The Ocean Between Us
Susan Wiggs
In The Ocean Between Us Susan Wiggs deftly portrays the struggles and triumphs of an American family facing life's greatest challenges as they come to understand the timeless lessons of the heart.On the surface Grace Bennett has it all – three wonderful children, a devoted husband and a life of adventure and travel. But somewhere between her husband Steve's demanding career, raising a family, the constant uprooting and the Navy's routine, Grace has lost her sense of self. And when a nearly forgotten secret resurfaces, her discontent comes into sharp focus.Something needs to change.She needs to change.Then duty calls.Now, separated by an ocean of regrets and longing, Grace and Steve are forced to take a hard look at their faltering marriage.But when the unthinkable happens, Grace is left to face a Navy wife's worst nightmare – the cold truth that life's biggest chances can slip away while you're looking for guarantees.
Praise for the novels of
SUSAN WIGGS
“A human and multilayered story exploring duty to both country and family.”
—Nora Roberts on The Ocean Between Us
“Susan Wiggs tackles contemporary issues in the crucible of family with gutsy poignancy and adroit touches of whimsy that make for an irresistible read.”
—BookPage on Home Before Dark
“The story’s theme—the all-encompassing power of love—is timeless, and it is this theme, along with the author’s polished prose and well-rounded characters, that makes Wiggs’s story so satisfying.”
—Publishers Weekly starred review on A Summer Affair
“A thrilling blend of adventure and romance…Wiggs provides a delicious story for us to savor.”
—Oakland Press on The Mistress
“Wiggs tackles some very difficult family issues in this tightly woven tale. Cleverly uncovering secrets at the perfect pace, she draws you into the tale with each passing page, allowing her characters’ emotions and motivations to flow out of the book and into your heart.”
—Romantic Times on Home Before Dark
“Engaging characters, nail-biting suspense, and a heartwarming secondary plot of a forbidden teenage love combine to make a delectable tale of Victorian America.”
—Booklist starred review on A Summer Affair
“It’s an inspiring story that will touch your heart.”
—Oakland Press on The Horsemaster’s Daughter
“A bold, humorous and poignant romance that fulfills every woman’s dreams.”
—New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd on The Mistress
“With its lively prose, well-developed conflict and passionate characters, this enjoyable, poignant tale is certain to enchant.”
—Publishers Weekly starred review on Halfway to Heaven
“…captivating sense of place, one that creates an atmospheric energy from start to finish.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Lightkeeper
“A woman’s valiant struggle for life and love, by turns romantic and gritty, always compelling.”
—New York Times bestselling author Josie Litton on Enchanted Afternoon
“Home Before Dark is a beautiful novel, tender and wise. Susan Wiggs writes with bright assurance, humor and compassion about sisters, children and the sweet and heartbreaking trials of life—about how much better it is to go through them together.”
—New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice
“People you’ll care about living real lives in one of the world’s most romantic cities. What more could a romance lover ask for?”
—Salem Statesman-Journal on A Summer Affair
“Wiggs’ strongest and most vivid writing, a novel that bites into such loaded issues as adoption, estranged sisters, difficult teens…family secrets…”
—Seattle Times on Home Before Dark
“Wiggs’s synergistic blending of historical authenticity, complex multifaceted characters, and riveting plot makes for an exquisite romance.”
—Booklist on The Firebrand
“The action-adventure edition of the romance novel.”
—Detroit Free Press on The Mistress
“Wiggs has a knack for creating engaging characters, and her energetic prose shines through the pages.”
—Publishers Weekly on Enchanted Afternoon
“Wiggs combines the complications of love and politics in an entertaining American historical.”
—Booklist on Halfway to Heaven
“With this final installment of Wiggs’s Chicago Fire trilogy, she has created a quiet page-turner that will hold readers spellbound.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Firebrand
“The Charm School draws readers in with delightful characters, engaging dialogue, humor, emotion and sizzling sensuality.”
—Costa Mesa Sunday Times
“A smart, unorthodox coupling to which Wiggs adds humor, brains and a certain cultivation that will leave readers anticipating her next romance.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Drifter
“An irresistible blend of The Ugly Duckling and My Fair Lady. Jump right in and enjoy yourself—I did.”
—New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter
“Wiggs’ writing shimmers…. Her flair for crafting intelligent characters and the sheer joy of the verbal sparring between them makes for a delightful story you’ll want to devour at once.”
—BookPage on Halfway to Heaven
“A classic beauty-and-the-beast love story that will stay in your heart long after you’ve turned the last page. A poignant, beautiful romance.”
—New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah on The Lightkeeper
“In poetic prose, Wiggs evocatively captures the Old South and creates an intense, believable relationship between the lovers.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Horsemaster’s Daughter
Also by SUSAN WIGGS
SUMMER BY THE SEA
A SUMMER AFFAIR
HOME BEFORE DARK
ENCHANTED AFTERNOON
PASSING THROUGH PARADISE
HALFWAY TO HEAVEN
THE YOU I NEVER KNEW
The Chicago Fire Trilogy
THE FIREBRAND
THE MISTRESS
THE HOSTAGE
THE HORSEMASTER’S DAUGHTER
THE CHARM SCHOOL
THE DRIFTER
THE LIGHTKEEPER
And watch for
TABLE FOR FIVE
The Ocean Between Us
Susan Wiggs
To my friend Geri Krotow and her family,
with love and deepest respect.
CONTENTS
PART 1:Mishap
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
PART 2:Point of Embarkation
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
PART 3:Communications Blackout
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
PART 4:Duty Status—Whereabouts Unknown
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
PART 5:Active Homing
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
PART 1
Mishap
Mishap: Unplanned or unexpected event causing personal injury, occupational illness, death, material loss or damage, or an explosion of any kind whether damage occurs or not.
(NAVAL AVIATION SAFETY PROGRAM)
CHAPTER 1
USS Dominion (CVN-84)
0037N 17820W
Speed 33
2215 hours (Time Zone YANKEE)
Steve Bennett glanced at the clock on his computer screen. He ought to be in his rack and sleeping soundly. Instead, he sat with his feet propped on the edge of the workstation, hands clasped behind his head while he stared at a scenic Washington State calendar and thought about Grace.
He was ten thousand miles from home, on an aircraft carrier in the middle of an unofficial communications blackout instigated by Grace herself. His wife. The mother of his children. The woman who had not spoken to him willingly since he’d been deployed.
She had maintained radio silence like a wartime spy. He received official communiqués about the children, and sometimes the occasional report that made him regret giving her power of attorney. But never more than that.
The cruise was nearly over, and for the first time in his career Steve felt apprehensive about going home. He had no idea whether or not they could put their marriage back together again.
“Captain Bennett?” An administrative officer stood in the doorway with a clipboard in one hand and a PDA in the other.
“What is it, Lieutenant Killigrew?”
“Ms. Francine Atwater is here to see you, sir.”
Bennett hid a frown. He’d nearly forgotten their appointment. In the belly of a carrier there was no day or night, just an unrelenting fluorescent sameness, stale recycled air and the constant thunder of flight ops rattling through the steel bones of the ship.
“Send her in.” He unfolded his long frame and stood, assuming the stiff and wary posture schooled into him by twenty-six years in the Navy. Killigrew left for a moment, then returned with the reporter. Steve would have preferred to use the public affairs office on the 01 deck, but apparently Ms. Atwater was adamant about exploring every facet of carrier life. It was, after all, the era of the embedded reporter.
Francine Atwater. Francine. A member of the “new media,” eager to take advantage of the military’s newly relaxed information policy. According to his briefing notes, she had arrived COD—carrier onboard delivery—and intended to spend the next two weeks in this floating city with its own airport. Both the skipper of the Dominion and Captain Mason Crowther, Commander of the Air Group, had welcomed her personally, but they’d quickly handed her off to others, and now it was Steve’s turn.
“Ms. Atwater, I’m Captain Steve Bennett, Deputy Commander of the Air Group.” He tried not to stare, but she was the first civilian woman he’d seen in months. In a skirt, no less. He silently paid tribute to the genius who had invented nylon stockings and cherry-colored lipstick.
“Thank you, Captain Bennett.” Her glossy lips parted in a smile. She was a charmer, all right, the way she tilted her head to one side and looked up at him through long eyelashes. Still, he detected shadows of fatigue under her carefully made-up eyes. Newcomers to the carrier usually suffered seasickness and insomnia from all the noise.
“Welcome aboard, ma’am.”
“I see you’ve been briefed about me,” she said, indicating his notes from the PAO.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What a surprise. Everyone on this ship has. I swear, the U.S. Navy knows more about me than my own mother. My blood type, shoe size, visual acuity, sophomore-year biology grade—”
“Standard procedure, ma’am.” Even in lipstick and nylon stockings, the media held no appeal to the military. Still, he respected the way she stood her ground, especially while wearing three-inch heels. Civilians were advised on practical shipboard attire, but apparently no one had wanted Francine to change her shoes.
A tremendous whoosh, followed by a loud thump, rocked the ship. She staggered a little, and he put out a hand to steady her.
“Tell me I’ll get used to that,” she said.
“You’d better. We’re launching and recovering planes around the clock, day and night. It’s not going to stop.” He slid open a desk drawer and took out a sealed plastic package. “Take these. I always keep plenty on hand.”
“Earplugs?” She slipped the package into her briefcase. “Thanks.”
He motioned her to a chair and she sat down, setting aside her bag. She took out a palm-size digital recorder, then swept the small space with a glance that shifted like a radar, homing in on the few personal items in evidence. “You have a beautiful family.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I think so.”
“How old are your children?”
“Brian and Emma are twins. They’re seniors this year. Katie’s in ninth grade. And that’s Grace, my wife.” A world of pain and hope underlay his words, but he prayed the reporter wouldn’t notice. Every day he looked at that picture and tried to figure out what would fix this. He’d never deceived his wife before, so he didn’t know how to undo the damage he’d caused. An ordinary husband would go home, take her out to dinner and say, “Look, honey. The truth is…” But Bennett couldn’t do that from the middle of the ocean.
And sometimes he wondered if he even wanted to, damn it. He’d done his best to keep her from being hurt, but she didn’t seem to appreciate that.
In the photo, taken at Mustang Island when they were stationed in Corpus Christi, the four of them were laughing into the camera, sunburned faces glowing.
“This is a great shot,” said Ms. Atwater. “They look like the kind of people nothing bad ever happens to.”
Interesting observation. He would have agreed with her, right up until this deployment. Grace and the kids were part of the all-American family, the kind you saw on minivan commercials or at summer baseball games.
“What’s it like, being away from them for months on end?”
What the hell did she think it was like? A damned fraternity party?
“It’s rough. I’m sure you’ll hear that from a lot of the sailors on board. It’s hard seeing your baby’s first steps on videotape or getting a picture of a winning soccer goal by e-mail.” Steve wished he had prepared himself better for her nosiness. He should have barricaded his private self. He was supposed to be good at that. According to Grace, he was the champ.
Atwater studied another photograph, this one in a slightly warped frame nearly twenty years old. “But the homecomings are sweet,” she murmured, gazing down at the fading image.
He couldn’t recall who had taken that shot, but he remembered the moment with painful clarity. It was the end of his first cruise after they’d married. The gray steel hull of an aircraft carrier reared in the background. Sailors, officers and civilians all crushed together, hugging with the desperate joy only military families understood. At the center, he and Grace held each other in an embrace he could still feel all these years later. He clasped her so close that her feet came off the ground, one of her dainty high heels dangling off a slender foot. He could still remember what she smelled like.
Since that photo was taken there had been dozens of other partings and reunions. He could picture each homecoming in succession—Grace pregnant with the twins, no high heels that time, just sneakers that wouldn’t lace up around her swollen feet. Then Grace pushing a double stroller that wouldn’t fit through doorways. By then, her perfume was more likely to be a blend of baby wipes and cough drops. In later years, the kids kept her busy as she shuffled them between music lessons, sports practices, Brownies and Boy Scouts. But she always came to meet him. She never left him standing like some loser whose wife had given him the shaft while he was at sea, who would sling his seabag over his shoulder and pretend it didn’t matter, whistling under his breath as he headed straight for the nearest bar.
Yesterday had been Grace’s fortieth birthday. He’d phoned and gotten the machine. Lately she was so prickly about her age, anyway. She probably wouldn’t thank him for the reminder.
Atwater asked about his background, his career path in the Navy, his role on the carrier. She listened well, occasionally making notes on a small yellow pad as well as recording him. At one point he glanced at his watch and was surprised to see how much time had passed. She’d talked to him about his family for nearly an hour. He wondered if he’d told her too much. Did the American people really need to know his life was coming undone like a slipknot?
He cleared his throat. “Says on my agenda that I’m your tour guide for nighttime flight ops.” He was surprised that she’d gained authorization to be on the flight deck at night, but apparently her project was important to Higher Authority.
“I’ve been looking forward to this, sir.” She came alive in that special way of people who were in love with flying, the more high-tech and dangerous, the better. And there was no form of flying more dangerous than carrier operations.
He was dog tired, but he put on a smile because, in spite of everything, he shared her enthusiasm.
“I thought about going into the service and learning to fly,” she said, her eyes shining. “Couldn’t make the commitment, though.”
“Lots of people can’t.” He said it without condemnation or pride. It was a plain fact. The U.S. Navy demanded half of your life. It was as simple as that. He’d been in the Navy since his eighteenth birthday. And of his twenty-six years of service, he’d been at sea for half of them. That kind of commitment had its rewards, but it also carried a price. He was finally figuring that out.
As he went to the door, the Inbox on his computer screen blinked, but he didn’t check to see what had come in. If it was personal, he didn’t want a reporter reading over his shoulder.
He led her single file down a narrow passageway tiled in blue, narrating their journey and cautioning her to avoid slamming her shins on the “knee knockers,” structural members at the bottom of each hatch. Lining the P-way were dozens of red cabinets containing fire-control gear and protective clothing. The least little spark could take out half the ship if it happened to ignite in the wrong place.
Steve spoke over his shoulder, but he wasn’t sure how much she was taking in. The constant din of flight ops intruded—roaring engines, the hiss and grind of the power plant and arresting gear, the whistle and screech of aircraft slamming on deck—drowning out normal conversation. In the enlisted men’s mess, they created a small stir. Sailors enjoying MIDRATS—rations for personnel on night duty—stopped what they were doing the minute they saw Francine Atwater. Their jaws dropped as though unhinged. Even the female sailors stared, not with the raw yearning of the males but with wistfulness, and perhaps a flicker of disdain. In the service of their country, they had learned to do without makeup, without hair spray, without vanity.
As they climbed an open steel ladder, Atwater took it in stride, but she was probably wishing she’d worn pants and thick-soled boots. They crossed the hangar bay, where aircraft waited with wings folded like origami cranes.
In the passageway under flight-deck control, the roar of aircraft pounding the steel deck was louder still. “We need to gear up,” Steve said, handing her a flight suit and boots.
“I’ve been briefed on safety procedures.” She sat down and slipped off her civilian shoes, flashing a slim foot encased in a nylon stocking. “Hours and hours of briefing.”
“The Navy loves to brief people,” he admitted, hearing echoes of the endless droning of Navy gouge he’d endured over the years, litanies of instruction and advisories. “In this case, I hope you listened,” he added. Then, assuming she hadn’t, he reiterated the list of hazards on the flight deck. A sailor could be sucked into an engine intake. Exhaust from a jet engine had the power to blast a person across the deck, or even overboard. He’d seen large men bouncing like basketballs all the way to the deck edge. Or an arresting wire might snap as a tail hook grabbed it, whipping with enough force to sever a person’s legs. Taxiing planes, scurrying yellow tractors, breaking launch bars—all were hazards waiting to happen.
His hand wandered to his throat in a habitual gesture, seeking his St. Christopher medal. Then he remembered that he’d lost it, the good-luck charm he’d had since his first deployment. He never went to sea without it. Ah, hell. At least he wasn’t flying.
He distracted himself by perusing the bulletin board of one of the squadrons. The postings included items for sale or trade, a movie schedule and an invitation to the upcoming Steel Beach picnic, during which a dozen or so garage bands would perform. Personnel on board were desperate to create a normal existence in a highly abnormal situation.
It didn’t always work, Steve thought.
After she finished gearing up for flight ops, Francine Atwater looked totally different. Steel-toed boots, a shiny gray-green jumpsuit and a white visitor’s jersey hid all of her charms except those big brown eyes.
Feeling a bit like an airline flight attendant, he showed her how to operate her float coat. The vest was equipped with a beacon light, a packet of chemical dye to mark the water if she found herself in the drink, a flare, a whistle. “This is your MOBI,” he said. It was a transmitter the size of a cell phone, with a whip antenna connected to a small box.
