Steady answered. “He got to the rope first.”
Her resolve weakened ever so slightly. “Does that hurt?”
I nodded.
She hardened again. “I didn’t ask you to stop me from falling.”
Steady spoke up. “Fall or jump?”
She shot a glance at him. “Whatever. Same thing.”
She pointed her finger at both of us. “I want off this boat. Now.”
I reached in my pocket and handed her the keys to her boat. She snatched them out of my hand and the tension in her face eased. “You’re not keeping me here?”
I shook my head.
“Then what do you want and why am I here?”
Steady continued. “We thought it’d give you some space to think things out. Maybe take a deep breath.”
She pointed at the door. “So I can leave any time I want?”
Stepping out of the walkway, I held open the door.
She jumped out the door, hopped in her boat, cranked the engine, and placed it in gear. The boat tugged on its mooring, satisfying her that we weren’t lying and she could actually leave when she wanted. She stood stoically. One hand on the throttle, thinking. Threatening. She eased the throttle forward, stretching the stress limit of the line. Satisfied she was not a prisoner, she throttled down, cut the ignition, and stepped back into my cabin. Steady patted the cushion next to him. “Katie, please.”
She wiped her hands across her face then abruptly pointed her finger in my face. “I don’t like you and I don’t trust you. And I don’t care what you did, just because I’m on your boat doesn’t mean I owe you a thing.”
I didn’t say a word. I was in bad need of some coffee. I stepped into the galley, ground some beans, filled the coffeemaker, and clicked it on. I observed her out of the corner of my eye. She sat listening to Steady explain himself and his thinking but her attention was centered on the galley and me and specifically the coffeemaker. It finished, I poured myself a cup and sat sipping, hovering over the aroma. By now she was ignoring Steady, staring at me and my cup. She raised an eyebrow. She was calm, measured. Arms folded, legs crossed. One foot tapping the floor. “Black. No cream. No sugar. And warm the cup before you pour the coffee in it.”
I never took my eyes off my coffee. I simply stepped aside and continued sipping from my mug. If she wanted coffee, she was more than welcome to it, but I wasn’t serving her. She stood, slammed open a cupboard, grabbed a mug, washed it in the sink then let it sit under the hot water for five minutes while my precious fresh water ran through her mug and down the drain. Satisfied her cup was of the right temperature, she poured some coffee, sipped not disapprovingly, and then resumed her pissed-off posture on the couch. From the sweat on her top lip, to the narrowed stretch between her eyes, to the tension in her shoulders, everything about her said, “Leave me alone. I don’t want you. Don’t need you. Don’t want to know of your existence.”
I obliged.
I stepped outside and noticed the current along the back side of Pavilion Key. The water from the gulf pushes in through a small slough, or break in the key, creating a swift current that often fills up with trout. I grabbed one of my poles, a Sustain 3000 on a seven-foot St. Croix, and threw a popping cork with a soft plastic into the current. I fish twenty-pound Sufix braid with a thirty-pound fluorocarbon leader. In English, that means I can pitch in around shells and other barnacled structures. It also allows me to cast really far.
Ten minutes later, I’d caught three inside the slot—two trout measuring at least fifteen inches and a flounder slightly smaller. I filleted them along with the trout I’d caught earlier in the cast net, and while Steady reasoned with psycho woman, I dropped the fillets in two skillets with some clarified butter and salt and pepper and started cooking breakfast for me and Steady.
Again, her attention turned toward me. She paraded to the coffeepot, filled her empty mug, and stood observing me. When I didn’t notice her, she returned to her throne on the couch.
The more I was near this woman, the more I wanted her off my boat. Just standing near her made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I’d never met someone who was so cold, shut off, shut down, and just downright rude. The B-word came to mind but I kept it to myself. So did the words “high” and “maintenance.” A stark contrast from my first glimpse of her kissing Steady’s cheek at the confessional. I served two plates—a number that did not escape her. Steady was in midsentence when she pointed at me. “Who the hell is he!”
