The Perfect Summer (Hubbard's Point) (4 page)

Grinning now, Annie padded barefoot down the dock. She half expected to hear Jimmy Buffett, her father's favorite, singing on the stereo. Maybe her dad had just needed a day off from work. He had come down here to the
Aldebaran
for a little rest and relaxation. Stepping over the lifeline onto the deck, she tiptoed over to the porthole.

Sometimes, during the past year, he had kept Annie's special present here on the boat, and she almost expected to see it now: a small model boat she had made him for Christmas two years ago, carved from balsa wood, painted dark green: a rowing dory instead of a motor boat. He'd said he'd always keep it with him. But it wasn't there . . .

As she moved around to the cockpit, she saw that the hatch appeared to be locked tight; she could see the closed silver padlock. That meant her father wasn't here now—but still, she wasn't really panicked. Annie knew the combination: 3–5–6–2. She could go below and check things out.

But as she started to turn the lock's dial with her thumb, she realized that it felt wet and oily. Looking at her hand, she saw blood.

And it wasn't just on her hand, on the lock: It was on the teak framing the companionway. Right there, on the corner, as if someone had really cracked his head going down into the cabin—a thick smear of red blood.

Annie wanted to believe it was from a fish.

Her dad had gone out, caught some bluefish. Or stripers. Or even a shark.

He was always bringing fish on board, and where there were fish, there was blood. Gutting, cleaning, rinsing fish . . . such a messy job.

But Annie's eyes filled with tears, and she somehow knew that this blood hadn't come from a fish. Her father was the neatest boater on earth. He kept a hose coiled on the dock, and he carefully washed his boat down after each trip.

“Annie!”

At the sound of her name, Annie wheeled around. Her mother was walking down the dock with Tara, but at the sight of Annie's face, her mother began to run. Annie was crying so hard now, she couldn't even see her mother anymore, but she heard the hollow thud of her footsteps on the long dock, and then she felt the boat rock and lurch as her mother leapt on board and wrapped Annie in her arms.

“Something awful's happened to him,” Annie wept. “He's hurt, Mom, or something worse . . . he was here, but he isn't now, and he's hurt . . .”

3

T
HE POLICE ARRIVED LESS THAN TEN MINUTES AFTER
Bay called, three cars pulling into the boatyard within seconds of each other. Bay tried to keep her arm around Annie, but her daughter yanked away, too agitated to stand still. She walked down the dock, waving so the officers would see.

“Must be a slow crime day,” Tara said. “So many policemen for such a little bit of fish blood.”

“I hope that's all it is.”

“Really? I'd completely understand if you felt otherwise,” Tara began, trying to lighten the mood; but at Bay's expression, she stopped.

“Look at Annie—she's beside herself. What if he's badly hurt somewhere?”

When the police officers approached, Annie ran over to stand by her mother's side. Bay spoke carefully, trying to stay calm as she gave them the facts she knew: that Sean had missed a bank meeting, she and Annie had come to the boat looking for him, and they had found blood on the doorway.

“Which boat is his?” asked Officer Perry, a tall young man with short dark hair and a kind smile for Annie.

“This one,” Annie said, pointing and running over to the
Aldebaran
.

“Nice fishing boat.” Officer Dayton nodded.

Bay said nothing, watching the police officers step aboard. Her stomach churned; Tara took her hand and squeezed it. They watched the officers look closely at the blood, walk slowly around the deck, gazing up at the sky and over the side into the water. Annie stood on the dock, not taking her eyes off them.

“Why are they looking in the water?” Annie asked suddenly, turning toward her mother.

“I think they have to look everywhere for clues,” Bay replied, reaching for her.

“Just clues?”

“Yes, honey.”

The furrow between Annie's brows deepened, and Bay's heart slammed her rib cage. She would never forgive Sean for this moment, as their daughter watched the police scanning the water for his body. And with that thought, Bay's own skin turned ice cold, terrified for her husband.

One of the officers used his handheld radio to make a call, while Officer Perry asked Bay if she had the boat's combination, so they could make sure Sean, or someone else, wasn't lying hurt inside.

“The hatch has to be locked from the outside,” she said. “He can't be in there.”

“Still, just in case.”

Bay hesitated.

She wasn't sure why, exactly. The longer she waited, the more she realized that she was afraid of what they would find inside—Sean lying hurt, or worse, and all the things he was keeping from her.

“Three-five-six-two,” Annie blurted out.

“Okay?” Officer Perry asked, looking for Bay's permission to enter. She nodded.

