he says, shaking his head. “She told me it was just cold
feet, and once we were married and in our new home, everything
would fall into place.”

Our new home. Their new home is my new home.
I wonder if Hanna had picked out paint colors yet or if she had
planned on a particular theme for the home.

“Had you been in the Calloway Cottage yet?”
I ask.

Mac shakes his head. “I refused to see it. I
told Hanna I wanted to wait until it was ready for us to move in,
but really, I never wanted to step foot in there. I felt like if I
did, it’d be an omen. I avoided it completely. I never had any
plans to live there.”

He tells us how, while standing on the docks
mildly arguing, they were interrupted by Warren.

“He was at his family’s restaurant and heard
Hanna yelling at me,” Mac explains. He props his elbows on his
knees and stares at the floor. “He ran outside to see if she was
okay. She told him that I was trying to call off the wedding
because I was scared.”

Oh, Hanna. Why did you have to do that? I
was hoping maybe her final moments weren’t so awful, but knowing
that she was hurt, angry, and yelling just made this story take a
nosedive.

“He told me I was being crazy and that it
was just cold feet. I was so sick of people saying that,” Mac says,
shaking his head. “Warren was a good friend of mine. I wanted to
explain myself, without mentioning Rosa anyway, but Eileen and
Raymond showed up a few minutes later to see where Warren had
disappeared to.”

He tells us of how Hanna was in tears, but
she didn’t want to admit to Eileen that she was being dumped.
Instead, she lied and said she was just upset because Eileen was
leaving after graduation and they weren’t going to all be together
anymore.

“And that’s when Warren said we should take
the boat out. Right now. Tonight. We were going to make one last
memory together, and I figured why not? I could do that much for
Hanna since she’d have to tell everyone the wedding was off the
next day. She knew I was serious about it. So I gave in. One last
joyride,” Mac says. He looks to the ceiling and sighs. “One last
joyride.”

I take half a second to glance over at
Rooks. My eyes haven’t left Mac since he started telling this
story. Rooks has loosened his shoulders, seeming relaxed in his
soaked button-up shirt.

“Was Shark Island part of the plan?” Rooks
asks. “Like ‘let’s go to the most dangerous place we can’ kind of
joyride?”

Mac shakes his head immediately. “No, not
even close,” he says. “The storm threw us off course. We weren’t
even headed in the direction of Shark Island, but Warren couldn’t
get the boat to steer back toward the restaurant.”

His expression turns fearful, like he’s
seeing Shark Island come into view all over again. “We slammed into
the rocks once, but the tides pulled us back. Warren was certain he
could get us turned around, but the currents just kept spinning us,
slamming that small boat into the rocks again and again.”

I wonder if Hector made it back home
tonight. I’m so pissed – like angry shark kind of pissed – but I
don’t want Rosa to lose her grandson, no matter how much of an
asshole he is. I care about her more than I hate him, even if he
left me to be a dead flamingo.

“The girls were scared and screaming, and
Hanna yelled that this was all my fault,” Mac tells us, placing a
hand on his chest to somewhat accept responsibility. “It was chaos
after that. Hanna was crying over the break up, and Eileen said I
deserved to burn him hell. Warren kept screaming for them to shut
up. Raymond never said a word.”

And that’s when Mother Nature stepped in.
The storm was tired of the teenage drama and took matters into her
own hands. Grabbing waves, wind, and rain, she threw them into the
boat, killing the engine and shattering the propeller blades.

“The whole boat jolted, like an electric
shock, and we were thrown,” Mac says. “Eileen went over first. She
didn’t come up for a few moments. Water was rushing into the boat,
flooding the deck. We knew it was a matter of minutes. Then we
slammed up against the rocks again. Raymond went overboard
next.”

I tighten the blanket around my shoulders to
fight the chill, but it’s useless. Lightning cracks outside while
the thunder claps at the earth. Mother Nature definitely has a way
of telling people to get off of Shark Island. I feel like she’s
replaying the very storm from that night, just to make a point.

“Warren and I were trying to lasso a rope
around a rock to pull us over,” Mac says. “We thought if we could
get to the rocks, we could climb up to solid ground, wait by the
lighthouse until morning, and the fishermen would find us. But then
Raymond yelled that he couldn’t swim. He’d injured his leg. Even
now, I don’t know if he cut it or broke it or…” Mac’s voice trails
off. “He was bleeding, though. ”

That feeling I got when I read Rosa’s final
letter engulfs me again. I know how this ends – sort of – and I
just want to pretend I don’t know. I want to be oblivious, although
I know the deaths of his friends are inevitable.

