Six miles away.
Five.
Four.
Three.
By the time Cupid’s bow rounds the southernmost point of Little Misery, the storm is practically on top of us. The water in the cockpit is up to my knees. I accidentally drop the bailer and watch it float out of reach with a disembodied sort of denial. It wasn’t helping much, but letting it go tastes like accepting defeat. Like accepting the impossibility that I might actually…
Sink.
We are sinking.
The jib sail is the first to go; the material shreds into ribbons beneath the claws of a particularly strong gust as Cupid limps — waterlogged and graceless — toward the larger of the two islands. The main sail follows suit shortly thereafter, torn to useless flaps of canvas that whip around the mast in an ear-splitting racket. The tiller in my hands is now just a prop; I grip it more to keep myself aboard the flooded vessel than to attempt to steer. The waves are up to my waist, and rising.
With each swell, my pretty red sailboat — my most prized possession, the greatest source of material joy I have known in my lifetime — sinks a bit further beneath the surface. The thought of abandoning her, once an impossibility, is now an inevitability I cannot ignore. Not if I want to survive.
Surrendering the tiller, I tighten the straps of my life jacket around my abdomen. My flip flops, kicked loose in some undefined moment of chaos, drift away one after another. I watch them disappear over the stern, which is now fully swamped. Beneath the lifejacket, water splashes against my chest, seeps a cold path up my spine.
When the cockpit goes under completely, I half-swim, half-scramble my way up the deck, toward the mast. I wrap my arms around the metal beam as the ocean swallows Cupid beneath me in great gulps, praying a lightning bolt does not choose this moment to strike.
It doesn’t take long to sink. In a laughably short amount of time, the water has me fully in its clutches. I gasp at the cold as my body begins to float. My numb fingers scramble for purchase on the rigging as the mast is dragged downward with the rest of the vessel. The emergency beacon at my shoulder activates automatically — a strobe blasting my retinas in rhythmic bursts of light, white then red then white, a looping pattern of distress designed to be spotted from a distance.
Against the thrashing waves, I struggle to hold onto the top of the mast — the only part of Cupid that has not yet been swallowed up — while trying not to get tangled up in the mess of shredded sails and stays. Between each white-capped crest, I glimpse the far off shore of Great Misery.
So close… yet so very far.
I’m a strong swimmer. Under normal circumstances, I could probably make it. On a clear day, without raging winds or ripping tides, I’d close the football-field’s worth of distance between myself and solid ground with ease. I’d pass the hours sunning on the warm rocks, picking sea-glass fragments from the sand, watching glossy black cormorants dry their wings in the gentle breeze.
But it is not a normal day.
Directly overhead, lightning splits the sky. Less than an heartbeat later, booming thunder answers. I feel another few inches of the mast slip down into the depths, forever out of reach.
Now or never, Jo.
Even as I steel myself for the swim, even as I take a fortifying breath into my lungs and prepare to head for the island…
I know in my heart I’ll never make it.
Looking back, I was a fool to think I actually stood a chance.
As soon as I start for shore, I know I’m done for. My arms flail for purchase against the raging currents, my legs kick futilely at the undertow dragging me off course. There is no order to this tide, no pattern to this surge. The ocean is a churning washing machine, ebbing and flowing at random, tossing me to and fro like a lone sock caught in the industrial cycle.
My attempts at swimming falter as I’m knocked sideways under the force of a white-capped wave. All I can do is hold onto my life jacket, fingers digging into the shoulder pads, praying it’s enough to keep me afloat until help arrives.
If help arrives.
I try not to think about that as another set of waves slams into my chest like a one-two punch, strong enough to knock me backwards. My whole body goes under for a moment, head disappearing beneath the surface as I spiral upside down in the riptide. The world tapers down to nothing but dark water. Bleak, cold undercurrents cloud my vision, disorienting me until I have no idea which way is up. The emergency strobe is my only light source, a flickering reprieve from the blackness.
I kick for what I hope is the surface, knowing all the while that I might be swimming toward the bottom. Thankfully, the lifejacket does its job. My lungs are screaming for oxygen by the time it drags me back to the air. My head breaks clear and I gasp, swallowing a gulp of the Atlantic as soon as my mouth opens. I choke against the brine, coughing to clear my airway. I’m dizzy and nauseous, still reeling from my underwater somersaults. The last thing I need is seawater in my lungs.
In the tumult, I’ve lost all sense of direction. I cannot see even a sliver of land over the breaking crests anymore. Cupid is fully submerged, the glinting metallic tip of her mast lost to the ocean’s fury. That should make me panic, but it seems I have grown numb — from the cold of the water, but also from something far more dangerous.
Hopelessness.
It spreads through me, a dull ache that moves outward from the center of my chest, where my heart pounds twice its normal speed, down my tired limbs.
And they are tired, I realize. So very tired of swimming against currents they stand no chance of besting.
So, there, bobbing like a cork at the center of a cyclone…
I stop.
Stop swimming.
Stop fighting.
Stop living.
The emergency strobe pulses weakly, a small speck of light in a dark expanse of sea. Overhead, the sky shakes with thunder. I crane my neck back, letting the rain pound onto my face. The blood in my veins is clotted with bitter resignation. I feel the storm surge swirl in deathly tendrils around my legs as I stop kicking.
I close my eyes as it drags me under.
TEN
archer
Where the hell is she?
Rain pelts the windshield, too heavy for the pitiful wipers to keep up. I strain my eyes to see through the rivulets streaming down the glass. Even without the downpour making things difficult, my visibility is next to nothing out here. I’m guided forward by lightning flashes and gut instinct.
If only Tommy had invested in some radar for this rust-bucket…
God, he’s going to be so pissed off if I sink. Not because he particularly cares whether I live or die. But if his precious Ebenezer ends up at the bottom of the Atlantic, he’ll never get over it.
The swells are intensifying — the lobster boat rises and falls like a see-saw as it chugs southward, the bow lifting toward the sky, then crashing down again with a drenching spray of salt and foam. It’s getting harder to steer; this vessel was designed to putter around the shallows pulling traps, not power through eight foot swells in the middle of a gale. If I don’t turn back soon, the engine will be thoroughly swamped.
Just a little longer, I tell myself, gripping the wheel tighter as another wave rocks us sideways, toward the rocky shoals off the coast of Little Misery Island. She’s out here somewhere…