The Girl in the Mirror(27)

She. Summer can’t know her baby’s sex yet, but she imagines a daughter. It’s not surprising when she already has Tarquin, but the thought tears at my insides.

I suppose it is because this baby will be “the Carmichael heir” that I’ve always imagined it would be a boy. When Noah and I were trying to conceive, I assumed our baby would be male. I never imagined myself having a daughter. I never allowed myself to.

I stare at Summer’s tanned abdomen, half revealed by the gold sarong she’s taken to wearing every day now. Perhaps she’s bursting out of her other clothes already.

Legally, Summer’s baby is my niece, but genetically, she’ll be as much my daughter as she is Summer’s. I’ll experience the glory and magic of laying eyes on my offspring, my genetic legacy, for the first time, not with my own baby but with Summer’s. I’ll hold her in my arms, smell her and feel her weight, but however much Summer lets me hold the baby, I’ll have to hand her back.

Somehow, it feels as if Summer has stolen from me.

“You look like the walking dead, Iris,” says Summer. “You can’t keep staying up all night. I haven’t been getting to sleep before midnight anyway. Go and get some rest.”

I argue, but Summer is insistent. “I’m young and healthy, and I’m a night owl these days. All I’m going to do is sit here and keep watch while Dave sails the boat.” She pats the autopilot control. “I promise to call you if anything needs to be done. In fact, I keep meaning to tell you this, or did you already know? If you want to check on me, you can watch me on TV.” She gestures toward the stateroom.

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“So you don’t know? I thought Dad might have told you. There’s a camera mounted on the pilothouse right above the compass, and it’s wired to the stateroom TV. You remember how the TV never worked? That’s because Dad didn’t want us to know how to turn it on. He kept a remote control hidden in that locked drawer above the bed, the drawer I’m keeping my wedding ring in while we sail, you know. Those times when we thought Dad was trusting us to stand watch on our own? He could check on us without getting out of bed.”

“So have you been watching me?”

Summer laughs. “Of course not. I’m not even sure if it still works. I’ve been sleeping in the quarter berth, remember?”

I’m relieved. My time on the helm, especially at night, when I let my thoughts wander, is my most private time. I’ve spent more time than I would like to admit thinking about Adam. Perhaps my fantasies could be read on my face or in the movement of my body. If anyone could read me, it would be my twin.

But I also feel betrayed. Not by Summer; she’s clearly telling the truth. By Dad. The night of my first solo watch, I reveled in the responsibility and the solitude. And he was spying on me.

I’m still uneasy about Summer staying up so late, but I’m exhausted, and in the end, sleep wins out over common sense. I start the engine, furl our flapping sails, check Bathsheba’s course, and roll into bed. God help me, I leave my dumb, pregnant sister up there on her own.

“Wake me at midnight,” I say, as I always do, and she says, “Of course.”



I wake in the stateroom, facedown on the bed as usual, sunshine kissing my neck. It’s bold day. Bathsheba is thrumming with engine noise. I look up. The angle of the morning sun through the portholes tells me that we’re still pointing south.

But something has changed. I’ve slid to the edge of the bed. I struggle to my feet and stand on a sloping floor. Bathsheba is no longer wallowing in the doldrums. She’s heeled over to starboard.

I peer through the ports. The confused seas of the zone have given way to neat rows of rolling southeast swells.

We’ve found the trade winds! The new energy in the air zings through my body. Like millennia of mariners before me, I’m thrilled at our escape from what felt like a windless death. Through the skylight, I see that Summer has hoisted the main, but she’s done a lousy job. The sail is flapping, and only the engine is powering us forward.

She should have woken me. I could have gotten us sailing properly, turned us westward, killed the engine. Now we’ve wasted time and fuel.

I can’t even remember coming down for a morning nap. The last thing I recall is going to bed at sunset after the pasta puttanesca, not even bothering with the dishes, feeling groggy and thick with sleep. Before I turned in, I realized we would cross the equator on Summer’s watch, and I went back up the ladder to remind her that it was traditional to throw a party and tip buckets of seawater over the crew when crossing the line. Some people celebrate with a jump in the ocean.

“I’m too pregnant for that sort of shit,” Summer said.

I didn’t argue with her. She must have been exhausted to swear like that.

“Don’t bother waking me for the crossing, then,” I said. I should have been excited about returning to the Southern Hemisphere, home, but I needed my bed. “I’ll try to sleep through till midnight. Unless you need me, of course.”

“Night-night, Twinnie,” said Summer.

But I can’t remember her waking me at midnight. Here I am and it’s day. Has my tired, pregnant sister kept watch all night?

A chill lurches through my body. The engine drones on, and Bathsheba, who always feels alive to me, is a cold, hard, dead thing, a mass of metal and timber lashed together, thrusting its way south through endless ocean. I stumble out through the saloon, up through the pilothouse.