“Let me guess. Man Overboard…Indicator.”
“You did your homework.”
“I told you, I was briefed. But you’re forgetting something,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t intend to go for a midnight swim.”
“Then we’re on the same page.” He slipped the device into the dye pouch of her float coat and closed the Velcro fastening. “But just in case, the transmitter has its own unique identification. That way, the bridge will know identity and location immediately.”
“So this one has my name on it?”
“Just the number of the float coat. You want me to show you how to fasten everything?”
“I’ve got it,” she said.
He showed her a status board outlining the night’s exercises. The list indicated who was taking off, who was landing, who the crew members were, the purpose of their particular operation.
“Two of the names are in red,” Atwater pointed out. “Is that significant?”
“They’re nugget pilots. New guys. This is their first cruise.”
“Lieutenant junior grade Joshua Lamont,” she read from the chart. “Call sign Lamb.”
Steve didn’t move a muscle, even though the sound of Lamont’s name was a punch in the gut. He wondered if he would ever get used to having Lamont under his command. A C-2 Greyhound transport plane had flown the young pilot aboard as a replacement pilot. Lamont was a member of the Sparhawks, the carrier’s squadron of EA-6B Prowlers. The reporter probably thought his call sign was sweet, but Steve knew it came from an incident during training in Nevada—Little Angry Man Boy.
“He’s flying Prowler six-two-three,” she observed. “My cameramen videotaped the aircrew while they were preparing that plane for tonight’s flight.”
“You’re making a video?” The public affairs office hadn’t bothered to tell him exactly what was up.
“You bet.”
He shouldn’t be surprised. A magazine was no longer just a magazine. These days every publication needed a multimedia presence on the Web, with all the attendant bells and whistles. Higher Authority had given their blessing to the article. These were patriotic times and frankly—unexpectedly—the media had been good to the military in recent times. Strange bedfellows, but sometimes you never knew.
“Lamont’s been in the air one hour and forty-eight minutes now,” he said. “Looks like they’ll be landing soon.”
“What about the other name in red—Sean Corn?”
“Lieutenant Corn is due to land directly behind the Prowler. He’s driving one of the Tomcats.”
“And they’re new to night carrier landings?”
“Yes, ma’am, but they’ve had extensive training.” Steve quickly switched to the public-affairs spiel. “A carrier landing is basically a crash landing on an area about four hundred feet long. The margin of error on approach is less than eighteen inches,” he told her. “The tail hook has to grab an arresting wire, or you have a bolter and the pilot has to come around for another pass. Success depends on every member of the team doing his job right, doing it on time and following orders. So the question isn’t why so many accidents happen but why so few.”
“But accidents do happen.”
He wondered if she had a secret wish to witness one. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you fly often, Captain Bennett?”
“Enough to stay qualified.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Flying used to be my life, but after almost a thousand carrier traps, I can live without it.” He tried not to smile at her thunderstruck expression. “Look, ma’am, if you’re looking for drama, you’re talking to the wrong guy.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t make good copy. Not anymore. I used to be a cowboy, turning everything into a competition. I used to look another pilot in the eye, call him my best friend and then wax his ass in training.”
“But you don’t do that anymore?”
He hesitated. “I’ll introduce you to some guys who do.”
They put on headsets, goggles and cranials with ear protectors marked across the top with reflective tape. Then Steve stood aside, motioning her ahead.
They climbed several more steel ladders. Steve opened another hatch and they passed a sign: Beware Jet Blast-Props-Rotor Blades. They crossed the platform, mounted a few more steps and finally reached the four-and-a-half-acre flight deck.
A strong, cold wind slapped at them, carrying with it the reek of jet fuel and hydraulic fluid. Cinders flung up from the nonskid surface of the deck needled their faces. Behind the protective goggles, Francine’s eyes reflected amazement. This was a strange new world, with the deck humming underfoot, busy personnel in color-coded jerseys and cranials communicating by gesture, planes and tractors scurrying to and fro. Despite the late hour, bright lights and thundering sound burst across the deck in a chaotic but precisely choreographed ballet of landing aircraft. The deafening noise made speech superfluous, so he gave her an expansive gesture: Welcome to the bird farm. She staggered a little as a blast of wind hit her, but then responded with a thumbs-up.
They crossed the roof to the island tower and climbed a series of ladders, passing various control centers. In Flight Deck Control, a chief petty officer kept track of the different aircraft and their positions on the “Ouija board,” little game-piece planes on a scale map of the deck. After asking permission to enter the bridge, he led her up another level to the top of the island, where the Air Boss presided over a domain of darkened cubicles encased in shatterproof safety glass. In Primary Flight Control, touch-sensitive glass, glowing control panels and monitors reflected off the intent faces of busy crew members. Another screen showed the positions of the entire battle group and other vessels in the area. Steve pointed out destroyers, cruisers, a supply ship, the oiler.
“And what’s that?” she asked, pointing to the screen.
“Probably a Japanese fishing boat,” Steve said.
In the tinted glass aerie, Commander Shep Hardin, the Air Boss on duty, barked commands at the flight deck. He paused briefly to greet them. “Aren’t you lucky,” he said to Atwater. “A guided tour by the gray wolf himself.”
“Thanks a lot, pal,” Steve said, then turned to the reporter. “Hardin’s no fun, anyway. Want to watch from Vultures Row?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
As they headed for the observation balcony overlooking the flight deck, she asked, “Why did he call you the gray wolf?”
He was sort of wishing she hadn’t heard that. “A carrier crew is made up of young men and women, most of them under twenty-five. At forty-four, I’m old.” He didn’t want to go into all the politics and posturing of his climb to the upper ranks. He pointed to a row of three aircraft chained to the deck. “Those are Prowlers, parked down there. They’re used for electronic reconnaissance and jamming.”
Francine cupped her hands around her eyes, pressed her face to the glass and studied the lighted deck. “The planes look sort of…lived in.”
She was right. These deck-weary aircraft hardly resembled the gleaming birds in Navy publicity photos. They looked as though they’d been patched together with duct tape, baling wire and Bondo.
“Ma’am, flight ops are the whole reason a carrier exists, so keeping the planes operational is crucial. Air crews work 24/7 to keep them ready to go,” he assured her, but he hoped she didn’t notice the drip of hydraulic fluid spattering the black steel deck. “The Prowler squadron has only four aircraft, so they get used a lot. It’s late in the cruise, and the concern isn’t making them look pretty. It’s making them work right.”
“And Lamont, the…nugget, is flying the other one.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Using her deck-ops manual for a flat surface, she made a note on her yellow pad.
“You ready to see some landings?” he asked.
“In a sec.” She scribbled furiously.
Then he instructed her to lower her goggles, slid open the door and they stepped outside. High off the bow, two shooting stars streaked briefly, drawing twin parallel lines down the black sky before disappearing. Steve tried to alert the reporter, but it was over so quickly that she missed it. No big deal. Shooting stars weren’t the main attraction tonight. Planes rained from the sky, one after another, slamming down on deck with screams of rubber and metal. Tail hooks searching for an arresting wire threw up rooster tails of sparks.
He handed the reporter a pair of binoculars and pointed out Landing Signal Officer Whitey Love, who stood with the other LSOs on the port side atop a wind-harried platform. From his vantage point under the edge of the flight deck, near the first set of arresting wires, the LSO studied the night sky through a pair of infrared lenses. Over the headset, he talked to his pilots. It was his job to coax each fifty-thousand-pound aircraft, hurtling at a hundred thirty miles per hour, to a three-hundred-foot landing strip.
A luminous amber signal on the port-deck edge aligned with a row of green lights, signaling that the incoming pilot was on the proper glide path for a safe landing. The dainty-looking tail hook had a shot at just five wires. Each cable could be used for a set number of traps before it was retired, compromised by the strain of stopping the speeding jets. If something went wrong, it could mean the loss of a sixty-million-dollar aircraft off the deck, and perhaps the lives of the pilot and crew.
Steve noticed a whiteshirt and three other VIPs loaded with equipment. Atwater saw his look and motioned him inside.
“My photographer and videographer and their assistant,” she explained.
He hoped the camera guys had been briefed on safety, too. The videographer appeared clueless as he filmed a turning jet that was on its way to the elevator. He clearly had no idea that the blast might toss him twenty feet in the air. Just in time, the host yanked him out of harm’s way and the group headed to the island.
They met up at deck level, where the floor hummed and a water cooler by the base of the elevator vibrated dangerously. As Francine made the introductions, an ordie in a soiled red shirt stepped inside, slapping a smoking glove against his thigh.
Steve recognized Aviation Ordnanceman Airman Michael Rivera behind the smudged goggles. The sailor quickly came to attention. The photographers immediately aimed their cameras at him.
“Everything all right?” Steve asked.
“Yes, sir. Slight problem with the flares, is all,” Rivera said, removing his goggles and scuffed red cranial. “It’s okay now.”
“Go down to the battle-dressing station and get that hand looked at.”
“No need, sir. Just wanted to get out of the wind for a minute.”
Rivera was Steve’s favorite kind of sailor—professional, dedicated, sure of himself. Not likely to let a smart-ass hotshot fighter pilot intimidate him on the flight deck. Besides that, Rivera’s winning smile and genuine warmth made him a regular recruiting poster boy. His face was covered in grime from a long shift on the flight deck, but that only made his teeth look whiter.
Atwater loved him instantly. Steve could tell from the soft-eyed expression on her face. Hell, he might as well indulge her. He made the introductions, and Rivera warmed right up, probably grateful for a break from the chaos of the open deck.
“And what do you do?” Atwater asked him, pen poised over her notebook.
“I deal with ordnance, ma’am. The bomb farm’s the area between the island and the rail where bombs and missiles are stored during flight operations. From there they’re brought to the aircraft.”
“And there was trouble with a flare?”
Rivera nodded. “Flares are used with F-14 Tomcats as a decoy for heat-seeking missiles. Each flare contains eighty internal units, and each of those burn at sixteen hundred degrees, so we’re real careful with them.” He grinned, and an irrepressible happiness shone from him. “I have even more reason to be careful these days. Had an e-mail from my wife this morning. The doctor found out the baby’s sex. We’re having a boy.” He looked ready to burst with pride. “Our first.”
“Will you be home for the birth?” Ms. Atwater asked.
“No, ma’am. But she’s got a lot of support at home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Washington State. Captain Bennett’s wife has been a real good friend to Patricia,” he added with a grateful look at Steve.
Don’t look at me, Steve thought. He had no idea what Grace was up to, but it didn’t surprise him to hear she was helping out a young airman’s wife. Discomfited, he looked through a viewing pane while the PAO who had been escorting the photographers joined in the conversation with Rivera.
Outside, Steve noticed…something. He’d spent too many hours on a carrier deck to not clue in when something was going on. A subtle change came over the crew charged with recovering the next aircraft. It was like a slight shift in the wind or an invisible spurt of adrenaline, something the reporter or even most of the flight-deck ops would never notice.
Steve excused himself. The CAG LSO, Bud Forster, who didn’t usually participate in a recovery unless things got ugly, was speaking quickly into his headset. “Prowler six-two-three…” he said, and his face was made of stone. Steve knew that look.
And he knew whose plane Forster was talking about. Lamont was driving the Prowler, and whatever was going on had not been in the plans for tonight’s exercises. Forster was handling it, though, and Steve wasn’t about to interrupt his work. He would have stuck around, but when he looked at the deck again, he noticed Francine Atwater and the others following Rivera to the bomb farm. The PAO was nowhere in sight.
None of the civilians would sense the mounting tension, he realized, hurrying down to the deck. But Steve felt it buzzing like an electrical current through his whole body. Shit. He’d have to go round them up like a herd of cats. Your ass is grass, Rivera, Steve thought. And I’m John Deere.
But then he reminded himself that he was the one who was supposed to be in charge of Francine Atwater, and he’d walked away. As he headed toward the ordnance, he thought he saw sparks and a stream of smoke from an aircraft flare dispenser on the deck behind Rivera and the civilians.
He blinked and rubbed his glove across his goggles, and saw it again. They were too far away to hear a shouted warning. But he shouted, anyway, at the same time signaling flight-deck control to sound a fire alarm. During flight ops there was always a fire truck and a team of firefighters standing by with nozzles leading to water tanks and aqueous film-forming foam.
Rivera, who was closest to the dispenser, spun around. He cast about, looking for the source of the fire, and for a second Steve thought he might miss the smoke. Then Rivera grabbed the burning cylinder and headed for the edge of the flight deck. There was a crack like a rifle shot. Sparks and rockets ripped apart the night. Rivera rolled on the ground. His entire arm was a glowing torch.
Steve ran. When he reached the burning man, he plunged to his knees and ripped off his float coat. He used the vest to smother the flames on Rivera’s arm and back, screaming for a medic even though he knew he wouldn’t be heard. It didn’t matter. By now, everyone on the bow of the flight deck would have seen, and help would be on its way. He wanted to stay with Rivera, hold and reassure him, but the dispenser was still smoking. In the cylinder, the internal units were burning with an intensity Steve felt even from three feet away.
If it smokes, get rid of it. The most basic rule of fire control.
He grabbed the handle of the dispenser. His glove ignited and he roared in agony but refused to let go. The damned thing felt like it weighed a ton, yet somehow he managed to rush to the deck edge with it.
A blast of heat and light engulfed him. There was nothing under his feet, and he felt as though he’d been sucked into a tornado. Where the hell was the safety net? That was the only coherent thought he had as he was hurled through empty air. Yet curiously, he could distinguish only one sound through the rush of wind—a throaty and frantic baying sound from the navigation bridge.
It was the special alarm reserved for one of the most dreaded incidents of carrier operations—man overboard.
CHAPTER 2
Prowler 623/BuNo 163530
0015 hours
Landing in the pitch-dark on the moving deck of a carrier was a freaking nightmare. And Josh Lamont loved the fear with a feverish intensity that sometimes worried his flight crew. When he saw his name on the flight schedule, he felt that familiar sizzle of anticipation. Night exercises, multiple aircraft, every second a hairbreadth from death—heaven didn’t get any better than this.
The preflight brief and man-up had been as routine as brushing your teeth. The night was clear and a million; you could see forever. Outside the Prowler’s bubble canopy, he could see the stars and planets swirling past. Straight on and high, twin shooting stars slid down and disappeared.
Josh grinned inside his mask, knowing he’d seen something rare. The euphoria of flying allowed him to ignore the fact that he’d been strapped to an ejection seat for two hours and was about to come home to the bird farm for a night-arrested landing. He switched his radio frequency and picked up the off-key singing of Ron Hatch, one of the electronic countermeasures officers, who sat on his right and was belting out his third chorus of “Mary Ann Barnes.”
“She can shoot green peas from her fundamental orifice,” sang Hatch, “do a double somersault and catch ’em on her tits….”
Newman and Turnbull, the other two ECMOs seated behind them, sang along. They were older and more experienced than Josh. Newman, who sat behind Hatch, looked to be as old as Bennett himself, a veteran of the problematic cruise of the Kennedy in 1983.
As the junior officer of the crew, Josh added his voice to the noise. The song about the “Queen of All the Acrobats” was known to every Navy pilot, passed like a secret handshake through flight schools and training programs. Their voices were tinny strains through the headsets, crackling with good humor. Being on the carrier was like being trapped at Alcatraz—no escape, no place to hide. Going up on a mission to touch the stars was a two-hour recess.
Josh studied the view outside the Prowler’s bubble. The sky wasn’t black, but a rich and layered purple, misty with stars. He had dreamed about this all his life. Flying had been his driving passion since he was a boy. And not just any flying. Navy jets. He had done battle with his parents over his obsession and aimed himself like a missile at his goal. Growing up in urban upper-class Atlanta, he wasn’t supposed to be pilot material. His childhood had consisted of excruciatingly quiet dinners in a house you tiptoed through. He used to envy big families filled with kids and noise, a chaotic contrast to his own tense and lonely existence. Attending the Naval Academy had actually felt liberating compared to the stiff, invisible confines of his boyhood.
And now here he was, living the future he’d envisioned for himself. And yet, ironically, this cruise brought him face-to-face with the hidden past. With Steve Bennett, a man he never thought he’d meet.
And then there was Lauren, a woman he never thought he’d deserve. She was more than a passing fancy. She’d taken up residence inside him. She was part of the air he breathed, the dreams he dreamed. The one thing he loved more than flying.
He imagined her waking up, thinking of him, checking her e-mail to read the short, funny messages he sent from the ship. Just before the man-up, he’d checked his e-mail to find a hurried-sounding note from her: Please call right away. I need to talk to you. He didn’t have time to contact her before the mission. But as soon as he finished up here, he’d call. He couldn’t wait. He wanted to hear her voice saying the only thing he wanted to hear from her: Yes.
