Still Summer

  Cammie’s generation didn’t dance. To her daughter’s vocal shame, Tracy had chaperoned several of Cammie’s high school dances. “Couldn’t you get someone else to do it?” Cammie had pleaded, livid. The kids seemed to grind each other into the walls during the fast dances and swayed back and forth like cattle attached at the pelvis during the slow songs.

  Ted would be able to dance.

  Over his protests, Tracy had taught him the rudiments of swing and a credible waltz. She supposed he would spend his sixteenth year grinding and swaying, too. But one day . . . he would be grateful. He would remember them laughing as he trod all over her feet in his size fourteen Nikes.

  He was old enough that he would remember her.

  That hurt.

  When it came to losing parents, a child was better off very young or old enough to have someone to stand in, not in the middle of growing up. Tracy’s parents were still alive and energetic, and Jim’s dad still took a daily run, although his mother had died of a congenital heart problem when Cam was little. She supposed that Ted would be okay, although . . .

  She had to save Cammie.

  Somehow, she would find a way to save Cammie.

  When she could no longer bear her solitude, Tracy slipped away for a moment to Holly, giving her water by the teaspoonful, playing music that seemed to please her on Lenny’s disc player. She talked to Holly, who did not answer but nodded occasionally. She had not moved from the bed since the attack, except once to lean on Tracy’s arm and use the bathroom.

  The same switch had been shut off in all of them.

  But Holly’s light had already been flickering. Her roaring show of defiance at Olivia had been pure will. She used the bathroom less and less often, sometimes not even once a day.

  Tracy talked about Ian and Evan, about their returning to school, about the turkeys Tracy would bake in the double ovens on the night following Christmas Day, for a formal meal after everyone had spent the previous morning opening gifts and going to church with their families. Tracy hosted all who would come, from Jim’s parents to Olivia’s mother, Anna Maria. She always had.

  She talked about her memories of Holly’s mother, Heidi. Of Heidi’s kitchen, smelling of cardamom coffee cake and the incomparable spritz cookies. She told Holly about the potato dumplings that left Tracy’s stomach literally protruding when she got up from the table to go home. Heidi had died only two years earlier. Often, she had told Holly that she was the old maid, forty-one years old when she gave birth to Holly, forty-three when she gave birth to Holly’s sister, Berit.

  “Now, in the old country,” Heidi would say, “it would have been scandal that I should marry when I was so old. But I came here with my parents, and I meet your father. He didn’t tell me his age. He was only thirty years! That he should die before me was impossible.” Yet he had. Evan’s name was spelled Even on his birth certificate in honor of Holly’s father, who had lived until the boys were five. And Holly, in her turn, had married a Norwegian boy, the son of immigrant grandparents. They had landed in Westbrook only through a casual acquaintance with Tracy’s father. A Jaycee of the first order, Frank Loccario sang the praises of their suburban home, with lawns that seemed vast to families who had grown up in tenements and then apartments, with swing sets and streetlamps and streets where children rode their bikes until their parents called them home for dinner at sunset.

  “Darling Holly, don’t leave me,” Tracy begged. “Holly, you’re my family as much as Janis is. Holly, listen to me. Evan and Ian need you. Christian needs his wife. I need you. Do you hear me, Hols? Don’t leave me alone out here. With Olivia. Help me.” And once in a while, Tracy thought that she felt Holly give her hand a soft squeeze.

  Finally, after covering Holly with the light quilt, even though the whole and every stitch of cloth on it was damp, Tracy went back to the cockpit. She fell asleep with her head on her arms. No one heard the radio crackle to life and the determined woman’s voice that called out, “This is the sailing vessel Big Spender out of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. Do you hear us, Opus? . . . This is Captain Sharon Gleeman. Please answer, Opus. Do you read us? . . . Does anyone have news of Lenny Amato’s sailing vessel, Opus, missing since June fifteenth? Over. . . .”

