The Girl in the Mirror(26)

Summer sits up straight. Her eyes are round. “May! Virginia’s sixteen on the first of May!”

It’s almost April already. No doubt the wedding is one month away.

Nice is dumb. I can’t believe that Summer and Adam worked out Francine’s evil plot before I did, and yet they didn’t think to check the legal marriage age in New Zealand. So Summer is risking a one-hundred-million-dollar pregnancy on an ocean voyage. If Summer miscarries, there won’t be time to conceive again before Virginia’s wedding. Everyone knows teenagers are crazy fertile. Virginia will be pregnant before the cake is cut.





7

The Zone




“What are you doing crossing an ocean in your condition?” are my next words to Summer. “A lot is riding on this pregnancy!” I set the iPad down on the cockpit seat and take an honest look at my pregnant sister. Despite the soft glow of the setting sun, she looks frazzled. Her lips are chapped; there are rings under her eyes.

“Don’t be so Victorian,” Summer replies. “It’s healthy to be active during pregnancy. And plenty of women miscarry even though they sit quietly at home. I could have stayed in Thailand and lost the baby and Bathsheba! Besides, I refuse to live a life dictated by the whims of a wicked stepmother. Even if I had known the legal age for marriage in New Zealand, it wouldn’t have changed anything. I mean, I don’t care that Francine’s trying to trick us out of the money. I care what she’s doing to her own daughter. As if the marriage wasn’t bad enough, Virginia has to go to bed with the boy and make a baby! It’s child trafficking!”

This is very high-minded of Summer. Somehow, I think Virginia’s happy to be trafficked for that sort of money. She’s already scored herself a ring that looks almost as big as Summer’s princess-cut diamond.

I feel as if my head is in a vise. It’s more than the thought of two sisters pregnant, which somehow makes me feel unsexed. There’s also something masculine about being skipper. I haven’t worn Adam’s skipper cap much, although Summer wears her big crew cap all the time, even when she’s in the pilothouse.

I’ve taken charge of the boat, but not of the crew. A skipper should always set rules, especially when people are doing solo watches. And I remember Summer merrily pointing the boat straight downwind the day we left Thailand. The girl is no sailor.

“I should have said this before,” I say. “I know you mostly do, but now I want it to be a rule that you stay in the pilothouse on your watches. We don’t want you slipping over in your condition. Call me if anything needs doing.”

I can’t believe I’ve let her stay up till midnight each night so I can get a few hours’ sleep at a normal hour. If Virginia gets the money, there’ll be no scraps for me. Not Bathsheba, not any yacht, not even grocery money.

“From now on I’m only sleeping during the day,” I say. “I’ll keep watch all night. You need your rest.”



Forty-eight hours later, we’re still in the zone. We’ve only made two hundred miles, which is my fault. My stubborn attempts to sail on my watches have resulted in lots of swearing, a little seasickness, and zero progress. Bathsheba has lolled drunkenly in the windless washing-machine water while her sails flapped uselessly. Those few times when the wind did strike, with pounding warm rain, she would heel so violently, it was as though a giant hand had pressed her sailcloth flat against the sea.

Summer has motored all the way through her watches, with the sails safely furled, making better progress. Even so, we’ve somehow drifted forty miles back east. I’m surprised, because the charts don’t show any strong currents here, but I try not to let it get to me. The key is to get south to the trade winds. Then we’ll make up lost ground fast enough. Summer is relying on me, and so is her unborn child.

During the long nights awake, fruitlessly trying to sail, I can’t stop thinking about Virginia. I’ve never had much time for my half siblings—when you have a twin you don’t need more sisters, and in any case, all four of them are pale reflections of Summer.

Virginia is nice enough, but she’s boring. I don’t even know what her hobbies are, apart from incest and stealing other people’s fortunes.

But I feel protective of her, a feeling at odds with my new protectiveness toward Summer. Virginia’s still a kid. Why didn’t Summer and Adam speak out about this engagement? If they, or I, don’t intervene, Virginia’s going to end up married to a relative and pregnant for no reason whatsoever.

“Of course I want to stop the wedding,” Summer says when I broach the topic in the cockpit at dinnertime. The afternoon of abortive sailing has killed her culinary zeal. The pasta puttanesca has an odd, canned flavor, and Summer barely touches hers, though I wolf mine down. “Too many things were happening at once,” she says. “I’d just done the pregnancy test, we’d checked the boat out of Thailand, and Tarquin had pus all over his nappy—”

“Stop,” I say, choking on an olive. “I get the picture.”

“Remember, we didn’t realize the wedding was imminent. And there’s still plenty of time to tell Virginia before the first of May. But you see . . .” Summer closes her eyes and places a graceful hand on her little belly. “It’s hard to describe. I feel so protective of this budding life. It feels wrong to reveal her existence to my enemies, to people who wish me harm, when she’s so new, so vulnerable.”