His thumb began to tremble and search the top of the control stick, manipulating the button to ensure that the jet would sail down the glide slope when the time came. Despite his intense concentration, he caught his mind wandering to Lauren again—the way she liked to be touched, the sound of her voice, the taste of her lips.
He should have pressed her for an answer before shipping out. But then he wondered, did he really want an answer from her? Flying Navy jets was a simple matter compared to loving a woman. All the same, he’d picked out a ring in Pattaya, Thailand.
As they neared their final approach, Hatch and company became all business.
“Don’t get fancy on us,” Hatch said. “Just do what you need to do. Better to be good than lucky.”
“Yeah,” said Josh. “But if you’re lucky, you don’t need to be good.”
“Be lucky on someone else’s watch.”
The ship was down there in the dark somewhere, too distant to see yet. He checked the horizon and the climb indicator to make sure he was level. Altitude eight thousand feet. Speed four-hundred-thirty knots. He made a series of other checks around the cockpit. He touched the Velcro fastening of a pocket on his G-suit—that was where he kept Lauren’s ring, for luck. Anything loose in the cockpit turned into a runaway missile during landing.
The approach controller gave him his new final bearing. The Prowler thundered down through three thousand feet. Josh’s gaze swept the instrument panel. According to the TACAN, the ship was steaming west-northwest at thirty knots. He came to idle, and the aircraft hung for a moment in an eerie, vaguely magical silence. Then he broke hard left to level the Prowler downwind of the ship. It was too dark to see the wake, but his instruments did the work, showing him lined up with the angled deck.
A couple of minutes passed. “Dirty up,” said the approach controller.
Josh pulled back on the throttle, lowered the handle, moved a lever down, hanging out his flaps, slats, gear and droops. Air screamed over the ailerons. Then he released the tail hook and scanned the panel again before calling in his landing checklist.
He was on full alert now, breathing hard, aware of everything with a strange clarity of sensation. He could feel the nylon webbing of the straps binding him to the ejection seat, the spongy pads of his earpieces, the jockstrap rim of the mask over his nose and mouth. He darted his gaze in a set pattern, his own way of checking the instrument readings.
“Prowler six-two-three, at five miles, lock on, call your needles.”
Josh compared his readings to the controller’s. His hands twitched over the stick and throttles. The tiny toy aircraft on the gyro listed to the right. He made a correction. “Boards out,” he said. “Landing check complete.” Adrenaline roared through him. He ought to be flying better. It was a bad time for doubts to poke at him, but he couldn’t help it.
He looked past the instrument panel. All he saw of the carrier was a misty yellow light. Not a damned thing more. He was three-quarters of a mile out and had to shift from scanning blessedly precise, crystal-clear instruments in the cockpit to focusing on the glowing meatball far below, the centerline of the deck and the angle of attack. It was like putting on the glasses of someone who was nearly blind.
“You’re okay. Easy as passing a camel through the eye of a needle. Make your ball call.”
“Six-two-three Prowler, roger ball, state five point five Lamont,” he said, telling the landing signal officer he’d seen the vertical light indicating the descent path, and that his aircraft had 5,500 pounds of fuel.
In order to land on the moving deck, he had to strictly control his glideslope, speed and centerline. The floating city of five thousand inhabitants, lit like a child’s Lite-Brite in the black sea, looked impossibly small. The fact that it was steaming away from him at thirty knots only made the ride more interesting.
Sweat tracked down between his shoulder blades, and he wondered if experienced pilots ever got used to this. Too high and he’d miss the wire and bolt off into the night again with barely enough fuel to make another pass. The slightest tip to one side risked a collision with a jet parked on the deck. A drift to the other side meant an unscheduled swim and the loss of a fifty-two-million-dollar aircraft. The LSO might wave him off two seconds before landing. If he came in too low, he’d hit the ramp and turn the plane and its crew into a fireball.
This is so cool, he thought.
His legs twitched and trembled uncontrollably on the rudder pedals. His lineup was good, or so he thought until the expressionless voice of the LSO came in through his headset. “You’re low, six-two-three. Power.”
Josh shoved his hand forward, overcompensating. The uncooperative nose of the aircraft reminded him that he was a rookie with fewer than fifty traps under his belt, not even a dozen at night.
“Take it easy,” said the soothing voice in his ear.
Then the emergency signal sounded. The LSO’s next order was not so soothing: “Red deck! Red deck! Power!” The vertical wave-off lights lit like a Christmas tree.
Josh rammed the throttles hard to the stops to firewall the engine. A red deck was closed to incoming aircraft, even those that were seconds from landing. He cut away and climbed back into the night. The plane shuddered like a live beast.
“Watch the PIO, nugget.”
Pilot-induced oscillation. “Got it. Not everybody wants to be a Blue Angel.” Josh concentrated on the climb, breaking the landing pattern. The plane shifted from side to side. “She’s yawing,” he said, flicking a glance at the instrument panel.
“The computer will correct it,” said Hatch.
“What the hell happened down there?”
“Fouled deck. Wait for instructions.”
A fouled deck could mean any number of things—an aircraft mishap, equipment left on deck, maybe personnel in the landing zone. For now, Josh could only worry about resuming the landing pattern and monitoring the fuel.
“Check your lineup.”
Even as he followed orders, Josh could see the lights of the “angel,” the carrier’s rescue helicopter, hovering like a benevolent guardian over the ship. Then the helo dipped and swept into a pattern he’d never seen before. Rescuing someone?
“Quit with the PIO, already,” Hatch repeated. Then, to the tower, he said, “Got a bit of a problem, Mother. How about you send a rescue helo out our way, just in case this nugget can’t get us down?”
“It’s not me,” Josh said. “Jesus, this plane is bent.” He wasn’t being defensive. The computer wasn’t making the proper corrections. The Prowler yawed hard to the right as though bent over a giant knee. Josh had never felt anything quite like it. The aircraft was in an uncommanded, uncontrolled, oscillating, full-rudder deflection.
He raised the gear handle and the plane pitched back to the left. That’s it, then, he thought as he took himself out of the landing pattern again and ordered the lead jet in the new pattern to get away.
“Vertical speed indicator just took a dip,” Hatch reported. Josh already knew this. The VSI was part of the ECMO’s instrument scan, but Josh was the pilot. It was all his business.
A negative dip. That was ejection criteria. The broadcast of “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” sounded surreal.
With the radio squawking Emergency, he tried three more cycles, one after another. “I can’t control the rudders,” he reported in a voice that was icily calm. They were still climbing, and every man in the cockpit understood why, though none would speak of it aloud. If they had to eject, they would need the altitude.
Fresh adrenaline burst through him. The drop in vertical speed was only part of the emergency. Any second the nose could pitch up or the aircraft could roll, and the decision would be taken away from him. They were a heartbeat away from an unscheduled carnival ride of ejection and parachute. They’d have a bird’s-eye view of a very expensive fireball.
Shit. The damned thing was still flying. He’d managed to climb to ten thousand feet. He wasn’t out of control. He had no control. He accelerated, hoping to get some more airspeed and altitude.
He could hear Hatch briefing the controller on the situation. Captain Bud Forster, the CAG LSO, came online again. In a few minutes, the whole battle group would know about the trouble.
The plane broke ten thousand feet, and the nose pitched up. Josh wrestled with it, but it kept bucking. He dampened the yaw by working the rudders opposite the cycles, but the aircraft kept canting on its own.
Nobody said what everyone was thinking: the jet couldn’t make a safe landing.
The ECMOs worked feverishly through checklists—rudder failure, control malfunctions, alternate approaches—hoping to find the magic bullet. “Nothing. There’s nothing applicable,” Newman concluded. “Wait here. We need to pull circuit breakers until we isolate the problem. Jeez, I do this in my basement when the dishwasher quits.”
When the first two were pulled, the yaw abated. “Keep going,” Josh ordered. The third one created no noticeable difference. When the fourth was pulled, the controls turned to mush. “Put it back!” Josh yelled. “Put it back!”
Too late. The nose pitched up wildly. I did this, thought Josh, fighting back with the controls. I’m the pilot, and I did this. The air-navigation computer was haywire. He tried feverishly to remember if he’d shut it off when he’d aborted the landing. Maybe the computer had engaged automatically and was overriding him. It didn’t matter now. The Prowler was completely out of control.
In the cockpit, they all knew it. Four pairs of gloved hands wrapped around four ejection handles. These were Advanced Concept Ejection Seats, 128 pounds apiece, each equipped with a twenty-one-pound rocket catapult. Success rate was better than ninety percent, but for some reason, Josh felt no reassurance.
He looked out at the ice-bright stars and wished he’d worn warmer clothes under his G-suit. At the same time, he was thinking and moving as fast as he could—faster than he’d ever imagined he could—but everything seemed to slow down. Time dilation. It was a concept he’d studied in advanced physics. Time in the moving system will be perceived by a stationary observer to be running slower….
He was a stationary observer; the Prowler was a moving system. The traveler measures his own proper time, since he is at the beginning and end of his trip interval.
In the shadowy cockpit, the glow from the instrument panel cast its eerie illumination over the faces of the crew as each man braced for disaster. They were all alone up here, yet they were not alone. Four lives, four families whose fate would be decided by a broken piece of metal hanging in midair.
Josh thought, Lauren. Only a minute ago he’d been confused about her. Now, with the same crystal clarity with which he could see the tumbling night sky, he knew exactly what he wanted. Lauren. The beginning and the end of his trip interval.
He took a deep, bracing breath. Then he gave the order he knew he had to give.
“Eject! Eject! Eject!”
CHAPTER 3
Whidbey Island, Washington
7:30 a.m.
Lauren Stanton woke up in the same state of mind she’d gone to sleep in—thinking of Josh. He had only been at sea for a few weeks, but it felt like forever.
She grabbed his pillow and hugged it, her eyes shut and her heart about to break. “Josh,” she whispered into the feathery depths. Maybe it was just her imagination, but she believed it still held his scent.
She of all people should know better than to fall for a Navy guy.
Groaning in protest, she swam to the surface of the covers and got out of bed. It was one of those perfect spring days on Puget Sound when winter seemed nothing more than a soggy, unpleasant memory. The sliding glass doors of the bedroom framed a view of the sapphire water and distant Cascades, the fiery pink of sunrise painting the vanilla ice-cream peak of Mount Baker.
She pulled on her robe, lingering at the window to watch a blue heron at the edges of the bank, lifting each foot and setting it down with great deliberation. In its beak it held a wisp of grass; it was nesting season.
She made the bed, which was a simple matter. She slept neatly, disturbing no more than a small portion of the covers. When Josh stayed over, the morning-after bed looked like a rummage sale at closing time—sheets ripped from their moorings, twisted and damp, pillows tossed willy-nilly. Josh made love and slept like he did everything else, with his whole self, with total abandon, his energy boundless and infectious.
Even through the ache of missing him, she couldn’t help feeling a warm spasm of remembered intimacy at the thought of their lovemaking. It was as though he had reached across the Pacific Ocean and caressed her.
“You’re a sick woman,” she muttered, heading into the bathroom. Josh’s toothbrush was still in the holder. He’d planted it there, as though staking a claim, the first time they made love in her bed. His absolute, unwavering self-assurance had both annoyed and thrilled her. “Just so you know,” he’d said. “I’ll be back.”
She dressed quickly for class—no shower for her until afterward—in black spandex shorts and a turquoise top. Then she checked her gym bag to make sure she had music, shoes, towel, water bottle. Everything in order. She had grown so cautious, so deliberate after Gil died. So excruciatingly neat and unobtrusive about everything she did, from sleeping without disturbing the covers to weighing the portion of organic granola she ate with yogurt every morning for breakfast. If Josh were here, he would tease her about it, threaten her with bacon and eggs, and she would start the day laughing at herself.
Ah, Josh. Whether he was in bed with her, on top of her, inside her or thousands of miles away, he dominated her life. He was the blazing sun to her moon. Even when she eclipsed him, moving in to cover his center, he was still so much bigger and brighter; he burned around the edges.
She put out fresh food for the stray cat who showed every sign of turning into a permanent resident. Then she did the breakfast dishes, such as they were—one bowl, one spoon, one juice glass—reflecting on how small her life seemed since Josh left. When he was here, breakfast tended to be an explosion of creativity and hilarity. He might carve through half a watermelon trying to make a model of a fighter plane, or use up a whole box of pancake mix, laughing at her misgivings about the calorie count.
As she wiped the kitchen counter, Lauren burst into tears.
This shouldn’t be happening to her. She’d finally gotten her life on track, her emotions under control after a three-year struggle with depression after Gil died. Now along came Josh, with his burning ambition, lofty dreams and his huge, insatiable appetite for everything in life—most especially her.
“Idiot,” she said, defiantly using two Kleenex to blot her cheeks. “Quit making everything into a tragedy.” She marched outside, filling her lungs with the special flavor of springtime on the island. A hint of raw salt air, new grass and the light, fragrant promise of budding lilacs.
Later it would rain, she knew. The forecast promised a change in the weather, and clouds were moving in on the morning sun.
She picked up her paper, shaking the dew off the cellophane bag, and waved to Mr. Carruthers, her across-the-street neighbor who came out to get his paper the same time she did each morning. To stare at her in her spandex, Josh had pointed out.
The night before he left, he’d asked her to marry him. It was all she thought about, consuming her like a giddy fever that kept her in its relentless grip. She hadn’t given him an answer to his proposal. The issue was not nearly as simple as she wished it could be.
He was not a man to settle for half measures. He wanted everything from her. She wasn’t sure she could live with his intensity, with his rocket-powered ambition. She didn’t know if his dreams could somehow mesh with her own.
In the wake of unbearable grief, she had fashioned a life for herself here. A small and tidy existence she happened to like very much. She had none of Josh’s sceneryeating hunger for adventure, for everything. She wondered why that was—because she couldn’t handle having her dreams come true, or because she was leery of wanting something too much? She couldn’t decide what scared her more, marrying Josh or losing him forever.
He was everything she wasn’t supposed to want, a Navy man who spent half his life at sea and the other half moving like a gypsy from place to place. He was a heartache waiting to happen.
The cheerful brrring of a bicycle bell sounded. She looked down the street to see Patricia Rivera peddling toward her. She was exactly what people meant when they said pregnant women bloomed. Patricia’s cheeks were flushed the color of a rose. Her slick dark hair shone. Her legs were ropy with muscle as she glided to the end of the driveway and squeezed the hand brakes. Even the bruise-colored starburst of varicose veins behind her knee looked as though it belonged there, every bit as appropriate as her protruding stomach.
Lauren held the plastic-wrapped paper away from her to let it drip on the ground. “You’re looking chipper this morning.”
Patricia smiled and smoothed a hand down her belly, draped in a polyester top that screamed Wal-Mart but only managed to play up her fragile beauty. “I have news.”
“Let me guess. You’re pregnant.” Lauren spoke lightly, but deep in a hidden place inside her, a terrible envy howled.
“Very funny.” Patricia opened the top of her water bottle and took a swig. “Congratulate me. It’s a boy. He was finally turned in the right direction during the ultrasound.”
The knife twisted. Still, Lauren found a smile of genuine happiness for her friend. “Congratulations, Patricia. That’s great.”
“Thanks.” Patricia put her water away. “The doctor says I can keep coming to fitness class so long as I take it slow. No restrictions other than common sense.”
Lauren congratulated her again and watched her friend ride away. Patricia had a husband she adored and a baby on the way. She looked like Catherine Zeta-Jones, but she was impossible to dislike. She was kind and bright, and she’d been one of Lauren’s favorite people since the day she’d walked into the fitness studio last fall. And she was not without her sadnesses, either. Her husband was half a world away on the same carrier as Josh, and she was bursting with the news about their baby.
Lauren looked down, startled to see that she held both hands lovingly on her stomach. She shook her head and went back inside. The phone rang as soon as she stepped into the kitchen.
She glanced at the clock over the stove. It was the middle of the night in Josh’s part of the world. She picked up on the fourth ring.
“Mrs. Stanton?” A vaguely familiar female voice used her married name, which she heard so seldom that the sound of it startled her.
“That’s me.”
“I have Dr. Hendler on the line for you.”
The receiver in her hand was suddenly drenched in sweat. It nearly slipped from her grasp. This was the call she had been awaiting with terrifying hope and dread.
She was aware of everything around her with razor-edged clarity: the pink-toothed profile of the mountains against the morning sky; the perfect flight of wheeling gulls patrolling the beach; the sound of radio music drifting from the bedroom.
