On Wednesday morning, she drove out of Los Angeles via the 605 and hooked up with Interstate 15 where she stayed for ten straight hours, less two bathroom breaks. She jumped onto I-70 and arrived in Grand Junction, Colorado, just as the last tussles of sunlight burned on the horizon. She found a Hyatt and paid cash for a single night. When she laid her head on the pillow she could still feel the smooth vibration from her hours on the road. She closed her eyes and hoped for sleep, always an elusive item during her summer treks. Like clockwork, memories of her family pushed themselves to the forefront of her mind during her cross-country trips. How could they not? Her family was what she had run from. Her family was what she was hiding.
During the rest of the year, Avery was a sound sleeper who never remembered her dreams. But each summer when she headed back to her past, her dreams were vivid and wild. They mostly alternated between her mother and father—a dead mother and a convict for a father. She loved her mother with all her heart, and had once loved her father the same way. But that love had been tainted by her father’s betrayal, and in its wake was a combination of hatred and scorn for the man Avery had once considered her hero. Tonight, though, holed up in a hotel somewhere near the Rockies, her parents were absent from her dreams. When sleep came to her, so too did memories of her brother.
The Oyster 625 weighed in at seventy thousand pounds and measured sixty-four feet in length. A blue water cruiser capable of handling the rough seas off the coast of New York, the sailboat was big, sturdy, and expensive. With a price tag north of $3 million, it was an obnoxious gift from her father for her twenty-first birthday. Designed to accommodate a racing crew of eight, the boat was also crafted for leisurely outings that could be handled by a pair of accomplished sailors, which Avery and Christopher were. Yet, two hours after Claire-Voyance left the marina, the sea churned with angry waves that crested at four feet and crashed over the sides of the boat. On downswings, the waves seemed to swallow the bow. The rain came in dense sheets that cut visibility to next to nothing.
They’d brought down the sails and the engine was fighting against the waves and the currents. The marina was more than two miles away and only choppy water and black skies were visible. The ocean lifted the magnificent boat into the air and dropped it like a toy into the crashing waves. Avery felt the Oyster pulling to the starboard side and she had trouble reining it in. The wheel wanted to twist clockwise and she fought to keep her westward course. The big boat, however, was pulling too hard. Something was wrong. Then she noticed the heel. No, not a heel but a dip. The bow was inching downward, as if ready to dive into the sea. She thought it was a swell that had dipped the front of the boat, but when it didn’t recover she knew it was sinking.
She lifted the cover of the DSC—digital selective calling—button and pressed it, sending a distress signal to the Coast Guard telling them the name of the vessel and her exact location in longitude and latitude. For good measure, and because she was scared to death, she picked up the transmitter and placed it to her lips.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Claire-Voyance. Mayday, mayday, mayday.”
The squawk of the voice was loud and static filled, yet barely audible over the rain and wind.
“Go ahead, Claire-Voyance, this is the Coast Guard. We have your location and are dispatching a crew. What’s your situation?”
“We’re an Oyster 625 in heavy rain and high winds. Four-to six-foot white caps and taking on water.”
“Roger that, Claire-Voyance. How many onboard?”
“Two,” she yelled over the roar of the waves. “We’re in a squall and taking on water. We’re heavily pitched to the starboard side.”
“What’s your timeframe, Claire-Voyance?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, as a wave crashed down over the bow of the boat. “My brother went below deck to find the source of the breach. To see if he could contain it.”
“Tell your brother to come above board. We’ll stay with you until our crew arrives.”
“We won’t have time,” Avery said as another wave engulfed the bow. “We’re capsizing.”
Avery bolted up in bed before she knew she was awake. It was her normal reaction to the recurrent dream, and she had determined it was a defense mechanism. Jolt herself awake so she didn’t have to relive the image of the Oyster’s bow dipping below the surface and then twisting vertically before spearing to the bottom of the ocean. Wake herself before her mind replayed her battle with the sea as she fought against the six-foot waves that did their best to drown her.
She lay back in bed and sunk her head into the pillow, pushing away all the confusing thoughts that hid in the shadows of her mind and waited to surface each summer when Avery made her trip home. She couldn’t allow those thoughts to distract her from what she needed to do. She had the summer to tie up the frayed and loose ends of her family’s saga. What happened after that would be out of her control. If, at that point, the floodgates opened and all the sordid details of her past spilled forth, at least she would have done her best for the ones she loved.
CHAPTER 8
Sister Bay, WI Friday, June 18, 2021
A VERY WAS BACK ON THE ROAD BY 6 A.M. THE FOLLOWING MORNING with a tall coffee in the console—two creams, two sugars—smooth reggae on the radio, and open road in front of her. East of Denver she slipped onto I-80 where she’d stay for two days. Lincoln, Nebraska, was her second overnight. On Friday morning, she crossed the entire state of Iowa before finding the Wisconsin boarder. She headed northeast, conquering the state on a diagonal track. White cedar and jack pines soon dominated the landscape as far as the eye could see. The lodge pole pines reminded her of her teenage years and the summers she spent in this part of the country.