  Day Nineteen

  Cammie dreamed of her bed. She dreamed of her bed as it had been when she was a child, her soft white comforter sewn by Grandma, light and sheltering as a bird’s wing. She dreamed of opening her closet and seeing the bright racks of her clothing, arranged by length and color, not the fierce blacks and browns of her young adulthood, but pinks and greens and yellows, stripes and flowers. She was angry at Jenny. Jenny had an American Girl doll party and pretended she was going to invite Cammie but then invited Rachel instead. Rachel and Jenny, always thinking they were better than Cammie. Cammie didn’t care. Daddy would take her to the children’s museum. They would play with the machine that made real shadows on the walls, shadows of you that stayed when you walked away. She smelled waffles baking and syrup heating. In her dream, she argued with herself, One more half hour of sleep? Or a waffle fresh instead of reheated? What if Teddy got all of them? Cammie jumped up.

  “Teddy!” she called. “Teddy! Don’t you eat my waffles!” Teddy was only three.

  “Cammie?” Tracy said hopefully. “Cammie honey?”

  “No, no, no, no, no,” Cammie mumbled. “I don’t want to.”

  “Cammie?”

  “Ted will never remember me as a good sister, Mama,” Cammie said, weeping in the strange dry way they all did now. Her speech was slurred. “He’ll always think I was a jealous bitch. And I was. Was I, Mom? Was I jealous of Ted because he was really, really yours and I wasn’t? Is Teddy grown up now?”

  “Cammie, let’s get up and drink your water, honey.” Instead of being moved by Cammie’s sudden slide back into girlhood, Tracy was alarmed. Was Cammie mentally affected? Permanently or from fluid loss? “Do you know where we are? . . . Cammie?”

  “Home?” She kept her eyes closed, determined, against the sunlight that bayed in the open door like a predatory thing.

  “Where are we, Cam?”

  “We’re . . . no, no, no, no, no, no . . . I know where we are, Mom. I know. We’re in the middle of nowhere; and Lenny is dead and Michel is dead and the other boy is dead, and Aunt Holly . . . Mom, I wish I was dead, too.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. Mom, we’re going to die. Anyway. We’re going to die. Aren’t we? Tell me, Mom.”

  “You aren’t going to die, Camille.”

  “Aunt Holly is going to die. And then I’ll kill Olivia myself. I’ll kill her myself.”

  “It won’t be Olivia’s fault. She has nothing to do with this, except that she withheld the food. I think Aunt Holly has some sort of infection in her blood. And the antibiotics haven’t been able to get it.”

  “I hate Olivia.”

  “Don’t. It’s too much effort. Think of it that way. She’s not worth putting forth any effort,” Tracy said.

  “Still, how could she do this to us?”

  “Cammie, we’re right here. If we don’t want this to change us, if we just want this to be another piece of information in our lives, that’s okay, do you see? Your great-grandfather, my grandfather, lived in Italy during the time of Mussolini. He was a little boy. He saw freedom fighters shot against the walls where the masters had painted murals. Cammie, your father, James Kyle—and I don’t mean Olivia’s one-night stand—his grandparents were Dutch. The Dutch all wore yellow stars in support of the Jews. The Kyles were the Conklings then. Your grandfather changed the name to make it sound cool, American, like a pop song. Grandpa Loccario was a fireman. You come from brave . . . Cammie.” Christ, Tracy thought, in her ordinary personality, her daughter would be laughing in her face, mocking her forensics.

  “But I don’t, Mom. I really come from bitch—not brave. I was selfish and rotten and mean to my brother, my good-kid sweet little brother, who loved me all my life. And now I
know it’s because I’m related to her.”

  “No. You did it because you’re a hot reactor, Cammie. You feel things in a mighty way, all the way through. Anger at me. Irritation at Ted. Admiration for Dad. For Michel, love. Lust. All that.”

  Cammie began to cry again. “Will I get another chance, Mom?” She reached up and touched her cheek. “You washed me. I remember now. Thank you, Mom. But, my face is dry. Why aren’t I . . . why can’t I cry?”

  Tracy said nothing.

  She went up to find the jar of water Cammie had patiently made the previous day. It was empty. Revolted, she poured her daughter half a glass of wine.