“Yes?” she asked in a strange and distant voice she didn’t recognize.
“Your test results are back,” said the doctor.
She tried desperately to read his tone. Was it good news or bad? She stopped breathing. She wanted to stop the world. “Yes?”
“I’m afraid it’s not what we’d hoped for,” he said. Softly, gravely. “Lauren, I’m so sorry….”
CHAPTER 4
Whidbey Island, Washington
2:30 p.m.
Grace Bennett drove off the ferry from Seattle and merged onto the country highway that formed the long, crooked spine of Whidbey Island. Fat raindrops ran backward on the window, like tears blown sideways on a face pushed into the wind. It felt as though the storm was driving her home.
As she sped up the main road, the wind and rain gradually abated. By the time she pulled to the shoulder and paused to get the mail from the box, tentative slices of sunshine shone through the clouds. She turned into the driveway and sat in the car for a moment, gazing at her house. In all her years as a Navy wife, she’d lived in a lot of places, but this was the only one she’d ever loved. It was a little bungalow on a bluff with an arbor of old roses and a view of the Sound. Some would call it dated, tacky. But Grace didn’t care. It was hers.
She couldn’t believe she’d bought it without Steve. But lately, she’d done a lot of surprising things—and the person she surprised most of all was herself.
Especially today. With a pleasant shiver, she picked up her purse and the stack of mail from the seat beside her and slid out of the car. She ducked her head to avoid drops from the ancient cedar trees that arched over the drive and skirted puddles to keep from ruining her new shoes, then let herself in through the front gate. She had just bought the ensemble of expensive skirt and blazer, and a pair of kitten-heeled pumps. The only outfit that had cost her more was her wedding dress.
On the porch, she stopped to sift through the mail, finding an assortment of bills, letters to the kids from prospective colleges…the usual overabundance of junk mail.
In the past, she used to sift through the mail with fevered eagerness, looking for a familygram or precious letter from Steve. These days, no one sent letters anymore, just e-mail. What was gained in speed and frequency with the Internet came at the sacrifice of the cozy, ineffable intimacy of a handwritten letter.
In a letter, Steve’s presence used to be a tangible thing. He had a charming habit of making his point with swiftly drawn strokes, an extension of his energetic personality. He used punctuation marks no one had ever heard of, yet she could practically hear his voice when he wrote, “I
you 1000x more than flying, girl
”
She used to sleep with his letters under her pillow.
And she used to spend an hour each evening writing aerograms, watching the shape of each word on the thin blue page as it appeared behind her pen. Her letter-writing was a sort of handicraft, a way to weave her love into every word she wrote. E-mail was different. Faster, to be sure, but different. And completely inadequate for fixing what was wrong between her and Steve. But after today, she had finally figured out what to do. All that remained was to tell him.
Juggling the mail, her purse and keys, she let herself in. Daisy, who had yet to grow into her paws, scrambled in to greet her, sneezing and wagging her feathery tail as though Grace had been away for a decade. A crystal vase of roses on the hall table filled the house with their soft, evocative scent. The flowers had been delivered yesterday for her fortieth birthday. They should have been sent by Steve.
But they weren’t.
Her leather-soled shoes made a satisfying tapping sound on the hardwood floor. She heard the light beep of the answering machine, indicating a number of messages. She’d check them in a moment.
She went to the kitchen and let the dog out. As she shut the door, she caught a glimpse of herself in the glass.
The image startled her briefly. She was a different person, and after today, there would be more changes afoot. Her encounter with Ross Cameron was everything she had hoped it would—and would not—be.
She still couldn’t believe she’d gone through with it. It was hard to get her mind around the idea of Grace McAllen Bennett doing something like that, yet she’d been heading in unexpected directions ever since a stranger named Josh Lamont had dropped like a bomb into the middle of their lives. That wake-up call had jolted her out of the life she thought she had and shoved her into unknown territory. With Steve at sea, Grace had started down a road of her own.
She set aside the stack of mail, took off her raincoat and put her keys on the counter, pausing for a minute to study the little sterling silver anchor key chain, a gift from Steve a lifetime ago. She hung it on a hook by the door. Though the house was quiet, a trail of kid clutter formed a path from the back door to the den. When they were little, it was composed of Fisher-Price pull toys and G.I. Joe action figures. Now it consisted of sports equipment and schoolbooks.
Grace glanced at the clock. They’d be home soon. She wondered if they would notice the new dress, the hair and makeup. Katie would, and she’d worry. That was Katie, the worrier. Change upset her, an unfortunate trait in a kid whose childhood consisted of moving every three years. She’d probably look at Grace and think demons had possessed her mother.
Brian would be oblivious, of course. At eighteen, he was oblivious to everything but baseball and drawing, his two reasons for breathing. Fortunately, they were also his reasons for getting into college, so she couldn’t complain. When Brian first explained his college plans, Grace had been worried about how Steve would react. But slowly, as she grew into her new self, she quit trying to turn this family into an adjunct to Steve’s career.
And Emma? There were days when Grace actually thought her older daughter had slipped away somewhere, leaving a secretive stranger in her place. She and her twin brother would be leaving home soon, yet sometimes Grace had the feeling Emma had checked out months ago, not long after Grace and Steve’s marriage exploded.
A terrible heat filled her, and for a moment she had trouble breathing. Even now, she thought, stunned by the powerful grip he still held on her heart. Even now. Flush from seeing Ross, she thought she finally knew her heart, but doubts kept seeping through the cracks and crevices that had appeared in the foundations of her life.
Nothing would be resolved until Steve came back and they made some sense of what had happened. She released a sigh, her breath a series of jerky exhalations.
Breathe, she reminded herself. Lauren, her trainer, had shown her how to find the deepest reaches of her breathing apparatus, capillaries only one cell thick, yet capable of sending a burst of oxygen into every panting, air-starved region of the lungs. Breathing was a learned art, so they said.
She headed into the study to check her messages. The answering machine was blinking an ominous number thirteen. She left the island for a day in the city and suddenly everyone needed her. Her e-mail box was sure to be exploding.
Sitting at the secondhand oak library desk that served as her company headquarters, she touched Play and picked up a pen.
The first few messages on the machine were strictly business. She was currently handling the relocation of three families and juggling delivery times, tonnage estimates, shipping contracts. Then came Katie: “Mom, I’m going to Melanie’s tonight, okay?”
“Actually, it’s not.” Grace had a list of chores she’d been saving for Katie.
“Okay,” said the voice on the tape. “I’ll stop by after school. Bye.”
Melanie. The Corpuz girl, Grace recalled. She had a Ping-Pong table and an older brother Katie considered “hot.” Katie wanted a boyfriend in the worst way. It was one of the hazards, Grace supposed, of being the brainy younger sister of the prettiest girl in the school.
“It’s a boy!” the answering machine blared in the vibrant voice of Patricia Rivera. “I just got back from the doctor’s, and he confirmed it. Call me and talk me out of these terrible names I keep coming up with….”
Next, a crackle of static and then Steve’s voice on the carrier satellite phone. “Hey, guys.”
Grace’s grip tightened on the pen. In spite of everything, just the sound of his voice still touched her. Still infuriated her. Still made her dizzy with memories.
“It’s your old man calling from the wrong side of the international dateline. Guess what? I’m giving a tour to a reporter from Newsweek….”
A reporter, thought Grace. What’s that about?
“Brian,” continued Steve, “I guess you’ll be getting word on your Naval Academy appointment any day now. I’m pulling for you, buddy.
“Emma-girl, check your e-mail. I sent you some digital photos of a pod of whales we spotted. Katydid, how’d that science project turn out? Bet you made an A-plus. And Grace…sorry I missed you on your birthday. I tried calling, but there was no answer. Hope you had a nice time. Okay, y’all give your mom a hug from me. Hug one another while you’re at it, you hear? I sure do miss you. Over and out.”
Grace massaged the sides of her jaw, trying to force herself to relax.
The next message was work-related. A crisis with an overseas shipment—an entire sealed container had been dropped overboard in Seattle. Someone’s whole household was bobbing in the drink.
A simple matter compared to the sticky complexities of her family.
Then Lauren Stanton. She sounded congested, or maybe she’d been crying. “Grace, hi. It’s Lauren. I—um—look, I canceled fitness class today and couldn’t find anyone to cover for me. Sorry about that.”
Grace winced at the emotional pain she heard in Lauren’s tone. Josh had been gone only a few weeks, and already Lauren was falling apart.
Grace hurt for Lauren. The two of them had their ups and downs, that was for sure, but extraordinary circumstances bound them together into an uneasy sisterhood of shared hopes and fears.
She had the phone in her hand, ready to start returning calls, as the final message played. “Hello, Grace. It’s Peggy from Buskirk Law Offices. I just wanted to let you know that I sent the packet over by messenger.” The voice paused as though, in the midst of a routine procedure, the speaker felt the weight of it. “The papers are ready to sign. Good luck, Grace.”
Good luck. Grace felt a strange sort of dread. What did she think she was doing? What was she doing?
She set down the phone, not quite ready to talk to Lauren—to anyone—just yet.
As she sat there, trying to make sense of everything she was feeling, teetering on the edge of taking a major step in her life, she heard the muffled sound of a car door slamming. Then another. Frowning slightly, because she wasn’t expecting anyone, she stood and went to the vestibule to see who it was. As she passed the hall tree mirror, she caught another glimpse of herself and smoothed her hands down her pencil-straight, raspberry-colored skirt.
Through the antique lace panel covering the front door, she saw the wet black gleam of a Navy vehicle, a common-enough sight on base, but fairly rare beyond the confines of the Naval Air Station.
The front gate opened. Between the tall hedges of climbing roses, two men emerged.
When Grace saw them, every cell in her body came to ringing attention. She could hear, far away in another part of the house, the sound of a faucet dripping and Daisy scratching at the back door. The scent of roses and orange-oil furniture polish hung in the air. The wispy lace covering the front door softened and distorted the features of her visitors, but even so, Grace knew exactly what she was seeing. The nightmare every military wife dreaded.
A Navy chaplain and the Casualty Assistance Calls Officer, coming up the walk.
PART 2
Point of Embarkation
POE: Point of Embarkation: to make a start, to engage, enlist, or invest in an enterprise.
CHAPTER 5
Nine months earlier
In the cramped, overheated dressing room of a self-consciously hip boutique called Wild Grrl, Katie Bennett’s head popped through the neck opening of a green Free People sweater. “How about this one, Mom?”
Grace helped her adjust the sweater, smoothing her hand down the textured mohair knit. Moving to Washington State from Texas over the summer meant the kids needed sweaters and jackets. As she turned Katie square into the mirror, she sneaked a glance at the tag dangling from the armpit—$64.99. Great. “It’s a good color on you,” she said. “Too bad it doesn’t even cover your navel.”
Katie turned this way and that, lifting a mop of straight brown hair off her neck and contemplating her reflection with the hypersensitive, overcritical eye of a fourteen-year-old girl. Grace wanted to tell her daughter she would look beautiful in a gunnysack, but Katie would argue with her. Katie always argued, and she usually won.
As Grace sorted through the other outfits they’d selected, she glimpsed the back of a woman in the unforgiving three-way dressing-room mirror. Neglected hair, a double-wide backside, jiggly upper arms. Then Grace straightened up and lifted her arm over her head.
The pudgy woman did the same.
She put her arm down.
So did the woman in the mirror.
She twitched her hips from side to side.
So did—
“Mom, what are you doing?” Katie asked.
“Contemplating suicide.” Grace laughed to make sure Katie knew she was kidding. She shuddered at the back view of herself in the unflattering fluorescent light. It shouldn’t be such a shock. She knew she’d been getting a little wide in the beam but had managed to avoid taking a hard look in the mirror. Whose hips were those, and why were they so large? How did she get to this state? At some point—she had no idea when—gravity must have kicked in. With no prior warning, she’d turned into a not-very-attractive stranger. But there she was, in living color, the dumpy, middle-aged suburban housewife she never thought she’d become.
“Is something wrong?” Katie prodded.
Grace sighed and picked up her purse. “No, sweetie. I don’t know what I was thinking when I put on these khaki shorts.”
“You look fine,” Katie stated.
The kids didn’t need for Grace to look like anything but Mom, and she’d done a damned good job of that. When Steve did a good job, he got a medal or pin of commendation. While she got…She wondered why no one ever gave women medals for motherhood.
“I’m the one in trouble, Mom. Nothing’s right.” With a long-suffering sigh, Katie peeled off the green sweater and tossed it to Grace.
“What about the hip-hugger jeans?” Grace suggested. “They were cute on you.”
Katie slipped a T-shirt over her head. “In order to wear hip-huggers, you have to actually have hips.”
Grace patted her arm. “Trust me, you’ll get them. The Lord will provide.” She avoided her reflection as Katie finished dressing.
Katie didn’t seem to notice her uncharacteristic silence as they went to find Emma. She was in another dressing room, where she’d put aside a stack of selections to show her mother. As blond and willowy as a prima ballerina, eighteen-year-old Emma never experienced the uncertainties that tortured her younger sister. At the moment, Emma was modeling a jersey skirt and sweater, her natural good looks magically transforming a discount outfit into a Marc Jacobs original.
Grace smiled at her older daughter. “I see you narrowed your choices down to, what, a few dozen?”
“Two skirts and three tops, and I’ll kick in for half,” Emma said. She worked as a lifeguard at the Island County Aquatics Center. It turned out to be the perfect place to meet people. After living here just two months, she had plenty of friends.
“Deal,” Grace agreed. A little extravagance was justified, she supposed. The Navy Exchange provided the basics, but the start of the school year, in a brand-new town, called for some serious retail therapy. Back-to-school shopping usually appealed to Grace. She took a peculiar comfort in the familiar rituals of summer’s end, in getting registered for school, joining the PTA, signing permission forms for sports and extracurriculars. She liked organizing their backpacks and binders, spiral-bound notebooks and bradded folders; she liked putting things in their proper place. Stowing ordnance, Steve called it.
Shouldering her bulging purse, she stepped outside and, for a moment, forgot where she was. She felt unmoored, disoriented. She had started over so many times in so many new places that she actually had to think for a second before remembering which town this was.
With Emma at the wheel of their aging station wagon, they headed down the road to a huge Rite Aid. This was Katie’s indulgence. Rather than getting school supplies at the Navy Exchange, she craved the variety available at the big drugstore. Under the bluish glare of fluorescent lights, the back-to-school aisle was jammed with harried mothers and restless kids. Emma wandered over to the makeup section, leaving Grace to pick out the basic necessities. Neither of the twins had ever been picky about their school supplies.
On the other hand, Katie took the task seriously and was presently weighing the merits of disposable versus refillable mechanical pencils. Waiting at the end of the aisle, Grace held her tongue, resisting the temptation to prod. But Katie had a sixth sense; she glanced over at Grace. “I just need a few more things.”
“No problem.” Angling the cart to one side, Grace selected a four-pack of glue from a display rack. She held the package briefly to her face, shut her eyes and inhaled. “I love the smell of glue sticks in the morning.”
“Very funny, Mom.” Katie opted for the refillable pencils, tossing them into the cart. Of Grace’s three kids, Katie was the only one who would actually keep the pencils long enough to refill. Then she added a chisel-tipped highlighter pen, a pack of index cards and a D-ring binder. “Okay, I’m all set.”
Katie was a moving violation of the laws of birth order. She overachieved like a firstborn, worried like a middle child and, only when she didn’t think anyone was looking, still played like the baby of the family. And like the baby, she was adored by everyone—except by herself.
They headed toward the checkout stand. Emma stood at the magazine display, flipping through Cosmo. Katie tilted her head sideways to read the shout lines. “Nine Ways to Drive Him Wild In Bed,” she read aloud. “You know, if that stuff worked, we would have world peace, I bet.”
“Let’s go,” said Grace, taking the magazine from Emma and sticking it back in the rack. Grace was no prude, and she wasn’t naive enough to think a parent could hold back the urges of nature, yet she felt a little dart of resentment at these women’s magazines and the glossy, seductive promises they made.
The two-for-seventy-nine-cents filler paper and multi-packs of ballpoint pens that seemed so cheap in the ad circular somehow managed to multiply to a hundred dollars’ worth of school supplies. Grace handed over a well-worn credit card, knowing the balance would make her wince when it came in the mail.
Glancing across to the adjacent checkout stand, she spied a young mother carefully counting out change while her two little kids swarmed the gumball machine by the exit. She was Navy, of course. After nineteen years as a Navy wife, Grace could spot one a mile away. They possessed a peculiar forbearance, and a deep strength as well. They were a special breed of women—and lately, the occasional man—to which Grace belonged. A sorority of itinerant householders.