He opened the hatch door and disappeared below, into the boat. Officer Dayton followed. Bay watched. Tires crunched on gravel; she turned to look, seeing a dark sedan park by the police cars. Two men, both dressed in suits, got out, and the other two uniformed officers walked over.

“Looks like the big brass,” Tara said.

“They'll find Daddy, right?” Annie asked.

“You bet your boots they will,” Tara said, hugging her. “My grandfather was a policeman, and I can always pick out the best investigators. Those two are excellent—I can tell.”

Leaving her daughter in the hands of her best friend, Bay climbed on board her husband's boat. She had to see for herself; if he was down there, she wanted to be there, too. Grabbing the chrome handle at the top of the ladder, she eased herself down below, into the cabin.

The officers didn't see her right away. They were huddled together over something up forward, talking in low voices. The cabin had been closed up, and it smelled musty and sweet. The boat rocked gently against the dock, making an irregular muffled bumping sound as the fenders absorbed the hull's impact.

Bay's heart thudded inside her chest. She thought, tears springing to her eyes, of the family's most recent time aboard: a fishing trip out to the Race, going after stripers with live eels. Billy had caught the biggest fish, Pegeen had caught the most. They had sped right past the spot where, on the summer solstice so long ago, Sean had told her he wanted to fly to the sun.

Now, her mouth dry, she turned toward the aft cabin.

The bunk itself was mussed—the blue-and-white striped pillow was bunched up, the coverlet wrinkled as if someone had recently lain upon it. Oddly, seeing that, her heart began to slow down. Had Sean been down here making love with someone when he should have been picking up Peg? Her panic decreased, numbness taking its place, washing her skin and all her nerves with soft grief.

About to leave the cabin, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed an open folder of papers on top of the chest of drawers. Some appeared to be account statements—of clients at the bank. A tally sheet, like the kind the kids used at miniature golf to keep score, was marked “X,Y,Z.” In the margin, he had doodled a panel truck, or a delivery van, in heavy black ink; written on the side and surrounded with dark swirls were the words “the girl” and “help,” and the name “Ed.”

What girl? Annie? Pegeen? Bay? Somehow Bay didn't think so. She stared at Sean's drawing. He had always had the nervous habit of doodling while he talked on the phone, trying to concentrate. Years ago Bay had teased that she was going to collect his drawings and put them in a book—he was a master of cross-hatching and caricature—or take them to a psychologist for interpretation.

What could a truck and “the girl” mean? Some kind of male Mack-truck logic, eighteen-wheel velocity and desire for Lindsey? Or someone new? Her heart broke to think of it. Hands shaking, she scanned through the rest of the folder.

A sheet of white-lined paper caught her eye. It couldn't be . . . She picked it up, and felt shocked—for the second time that day—by a ghost from the past. A letter, in her own handwriting, written so long ago . . .

She must have exclaimed out loud, because suddenly the police officers knew she was there. They heard her, and hurried through the main salon to the aft cabin.

“Ma'am, you can't be down here,” Officer Perry said, his voice much sterner than before.

“But it's my—our—boat,” she said, trying to smile.

“I'm sorry,” he said firmly. “Right now it's a possible crime scene. Please go back onto the dock and wait there.”

Bay froze, shocked by his words. Stuffing the letter into the back pocket of her shorts, she followed him to the companion ladder and saw what she had somehow missed upon boarding earlier: a crooked trail of red splotches.

Small red spots leading to or from the hatch opening toward the bow. And there, at the forward end of the settee where on that last voyage the kids had eaten dinner—the swordfish Sean had grilled for them on deck—was a blue blanket now stained purple and black.

Only it wasn't purple or black at all, Bay realized as she climbed up to the deck, her heart in her throat: It was red blood, and a lot of it.

As she stepped out of the cabin, into the fresh air, she caught sight of Annie and Tara, their grave faces confirming that everything was wrong and they knew it, too, that somehow, during the course of this brilliant, blessed, bright blue day, their lives had all been shaken like a snow globe, turned upside down.

WHILE ANNIE STOOD THERE, A STRANGE THING HAPPENED:
She left her body. Not like those people on TV, who died on the operating table or in a car accident and rose above the scene, watching their doctors and families with new, wise insights.

No, when Annie left her body, she flew far from the dock, into the past. She flew into her childhood, when her father would walk her to school. He would hold her hand, sing a little song to her when they got to the crosswalk:

“Stop, look, and listen, before you cross the street.

Use your eyes, use your ears, before you use
your feet . . .”

