Tattered Innocence (10 page)

“Stop. Quit waiting on me. This is my
job.”

“It’s called common courtesy. I’m getting
myself a drink. You don’t have a drink. I get two.” He shook his
head like she was a nut case.

Maybe she was.

“Anyway, what I was going to say is that I
bet you were a really good coach.” Jake wiped his mouth on the back
of his hand and climbed the steps into the cockpit.

A tiny quiver vibrated her solar plexus,
fanning outward until it reached her fingertips, toes, and the
crown of her head.

Later that afternoon, Rachel darted in front
of the plaid boxers and soggy shorts that hung from Nigel’s ebony
hips and snatched the line from his hands. “Thanks a million!” she
yelled as she leapt from the bank. The impact of the cool, green
water closing around her encased her in a delicious microcosm of
all that was good about crewing for Jake.

Perched on sprawling tree roots at water’s
edge, she wrung the moisture out of her hair and watched the boys
swing out and drop like ice cubes into the water of the cove.

Jake and the boys paraded cannon balls and
jack knives into the cove. She tried, unsuccessfully, to imagine
Bret doing the head-first “watermelon” Jake did.

Jake slumped onto the bank nearby, breathing
hard. Rivulets ran down his arms and back. His breathing slowed,
and he looked up at her. Water slicked his curls flat against his
head. The sun picked up golden flecks in the brown of his eyes.

Her breath caught, and she refocused on
Keenan whose arms and legs flailed in mid-air before he hit the
water. She squashed down the popping and fizzing inside her—the
same sensation that had lured her to Bret.

She darted a glance back at Jake. He’d drawn
up his knees, chin resting on his folded arms as he gazed at the
far bank.

“Thinking about Gabrielle?”

“Y—” He twisted his head toward her. “Let me
have a private thought, would you?”

“Excuse me for caring.” Rachel climbed the
bank and got in line with the boys. Obviously, Gabrielle was the
only one causing any popping and fizzing for Jake.

Jake peered over his shoulder at Rachel.

She stood between Pete and Keenan, her back
to him, saying something that made the boys laugh.

His eyes drifted over her ringlet-covered
shoulders, the one-piece Speedo, her long legs. He caught Nigel
doing the same, male appreciation written on his face.

Jake jerked his chin in the opposite
direction. He wanted Gabs. Not Rachel. Gabrielle.

Wind over twenty knots whistled past Jake’s
ears as he manned the helm. He surveyed the four to five-foot
whitecaps and the dark sky boiling overhead. A minute ago they’d
clipped along at six knots under blue skies, making him wonder why
the meteorologist had called for gusts of more than twenty-five
knots. He glanced at the GPS, mentally converting miles per hour to
knots. Twenty-seven knots. Anxiety churned under Jake’s ribs.

The bow lofted and plummeted, taking on
green water.

“Everyone below,” he barked as he kept the
Queen
tacking seaward. “We’re in for a big blow.” His eyes
nailed Rachel. “Get the boys into life jackets.”

“Jake—please hang on tight.” Her eyes locked
on him, her hand clamped on the hatch rail. One of the boys jarred
Rachel on his way through the hatch, but she seemed not to notice.
Couldn’t she feel the wind amping up?

The
Queen
listed deeper into the
tack, sea spray pelting them.

“Get below!” he said.

Rachel startled and ducked into the
cabin.

Jake steered with one hand and dredged
bungee cords out of the cockpit locker, his mind already walking
through the motions of heading the
Queen
into the wind,
lashing the wheel, reducing sail—reefing the main, dropping the
staysail and genoa, leaving the mizzen up for stability—starting
the motor.

The wind flung rain and ocean at his skin
like a thousand acupuncture needles. The sound of ripping sailcloth
belched above the storm, jerking his head up. He gazed in shock at
the flapping mainsail ripped top to bottom as he wheeled the
Queen
into the wind. Nausea and a five thousand dollar price
for a new sail swam in his stomach.

Was Jake frightened? It didn’t matter.
Rachel was afraid enough for both of them. “Everybody into life
jackets!” She hauled Pete and Keenan off the port bench by their
arms and pitched jackets out to the boys.