The woman looked up, and for two seconds their gazes held. Grace offered a smile, and the woman smiled back, then resumed counting out her money.
She sent Emma and Katie out to the car with their bloated cart while she stopped at the ATM machine by the door. As she waited for the machine to cough up the cash, her gaze wandered to the community bulletin board above the drinking fountain. Yellow handwritten cards and published brochures offered everything from dog-sitting services to weatherproofing. Garage sales abounded, as they did in every Navy town. When it was time to move, you lightened your load.
There were items on the bulletin board from Welcome Wagon, Mary Kay, the usual suspects. A glossy, tri-fold brochure caught her eye, mainly because it shouted the word free. She took one out of the rack. One free month of unlimited classes.
The flyer was for the Totally New Totally You fitness studio down on Water Street, owned and operated by Lauren Stanton, IFA Certified.
She stuffed the brochure into her purse among ferry schedules, receipts, change-of-address forms and the kids’ health records. With much greater care, she folded the bills and receipt from the ATM into her wallet. She was almost afraid to look at the bottom line.
In the parking lot, a gray-and-white seagull cried out and flew aloft, drawing her gaze upward. The sky was almost unnaturally blue, arching over a distant mountain range topped in snow, even in August. The fathomless blue of Puget Sound surrounded misty, forested islands with interesting names like Camano and Orcas. And Whidbey, of course. This was far and away the prettiest place they’d ever lived, even more dramatic than the vol-cano-scape of Sigonella, on Sicily. The weather here was on the cool side, unseasonably cool, locals said, and evenings warranted a sweater or light jacket.
Grace turned her face up to the dazzling sky. This was so different from other places she knew. She had been to coast-hugging barrier islands connected by causeways to the mainland—Galveston, Coronado, Padre near Corpus Christi. Sigonella was an arid rock. But Whidbey Island had its own sort of magic. Forty-five miles of rolling hills surrounded by cold blue water, Whidbey was a world unto itself, with its air of serenity and ageless beauty. Accessible only by car ferry or by a dizzying arched steel bridge spanning Deception Pass at the north end, it commanded the heart of Puget Sound.
She was going to like it here. No, she was going to love it here. That really wasn’t the problem. In a couple of years, she was going to have to leave. That was the problem.
Exasperated with her own thoughts, she dug for her keys, which were strung on the silver anchor key chain Steve had given her the first time he went to sea, long ago.
At the car, the girls were talking to a big-shouldered boy with a neck as wide as his head. Or rather, Emma was talking while the boy hung on her every word and Katie leaned against the shopping cart, trying to act nonchalant. The boy wore a purple football jersey and a gold stud in one earlobe. He looked like every high school girl’s fantasy—and he looked familiar.
“Mom, this is Cory Crowther,” said Katie.
Grace smiled at him. “Hi, Cory. I remember you from your dad’s change-of-command ceremony.” Earlier in the summer, Cory’s father, Mason Crowther, had taken command of Carrier Air Wing 22. Mason was one rung on the ladder higher than Steve, his Deputy CAG. In a year, Steve would be eligible to take command from Crowther.
“Yes, ma’am. I remember you, too.”
“But you disappeared on us,” she added.
He sent her a grin worthy of a toothpaste ad. “Went to football camp, ma’am.”
“I bet your mother missed you,” Grace said. Allison Crowther played a key but undefined role as the CAG’s wife. Grace realized her comment embarrassed Cory, so she said, “All set?” to her daughters. She pulled the cart around to the back of the car. Maybe he’d offer to help.
“Nice to see you, ma’am. I’d better be going,” he said. “Practice.”
So much for gallantry, thought Grace. She kept silent, though. Moving so frequently was hard on the kids, and she didn’t want to sabotage any potential friendships.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and wheeled backward, unable to take his eyes off Emma. “See you around.”
“See you,” said Emma.
“Bye, Cory,” Katie said, her eagerness adorable to Grace but unappreciated by the boy. “Good luck at practice.”
He grinned again and took off, heading for a shiny Dodge Ram pickup truck. Navy blue, of course. An array of squadron insignia decorated the rear window and bumper.
Katie sagged dramatically against the station wagon. “Good luck at practice,” she mimicked herself. “God, I’m a hopeless dork.”
Emma ruffled her hair. “You’re not used to football gods yet.”
“Don’t ever get used to football gods,” Grace said. “They’re nothing but trouble.”
“Was Dad a football god?”
“He didn’t play football,” Grace said. But he was a god.
“What did he play?” Katie asked.
“He didn’t. He was already an officer when we met.”
Grace opened the back of the car, and the three of them loaded the bags. She was tempted by a tube of Pringles sticking out of a sack, but quickly reminded herself of the nightmare in the mirror. She was going to have to take it easy on the Pringles.
“I’ll drive,” said Emma, folding her lithe form behind the steering wheel.
“You always drive,” Katie said, out of sorts over the Cory encounter.
“It’ll be your turn before you know it,” said Emma. “Get in and buckle up. We’re taking the scenic route.”
They drove through Oak Harbor, a town that took its beautiful setting for granted. A blight of strip centers and prefabricated housing flanked the main road through town. But at the foot of the clustered buildings, and above their rooftops, the view was crafted by the hand of God—an intensely blue seascape, alive with white-winged sailboats, cargo ships with containers stacked like Lego blocks, ferries shuttling tourists and commuters back and forth to the San Juan Islands or the mainland. A forest fringe of slender evergreens swept up to a white mountain range.
When they’d first arrived here, Emma and Katie would occasionally burst into “The Sound of Music” when the mood struck them. Her silly, funny girls. Watching her two daughters together gave Grace an unexpected pang.
They were nearly grown, whether she was ready or not. Looking at Emma’s face was like watching one of those time-lapse photographs of a flower opening. She could see her turn from a tender-faced baby into a young woman whose beauty seemed to be made equally of strength and fragility. Meanwhile, Katie grew tall and thin, and became smarter and more inquisitive every year. Grace couldn’t believe how quickly time had passed, how soon they would be leaving her.
“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” she said.
“I wish we lived closer to the water,” Katie said, never wanting to make the mistake of being in complete agreement with her mother. “The base isn’t pretty at all.”
“Bases aren’t supposed to be pretty,” Grace said.
“When I leave home, I’m going to live in one place and never, ever budge,” Katie declared.
“Not me,” said Emma. “I’m going to live everywhere.”
“Just don’t forget to write,” said Grace. She was tempted to broach the topic of college, but decided to wait. It was hard to resist pushing, though. Emma had barely touched the stack of glossy catalogs and brochures that flooded the mailbox all summer.
“I want to live there,” Grace said, speaking out before she’d fully formed the thought. She gestured at a house on the water side of the road, with a fussed-over garden and painted gingerbread trim. Like a stately tall ship, it commanded a view of the shipping lanes and mountains. It was a restored Victorian, the kind built by fishermen from Maine who’d relocated to Whidbey a hundred years ago.
“How about this one?” asked Emma. Without waiting for an answer, she pulled off the road and parked on the gravel shoulder in the shade of a huge cedar. The driveway was marked with a realtor’s tent sign and a bouquet of balloons imprinted with Open House.
Automatically Grace checked her watch. By habit she was a schedule person, but on this sunny Saturday afternoon they were in no hurry.
Visiting open houses was a hobby she’d fallen into years ago. Emma and Katie shared her fascination. There was a sort of vicarious pleasure in stepping into someone else’s world. It was a guilty thrill. Walking through other people’s homes made Grace feel as though she was visiting a foreign country with customs and habits she barely understood. She loved to study the gardens with perennials, displays of family photographs showing generations growing up in the same place. She was intrigued by the permanence of their way of life, and she studied it like an anthropologist researching a different culture.
She wondered what it would be like to live in a place where you could plant a garden and still be around to see how it turned out.
This was definitely a girl thing. Steve and Brian couldn’t stand open houses. But for Grace and her daughters, the fantasy began as soon as they stepped onto the driveway of crushed rock and shells.
The house was a disappointment, an ugly stepsister to the Victorian masterpiece down the road. Despite an impressive arbor of old roses, the garden was an uninspired mix of perennials, rhododendrons and low, leafy shrubs. Worse, someone had tried to give the place a nautical flavor by heaping driftwood in a self-conscious arrangement, creating a rope fence. A wooden seagull was perched atop the post next to the front gate. Over the door arched a driftwood sign: Welcome Aboard.
The girls walked in through the open front door, heading for a hall table laden with bakery cookies, a coffee urn, a pitcher of lemonade and some real estate flyers.
Grace hesitated before she entered the house. Unbidden, a quiet stirring occurred deep inside her. It was just a strange day, she thought, beginning with the shock of meeting her real self in the dressing-room mirror.
She could feel the fresh sea breeze rippling across the yard and stirring the tops of the trees. Murmurs of conversation drifted through the house as little knots of people inspected the unnaturally clean rooms. Her awareness of everything heightened, and for some reason, she held her breath the way she used to in church each Sunday morning, just before genuflecting.
In the blink of an eye, the peculiar moment passed. She stepped over the threshold into a stranger’s house. The spongy gray carpet beneath her feet had seen better days, and the walls were an oppressive putty color. Sometime in the distant past, a smoker used to live here. Bowls of potpourri barely masked a cindery hotel room odor. But still, the plain-Jane house cast an odd and mesmerizing spell on her.
Grace smiled and greeted the listing agent, accepting an information sheet on the house. She was a looky-loo and never pretended to be otherwise. An experienced agent could see that a mile off.
Grace strolled through an outdated kitchen with harvest-gold appliances, oversize vegetables on the wallpaper, phony redbrick linoleum on the floor and Formica countertops with the classic boomerang pattern, faded in places from scrubbing. The study was the only modern segment of the house that she could see. It contained a well-designed workstation and a state-of-the-art Mac computer surrounded by scanners, printers and devices Grace couldn’t identify. Clearly, this was the domain of a computer whiz.
One set of lookers was in the corner snickering over a collage made of seashells, which framed a chalkboard. Ignoring them, Grace passed through to the front room, and there, finally, she understood the magic of this place. The living room was oriented like the prow of a ship, with sliding doors leading out to a deck. The windows were covered by heavy pleated drapes, though someone had had the sense to thrust them wide apart. The view made Grace forget every unfortunate aspect of the little house on the bluff. It was a view that encompassed the length of Puget Sound, from the uneven teeth of the snowcapped Cascades to the dimpled blue peak of Mount Baker. The Sound was at its liveliest, as though every schooner and ferryboat, every barge and pleasure boat, put out to sea just for her viewing pleasure.
The girls were out on the deck, eating cookies. Grace pantomimed “five minutes” and headed for the stairs. The two bedrooms at the top of the landing were poky and nondescript. But the master bedroom commanded the same view as the living room downstairs.
Standing in this place, Grace felt a painful tightness around the heart. It was the sense of wanting something she could not possibly have.
She was about to leave when she became aware of a murmuring voice.
“But I thought the shipper wouldn’t schedule me until the house sold,” said a woman’s tense voice. “I can’t possibly be ready before then.” A pause. “I understand, but—” Another pause. “And what’s the charge for that? I see. Well, it’s not in my budget. I don’t know…”
Grace waited until she heard the bleep of the phone, followed by a shaky sigh she could relate to. Then she approached the woman, whose lower right leg was in a walking cast. She was an older lady whose pleasant face was trembling and swollen with unshed tears of frustration.
“I couldn’t help overhearing,” said Grace. “Sounds as though your shipper is trying to move up the date on you.”
The woman nodded glumly. “Yes. It’s horrible. I had an offer on the house, but the loan fell through, so it’s back on the market again. Now the shipper wants to stick to the original schedule or charge me a huge extra fee.” She shook her head. “You know, I can design and launch a Web site, but dealing with a moving company is totally beyond me. My name’s Marcia Dunmire,” she said. “I’m a digital engineer.”
“Grace Bennett. I’m a Navy wife.”
“Oh. Then you’ve done this a few times before.”
“I don’t mean to be nosy, but maybe I can help. Do you have a copy of your contract?”
“Right here.” The pinched expression eased from Marcia’s face. “I’d be grateful if you’d look it over. I’ve never used a moving company before, ever.” She handed Grace a carbonless copy that looked very familiar.
“Some shippers move dates around if they have space in a truck that’s ready to go. And unfortunately, some agents try to tag you with extra charges and kill fees.” Grace glanced over the information. The estimated weight was grossly inflated—40,000 pounds. In reality, the contents of this house amounted to no more than 20,000 pounds. The inequity didn’t surprise Grace but set her teeth on edge.
Paging through the boilerplate sections of the contract, she found what she was looking for. “You’re okay,” she said. “They can’t charge you for rescheduling so long as you ship within sixty days. I’ve been a relocation ombudsman for the Navy for years. I could make a call for you, if you like.”
Marcia handed her the phone. “Be my guest. I’d love some help.”
Grace hit Redial. She and Marcia moved aside as a young couple came to the master bedroom. Like Grace, they were instantly drawn to the view from the wide front window. Go away, she wanted to tell them. This is my house. The clarity—and the absurdity—of the thought startled her.
“Yes,” she said when she finally got past the receptionist. “Terry, is it? Hi, Terry. It’s Grace Bennett of…Executive Relocators.” She tossed out the name from a well of fantasy inside her, claimed Marcia as a client and plunged in. It took no effort at all. When Grace discussed business, a certain confidence came over her. She stood up straighter, spoke with authority.
“Thanks for the info, Terry,” she said. “Then I guess I’m confused. According to Mrs. Dunmire’s contract, she has sixty days to reschedule. Yes, yes, of course.” From the corner of her eye, she saw the girls come in. When they spotted her with contract in hand, phone to her ear and the older lady watching with hands clasped in hope, they rolled their eyes and went somewhere else. They were used to seeing their mother in ombudsman mode.
“Let me check with my client on that, Terry.” She pressed the mute button on the phone. “He says you didn’t say you’d ship within sixty days.”
She sniffed. “I didn’t get a chance to say anything. But the extra time would solve the problem. I’m sure of it.”
Grace went back to Terry. “I’m a little concerned about this weight discrepancy here, too, so maybe you should send another agent out to redo the estimate.” She honestly liked doing this—sticking up for people. Whatever floats your boat, as Steve would say.
A few minutes later, she hung up the phone. “Well,” she said, “that should help some.”
Marcia rolled her walker toward the door. “You have no idea. Good Lord, I’m a babe in the woods. Since my husband died I’m finding new areas of incompetence every day.”
“No,” said Grace. “You’re finding new challenges. And new ways to shine.”
“You’re very wise for such a young woman.”
“Bless you for thinking I’m young,” said Grace, remembering the dumpy housewife in the mirror. “And wise. Actually, I know there’s no comparison to being widowed, but every time my husband goes to sea, I find myself having to deal with things on my own. Moving seems to be my specialty.”
“Are you really an executive relocator?”
“No, I just said that on the spot, to sound more official. I’ve done it unofficially for years.”
“You’re very good at it. You should charge for your services.”
“So I’ve been told. But my clients are all Navy families. I work pro bono. Sometimes I think about doing this professionally, though. But…”
“It’s a great idea, especially for this area. Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon…It’s the land of the high-profile multinational company.”
The notion teased at Grace, but she pushed it away. “Do you need help on the stairs?”
“No, thanks,” Marcia said. “I keep another walker downstairs. Blasted ankle. I broke it playing volleyball.”
Grace spotted her daughters out on the lawn, pacing. “I’d better be going. The natives are getting restless.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean to keep you.”
“It was my pleasure. I love your house.”
“Do you? We bought it in the sixties when it was all we could afford. I just couldn’t deal with updating it only to put it on the market. Are you planning to buy a house?”
“Some day,” Grace admitted. “But it’s a long way from the wish to the deed. Steve and I always said that when we were stationed in a place we liked well enough, we’d talk about buying a house.” Although most Navy families did buy homes, Grace and Steve had agreed long ago that a permanent home and mortgage didn’t fit their way of life. But for a while now, she’d been having second thoughts about that decision.
“I’ve heard people in the service are able to retire young and start a whole new life for themselves.”
Grace smiled, even as she felt the terrible tension between fantasy and reality. “I’ve heard that, too. But not from my husband.”
“Well, you could pick a worse place than this to make a permanent home. It’s beautiful and peaceful, just a ferry ride to Seattle, yet far enough from the city to feel safe and quiet.”
“It’s pretty ideal,” Grace admitted.
“I’ll tell you what,” Marcia said. “Since you won’t let me pay you for your help, let me do something I’m good at.”
“You don’t have to—”
“What I’d like to do,” Marcia said, overruling her, “is design a Web site for you. That’s what I do for a living. I’d consider it a privilege.”