  Sharon spoke to the Honduran navy officer, who spoke excellent English. He had apprehended Ernesto Flores in a stolen motorboat fifty miles or so off Choluteca. Flores had not been roughed up, simply taken to port and given into the hands of local authorities after questioning. He admitted the smuggling and said he had been forced into it by an American he could identify if authorities set up a dummy run. He was a poor man, who had long supported a sick wife, now dead, and his cousin Carlo’s entire family of children. He was illiterate, and work was scarce. An American teenager had approached him about the drug sale, telling him that he would bring home thousands of American dollars. He had never done anything like this before. Asked about the opals in his pockets, he said he’d been given them by some women in a broken-down sailing ship. Given to him willingly, when he’d helped save their lives from his cousin Carlo, who had tried to rob and rape an American girl. He and Carlo and the American teenager had found the girl and her mother somewhere between Santo Domingo and Honduras. Ernesto had to fight both of them off and finally had to use the gun given him by the man named Chief. He had never owned a gun. Several of his cousins came into the military compound to say that Ernesto was speaking the truth.

  Janis listened as Sharon noted the area for the last sighting of Opus.

  Sharon said, “Bravo!” when the Honduran officer told her that the navy would cooperate with the United States Coast Guard in alerting vessels and sending rescue ships to search for Opus.

  “Now, this is something like!” Sharon said. “Regin, turn this boat west. We may be able to reach them by tomorrow if we travel through the night. They could easily get to them before us. I hope they do. But wouldn’t it be fun if we could? You see, Janis? We know that your cousin was alive less than twenty-four hours ago, and so was her daughter!”

  “What about your friend?”

  “Lenny wasn’t mentioned. This man, this drug runner, well, it was just as Regin said. Lenny might have been . . . well, restrained by this partner of his, or the agent simply didn’t mention him. In any case, we’ll see soon, won’t we?”

  Sharon tried to keep her spirits up for the sake of this decent young woman. She knew that Lenny was dead. Lenny would never have allowed anyone to board Opus. The thief’s story stank to high heaven. She feared what she might find on Opus if they found her, but it was not in Sharon Gleeman’s nature to fail to see something through that she had begun. She owed Meherio this much. And that sweet boy Michel, who called her “madame.” She owed him, too. He was part of their confederacy, and those who sailed the turquoise seas that bled one into another would be poorer for the losses. Of course, there was a chance. Strange happenings were everyday currency in the Caribbean. Lenny might be making his way home by now. Michel may have been resting, battered by exposure but alive, when the tender was spotted.

  Janis leaned forward, as if to urge Big Spender to proceed fast, faster toward Tracy. “Sharon,” she said, “there’s no way that they could drift away from the position they were in when the . . . accident happened? The sea is so calm. . . .”

  “Here, dear, but perhaps not where they are. The winds are building, it’s going to get choppy out there. And the currents are always crossing. In one latitude, you might have breeze. Just a degree south, nothing. Fine for Regin here to row in. Regin rows single sculls for exercise, in the Long Island Sound.”

  “So, they could drift. . . .”

  “Janis, anything is possible. Let’s hope for the very best.”

  “Have to go with her there, Janis. Let’s keep a hope,” said Reginald. “I’m going to make us a nice omelet. We’ll have a snack on the fly.”

  “I see land, Mom,” Cammie said. “I see land through the window of the cockpit.”

  “Sleep, honey,” Tracy answered. She had spent another two hours wringing two pints of water from a gallon of sea. She had dragged Holly out of her bed, which was sodden with sweat, only long enough to air it. Holly’s breath was racking and for long moments seemed to stop altogether. The water Tracy placed on her tongue, on a soaked cloth, dribbled from the cracked corner of her mouth. Tracy had to sleep, to block that picture from her mind.

  “I see land, Mom,” Cammie said again in a mechanical voice. She tried to pull Tracy out of her berth. Tracy opened her eyes, which clicked and ached as if she had been struck. It hurt to blink. “I see land.”

  Tracy hauled herself to her feet.

  Cammie saw land because . . . there was land.

  Not a spit of sand with a rock and a stick.