“His name is Sunday. He’s a hermit, of sorts.”
“A what?”
“Hermit. The church once called them ‘desert dwellers’ though he’s”—Steady waved his hand out across the water—“thrown that definition on its head. It’s a voluntary, solitary lifestyle meant to bring about a change of heart.” She glanced at me. He continued. “A condition in which the participant withdraws. Given to penance and prayer.” She recrossed her legs while her thumb traced the rim of her mug. Her eyes never left me. Steady continued, “In the Canon Law 1983, the church recognized the eremitic or anchoritic life by which the Christian faithful devoted their life to the praise of God and salvation of the world through a stricter separation from the world, through the silence of solitude, assiduous prayer, and penance.” He motioned to me. “A hermit is recognized in the law as one dedicated to God in a consecrated life if he or she professes the three evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience. And, in his case, a fourth.”
I had no idea what he was talking about but I didn’t interrupt him. He’d piqued my interest and I wanted to know where this was going. Technically, everything he said was true, but it had never been an official thing. She did not look impressed. “Fourth?”
He nodded. “Yes. Silence.”
Steady had turned chatty. Taking the focus off her and placing it on me. “His profession is confirmed by a vow or other sacred bond in the hands of the diocesan bishop”—Steady smiled—“and observes his or her own plan of life under his direction.”
She cut to the chase. “So, he lives alone and talks to no one?”
“Solitude is not the purpose, only a conducive environment for striving after a particular spiritual aim.”
She slowly turned her head toward me. “I can think of few things that sound worse.”
“He is a man who has renounced worldly concerns and pleasures to come closer to God. His life is filled with meditation, contemplation, and prayer without distractions of contact with human society, sex, or the need to maintain socially acceptable standards.” She raised an eyebrow and measured me. “He maintains a simple diet with very few distractions.”
“So”—she pointed at me—“he doesn’t want sex?”
Steady laughed. “I didn’t say he didn’t want it. I said he’d taken a vow to abstain from it.”
She shook her head. “Pitiful. What kind of a loser would vow that?”
Steady shrugged. “I did.”
“Yeah, but you don’t count. You’re a priest. You’re supposed to. He’s nothing but a guy who’s”—she painted her hands across my boat—“checked out and attached some religious mumbo jumbo to it to give him a sense of purpose. Living out here in the middle of nowhere with no purpose and no reason for anything.”
I didn’t even know her and yet she’d undressed me in a single sentence. She knew me better than I liked. I didn’t respond. While what she said was true, she was also trying to turn my screws and get a rise out of me.
She thumbed at me. “Can he talk? What language does he speak?”
I turned to her. “I speak English.”
One hand on her hip. “It is alive.” She eyed me. “I thought you’d taken a vow of silence.”
Steady explained. “He can talk. He has no intent to be rude. He simply chooses not to engage or initiate conversation, and avoids environments in which he might.”
She looked at me, but spoke to Steady. “What’s his name again?”
“Sunday.”
“Sort of a sucky name.” She bit her bottom lip.
“He didn’t choose it.”
“Still sucky.”
She looked at me. “You’re strange.”
Another bait. I didn’t bite.
She spoke slowly. As if doing so would allow her to produce the intended reaction or control the outcome. “Do you know who I am?”
Most in the civilized world knew her. “Yes.”
“So, I know Steady. Steady knows me. Steady knows you. You know me. I don’t know you. Who are you, besides a hermit?”
It was a good question. The answer was simple. “I am not the man I’d hoped to be.”
My response was a speed bump. She rolled over it. “Which way would I go if I wanted to get myself out of here?”