“That’s incredibly generous of you,” Grace said. “But I don’t have the first idea of what I would do with a Web site.”
“It can be for anything. Your family, your kids, your husband.”
“My husband already has a site. It’s called navy-dot-mil.”
“Oh, my. Well, I can’t really compete with that. But something for you, personally. We can create a Web site for your hobbies—knitting, gardening, songwriting, what have you.”
“My hobbies?” Grace grinned. “Most days, that would be carpooling and family finance.”
“Give it some thought.” Marcia handed her a business card. “Call me. It’ll be fun, you’ll see. I really do owe you, big-time.”
Grace was quiet as they drove away. On the seat beside her lay the various receipts and flyers she’d collected. She had two things to show for her day. Two impossible dreams. A perfect body and a home of her own.
CHAPTER 6
After the day’s final briefing, which was anything but brief, Steve Bennett knew the exact date and time he’d be leaving his family. Again. Sure, he was a patriot; he’d spent his career serving his country. Yet he felt alternately harried, preoccupied and distracted by his myriad duties. A part of him missed the glory days of flying, the constant brushes with danger and the heady rush of cheating death. But he was a family man now, and he’d reached the stage of his career where he was ready for his own command.
And that didn’t happen without compromise. Even if it meant putting up with rule-book blowhards like Mason Crowther, his immediate superior.
When he walked through the door, he deep-sixed the burdens of the day, shutting his eyes and inhaling the smell of baking chicken. Like magic, the aromas and sounds of home lifted his spirits. Then he took off his cap and tossed it Frisbee-style to a hook on the hall tree—a little stunt that drove Crowther nuts and often prompted him to remind Steve that replacing a damaged cover would set him back two hundred bucks.
Feeling decidedly better, he went in search of his wife.
Grace stood at the counter, tossing a salad. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Smells great,” he said. “Do you need some help?”
“No, thanks. We’ll eat just as soon as you get washed up. The kids want to go out tonight.”
He aimed a wounded look at Emma, who was setting the table. “You’re ditching us?”
“It’s the last Saturday night of the summer. Our last night of freedom.”
He washed his hands at the sink. “Yeah? So what are you up to?”
Emma shrugged in a way that made him grit his teeth. His elder daughter was not uncommunicative, but she definitely had her own set of private signals and gestures.
“Translation, please,” he said, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. He knew this was a particularly difficult move, uprooting the kids for their senior year and thrusting them into yet another “hostile environment,” as they liked to call it.
Steve knew it wasn’t his fault. But it sure as hell wasn’t his family’s, either.
“Some of the kids are going down to the beach at Mueller’s Point.”
“Bonfire and fireworks,” Brian added, ambling into the kitchen. Without being asked, he started filling the water glasses from a chilled pitcher.
“Excellent,” called Katie from the living room. “That means I can go, too.”
Both Emma and Brian snapped to attention. “In your dreams, dork,” Brian said. “It’s bad enough I have to drag Emma along—”
“Drag Emma along?” she said with an arch look. “Hey, if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have any friends at all.”
“If it weren’t for me,” Grace said, tapping her arm with a spatula, “you wouldn’t have any dinner.”
They all sat down and Steve asked the blessing and then wondered why he bothered to ask. This family was all he needed and more. This was what he lived for, these moments of simplicity when they sat down to share a meal. He wondered if they had any idea how much it meant to him.
“So,” said Grace, passing the bread. “How was—”
“Your day, dear,” Katie finished for her. “You always say that, Mom.”
“Well, I always want to know. Don’t you?”
“I already know. He filled out some forms, answered a zillion e-mails, had a planning meeting with the senior staff and did all the stuff Captain Crowther didn’t want to deal with, because that’s what the DCAG does.” Katie pushed her glasses up her nose. “Right, Dad?”
“Pretty darned close, Miss Smarty-Pants.” He caught Grace’s eye. She looked distracted tonight, maybe a little tired. “Thanks for asking.”
This was his opening to announce the upcoming trip to the Pentagon and then the deployment in November. Not now, he thought. He’d save the news for another time. With school starting Monday, everyone had enough on their minds.
But was there ever a good time to tell the family you were leaving them? He’d done so many times, but it never got easier.
He looked around the table and his heart filled up. Although he could command a squadron or air wing, he was helpless when it came to his family and helpless to know whether or not he was doing a good job at home. His background, which included more foster homes than he’d ever bothered to count, hadn’t prepared him for the powerful tenderness of family life. His instincts told him how to land a plane on a carrier deck at night in a storm, but they couldn’t tell him how to talk to his daughters.
Emma was so pretty she could break your heart with a single blink of those Caribbean-blue eyes. Steve ought to know—she’d broken his often enough. Every time he said goodbye to her, from the time she was old enough to understand what goodbye meant, she had broken his heart. Yet oddly, with all the moving they had done, Emma seemed to adapt the easiest. She actually liked making new friends, and found her place in school with seemingly little fuss or effort.
Brian was his trophy son, and he appeared to like playing that role, bringing home honors in track and baseball, earning decent marks in his classes. He was a prime candidate for any number of colleges, and the Naval Academy was at the top of his list.
Then there was his little Katydid, so quick you’d miss her if you didn’t keep your eye on her. She read a book every day or two and was so smart she had her teachers scrambling for material, trying to stay one step ahead of her.
And Grace. The architect of it all. She built this family brick by brick, fashioned it out of hard work and a vision he hoped like hell they both shared. In the upheaval of the move this summer and taking on his new duties, he’d barely had time to sit down and talk to her about anything.
She used to make time, carving a quiet half hour out of the day so they could discuss whatever was on their minds. He’d never told her how grateful he was for that; he figured she knew. But lately, even she’d been sucked into the breakneck pace of their lives, and those half hours had fallen by the wayside. He missed their time together, but didn’t know how to tell her so.
It wasn’t his fault, and it sure as hell wasn’t hers, but a hairline fissure had appeared in their marriage, seemingly out of nowhere. Or so he thought. He was almost afraid to mention it for fear of giving it a name and making it real. But he had to trust that things were fine, or nothing else in the world made sense. Grace was different from women who walked away from Navy men. She wasn’t going to bail on him.
He stabbed his fork into a second helping of chicken. “There’s a barbecue at the Crowthers’ next Sunday,” he said. “The whole family’s invited.”
“I’m busy,” Katie declared.
“I’ve got practice,” Brian said.
He noticed Emma had no objection. The Crowther boy was her age, and he’d called at the house a couple of times, looking for her. “The whole family,” he repeated. “He’s the CAG, and he wants everybody to have a good time.”
“Then he should count us out,” Katie said.
“Maybe buy us tickets to a Mariners game,” Brian suggested. “That’d be a good time.”
“You don’t have to stay long,” Grace explained in her ever-patient tone. But even she sounded a little weary of social obligations. She used to love dressing up, going to official functions and informal gatherings. “Just say hi and eat some barbecue and take notes, because—”
“Because next year, Dad’s going to be the CAG,” Katie finished for her.
“Such a bright child,” Grace said with a wink.
“I heard Mrs. Crowther is a Grade-A, certified b—uh, pill,” Katie said in a gossipy tone. “Brooke Mather says she has these horrible teas and stuff for the wives, and gets all mad if you don’t come. And my friend Rose Marie says that in the winter, you can’t wear a fur to any function, because Mrs. Crowther doesn’t have a fur.”
“Even if it’s a really ugly fur?” asked Brian.
“That’s enough,” said Grace with a gleam of suppressed amusement. “We’ll all go, and we’ll be terribly polite and charming and they’ll think the Bennetts are the nicest family in the Navy.”
Steve had been dealing with Crowther all day, and he yearned to change the subject. He turned to Brian. “So have you had a chance to look at the admissions packet from the Academy?” he asked.
“You bet,” Brian said. “I can’t wait to roll up my sleeves and start filling in all those bubbles with a number-two pencil.”
Steve grinned to hide a twinge of annoyance at his son’s sarcasm. Brian was a star athlete with bright prospects, yet he spent every spare minute creating intricate, almost hyperrealistic drawings of some fantasy world. He claimed to be working on a graphic novel, which was beyond Steve’s comprehension. Still, Brian had a serious desire to excel, and Steve hoped he’d choose to do it at the Naval Academy.
“It’s a little early in the year to burn out on the application process,” he pointed out.
“I looked at that stuff,” Emma said. “It’s not that different from a regular college application.”
“Except for the blood test, urinalysis, dental X rays, physical aptitude exam…” Brian counted them off on his fingers. “Oh, and they’re not going to like my tattoo and body piercings one bit.”
“What tattoo and body piercings?” Katie demanded, craning her neck to study her brother.
“The ones I might get one of these days,” he said. “Now that I’m eighteen, it’s all up to me.”
Clearly bored with her brother, Katie turned to Steve. “Can we get a dog?”
She had been asking all summer. She asked every summer, he remembered. “We’ve talked about this before. A family pet is—”
“One more thing to worry about,” Katie interrupted, exaggerating his Texas accent.
“It’s one more thing to love,” said Emma.
Steve and Grace exchanged a look. Both knew better than to take the bait. The conversation was in danger of turning into a squabble that had no resolution. With characteristic skill, Grace steered the topic around to other matters and brought the meal to a successful conclusion. She did this all the time, he realized, watching her pump Katie for details on the bike trip she’d made with her two new friends today. Grace smoothed out the wrinkles, anticipating trouble before it appeared.
“I’m proud of you for making friends so quickly this summer,” she told Katie.
“Like I have a choice,” Katie said.
“You don’t,” Grace said, getting up from the table. “None of us do.”
Maybe it was his imagination, but Steve sensed a subtle tension in the air. It was probably all in his head, he thought, watching Grace serve a dessert of strawberries in little glass bowls.
Sometimes he was so grateful for his family, it made his chest ache. That was the hell of having a job like his—he missed crucial moments in their lives. And even the periods of deepest contentment never lasted. But maybe, he conceded, the job made them sweeter, made him appreciate them more. Grace used to tell him so all the time, but she hadn’t mentioned it lately.
After dinner, the kids got ready to go out. Steve could hear Brian and Emma upstairs arguing. The two of them shared the Bronco II, and if their plans for the evening didn’t happen to coincide, they sank into one of their legendary disputes. He wondered why, after all these years, they still bothered. It was a bit like shadowboxing.
The twins were so alike, blond and athletic, with identical blue eyes. They had the sort of looks older women fussed over in grocery stores. When they were little, Grace used to push them around in the “double wide,” a dual stroller she took everywhere. By the time Katie came along, that stroller had a lot of miles on it. Katie occupied a sling-like compartment in the rear of the contraption. She was such a quiet, unobtrusive little soul. One time—Grace swore it was only once—she had actually set her diaper bag on top of the baby, having forgotten until a little kitten mew of distress alerted her.
The expected squabble subsided without intervention, and Steve let out the breath he’d been holding. The twins had entered a phase of their relationship in which they were starting to like each other on a selective basis. Perhaps as the concept of leaving home became ever more real to them, they decided to explore the deep and mysterious heart of their twinship. Whatever it was, Steve would not complain. Especially since Katie, his awkward colt of a daughter, seemed to be experimenting with her own brand of rebellion here and there.
At the moment, Katie was stretched out on the sofa, reading a book. Her long, skinny legs—Olive Oyl legs, she lamented—were draped over the backrest, her head hanging off the side at an impossible angle. She read with deep concentration, seeming to inhale the story through her eyes. Steve walked over and mussed her hair playfully, earning a we-are-not-amused glare. He bent down to see what she was reading. “Beneath the Wheel by Hermann Hesse. The feel-good book of the year.”
“At least it makes my life seem less depressing.”
“Since when is your life depressing?”
“Since Brian and Emma get to go out tonight and they’ve already got tons of friends and not one person even cares if I exist—”
The phone rang. “I’ll get it,” she shrieked, flinging aside the book and clearing the coffee table in a single leap.
“She ought to go out for the track team. I’m thinking hurdles.” Steve’s gaze followed her as she streaked from the room. “What’s this about her depressing life?”
Grace smiled as she wiped down the dining room table. “Wait five minutes. Her mood will shift.”
It took less than five minutes. Portable phone in hand, Katie rushed back into the room, bursting with smiles. “I’m going to the movies with Brooke Mather,” she announced. Then she locked eyes with Steve and cleared her throat. “May I go to the movies with Brooke Mather? The eight o’clock show at the Skywarrior?”
The base cinema was crowded with teens each summer and had been for decades. Steve wondered idly what it would be like to watch the decades slip by in one place.
“Who’s driving you?” asked Grace.
“We can ride our bikes.”
Grace threw the sponge into the sink. “Nice try, kiddo.”
“We can.”
“Of course you can. But you’re not going to. You know the score, sweetheart. The base is—”
“I know. I know. Too crowded with clueless drivers who don’t watch for bikes, especially after dark.”
“Riddled with revved-up Navy guys who have only one thing on their minds,” Emma chimed in, coming down the stairs.
“Yeah, Dad,” Katie said, “what’s with all the revved-up Navy guys? Aren’t you senior officers supposed to keep discipline?”
“No,” he said, “we’re supposed to throw our unfledged daughters in their paths as virgin sacrifices. Go ahead. Ride your bikes. It’ll appease the gods.”
Her face fell and her cheeks ignited. Too late, Steve realized his sarcasm had been too harsh. Lately, he seemed to have an uncanny ability to make his smart daughter feel stupid.
“I’ll take her,” Emma said as Katie studied the floor.
“Take her where?” Brian demanded, clumping downstairs. In a rugby shirt, khaki shorts and Top-Siders, he looked more J. Crew than United States Navy. But Steve didn’t say anything.
“You’re going to take me to Brooke’s, and then you’re giving both of us a ride to the movies.” Katie recovered quickly and addressed her brother in a bossy tone.
“And when it’s over, you’re bringing them home,” Grace added. “Please.” It was the system they had worked out over the summer. The twins were responsible for their sister. It was the price they paid for car privileges. Katie took full advantage of her power over them, particularly Brian. In front of her friends, she liked to sit in the back seat and direct him with a regal “Drive on, James.”
The customary rush to the door ensued. Whereabouts were verified, curfews set, cell phones confirmed operational. As soon as they departed, Steve headed into the study to check his e-mail—the bane of his command these days. On the desk he found a stack of notes in Grace’s handwriting. He recognized the names of shipping companies and local agencies and clubs, along with women’s names and numbers. She belonged on the Navy’s payroll, considering all she did for its families. That was Grace—helping, always helping. Sometimes she was so busy helping other families that the Bennetts were on autopilot.
At dinner she had seemed quieter than usual. Sometimes Grace reminded him of the calm, clear water above a reef. Placid on the surface, a lot going on underneath, invisible yet very real. But he was a flyer, not a diver. And he sure as hell wasn’t a mind reader.
CHAPTER 7
In the wake of the kids’ departure, the house had a hollow air, as though waiting to take a breath. It was funny how houses each had their own personalities, thought Grace. This one was self-consciously cute, with Bavarian-style windows and halfhearted gingerbread trim. It was her least-favorite type of house—a meandering floor plan, boxy rooms, open hallways that amplified noise. The Navy’s idea of officers’ housing was that size matters.
She wandered out onto the porch to watch the kids drive away. Whidbey Island lay so far north that in summer the sun lingered late, painting the sky with deep shades of pink and gold she’d never seen anywhere else. The sight filled her with wistfulness, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on the reason.
The tread of a footstep startled her briefly, and she turned to see Steve there. “Hey, sailor,” she said, instantly getting over the brief moment of surprise. Every once in a while, she forgot he was around. A Navy wife either had all of her husband or none of him. There was no in-between time.
The Bronco’s taillights glowed at the intersection, then disappeared around the corner. A bittersweet feeling swept over her as she watched them go. They looked so independent, heading out into the evening by themselves. She turned to Steve with a heart full of need. “I hate watching them go.”
“Brian’s a good driver.”
“It’s not that. I hate the idea that they’re leaving.”
“Summer’s not quite over yet,” Steve pointed out, clueless.
“I don’t mean school,” she said. “I mean for good.”
“What, do you want them to stay?”
God. He didn’t get it. She turned to the porch rail, planted her elbows on it and stared out across the yard, a cramped rectangle of beaten-down grass trampled by countless families that had lived here before. Far in the distance rose the mountains in a glittering robe of gold, unreachable.
“Don’t get all pissed off at me, Gracie. I didn’t make the rules. The point of raising kids is to prepare them to be independent, so they can leave and find their own lives.”
Logic wasn’t what she needed right now. She needed…she didn’t know how to put it into words. “I’m not mad at you,” she said.