  Tracy saw land with trees. There was a beach. And—she could barely make it out through a gust of morning fog—what could be a building among the trees. Rapidly, the Opus was drifting past it. It could be deserted. It could be inhabited by beasts like the ones who had come to murder them. Was there a way she could tack back? Tracy ran up onto the deck and successfully reset the sails. She was able to turn the boat slightly, sailing slowly, surprisingly upwind. But not enough. What was the alternative plan? What improbable course of action was left to her?

  She took hold of Cammie’s shoulders and said, “Make water every day. Promise.”

  The island began to recede farther. It had to be now. Tracy grabbed a life jacket and leaped up onto the deck, where she untied the inflatable’s straps and stood back as it sprang to a huge, flapping, orange being, shuddering in the breeze. Strapped to the interior were a liter bottle of water, blankets, and harness. More gear she couldn’t decipher. Oars and oarlocks were snapped securely to the sides.

  “Take care of Aunt Holly,” Tracy said. “Make sure she drinks whatever she can. Try to make her walk. Try to make the boat tack. Keep switching the sails with the wind, like I did. Go back and forth, Cam.”

  “Mom! Don’t leave me!”

  “Cammie, this may be our only chance. Help me throw it over. I’m strong. I can row that far. I’ll take the big flashlight.”

  “It has to be a mile! Who knows who’s out there? What if no one’s there and I drift away, alone?”

  “Hurry, Cammie!”

  They struggled to push the inflatable to the end of the deck and lowered it into the water, holding on to the lines. As she descended the stairs, she caught sight of the device Lenny had shown them, the one that could direct rescuers to a sailor overboard. A tether, she remembered, attached the submersible device. It would send a signal from someone stranded in a life jacket. Would it work on the boat? She had no idea how but knew Cammie could puzzle it out.

  “Honey, the thing with all the letters. ERPID or something. Find it and strap it on and dip it in water. Put a life jacket on and hang from the ladder with your body in the water. Do it as often as you can. This thing shows where you are.”

  “Why didn’t we do this before?”

  “I . . . don’t know. It seemed every day we might make it to some kind of safety. And we had our hands full. The truth is, I forgot about it.”

  “You take it, Mom! . . . Mom!” Cammie called as Tracy disengaged the oars and leaned forward. She began to row. “Mom! At least take the radio. If you don’t, I’m coming in after you.”

  “Throw it, then,” Tracy instructed her, and Cammie pulled back her arm and aimed with all her soul and mind. The radio landed in the bottom of the inflatable. As far as Cammie knew, this radio was the one that still had fresh batteries.

  “Listen to me,” Tracy
called out. “Look at me. Put the device on and don’t take it off. Find the tethers. Give one to Olivia and get one on Aunt Holly. If the wind gets stronger, attach the tethers to the D rings! If it blows hard, lower the sails so they don’t blow out.”

  “To what?” Tracy’s voice was growing faint. Cammie strained to hear her.

  “To anything!” Tracy shouted. “Attach yourselves to anything that has a hole in it and won’t break free. I love you, Cammie!”

  “I love you!” Cammie shouted, but her shout was caught up and carried toward the sky.

  As darkness fell, Sharon and Janis leaned close to the radio and watched the radar. “If it’s anything out there, it’s a little rain. Not a tropical depression. Janis, that’s the precursor to a hurricane. I’m telling you it’s not that. It’s a little rain, that’s all.”

  They waited for contact from the Coast Guard, and finally it came. They were suspending for the evening. They’d spotted nothing and would resume in the morning. “We understand. This is the sailing ship Big Spender, signing off.”

  “We’ve alerted all available vessels in the area or close by, Captain Gleeman. They may be able to go on searching through the night. Over.”

  “Good on,” Sharon said.

  “Do you leave the radio on all night?” asked Janis. “And why would they go on searching?”

  “For the sport, dear. And yes, of course, I’ll leave the radio on if I’m running all night, to chat if you fall asleep, if for no other reason. Someone’s always awake for a chat. In a while, I’ll let Regin take over, and you should get some sleep. I will.”

  “I don’t think I can sleep.”

  “Well, then Regin will have company. He’ll like that. Be prepared for long stories about his sheltered southern boyhood.”

  “I don’t mind. I like hearing him talk.”

  “So does he,” Sharon said with a smile.