I pointed through the glass toward the mangroves. “Head twelve miles that way. You’d lose a few pints of blood to the mosquitoes, but there’s no need. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
She eyed me for a moment, assessing. Then she stood, walked to the galley, and grabbed both plates. She handed one to Steady then stood holding my breakfast on the other. She picked at the white, flaky fish, finally tasting it. She pushed it around her mouth, unable to hide her surprise. When the plate was empty, she set it down, and walked out on the deck with her mug. She climbed up on the foredeck and stood staring at the Ten Thousand Islands. Her arms crossed. A breeze tugged at her clothes, revealing the rope burn on her neck. Steady followed her and handed her a small tube of Neosporin. “Katie, if you’ll tell me what you need, what you want, how to help, I—we—will.”
She glanced over her shoulder and down at the galley where she had last seen me. “I don’t like the way I treat people. I am… People deserve better.”
She was a roller coaster. High highs, and low lows. Steady put his arm around her. “You can rest here. Take some time—”
She looked cold. Her eyes fell to the water’s surface. Lost in a gaze. He lifted her chin. “Let’s don’t talk anymore today. Let’s just take it easy. You’re safe. No one knows you’re here except us.” She glanced at me. Steady looked at her neck. “This will heal.”
She shook her head, staring out across the gulf. Tears were dripping off her face. She tried to speak and couldn’t. She was waging a battle against the rising tide of her emotions and the tide was turning. She was losing. Finally, the words exited in a whisper. “If regret is an ocean, then I’m drowning.”
Steady led her to my cabin, where she spent the day sleeping. He, on the other hand, walked the perimeter of the boat, his beads in his hands, eyes on the horizon. I cleaned, spooled, and oiled some reels, replaced one of the live well pumps on the Pathfinder, and watched my cabin door out of the corner of my eye for the next eruption. Late in the afternoon, we fished a little—live shrimp on an eighth-of-an-ounce jig head. Toward dark, I swam the fifty yards to the beach, gathered driftwood, and built a bonfire. Steady followed in the dinghy and, at dark, we grilled a few trout and two reds, quietly watching the boat for any sign of life.
None emerged.
Steady had something on his mind. Kept watching me out of the corner of his eye. He usually chewed on whatever he wanted to say for a long time before he spoke it. I’d learned to give him time. I fed the fire and watched the boat. With the moon high, the fire hot, and coals glowing white, Steady walked to the water’s edge, filled a bucket, and carried it to the fire. Without speaking, he poured five gallons of water across my bonfire.
“What’d you do that for?”
He shook out the last few drops as darkness enveloped him and steam rose around him. His eyes were trained on the boat. “It does seem a shame to purposefully douse something so beautiful.”
I nodded. “She is beautiful.”
Steady tossed the bucket at me and climbed back in the dinghy. “I wasn’t talking about her, dummy.”
Gone Fiction has two cabins. One starboard, one port. Her royal highness was asleep in my cabin so Steady stretched out in the guest cabin, or since he was the only one to ever use it—his cabin. At midnight, I stretched my hammock across the posts of the aft deck. It’s a Hennessy and I’d prefer it to most any bed but, admittedly, I’m used to sleeping alone. It also has a built-in mosquito fly, which can come in handy just before daylight.
I slept with one eye open, which meant I didn’t.
CHAPTER SIX
At two a.m., a door cracked. Then a zipper. A snap. Boards creaked. I’d been expecting this. The cabin door opened and closed slowly. I stared through the screen of my hammock. Moonlight lit upon her shoulders. She crept barefooted across the lower deck and untied her boat. Steady appeared just below me in the galley. We watched her push off into the current. He whispered, “This feels bad.”
I nodded.
“You’d better go with her.”
I grabbed my hat and the keys to Jody. In the distance, I heard the rumble of her engine. She was idling out—into the gulf. I turned the corner and watched as the blue LED lights from her instruments lit her silhouette. The water was a black sheet of glass. Not a ripple. That was good for her and bad for me—it meant I’d never catch her. I stepped into the Pathfinder, untied the bow, cut the running lights, and cranked the engine. Following her would be easy—all that power created quite a churn in the water. ’Course, it was nearly three times as fast as my boat, too. Neither one of us could throttle up, or gun it, until we reached deeper water. She needed four feet. Given my jack plate, I needed at least two and a half. More like three. She was nearly a half mile away when I heard her engine rumble, saw the bow rise up, and she started putting distance between herself and the island.