“Then what’s this?” he asked, touching her forehead with his finger, then with his lips. And just like that, her annoyance melted. “You’re frowning.”
She smiled up at him. “Not anymore.”
“Good.”
They stood on the porch together and silence lingered, punctuated by the cry of a gull and the shouts of children playing down the block.
The neighborhood was an uninspired cluster of plain but neat houses designed for wayfaring Navy families. This section was known as officers’ country, housing squadron skippers, executive officers, captains and commanders, lining streets named after aircraft or astronauts. Some of the places had million-dollar views of the mountains to the west, but the Bennetts’ place faced another house that looked just like it.
As they walked back inside, a few lights came on in the windows across the way. The strange wistfulness that had weighted her chest all day pressed harder now, and she felt as though she might burst. Discontent had crept up on her, entered through a side door. Everything around her was changing, and she felt compelled to change, too.
She wanted to talk to Steve, really talk, the way they never did anymore. She wished he would notice her mood, ask her what was on her mind. That would be the day, she thought. She cleared her throat. “Steve.”
“Yeah?”
“When I was out shopping for school clothes with the girls, I looked in the mirror and realized that I’ve turned into a fat lady.” She just blurted it out. It sounded so stupid, spoken aloud.
“What?” he asked.
“Fat and forty.”
“Aw, Gracie,” he said. “You’re not fat and you’re—” He paused, and she could see him doing the math in his head. “Not forty.”
“Okay, a stout thirty-nine, then.”
He chuckled and pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her hair and inhaling as though he’d forgotten the scent of her. And maybe he did forget, she thought, slipping her arms around the familiar muscular torso. Maybe, when he was six months at sea, he forgot the way she smelled, the texture of her hair and the way she tasted. Funny, she had never asked him.
Though she’d known him half her life, there were facets to him that remained a mystery. She pictured the carrier as an alien spacecraft that sucked up five thousand earthlings and took them away for long periods of time, doing experiments on them in the guise of training exercises. Then the earthlings were returned to their home planet, altered in subtle ways.
When he returned from a cruise, his hair was often different. He might have a faint scar from a healed-over cut. Sometimes he grew a mustache. During the first Gulf War, when he returned from a cruise that had run three months longer than scheduled, she even had the strange sense that his whole body chemistry had changed. She remembered running her fingers through his hair so thoroughly that he asked what she was doing.
“Looking for the alien probes,” she had replied.
And even though she might momentarily forget he was in the house, she never, ever forgot how he smelled and tasted, what the beating of his heart sounded like when she leaned her cheek against his chest.
“Where did that come from?” he whispered, rubbing her back.
“What?”
“This forty-and-fat self-flagellation.”
He made her sound so silly. She shouldn’t have spoken up. He couldn’t do anything about it, couldn’t fix what he didn’t know was broken. For that matter, she didn’t know exactly what was broken.
“I told you,” she said, taking another stab at explaining. “A three-way mirror in the dressing room. The kind where you see yourself from behind—and you realize you’re turning into a dump truck. And I’m not flagellating myself. Although if it were a means of fat reduction, I suppose I’d give it a try.” She studied his face by the dying light of the evening. He had the square-jawed, all-American look of a career officer on his way up. The lean body of a warrior. And the kind of smile that made women pause in whatever they were doing and find some reason to sidle up for a closer look.
“I don’t think you can understand this,” she said. “You still fit into the same size Levi’s you did twenty years ago.”
He cupped the palm of his hand and skimmed it down her side, as though mapping the imperfect topography of her body. “I don’t understand how you can look in a mirror and not like what you see.”
For the first time in their marriage, she flinched at his touch. “I’m not fishing for compliments. I swear I’m not.”
“And I’m not doling out compliments. This is the truth. You’re the mother of my children, Gracie,” he said, bending down to kiss her. “You’re beautiful to me.”
And just like that, she let her troubles dissolve. He had, in addition to the physique of a deity, a certain boyish sincerity and fortunate sense of timing that made him irresistible to her. She pressed herself against him, welcoming the growing heat of intimacy. Her eyes drifted shut. She became absorbed in his embrace and in the dreamy promise created by his gently probing tongue. She knew they would make love tonight and that it would be wonderful. It was one of the things she could depend on in her marriage.
“Better?” he whispered.
She nodded, because it was easier than trying to make him understand.
He kissed the top of her head and stepped back.
“You always do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“You’re always the first to let go in an embrace.” He looked completely baffled, so she went on. “The first to leave the bed after we make love.”
He smiled. “Let’s go work on that. I had no idea you had a problem with this, Grace. I’ll stay as long as you like.”
He reached for her, but she moved away. “I don’t have a problem,” she said, wondering how she could possibly make him understand. It wasn’t something obvious, but an aspect of their relationship that, over the years, had slowly and inexorably crept into her awareness. He wasn’t rude about it. He probably didn’t even realize he did it. He was a busy man with important duties.
“It’s just that sometimes I feel like I’m one of the things on your mental list of things to do: tell the wife to get the silly fat notion out of her head, give the kids a pep talk before thrusting them into yet another new school, take command of a carrier air wing, make the world safe for democracy—”
“Jesus, Grace, what’s got you so cynical all of a sudden?”
“It’s not all of a sudden.” She studied his face, that all-American handsome face, and saw genuine confusion in his eyes. He was the sort of man who fixed things—but if he couldn’t see it, he couldn’t fix it. “Never mind. I’m just stressed out. Want to rent a movie?”
“I’ve got a better idea.” He put some music on the CD player, soft, fluttery jazz by Authentic Rhinestone. Then he slipped his arms around her, holding her so close that she disappeared, and drew her into a sexy dance.
“Yeah?” She shut her eyes as desire simmered through her. Even after so many years, he could still make her foolish with wanting him.
“Yeah.” He pressed his thighs to hers. Steve was a fine dancer. He’d been advised to learn at officer training school. He was good at anything and everything that would help him advance his career, she thought, and then felt disloyal. He was a good husband and father, two things the Navy didn’t require of him.
They danced all the way to the bedroom. As Grace drew the curtains shut, he came up behind her and slipped his hands along the buttons of her top, undoing them one by one and sliding the shirt down her arms. Just for a moment, she flashed on that image of herself she’d seen in the dressing room. With a will, she remembered what Steve had said—“You’re beautiful to me.” And he made her feel that way, with his hands and mouth as he finished undressing her and laid her down on the bed. By the time he shed his clothes and joined her, she wasn’t thinking at all.
This was a different sort of dance, one of their own invention, the moves practiced and perfected over the course of years. The intimacy was deep and genuine. It was a haven for Grace, a place where she felt complete and…yes, beautiful. She lost track of the time, and was startled to see, through gaps in the curtains, that the last light of day had finally faded. Steve lay atop her, breathing slowly with contentment.
“I should ask you to dance more often,” he whispered.
She smiled and held him close, their bodies still joined. Even in moments like this, she could never get close enough, could never know him completely, a dilemma that both frustrated and excited her. He was a complicated man who had overcome a brutal childhood, and no matter how much Grace loved him or how well she knew him, there was always a part of him that was a mystery to her.
It wasn’t just his other life on the carrier. The same strength that had allowed him to survive his youth had made him a warrior. When she held him like this, it was hard to believe that, at his very essence, he was a machine trained to kill. The Navy had every possible term for it, but the bald fact was, that was his job. To kill and to train and lead others to kill. That was his secret side, the shadow Steve. He could hold her with the tenderness of a bridegroom. Yet if ordered to do so, he could send men and women to drop bombs on people.
He shuddered one more time, then parted from her, sliding the cool bedsheets up over them both. “You know,” he said, “I think I’ve figured out why kids leave home.”
“Hmm?” Grace sank back against the pillows. “Why is that?”
He folded his hands behind his head. “So their parents can have sex whenever they want.”
“Dream on.” She laughed and moved closer to him, laying her head on his chest. A pleasant sleepiness crept over her, and she could feel his muscles relax.
“I love it here,” she said, her thoughts drifting to the house she’d seen.
The CD changed to an old Rolling Stones collection, and strains of “Ruby Tuesday” drifted through the house.
He slipped his hand under the cool sheet and caressed her. “I love it here, too.”
“Very funny.”
“I’m serious. I’m going to miss you, Grace.”
She knew that tone in his voice. “You’re leaving?”
“I, uh—I’m going to Washington on Tuesday. Briefing at the Pentagon. I’ll be gone a week.”
She tamped down a familiar welling of resentment. Of course he was leaving. That was nothing new, and a week’s absence was minor. But maybe what she resented was that he’d waited until she was drowsy with sex before springing it on her. All right, she thought, that was his dream. Maybe it was time to try out hers on him.
“Well,” she said, “that’s your project. Here’s mine.”
“Where?”
She grabbed her robe and slipped it on. Despite his romantic words earlier, she felt no need to put her middle-aged body on parade. She switched on the light and found the real estate brochure on the bedside table.
“The girls and I went to an open house,” she said, handing him the sheet and putting on her reading glasses. Steve didn’t need glasses yet. Of course he didn’t.
Heaving a long-suffering sigh, he scooted up in bed and scowled at the flyer. “Yeah?” he said. “So?”
She realized she was holding her breath. The brochure showed a reasonably flattering picture of Marcia’s home basking in the sun, clear sky and blue water in the distance. But she wanted him to see what she saw, a house on a bluff, surrounded by towering trees, an apron of emerald grass and a view of the sea. She wanted him to see a place that would become theirs, a place where they might sit on the deck and hold hands, watching the stars come out at night. She bit her lip, feeling foolishly sentimental. It was just a damned house. A plain-looking house owned by a widow who had spent her entire marriage there.
He scanned the information quickly and efficiently, with total absorption. That was the pilot in him, able to suck up multiple facts in moments. In a squadron ready room before a flight, he’d be handed charts and kneeboard cards. A pilot had mere seconds to memorize the code words of the day and mission specifics on a color-coded briefing card.
Yet when he lifted his gaze to her, his expression was one of total incomprehension. Clearly he needed remedial work.
Grace took the flyer from him and set it aside. She’d never understood how he could frustrate her and turn her on all at once. “Well?” she whispered, turning to nibble at his ear. “Do you like it?”
“I get the idea there’s only one right answer to that question.” He slipped his hand inside her robe.
“I want it,” she said.
“Me, too,” he agreed.
She pushed his hand away. “Really, Steve. I want to buy this house.”
He fell still. “Gracie, we’re only going to be here a couple of years. Three, max. Then we’ll be stuck with a house here.”
“You don’t get stuck with a house. You own it. You live in it. It’s where you go at the end of the day—”
“Not if you’re transferred to the Pentagon.”
His career again. She used to find it so exciting, used to look forward to each new assignment. But lately her thinking had shifted. She wanted permanence. She wanted a home. “It’s time, Steve. I need something of my own for when the kids are gone. A place we can always come back to, an anchor.”
“What if we have to sell it and it doesn’t sell? How can we take that kind of risk?”
She couldn’t help it; she laughed. “A risk-averse Navy pilot. Who knew?”
“When I’m on the job, I put myself at risk. But this could affect the whole family. The kids are going to college. Sure, Brian is headed for the Naval Academy, so there won’t be any tuition for him, but…”
Grace figured it was the wrong time to set him straight about Brian and the Academy, so she bit her tongue.
“But what about the girls?” he asked. “Even with what we’ve set aside, it’s going to be tough enough paying tuition. This isn’t the time to be taking on a big mortgage.”
“No, it’s not the time. We should have done it years ago. The down payment can come from my grandmother’s estate, and we can easily qualify for a VA loan.”
He blew out a long-suffering sigh. “If you absolutely need a house, let’s find something in our price range. This is waterfront property. It’s twice what we can afford.”
“We’ve been saving for years.”
“Look, we had a plan, Grace. We were going to wait.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I want this house, Steve. That’s what people use their money for. It’s what they save for.” She held back from pointing out that everyone else their age seemed to be homeowners, many of them on their second or third home.
He scowled at the list price. “I know you’re a genius with the budget, Grace. But a house—” he pushed the flyer away from him “—was something we always said we’d talk about…later. And this one is completely beyond our means.”
“What if I found a way to afford it?” she asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“I could work.” The idea had been simmering inside her even before her encounter with Marcia. Now a new sort of energy heated up. This was a possibility, not a daydream. Maybe she should have approached Steve differently, eased into the topic with him, but like he said, he was leaving. At the moment, he was glaring at her as though she was the enemy.
“I’m not a traitor,” she said. “This is not some wacko idea I’ve had. And I’m not talking about a part-time clerical job on base somewhere. It finally hit me today. There’s something I’m good at, and I could actually make a career out of it. I’m going to be an executive relocator.”
“A what?”
“Executive relocator—someone who helps people move. In the civilian world that’s worth something.”
“It sounds sketchy to me.”
“Don’t you dare be condescending.”
“I’m being practical. Setting yourself up for business is a long-term proposition.”
“These days a business can be run almost entirely from the Web.” She sat on the edge of the bed and hugged her knees up to her chest. “I don’t need a physical location, just a virtual presence on the Web, a voice on the phone. I’ve been doing it for years as an ombudsman, anyway.”
“I know that, Grace. You have incredible talent. Hell, I’ve seen you juggle schedules and plan a move like an air traffic controller. I’ve seen you find schools for kids with special needs, boarding kennels for dogs and parrots and drug rehab for more personnel than I care to remember. The families of the air wing need you. You’re too damned busy for a regular job.”
“Will you listen to yourself?” she said, incredulous.
“Grace, honey, I don’t want you to have to work for a living. That’s my job. I want you to be here for the kids.”
“While you were out they grew up, Steve. They don’t need me home twenty-four hours a day anymore.”
“Maybe I need you there, Grace. Did you ever think of that?”
“My God, no. I can honestly say I never did. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
He pulled on a pair of boxer shorts and paced the room. He always got restless when something was bugging him.
She found herself staring at his chest. Between his perfectly sculpted pecs nestled a St. Christopher medal he never took off. She’d once asked him where it came from. He said someone gave it to him just before he went to sea for the first time. Now the dark hair on his chest was sprigged in gray, which she found unaccountably sexy. Why was it that he seemed to become more attractive as he aged, while she just seemed to turn soft and faded? It wasn’t fair. He didn’t need his looks. He had everything else.
“It’s not that we can’t afford it,” he said. “We can, if we’re careful. But years ago, we agreed that owning a house doesn’t fit our lifestyle. When I retire, we’ll go anywhere you want. That was always the plan.”
“Plans can change.” Once upon a time, she had agreed with him about the burden of a house, given their way of life. But once upon a time was long ago.
“When did you change the rules on us?” She tried to answer, but he cut her off. “A house is a burden. A financial hemorrhage. What’s the point of buying a place when we’re moving in a few years?”
“What’s the point? How about our future? How about doing something for us instead of the Navy for a change?”
“I thought you were on board with our long-term plans. You’ve raised the three best kids in the world. I’m riding high in the Navy. What can a career for you add to that?”
“I can’t believe you just asked me that.”
“I can’t believe what you’re asking of me.” He opened a dresser drawer and started rummaging around. “Why now? Why this house?”
“There’s something about it, Steve. It’s special. At least come and see it with me.”
“It’s pointless, Grace. A waste of time.”
“I don’t need your permission to buy a house,” she said.
His back stiffened. “You wouldn’t do that.”
She had no idea whether she would or not. He seemed a lot more sure of her than she herself was.
“We both agreed that we wouldn’t get a permanent house of our own until I retire,” he repeated.
“So retire, and we’ll buy the house.”
“Very funny, Grace.”
“Maybe I wasn’t joking.”
He yanked a T-shirt over his head. “Yes,” he said. “You were.”
CHAPTER 8
“It’s the last official night of summer,” Emma said after they dropped off Katie and Brooke at the theater.
“How’s that?” Brian asked, jiggling his knee as he signaled to pull out into the road. Even while driving, he never sat still. He was always drumming, tapping or somehow moving around. It drove his teachers nuts, but his coaches appreciated all that excess energy.
“Dipshit,” she said. “School Monday.”
“Yippee.”
“So not only is it the last night of summer, it’s the last Saturday night before senior year.” The last time she’d go school shopping with her mom and Katie, the last time she and Brian would head out into a clear, cool night, looking for a fitting way to mark the end of summer before they went their separate ways.
He eased out onto the road. “Yeah, so?”
“So nothing,” said Emma, tucking away an old feeling of exasperation. “It was just an observation.” Sometimes she wished her twin had been a girl. Brian was such a guy. So dense and literal.
“We should make the most of it, then,” he said a moment later, surprising her. “Where’s the party?”
