Twenty Years Later(14)
They’d brought down the sails and the engine was fighting against the waves and the currents. The marina was more than two miles away and only choppy water and black skies were visible. The ocean lifted the magnificent boat into the air and dropped it like a toy into the crashing waves. Avery felt the Oyster pulling to the starboard side and she had trouble reining it in. The wheel wanted to twist clockwise and she fought to keep her westward course. The big boat, however, was pulling too hard. Something was wrong. Then she noticed the heel. No, not a heel but a dip. The bow was inching downward, as if ready to dive into the sea. She thought it was a swell that had dipped the front of the boat, but when it didn’t recover she knew it was sinking.
She lifted the cover of the DSC—digital selective calling—button and pressed it, sending a distress signal to the Coast Guard telling them the name of the vessel and her exact location in longitude and latitude. For good measure, and because she was scared to death, she picked up the transmitter and placed it to her lips.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Claire-Voyance. Mayday, mayday, mayday.”
The squawk of the voice was loud and static filled, yet barely audible over the rain and wind.
“Go ahead, Claire-Voyance, this is the Coast Guard. We have your location and are dispatching a crew. What’s your situation?”
“We’re an Oyster 625 in heavy rain and high winds. Four-to six-foot white caps and taking on water.”
“Roger that, Claire-Voyance. How many onboard?”
“Two,” she yelled over the roar of the waves. “We’re in a squall and taking on water. We’re heavily pitched to the starboard side.”
“What’s your timeframe, Claire-Voyance?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, as a wave crashed down over the bow of the boat. “My brother went below deck to find the source of the breach. To see if he could contain it.”
“Tell your brother to come above board. We’ll stay with you until our crew arrives.”
“We won’t have time,” Avery said as another wave engulfed the bow. “We’re capsizing.”
Avery bolted up in bed before she knew she was awake. It was her normal reaction to the recurrent dream, and she had determined it was a defense mechanism. Jolt herself awake so she didn’t have to relive the image of the Oyster’s bow dipping below the surface and then twisting vertically before spearing to the bottom of the ocean. Wake herself before her mind replayed her battle with the sea as she fought against the six-foot waves that did their best to drown her.
She lay back in bed and sunk her head into the pillow, pushing away all the confusing thoughts that hid in the shadows of her mind and waited to surface each summer when Avery made her trip home. She couldn’t allow those thoughts to distract her from what she needed to do. She had the summer to tie up the frayed and loose ends of her family’s saga. What happened after that would be out of her control. If, at that point, the floodgates opened and all the sordid details of her past spilled forth, at least she would have done her best for the ones she loved.
CHAPTER 8
Sister Bay, WI Friday, June 18, 2021
A VERY WAS BACK ON THE ROAD BY 6 A.M. THE FOLLOWING MORNING with a tall coffee in the console—two creams, two sugars—smooth reggae on the radio, and open road in front of her. East of Denver she slipped onto I-80 where she’d stay for two days. Lincoln, Nebraska, was her second overnight. On Friday morning, she crossed the entire state of Iowa before finding the Wisconsin boarder. She headed northeast, conquering the state on a diagonal track. White cedar and jack pines soon dominated the landscape as far as the eye could see. The lodge pole pines reminded her of her teenage years and the summers she spent in this part of the country.
By 3:30 p.m. Friday afternoon she made it to the southern edge of the thumb of the Door County peninsula. She drove north on Highway 42 and followed the two-lane road for forty miles. The shores of Lake Michigan’s Green Bay were to the west as she passed through the towns of Egg Harbor and Fish Creek. Eagle Harbor glistened in the afternoon sun as she navigated through the busy town of Ephraim. The red-striped awning of Wilson’s ice cream parlor filled her mind with memories of long, hot summers as a teenager—the best of her life.
Toward the tip of the peninsula Avery found Sister Bay, Wisconsin, the town where she had spent every summer of her childhood. Avery’s parents had shipped her from Manhattan to Wisconsin, where she spent the summer, starting in the sixth grade, along with other wealthy kids from around the country, at Connie Clarkson’s School of Sailing. Eighty percent of the kids at the summer camp came from the Midwest. The rest traveled from the West and East Coasts and were kids whose parents were hungry for them to learn to sail at one of the most prestigious and soughts after institutions in the country.
Avery’s parents had done the same for her older brother, Christopher, whose return home at the end of every summer came with grand tales of life on the water, harnessing the Lake Michigan winds and gliding through Green Bay. The names and places became legend to Avery. Washington Island, Rock Island, St. Martin Island, Summer Island, Big Bay de Noc, and Peninsula Point Lighthouse. Avery couldn’t wait for her turn. When it finally came, she seized the opportunity. By the time Avery was in eighth grade she could manage a twenty-two-foot schooner by herself. During high school, Avery returned to Sister Bay each summer as a sailing instructor—a position typically reserved for college students but one Avery earned from her advanced skills on the water. At seventeen she was a more polished sailor than any of the college-aged kids who taught at the school, and she could give many of the adults a run for their money. During college her summers were spent running Connie’s school as the chief instructor. Avery owed her work ethic and indomitable spirit to the summers spent in Sister Bay, and specifically to Connie Clarkson, the owner of the sailing school and Avery’s mentor. As she navigated the last mile of her journey, Avery’s thoughts shifted from those wonderful summers of her youth to the troubled times of recent. Things were easier as a kid, when all she cared about was being on the water and harnessing the wind. Things were easier then, before she learned that everything in her life was a fraud.