She had become a far-off speck when I pushed the stick forward. One advantage I had—and possibly the only one I had—was that her exhaust was running straight out the back. When she was on plane, I could see flames. Like following a candle across the water. Seconds later I was skimming the surface at sixty-two miles an hour. I wasn’t catching her, but I wasn’t losing sight of her as quickly, either. The trick would be following her while not being detected. If she cut her engine—or snuffed out the candle—and mine was still screaming behind her, she’d simply crank the engine, slam the throttle to the dash, and leave me in her dust.
I had one shot at this.
I adjusted my trim tabs and reached sixty-seven miles an hour. Too fast for my boat. A rogue wave or odd ripple and I’d flip, probably snap my neck, and Steady would have to swim home. Not to mention what would happen to the woman.
But my mind was not thinking about what might happen at that moment. It was thinking about the moments tomorrow. Next week. Next month. Playing the what-if and if-then game. Chances were good that if we, or I, convinced this girl not to end her life, that she’d stick around awhile. Where else would she go? She’d have to hide and I had a good hunch she’d not thought that through. Although, I’d bet my boat that Steady had. Which was why he said to bring her here. In fact, I’d bet he had thought that through the moment I appeared in his church after her confession.
In front of me, nearly a mile in the distance, she turned hard to port ninety degrees left—and continued her scream across the gulf. At this rate, she’d be in Cuban waters in about forty-five minutes. Maybe thirty. I cut the angle and soon came in behind her, a quarter mile back. She slowed, then turned hard to starboard and gunned it. We were now fifteen miles out into the gulf, where the depth was rolling between nine and fifteen feet. Another half mile and she turned hard again, followed by another. This erratic serpentine course continued for a mile. Then another. I couldn’t figure out what she was doing until my eyes landed on the depth finder.
She was looking for deeper water. One of the reasons the gulf makes for such great fishing is the grass flats—a shelf of water that extends miles offshore that never grows deeper than about fifteen feet. The caveat to this is the occasional “hole.”
I throttled back, idled, an
d watched her frantically searching for a watery grave. Didn’t take her long to find it.
The candle disappeared.
I killed the engine and watched her disappear into her cabin only to reappear moments later. She was hunched over, moving slowly. Like she was carrying something heavy. While she fiddled with something below her, I coasted within a hundred feet, lowered the anchor, and slipped into the water—breaststroking to her stern.
I could hear her dragging something heavy across the floor of her boat. Then she lifted it onto the platform at the rear, balancing it next to the edge. I swam faster.
I reached her boat and hung silently from the stern while she stood on the ledge above me and muttered to herself. She busied her hands with something small. The heavy thing she’d brought up from the cabin was a white bucket, which now sat next to her. She had undressed again and stood naked save the rope that ran from her neck to the bucket. Obviously, she intended to finish what she’d started. Her boat was equipped with a sun pad—a padded platform directly above the engines.
Her hands were cupped in front of her, nervously moving. The mumbling continued. It sounded like she was saying the same thing over and over again. Or parts of the same thing. She stepped up on the edge of the boat, her toes dangling over the water. I listened, catching the last of a sentence. Her voice was breaking. I caught bits and pieces. “… mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.” Then the moonlight lit the strand of beads in her hands.
The rosary.
Her prayer was growing louder. I knew that if she was hell-bent on killing herself, sooner or later she’d succeed and no power on earth, and certainly not me, would ever be able to stop her. She needed a choice, but she also needed to know what was at stake. Her legs tensed, knees bent. She sucked in a deep breath. Then let it out. All of it.