“Mueller’s Point,” she said, “as usual.” They knew all the common rendezvous points, because they’d had the entire summer to figure out the social scene. Both twins were adept at making friends quickly and easily, wherever they went. It wasn’t a gift, exactly. It was a survival skill. Moving every couple of years, you either learned to adapt and settle in fast, or you died the slow, excruciating, life-scarring death of the social outcast.
The life of a Navy brat was not for wimps. By the age of six, she and Brian had learned to reconnoiter a place, move in and make their mark in just a short time. The system wasn’t flawless, but it worked pretty well. To this day, she still kept in touch with a handful of kids all over the globe, kids she’d met and brought into her heart, shared a warm but temporary bond of friendship with before moving on. It was frustrating sometimes, because every once in a while, she really clicked with someone, only to have to leave just when it felt comfortable to share her life with that person. Each time she moved away, the goodbyes were filled with heartfelt promises: I’ll never forget you. I’ll write every day. I’ll come back to visit each year. Even though delivered with absolute sincerity, the pledges were never fulfilled. Not even once. Emma figured that was life for you, an unending strain of farewells and false promises.
“I guess it is pretty weird,” Brian said as he drove toward the waterfront county park. It had a boat ramp, a dock and a fire pit on the beach. Over the summer they’d learned it was the favored hangout for a sizable group of kids. “The thought of no more school, ever.”
“Except college,” she reminded him.
“Right. College.” His voice sounded flat and glum.
“Quit pouting,” she said. “You’ll be playing baseball and running track. How bad can that be?”
“Dad wants me to go to the Naval Academy.”
Her brother would be offered an appointment, of course. He was a shoo-in. But getting the appointment was only the first hurdle. Getting through was the harder task. Unlike Brian, Emma had always been fascinated by the process. It took everything you had, and more. It took a willingness to give up your whole life, to surrender everything that made you unique. You had to make yourself over in the image of the Navy. A warrior with a spine of steel. And a degree in engineering.
“It’s not such a bad idea, Brian.”
“Geez, not you, too.”
“It’s a hell of a deal. You get an education and a job, guaranteed. An awesome job, by the way.”
“And Dad gets his son in the Naval Academy,” Brian said. “That’s what it’s all about, and don’t pretend it isn’t.”
“Well, sure it is, but so what?”
“He wants it for him, not for me. He never got to go to the Academy, and he thinks sending me there will fix it.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“I could run off and join the circus.”
“Right. You could call your act World’s Dumbest Brother.”
“Well, hell, Emma. I’m eighteen years old—”
“Really? I never would have guessed.”
“Very funny. What I’m saying is, when does it get to be my life? When do I get to do all that Goethe shit about going confidently in the direction of my dreams?”
Although she had the urge to laugh at him, Emma was caught by what he said. “You should be doing that now.”
He was quiet for a while as he drove. The night swished by, a streak of stars above the treetops. Finally Brian said, “I am.”
“You are what?”
“Going for what I want, not what Dad wants.”
“Art school, you mean.” Emma felt a grudging admiration for him. He’d wanted that forever.
“I need to take my shot.”
“I know. But Dad will say it’s not practical, that you’ll never make a living doing art. And maybe he’s not so wrong, Brian.” She thought about her brother’s magical drawings. He created new worlds, whole universes with such clarity of vision that sometimes she believed they were real places. “But then again,” she added, “maybe he just doesn’t want you to be a starving artist.”
“It’s my choice to make it work or fail, not Dad’s. Being a starving artist is a lot more appealing to me than the Navy.”
Emma said nothing, but she knew one thing for sure. Brian would never go to the Naval Academy. His hero was Robert Crumb, not John Paul Jones.
“So have you told Dad yet?” she asked.
“Idiot. Of course not.”
“Are you going to tell him before he goes on deployment?”
“Hey, how about worrying about your own plans for a change?” Brian asked, parking the truck.
“I don’t have any plans, so I’m not worried.”
He shook his head. “You’d better start playing the lottery, then.” He grabbed a jumbo bag of Chee-tos—his contribution to what was loosely termed a “party”—and took off without waiting for Emma. That was fine with her. Brothers and sisters didn’t go to parties together.
All their lives she and Brian had struggled with this. On their fifth birthday, they had thrown themselves into a jealous row that didn’t end until Emma sank her teeth deep enough in Brian’s arm to draw blood. After that year, they’d always had separate parties, one supervised by their mother, one by their father unless he was at sea. In that case, someone else would step in, usually another Navy mother.
Their rivalry was typical of twins, according to the experts. Emma knew this because her mother had read everything ever written about twins. Parenting Twins. Educating Twins. Raising Twins as Individuals. There was a whole body of literature out there, it seemed, to enable twins to feel normal.
It was dumb to pretend there was nothing unique about twinship, she thought, putting on lip gloss while studying her mouth in the visor mirror. Being a twin wasn’t normal, but it didn’t have to be a problem if you didn’t feel like making it into one. Now that they were practically through high school, it wasn’t such a big deal. But that still didn’t mean she felt like showing up at a party with her brother.
The action was in full swing already. A group of kids sat around a big bonfire, and music roared from someone’s car stereo. Bottle rockets left over from the Fourth of July whined and popped. A few grocery sacks and ice chests hinted that the foray for beer had met with success. The last of the daylight lingered on the water, flickering with the motion of the waves.
The sight of her friends gathered around a beach fire lifted her spirits. The glowing logs gave off a peculiar aroma, and the lively yellow flames illuminated about a dozen kids, mostly seniors. They were a mixture of Navy kids and locals who knew their way around.
Driftwood logs, smoothed and bleached by storms, lay like giant pickup sticks along the rack line of the beach and provided seating around the fire. Brian had already eased into the group and was sitting between two varsity cheerleaders. Girls were nuts for her brother’s goofy charm, his looks and the offhand kindness that was second nature to him.
As she stepped into the circle of light Cory Crowther stood up to greet her. She liked that. He was also sports-hero handsome, with big shoulders, a great smile and probably an ego to match, but he seemed to genuinely like her. Although he’d been away most of the summer, everyone knew him—captain of the football team, son of a Carrier Air Group commander.
“Hey, Emma,” he said in a good-natured drawl, perhaps elongated by a hint of beer. He patted the spot beside him. “Come sit with us. You know Darlene Cooper, right?”
“Hey, Darlene.” Emma smiled at the girl beside Cory.
“Hey.” Darlene was a heavyset girl in a tie-dyed T-shirt, with multiple piercings and multicolored hair. She was extremely cool, Emma thought.
Darlene pushed a cooler toward her. “Beer?”
“Thanks.” Emma took a can of Rainier, even though she didn’t care that much for it. She’d take a few sips and carry the can around for a while, just so they wouldn’t think she was a dork.
“So are you nervous about starting school in a new place?” Cory asked.
Emma shook her head. “If I let moving freak me out, I’d have shot myself by third grade.”
“I’m glad you didn’t shoot yourself.” His leg moved—maybe accidentally, maybe not—so that it was aligned with hers, warm and solid. She liked the feel of it and didn’t move away. Maybe Cory was a bit full of himself but he was a key player around here. He was important in the small, contained, sometimes brutal world of high school, and she could do worse than win him over as an ally.
“Where are you from?” Darlene asked.
“Most recently from Corpus, on the Texas Gulf coast. How about you?”
Darlene took a big slug of beer. “All over, like you. Whenever my dad gets orders, off we go. It’s just the two of us.”
“Your mom’s not with you?”
“Nope. She took off when I was a baby and I haven’t seen her since.”
Emma sensed the hurt beneath Darlene’s nonchalant attitude. “So what do you do when your dad goes to sea?”
“Depends. Sometimes I stay with friends or family. One time I had to go to a foster home because there wasn’t nobody.” She shook back her candy-colored hair and took another sip of beer. “This year’s going to be cool, though. Now that I’m eighteen, I get the apartment all to myself while he’s on deployment. Our complex has hot tubs and a pool in the courtyard.”
“That is so bitchin’,” said Shea Hansen, who sat across the fire. “I can’t wait to be out on my own.”
Shea had tanned legs and wore loose nylon athletic shorts, like a runner. Her father was the minister of Trinity Lutheran Church in Oak Harbor, and Shea taught vacation Bible school there. Emma knew the whole community would be shocked by the sight of Shea sitting around and drinking beer. Adults tended to see what they wanted to see. And in hometown girls like Shea, they saw the good girl who could do no wrong.
Emma pointed out the varsity bars, divisional championship and state finals pins on the boiled-wool front of Cory’s letter jacket. “You’ve been at the same high school all four years,” she said. “How’s that work?”
He stretched his feet toward the fire. “We were transferred here five years ago, and my mom decided this was where she wanted to stay.”
“So what happened when your dad got orders?”
“My mom and I stayed put. The old man spent his next two assignments as the oldest guy in the BOQ. He’s back now, learning to be a family man again. He never was much good at it.”
Emma braced her hand on the beach log and turned to look out at the inky water, speckled with reflected stars. She couldn’t imagine her father in the bachelor officers’ quarters. He’d shrivel up and die there. Everyone’s family was different. She was glad her parents believed in staying together, whether the assignment was to Fallon, Nevada, or the wilds of Alaska.
“No way was my mother moving after she found her dream house over on Penn Cove,” Cory explained.
“This place seems to have that effect on people,” she said, thinking of how her mother had looked when they’d gone to see that funky house on the bluff.
“Must be nice, staying in one place for five whole years.” Darlene opened another beer.
“No, you’ve got it nice,” Cory said. “Your own apartment. As soon as they start their cruise, it’ll be party central over there.”
Darlene tossed a stick into the heart of the fire. She watched the flames wrap around it. “You bet.”
Emma couldn’t help feeling sorry for Darlene, who lived alone with her dad and had raised herself without a mother. She drank too much and didn’t quite manage to hide the loneliness in her eyes.
“So do you miss Texas a lot?” Shea asked Emma. “Did you leave a boyfriend behind?”
“No, and yes.” Emma grinned. “Texas weather is too hot for me. And yeah, there was a guy.” She’d dated Garrett for six months, and he’d been the best boyfriend in the world. He was polite, kind and extremely cool. His father was a country club golf pro and his family had never lived anywhere but Corpus. When she left Texas, they had both cried. He promised to write, call and e-mail every day. She promised nothing of the sort. After so many partings, she knew better. But her crazy heart didn’t. It always broke, no matter how hard she tried to protect it.
“You don’t have a boyfriend now,” Cory pointed out.
“That’s right.”
He lined up his leg with hers again. “Maybe you’ll get lucky.”
A shriek that sounded like an Indian war whoop split the air. The thud of bare feet on the wooden planks of the dock, followed by a splash, heralded the evening’s festivities. Jumping off the dock into the icy Sound was a time-honored local sport of murky origin and questionable purpose. At low tide, the pilings were just tall enough to be deliciously scary, and the water still deep enough to be safe.
The first one in, a skinny kid named Theo, bobbed in the dark water, the moonlight glancing off his sleek head. “Come on in,” he yelled. “Don’t let me freeze out here alone.”
“I’m in,” said Darlene, peeling off her shirt and shorts to the swimsuit she wore underneath. More splashes erupted. Screams and shouts rang through the clear night air, and the noise held a special quality of abandon, Emma thought. Monday morning was in the back of everyone’s mind. That, and maybe the thought that had been nagging at Emma lately—in just a short time, they’d all be out in the world, on their own. The prospect was exhilarating, intimidating, inevitable.
With a laugh, Shea jumped up and went to join the others. She moved like a ship in a storm, and Emma imagined she could hear the sound of beer sloshing in the girl’s stomach.
“She can swim, right?” she asked Cory.
“Hell, in that condition, she can probably fly.”
“How much beer did she drink?”
He grinned. “The question is, how much of this did she have?” He held up a tiny Ziploc bag containing six pills marked with a small but recognizable stemmed cherry. He slid one onto the palm of his hand. “Your turn, new girl.”
Emma hated being in this position. It was not a good idea to say no to the big man on campus. However, it was an even worse idea to mess with Ecstasy. “I’ll stick with beer,” she said, and tipped up her can of Rainier just to make her point.
“You chicken?” he asked.
Emma looked around and realized that she and Cory were alone by the fire. Everyone had abandoned them for the dock, and the deep night beyond the circle of fire lent the moment a certain intimacy.
“No,” she said with a laugh, and tossed her head. “You shouldn’t, either. Aren’t you applying for an appointment to the Naval Academy?”
“Hell, yes. It’s a tradition among the Crowther men.”
“Yeah? Last I heard, the Academy frowned on that stuff.”
He put away the bag. “I’ll clean up before my physical.”
“No, I mean, if you’re going in the military—” She broke off and waved her hand. “I’m all for personal liberty, but I’d rest easier knowing people in the military were clean and sober.”
“Dream on, new girl. Some of the best drugs on the market come through the military.”
She dropped the subject. She knew there was a drug problem in the Navy. Plenty of men and women in her father’s command struggled with it; some of them were barely older than her. Her father ordered sailors into drug treatment or AA, probably more frequently than she knew.
“So what about you, huh?” Cory asked. “You applying for college?”
A familiar but unsettling sense of indecision prickled over her like a skin rash. There was something wrong with her. She was sure of it. Other kids had at least some idea of what they wanted to do after high school. But when Emma considered her future, she saw no clear picture of any sort of life that made sense.
She slid a glance at Cory, considering him. He was probably one of the best-looking guys she’d ever met. But you didn’t confess the secrets of your heart to a football god. He didn’t even notice that she’d failed to answer his question.
“Why are you looking at me like that, new girl?”
“Why do you keep calling me new girl?”
“Would you rather be called old girl?”
“I’d rather be called Emma.”
“Emma. That’s a nice name.”
He had a way of looking at her as though she really mattered. She couldn’t tell if that charm was genuine or if it was his way of flirting. The intimate sense of aloneness seemed magnified by the fire. She could hardly see beyond the pool of light, though she could still hear her friends laughing and splashing.
“Why don’t you have a girlfriend, Cory?” she asked him.
“How do you know I don’t have a girlfriend?”
“You’re sitting here with me on the last night of summer. If you had a girlfriend, you’d be with her.”
He turned to face her, and the breeze stirred his shining dark hair. His hand came up and lightly slid across her back. “Maybe I am,” he said, his eyes clearing, his all-American smile practically glowing in the dark. “Maybe I am.”
She laughed softly, though she felt a thrill of attraction. “You are so full of it.”
But she let him kiss her, anyway. She wanted him to. And he was good at it. He seemed to know just how to slant his mouth and circle his strong arms around her to heighten her awareness of his body. She liked a boy who understood the intricate choreography of a kiss instead of fumbling around and shoving himself at her the way some guys did. She’d missed this all summer long, missed the feel of a boy’s arms around her, his lips on hers.
He pushed his tongue into her mouth. The intimacy both shocked and thrilled Emma. A part of her—the part from the Grace Bennett School of Proper Behavior—compelled her to pull away. It was trashy to make out with a boy you hardly knew.
Reluctantly she put her hands on his rock-hard upper arms and moved away. But that only made him hold her tighter, and another part of her—the wicked Emma part—indulged in the fierce sweetness of the kiss, letting sheer sensation block out common sense. She didn’t care who saw her or what they thought. It was the end of summer and she was about to be the new girl for the last time. And life was good.
Until Brian interrupted. Yelling like a maniac, he raced into the circle of light cast by the fire. “Go on in,” he yelled, spraying them with drops of icy water. “The water’s fine.”
Emma and Cory broke apart like a pair of negative charges. She straightened her shirt and glowered at her brother. Wearing only his shorts, he stood shivering beside the fire. His skin was covered in goose bumps, his hair plastered against his head and his eyelashes spiky from salt water. Darlene and another girl Emma recognized trotted along at his heels. The other girl’s name was Lindy, but Emma and Katie had another name for her: the Stalker. She was crazy about Brian and had been after him all summer.
“Don’t mind me,” he said. “Just getting warmed up for the next round.”
“So were we,” said Cory, laughing but baring his teeth in annoyance.
“Do me a favor, Crowther,” Brian said. “Next time you decide to grope my sister, don’t do it in front of me. It skeezes me out.” He gave an exaggerated shudder.
“Try minding your own business,” Cory snapped, using a stick to stir up a shower of sparks in the fire.
“Hey, I know why you go out for football every year,” Brian said.
“Because I’m the best there is.”
“Because you’re too fat and slow to make the track team,” Brian said. As he spoke, he coiled into a runner’s crouch.
With a growl, Cory lunged at Brian. His big angry hands grasped at empty air. Like a cartoon Road Runner, Brian took off. Even barefoot, he managed to stay ahead of Cory. He led him on a chase all over the park, dodging behind trash cans and picnic shelters, veering and feinting in and out of the shadows.
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