The Girl in the Mirror(35)

But I can’t do it. It’s too great a sacrifice. My life might be empty, but it’s my life. It’s who I am.

Francine will triumph. There’s nothing I can do about it.



I think about artificial insemination. When Noah left, I thought I was pregnant. I had tender breasts and all the other signs, but then I got my period, and obviously, there was no more sex after that.

If only I had kept a single sample of Noah’s sperm. To think how much of it we collected in condoms and threw away before we were married. The baby would have been born late, but babies are early or late sometimes, aren’t they? It isn’t an exact science.

Noah would have been delighted. What child is unwanted when it’s born with a hundred-million-dollar check in its mouth?

If I could get Adam on his own. Summer’s dead, but you have to pretend I’m Summer. I don’t want anything from you except a sperm sample. I’ll split the money with you.

It’s impossible. He’d be a wreck. Adam’s a straight-up guy; he’s not going to be a good actor. And, like Noah, he’s inexplicably uninterested in the money. He and Summer got pregnant by accident.

Maybe he’d do it to thwart Francine. Or maybe not.

I’m not going to do this. It’s too hard.

I drop my engagement and wedding rings overboard anyway. They vanish in Bathsheba’s turbulent green wake. I don’t know why I kept them so long, and the dull little emerald that Noah thought matched my eyes always looked tawdry beside Summer’s diamond. I shift her rose-gold rings from my right hand to my left. I don’t want to lose them.

It’s like passing through a mirror.



On my last night at sea I sail into a lightning storm. The wind stops as if someone closed a door, and the sea is still. The sails hang lifeless, but the black sky is shattered by a thousand spears of light.

I’m supposed to put the electronics in the oven to protect them from lightning strikes, but the sat phone is gone, and I don’t care about anything else. Certainly not the iPad, with its screenshots of slutty Virginia. Let it fry. Let it all fry.

I stand on the foredeck in the blackness, one foot on the Samson post, right where Summer and Adam made the baby. I’m tall, and it’s the farthest from the mast I can get. Bring it on.

The air crackles and bursts into stars. My ears ring with the thunder. But nothing touches me. I am the albatross around my own neck. I’m too condemned even to die.



With Bathsheba’s fuel tank empty, there’s no way out of the lightning storm. After watching it for hours, I sleep in the cockpit and wake cold. It’s still dark, but stars are fading from the sky. Air rushes lightly over my skin. I force myself to my feet and hoist the sails.

First light sees us racing toward Port Victoria under a wild hot sky. The wind freshens, and Bathsheba is overpowered, but I can’t bear to shorten sail. She bucks and shrieks, but I push on. My lips are dry; my throat throbs. My skin is so hot, it feels flaky, as if it might turn to powder and blow away.

The island of Mahé is steep and rugged on the horizon, and as I approach, its silhouette resolves into hills clad in dense bush. I long to climb them. Land. Soon I will stand on stable ground.

The waves grow lumpy and tumultuous. The sea behind me builds into a rage. The sky is concrete now, the water doomsday dull, yet it does not rain. My body is arid. My body is a desert.

I urge Bathsheba forward. I can see the islet, Sainte Anne, now, with the taller peaks of Mahé behind. Between them are shelter, calm waters, the port.

As I race toward Sainte Anne, the sea growls and roars. Bathsheba skids and careers like a race car. We have never sailed so fast, but I feel as though we will never get there. My thirst is a force driving us on.

And now Sainte Anne is to port, and we turn and leave the turmoil behind. We’re here. The harbor is flat, and the town waits calm and pleasant and ordinary, off to starboard, nestled between sea and hill. Civilization. People.

But Bathsheba races onward. I should have dropped the sails already—to wait so long and now be short of time! I leap from one side of the cockpit to the other, cranking winches, swearing, sweating, tripping on lines. I drop the main, and now I can’t control the yacht. With only the genoa flying, she’s unbalanced. I push the tiller hard to starboard, but I can’t bring her up into the wind. I’m going to hit the island. I’m going to crash into the Seychelles.

I must drop anchor fast. No time to choose where. The depth alarm screams. We’re about to touch the bottom. I can’t let the anchor out slowly; I pull out the brake and let it clatter into the water along with fifty meters of chain. It sounds like a catastrophe. I realize I’m wet. I’m soaked, and the deck is streaming with water. I didn’t even feel the rain. I suck it off my arm, but it’s salty and foul on my skin.

But the anchor’s holding, dug in by the squally wind. I snatch the genoa sheet and winch for dear life, furling the sail before we can blow off the anchor, as a voice comes on the VHF. A human voice at last. Deeply accented English.

“Yacht Bathsheba, Yacht Bathsheba, this is the Port Authority. You have anchored in a restricted area. Please move your vessel.”

I press the transmit button. “I can’t move,” I sob. “I’m out of fuel. I’m out of water. Please, please help me. My sister’s lost. My sister’s lost at sea.”