He had kept her safe, taught her how to do it on her own. Those were her favorite times with her father, when the other kids were home with her mom, when he wasn't too busy with work, fishing, or friends—and before she had gained weight and disappointed him. Annie had felt the full force of his love on those walks to school; when he had turned away, to leave her on the wide granite steps, she had felt as if the sun was setting, as if his great warmth had been removed.

Now her mother and Tara spoke in soft voices. Police officers hurried around the dock; their car radios squawked in the parking lot. People didn't pay the same attention to kids as they did to other adults, so the two men in dark suits spoke to the uniformed officers as if Annie wasn't there.

“Investigation,” she heard them say. “Internal . . . at the bank . . . the
Feds . . .”

“Mommy, what are ‘the Feds'?” Annie asked, running over.

“It means the Federal government,” her mother said, putting her arms around Annie, rocking her so soothingly that Annie could almost think everything was going to be fine, that the whole Federal government was going to come to look for her father. Annie just held her mother and smelled her wonderful Mom-smell of sunscreen, lemon cologne, and salt water.

But then Tara whispered to her mom, “It means the FBI,” and her mother gasped, and Annie pulled away.

Before, everyone had been friendly, but now they were brusque and cold, and Annie understood that her father—somehow, a mistake, a nightmare—had become a suspect in something. A new car drove up, and two people got out carrying large cases. Tara said, “Forensics team,” and Annie's mother said, “This can't be happening.”

To Annie, it wasn't. Her body was air. The breeze moved through her, cooling her bones. Her bare feet, rooted on the dock's wide planking, hardly felt the summer heat. Her skin felt singed, as if it had been ripped away and her insides were leaking into the sky. Her mother reached for her, but Annie couldn't be held.

“Annie?” her mother said, arms reaching out.

Annie knew that her mother was trying to comfort her, and that she probably needed a hug back, but Annie couldn't let herself give it right now. She was Air-Girl. She had left her body entirely—just like a periwinkle crawls out of its shell.

And now, time traveler that she had become, she flew forward into the future. She closed her eyes, to block out every sight.

She thought of her life, of her father holding her hand all through it. “What's your favorite song, Annie?” he asked her sometimes. “Because we'll have them play it the day I walk you down the aisle. Forget Mendelssohn . . . whatever you want.”

But Annie veered away from her wedding day—boys didn't like her, anyway—and dreamed of her sports banquet instead. She had been to them before, for her brother and her best friend's sister, and now her throat choked up to imagine herself at the big table, flanked by her parents. They would be eating . . . prime rib, her father's favorite.

Annie would be thin. She wouldn't have eaten so much, exercised so little. She would have tried out for teams, made the cuts, taken their school all the way to the state championships. And she would be so thin and pretty . . .

The principal would call her name. Annie would push back her chair and, standing tall, so her father wouldn't criticize her posture, walk among the tables to the stage. People would be cheering. The other parents would be smiling at her father, giving him thumbs-ups for her excellence in—Annie cast about, searching her mind for the perfect sport—field hockey!

Or soccer. Or lacrosse. Or crew. Or basketball . . .

The sport was less important than the applause Annie would receive as she accepted the certificate and trophy, as the whole crowd of parents, children, and especially her father stood in an ovation, as Annie ran down from the stage, straight into her father's arms.

“Mrs. McCabe?”

The officer's voice interrupted Annie's reverie.

“Yes?” her mother said.

“We're going to clear this area right now. Why don't you go home? Someone will contact you very soon.”

“What were those officers saying about ‘the Feds'?” her mother asked, pointing.

“You'll be contacted very soon.”

“Please tell me now,” her mother said, her voice shaking. “I have three children. They're all so worried about their father. Please tell me what to tell them.”

“Soon, Mrs. McCabe. As soon as we have any real information.”

Her mother stood her ground, as if she was making up her mind about whether to insist on knowing more now, whether to demand to speak to someone higher up. Annie had seen her be bold and insistent when she needed to.

But right now, Annie saw the way her mother looked from the man to Annie . . . Staring into Annie's eyes seemed to make up her mother's mind. Their eyes met, and her mother smiled. Annie watched the fight go right out of her.

“Let's go home, honey,” her mother said.

Annie nodded, unable to speak.

Her mother gathered Annie into her arms as if she were a very small child instead of a twelve-year-old soon-to-be-recognized sports star. And Annie didn't even mind. She squished against her mother's body, not wanting even an inch of space between them, as they walked with Tara back down the dock, away from the boats and the police and into their car.