Rob turned the phone off and tossed it down the companionway and into the cabin, where it bounced off the navy-blue cushions and landed on the floor.
He wanted the jib up too. He unfurled it, loaded the winch. Trimmed the jib. Up from four knots to six, and now the sight was even more magnificent, the two sails up, the wind out of the southeast. Cruising now. Rob had sailed lots of boats in his life but really there was nothing like this kind of sailing, like sailing a Hinckley, every part of the rigging placed exactly where you wanted it to be. Magic. Bliss.
An errant thought still nibbled at him, something he’d forgotten to do.
Now he had to undo the jib sheet, so he was shifting from port to starboard trying to get it done. This was maybe a little bit easier with someone else on board. Slightly easier.
It was while he was undoing the jib sheet that he remembered what it was he had forgotten: the VHF for the marine forecast—the very same radio, of course, that the fishermen in Little Harbor used for the same reason. Because no matter who you were or what kind of boat you had you were just as vulnerable to the whims of nature as the next guy. The ocean was the Great Equalizer. You could be aboard the Titanic or a lobster boat and disaster could find you either way.
He switched on the VHF.
Now he scanned the horizon, and he could see the storm clouds gathering at the edge. He should have seen these sooner, he should have been scanning the horizon the whole time, but instead he’d been looking down, thinking about Eliza, about Charlie, about Mrs. Cabot, his faltering business, the money.
Something made Rob think of John F. Kennedy Jr. and his ill-fated flight from New Jersey to Martha’s Vineyard. This was big news for a lot of people, of course, but in particular for other pilots and for sailors, and the big question all of them had was not why (as it was with the general public) but how. An experienced pilot, a short and familiar trip: How?
These clouds were far enough away that Rob figured he could outrun them, could sail back to the harbor, back to his mooring.
Of course, he had the option to take down the sails, furl the main, motor back. On another day, in another summer, perhaps he would have done exactly that. That was the more cautious of the choices, and Rob was a smart and experienced enough sailor to know when caution was called for. But on this day, in this summer, the one day he’d had the boat out in weeks, he didn’t choose caution.
He’d been four when his father started taking him out on his boat. His father’s departure for Thailand, his leap from Judith’s arms into Malai’s, and the shambolic aftermath of that leap, was still four years in the future. Rob had been too young, too unsullied and innocent and naive, to realize that his father might eventually leave them. He hadn’t known fathers could leave. Who’d ever consider such a thing? Fathers were real and solid and present; they were teachers, they were gods. Like Charlie was to Eliza.
Eliza! He’d promised her he wouldn’t go out on the boat alone. But he’d also promised Mrs. Cabot he’d get her in before Thanksgiving. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t need his mother’s money. When he and Eliza had stood up in front of two hundred and fifty people in Trinity Church in the Back Bay he’d promised God and everyone he’d never kiss another woman, and then he’d allowed himself to be kissed by Deirdre Palmer.
Fuck cautious. He’d keep the sails up.
He remembered sitting at his father’s knee and learning about the way the wind filled the sails. He remembered their first overnight sailing trip, to Rockport, Maine, just the two of them. He remembered waking in the bunk to smell breakfast cooking: the most delicious bacon and eggs Rob had ever eaten in his life.
Rob pulled his life jacket from the cockpit locker and put it on. As he zipped it, his mind went again to JFK Jr. and the question: Not why, but how?
The answer was, of course, in the backstory. All answers were in the backstory. The sister-in-law delayed at work, the flight pushed back, and back again, so that they were flying in darkness instead of daylight. It became impossible to tell the sky from the water.
The wind picked up; the storm clouds were moving fast. They were directly above, and Rob could see his error. He should have doused the mainsail when he had a chance, when all was still calm. He should pull it down now.
The wind pressure on the sail was now so great that the boat was beginning to heel. Rob wrestled with the sail, but alone he was no match for the wind. And, anyway, he should be at the wheel; he should have another guy, maybe two, with him, so they could pull the sail.
Rob’s breath was coming fast now, and he braced himself against the wind.
It was then that the autopilot’s compass lost its memory. Rob, still struggling with the sail, had no say in what direction the boat was headed, because it steered itself wildly back and forth, the autopilot searching for a course. It was as though the devil himself had taken the wheel. And maybe he had.
Now the question was whether or not to leave the sail and run back and take the wheel himself. An unfair choice: between bad and worse.
The grease from the bacon that long-ago morning in Rockport, his father’s hand on his shoulder, the sensation of being utterly cared for. The certainty that all things were in their place, that all was right with the world.
That was what he wanted for his kids, for Eliza, for their lives. He wanted to give them that sense of order, of being loved unconditionally—his three females, with all of their flaws and foibles and beautiful hair and delightful quirks and confounding social media habits. He wanted to deserve being loved back the same way. And if he’d failed them in the past, he wouldn’t fail in the future.
That’s what he was thinking when he was thrown to the deck with a force as strong as a gunshot, and the world went black.
46
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Eliza
Eliza didn’t want to leave her father, but she had promised Evie ninety-three different ways that she’d be home for Charlotte’s Web, and home she would be. Besides, Val was there. She’d stay the night with Charlie, if he’d let her. Eliza had washed and replaced the sheets for her own twin bed in case.
As she drove out of Little Harbor, and through Ellsworth, and past the lakes and ponds along Route One, she put the words in her mother’s letter on repeat: I’m so sorry I left you, Eliza. But I’ve never, ever been sorry I came back.
Not only that, but this: Then I found out that there’s no such thing, no fairy tale. I guess that’s Lesson Number Five.