The smell of perspiration and this morning’s
sausage hung in the air as she threaded among the shirtless boys
checking their life jackets. The
Queen
slammed through a
wave, and Rachel’s teeth clattered together. “I’m not your mother,
Nigel.” Rachel jerked the belt to his life jacket. “Buckle up.”

Someone pinched her backside. She spun and
halted, her hand a hair from Pete’s face. “Try it again, bud.”

“Whaaaa!” Pete’s sun-whitened hair stood out
around his head like a halo. “I didn’t mean anything.”

Rachel glared at him another second, almost
glad for the distraction. She slipped into a life vest and darted
up the companionway with a jacket for Jake. The
Queen
surfed
the storm in all her biker-chick glory—hauling a cargo of
testosterone to safety.
Hold together old girl. Please.

The wind gusted Rachel airborne as she
hopped the coaming onto the side deck. One foot slipped over the
gunwale and she scrabbled for a grip on the shroud to keep from
going overboard.
Oh, God!
The rigging beat a metallic drum
roll against the masts. All sail but the mizzen had been dropped
and bungeed to the rails in clumps.

Clinging hand over hand to the cabin rails,
Jake’s jacket clenched in her teeth, she made her way toward him at
the base of the mainmast where he lowered the flailing pieces of
the mainsail. Ragged edges of sail whipped frantically, flinging a
four foot fiberglass batten
i
nto the
ocean. Sea spray and rain pelted her. Inside, she chanted,
Keep
us safe. Keep us safe. Keep us safe.

Jake grasped the jacket.

She licked the salt off her lips and
shouted, “I’m getting the harness for you!”

“No! Get below where you’re safe.”

The wind wiped the scowl from his face and
the breath from her lungs.

She scrambled back through the hatch and
slammed it with a bang, irked that Jake refused to let her take
care of him like she did everyone else in her life. If she knew
where Jake kept the blasted safety harness that tethered him to the
boat, she’d make him wear it.

She panted, catching her breath. She might
be able to tolerate his self-sufficiency if he didn’t make things
worse by trying to take care of her.

When her breath slowed, she launched into
“Boom Chicka Boom,” motioning for the boys to join in.

Pete rolled his eyes. “This is lame.”

“Fine. You pick the next song.”

“Right.”

Rachel bent toward his snowy head. “Go
ahead, think about the
Queen
going down.”

Pete’s face turned chalky under his tan.
“Chicka rocka chick a rocka chicka boom…” He added his baritone to
the others.

Half-way through
Let It Be,
the boat
pitched. A snapshot of the
Queen
, her masts pointed toward
the ocean floor, darted through Rachel’s mind. She shivered, and
swallowed hard.

Jesus—
It was all the prayer she
could conjure.

A wave smacked the hull with such force that
Rachel lunged for a grip on the dining table. Her eyes darted
around the cabin looking for splintering wood. “God!”

“God bless America…”

Not yet.
She didn’t want to die.

The only time she’d been this close to life
and death had been at age five when she’d witnessed Hall’s
birth.

Mama lay on the kitchen floor, her head
rolling from side to side, eyes crazed with pain, clamped-down
screams ripping from her chest. Hall slid into Rachel’s arms, the
one true miracle she’d ever seen. As the lady paramedic pried Hall
from Rachel, a bloody blob half the size of Hall oozed out of Mama.
Rachel cried hysterically that Mama was dying till the man
paramedic carried her into the living room. He talked in a calm
voice until she heard his explanation of the placenta. He smelled
of Little Debbie oatmeal cakes and cigarettes before they were
lit.

The boys sang
Cobra Starship
now.

Other than helping Hall grow up, she’d
accomplished nothing significant in twenty-three years. And she
couldn’t die disconnected from Hall. She had to face him whether or
not he knew about Bret.

Keenan’s teeth came down on his lip.

Rachel shot him a small smile of
encouragement she didn’t feel.

The boat rolled sharply starboard. Her
fingernails dug into the wooden ridge that lipped the table.

Two seconds of quiet before the
Queen
tossed to port filled with the sound of someone emptying his
stomach behind the door of the head.

Rachel glanced at her watch. Only thirty
minutes had gone by.