“Eileen was screaming hysterically, kicking
and splashing like a fool, as if the blood weren’t already bad
enough,” Mac says, shaking his head. “One second, she was wailing
and the next, she was gone. Some nights, I still wake up in a cold
sweat from that vision. It’s always Eileen, her arms in the air,
water splashing around her, and then she’s pulled under so fast.
Gone, just like that. She was the first to go. Fifty years later, I
still see her out there.”

Raymond was pulled under next, moments after
Eileen. But Raymond fought, which only made it worse.

“He screamed one good time before he was
pulled under,” Mac says. “I still hear it, like a wild animal
that’d been caught in a trap. You could hear the pain, the very
moment before he died. The boat’s headlight was still on, and the
water turned red. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen.”

By then, the boat was half-submerged, still
bumping into the rocks every few minutes but unable to stay close
to them long enough to climb to safety.

“It got quiet for a little while,” Mac says,
nodding his head slowly. “We knew they were feeding, but the blood
was going to draw in more sharks by the minute. It was a fact.”

“What happened to Hanna?” I ask. My heart
aches for her, knowing that her final moments included a break up,
a canceled wedding, and watching your friends get eaten alive.

“I thought we were going to make it out,”
Mac says. “I really thought the worst was over, and we’d make it to
the rocks. And then the rain came. Then the wind. The little bit of
Warren’s boat we had left was tossed around, unable to balance
itself. We were at the mercy of the storm, and she didn’t like
us.”

She had to have liked Seth, though. She let
him survive, but she made sure she left her mark. Those mental
scars will never fade away. It’s a miracle Mac is as sane as he is
today. It’s like Mom said – sink or swim. Frank was forced to sink.
Seth McIntosh decided to swim.

“Hanna was thrown from the boat,” Mac says,
looking back to the floor. “She was so small. She couldn’t hold her
own weight against those winds. She was frozen with fear,
completely panicked but still.”

The ocean pushed the boat back against the
rocks, slamming it forcefully enough to jam the broken propeller
into a wedge.

“We weren’t sure how long the boat would
hold, so I told her to swim,” he explains. “She just kept shaking
her head and crying. I yelled over and over – Swim, Hanna! Swim! –
but she wouldn’t budge. She was terrified. She said if she moved,
they’d come for her, and I told her if she stayed, they’d come for
her sooner.”

A warm, salty tear streams down my cheek,
dragging my beautifully crafted makeup job with it. I lick my lips
and taste the bitterness.

“Warren said he refused to let her die, and
he jumped in to get her. But they didn’t make it back to the rocks.
Hanna was bitten first. She was still screaming when she was pulled
under. It was the most awful sound, that gargling choking noise.
Warren tried to fight his way free. He was swimming toward me and
yelled for me to go. And then he was gone.”

Mac exhales heavily before standing and
walking over to the window. Tonight’s storm rages outside.
Raindrops slam against the window the way Warren’s boat slammed
against the rocks.

“For fifty years, I’ve wondered if I should
have gone back and told someone what happened, but I couldn’t,” he
says to the window pane. “I guess some people would call it
survivor’s guilt. But when I came back, I heard the rumors, the
theories. If this town found out that I made it out alive, that I
ran and didn’t look back, it would make me guilty just because I
lived.”

I never thought I could be more protective
over Seth McIntosh than I was upon reading those letters, but I
think my defense mechanisms are on high alert right now. I dare
anyone to blame him. I dare anyone to come after him. This little
flamingo survived Shark Island. I can pretty much take on the
world.

“When did you come back?” I ask. My hair
drips water down my face, but I think I’ve rid myself of my vanity.
Everything in my life changed tonight.

He turns back toward where we sit. “I took
the letters the next morning and put them in the wall,” he says. “I
knew Hanna’s family well enough to know that none of them would
ever live there. It would be too painful. I couldn’t let anyone
find them. I didn’t want Rosa to be connected to what happened. I
had to protect her.”

“You never told her?” Rooks asks.

Mac shakes his head. “She’s never even met
me,” he admits. “Well, you know, not as Mac. I came back in ’76,
but she was married and about to pop any day. I knew she’d moved
on, so I re-enlisted in the Navy. I didn’t come back here for good
until about fifteen years ago. I’m a Coral Sands native. I finally
needed to come home.”