“I guess I just want to know if I’m on the right path. I always thought this research project was my calling in life, but now I’m not so sure. Lately, I’ve started to wonder if I enrolled in this program just to escape my life at home with my mother. And my project seems . . . I don’t know . . . it seems sort of childish to me now.”
He inclined his head. “Pardon me. I’m just trying to understand. Do you think physics is childish?”
“No, of course not. Not as a whole. It’s just my project that seems silly. I think it’s too personal.”
“How is it personal?”
“I’m sorry, I feel ridiculous talking about this. But I suppose I have to if you’re going to help me figure out my life and tell me what I should be doing.”
With a friendly, open smile, he said, “I’m not here to tell you how to live your life, Melanie. Only to help you reflect on where you are and why. And hopefully, that will help you to make good decisions moving forward.”
“Okay,” I said hesitantly. Then I glanced at the grandfather clock by the door. “I feel like I’ve been here awhile. Is our time almost up?”
He checked his wristwatch. “We still have a few minutes.”
“All right . . . well then . . . sometimes I wonder if I’m just providing fodder for those awful supermarket tabloids that tell us about celebrities that were kidnapped by aliens or a pig from Arkansas that grew human feet. I worry that my work is silly.”
“I don’t think it’s silly at all,” he replied. “And if the head of the physics department at Columbia approved the topic . . . if he believes there could be a solid scientific explanation . . .”
“I suppose.” I sat there, looking down at my hands. “But sometimes I wonder if I should just give it up and use my research for something else—like predicting severe weather systems.”
“Like tornadoes that rip through trailer parks?” he asked.
My eyes lifted. He was very astute. “Maybe.”
Dr. Robinson considered that for a moment, then checked his watch again. “It looks like we’re out of time for today. But this is a very good place to pick up again next week. You’ll come back? I’d like to hear more about why you feel the subject of airplanes vanishing into thin air is too personal for you. Would you be willing to talk about that?”
“Sure,” I replied and felt a little kick from my old passion for the project. It came as a surprise because I had been so bored with it lately.
Besides that, I had enjoyed talking to Dr. Robinson, and I wanted to see him again. There were so many other things I could talk about on this sofa. But mostly, I wanted to know if my work was important or just a silly childhood fantasy.
CHAPTER 4
OLIVIA
Miami, 1990
By nightfall, the search for Dean and his missing aircraft was still ongoing. My sister, Sarah, and her husband, Leon, had arrived at noon to keep me and my mother company while we waited for news, but there were no calls from Richard or the Coast Guard. That’s not to say the phone hadn’t been ringing off the hook, but it was friends or family calling to check up on me or reporters asking questions: Whether I believed Mike Mitchell’s alarming theories about the Bermuda Triangle, or if Dean had ever spoken to me about strange occurrences in the past. Unidentified flying objects? Sensations of zero gravity? Unexplained equipment malfunctions? Eventually, I just handed the phone to Leon, who asked them to respect my privacy during this difficult time and stop calling.
“Thank you for coming over,” I said to Sarah as I walked her and Leon to the door after supper.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay tonight?” Sarah asked as she hugged me. “We could stay longer if you want.”
“I appreciate that, but I’ll be fine. Mom’s here.”
Leon hugged me as well. “Stay strong. Let us know if you need anything.”
“And we’ll be back tomorrow,” Sarah added as they made their way to the elevator.
I shut the door behind them and returned to the sofa to join my mother in front of the TV.
“I don’t understand it,” she said. “It’s the top news story all over the country.”
“Do you think it’s because of who we are?” I asked. My late father had been no stranger to front-page headlines about his business activities. He’d even graced the cover of Forbes magazine once, in the late seventies. It hadn’t taken long for the media to dig into Dean’s personal life and make the connection.
“Maybe,” she replied. “But mostly, I think it’s because of what Mike Mitchell said on national TV this morning. It lit the whole thing on fire.”
We had been watching CNN for hours. They had a reporter on the ground in San Juan covering the search from there, but now they were interviewing so-called experts about other unexplained paranormal phenomena over the Bermuda Triangle.
I sat forward on the sofa cushion and picked up the remote control to increase the volume. “What’s this guy saying?”
He was a guest in the studio, a yachtsman who sailed regularly around the Bahamas.
“It was the most bizarre thing I ever experienced,” he said. “I was off the coast of Nassau with a crew of five, and it was a breezy day—the water was pretty choppy. We see a fogbank ahead, but it wasn’t like a normal fog . . . it was thick like milk, and it seemed to be traveling toward us because we weren’t going that fast. Then wham—we’re inside it, like we passed through a wall, and I couldn’t even see the water over the side. It was the same milk down there. I hear my first mate shouting from the bridge, so I run to see what the trouble is, and our compass is going crazy, spinning around and around. All the power goes out. The radio isn’t working. We were in a bit of a panic until all of a sudden we emerge out of the fog and into the sunshine! But we weren’t really out of it because it was like being in the hole of a donut. We were surrounded by that milk, in a perfect circle all around us. And there was no wind. It was a flat calm in there, and deadly quiet. It was kind of eerie, if I’m being honest. No one said a word. We were all stunned. We floated around for about a minute, then the milky wall came at us again, and just like that, we’re back in choppy waters with high winds.”
“Incredible,” the anchorman replied. “Did your instruments start working again?”
“Yes, as soon as we were out of it, the power came back on. But later that day, we learned about a freighter that disappeared in the exact same area, not long after we’d had our strange experience. They lost radio contact and never found any wreckage or evidence of it sinking. There were no distress signals, so that remains a mystery to this day.”
With a rush of panic, I grabbed hold of the remote control and switched off the television. “I can’t take this anymore.” I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed the heels of my hands to my forehead. “I don’t want to hear about ships disappearing. I just want them to find my husband.”
Mom slid close and laid a hand on my shoulder. “They’re still searching,” she said. “And maybe all this media attention is a good thing. The more people who know about it, the more eyes will be on the water, keeping watch.”