A few seconds passed before she realized the
pitching had ratcheted down, the squall blown over as suddenly as
it had descended. Rachel’s muscles slackened. Blood flowed into her
knuckles. She held her breath, straining to hear Jake’s footfall.
At last she heard movement above
.

Thank You, God.

If she could just hold it together for a few
more minutes….

Popcorn. It would return the boys to a sense
of normalcy. Her mind slipped into autopilot, her emotions stacked
on each other, a Jenga tower about to topple. She lit the stove and
spilled oil into a puddle in the bottom of the Dutch oven. Minutes
later, she absently tumbled the corn into a plastic bowl and
watched Nigel’s ink-black fingers close around the white kernels.
The bowl wove around the cabin from hand to hand, and she started a
second batch.

Leaving Keenan in charge of popping the
corn, Rachel numbly climbed topside to find Jake.

The anchor chain clattered through the chock
as Rachel approached the foredeck.

Jake’s soaked T-shirt melded to his skin. He
grabbed the genoa and squinted at her. “Everybody okay below?”

The deck vibrated with the rattling of the
chain diving downward. “Yeah.” Rachel stepped onto the cabin and
held the sail bag for Jake. “You?”

Jake nodded.

“The
Queen
?”

“Mainsail blew, shredded beyond repair.”

“I see. I’m sorry.” Rachel ran her eyes the
length of the
Queen
. Hopefully, the mainsail was the only
casualty.

She should help Jake with the rest of the
sails, but her thin veneer of control ebbed away as the
Queen
bobbed in the short swells. Tears pooled in her eyes,
blurring Jake’s puttering on the bow. Liquid spilled down her
cheeks before she made it into the darkness of the aft cabin.

Jake paused at the base of the mainmast,
staring at the remains of the mainsail fluttering in the soft
breeze. A new sail would wipe out his reserves. He had to
succeed—to make Gramps proud.

He sighed and headed to the bow, running his
fingers over every fitting, checking for damage.

Gramps left him money to refit the
Queen
, and he had a nice chunk of savings, but neither of
them had imagined what a money sieve she’d be.

His grandfather had started with a feed
store outside Indianapolis, bought the neighboring farm, gutted the
barn, and turned it into a restaurant. Later, he dug a lake,
stocked it, charging a fee per fish. He rented out the house and
outbuildings to an Amish furniture shop, a bulk food store, and a
bait store. In the summer, people paid to swim and hold family
reunions at the lake.

Jake had inherited Gramps’ entrepreneurial
bent and work ethic. But those wouldn’t be enough if the
Queen
bled him dry.

The hatch above Rachel slid open and she bit
back a sob. She didn’t look up. It could only be Jake. Gray-white,
after-the-storm light bathed the cabin.

“You okay?”

What could she say—huddled on her bunk,
clutching a pillow to her chest? A hiccough escaped.

Jake swung into the cabin. He motioned with
his head. “Come here.” His hands reached for her.

Rachel lifted wet eyes to his and slid off
the bunk into his arms.

Jake rubbed her back. “It’s okay. Let it
out.”

The moisture from Jake’s sodden shirt seeped
through hers as she cried.

“The storm’s over. We’re all safe.” He
stroked her hair.

He smelled of rainwater, sea, and sweat. His
arms felt like heaven.

Rachel quieted against his shoulder, the
last sobs shuddering through her like aftershocks. She felt his
chest expand and contract. His breath warmed her scalp behind her
ear.

Jake’s taking care of her felt a whole lot
better at the moment. She drew away from him and sniffled. “How did
you learn to do that?”

He reached for dry clothes out of his bin.
“Do what?”

Rachel scooted onto her bunk. “To—to let a
girl cry.”

Jake grinned at her, clothes in one hand. “I
have a sister and a mom—I had Gabs.”

Gabrielle. The dampness of her shirt chilled
her skin. She inhaled, a sob stuck in her chest.

Jake struggled out of his sopping T-shirt
and glanced at Rachel. He turned his back on her, feeling weird.
He’d been shirtless around her a dozen times and not given it a
second thought, but he’d never held her, never seen her cry, never
buried his nose in her hair. Those tiny, pale freckles he couldn’t
see till he was right next to her got to him, like her brown eyes,
dilated and swimming in emotion.