Daughter of Deep Silence (2 page)

I
wake in darkness, raw and confused. There’s this moment of lightness as I roll over, the soft bed beneath me and the sheets sliding along my skin. For a fraction of a heartbeat it feels right.

And then I remember. It comes as a physical sensation first, a crushing on my chest as my mind struggles to bend and stretch to take it all in.

The gun pressed so hard against Dad’s head that it caused the skin around the barrel to wrinkle and pucker. All down the hallway, shots firing, one after another after another. Systematic. My dad’s top teeth scraping against his bottom lip, starting to say my name.

Gasping, I bolt upright, pressing my palms over my ears as though that could somehow stop me from hearing. But of course it doesn’t.

The gunshot, shattering bone.

It never will.

Beneath me, the yacht rocks softly, the thrum of its engine a low vibration through my bones. The stateroom is empty, the windows dark. It’s too quiet. I’m too alone. Memories of the attack circle around like hungry sharks and I reach for the television remote, hoping that sound and distraction will keep them at bay.

When it flickers on, the TV hanging on the far wall is glaringly bright and colorful, stinging my eyes. But it’s something other than silence and that’s what I crave. I flip through channels absently until a familiar name stops me.
Persephone
.

My hand falls limp to the bed. Heart pounding, I watch as a news anchor shuffles papers while an image of the cruise ship floats behind her. “Breaking news on last week’s
Persephone
disaster,” she announces. “Sources are confirming that another survivor from the ship may have been located. As of now, authorities haven’t released any information about the potential survivor or survivors. While we wait for more information to trickle in, let’s take a look at the dramatic footage of Senator Wells and his son taken shortly after their own rescue.”

The scene on the TV shifts to a sprawling marina bustling with activity. The camera zooms in on the gangplank of a large US Coast Guard ship, focusing on a small group making its way toward the pier.

Senator Wells leads the pack. Even with a sunburned face he manages to appear debonair in an almost-dangerous way, the salt-and-pepper scruff of his unshaven face emphasizing the sharpness of his cheekbones. The camera pans past him and my breath catches.

It’s Grey. Alive.

It’s one thing to be told he survived, yet another to see it as truth. That same surge of relief washes through me, the sudden realization that I’m not alone. Someone else out there understands.

I devour his appearance. Grey looks much worse than his father. He clutches a thick blanket around his shoulders, his steps slow as he trails after the group. His hair sticks up from his head at odd angles and his eyes look bruised above the shadowy scraps of stubble strewn across his cheeks and chin.

Reporters rush the two en masse, shouting questions and Grey rears back, alarmed by the sudden onslaught. I press my fingers against my lips, feel them trembling. One of the coast guard men tries to push the camera away, but the Senator stops him. “We’ll answer,” he says. Grey winces and his eyes squeeze shut.

“The world deserves to know the truth of what happened to the
Persephone
,” the Senator explains, pulling Grey toward the reporter’s microphone. “It happened fast,” the Senator begins. I find myself nodding even though at the time it had seemed like hours. Days of gunfire. Years of blood.

“It was late and I was out on deck with my son, helping him look for his phone he’d forgotten by the pool that afternoon. There was a terrible storm and we were just about to give up and go inside.” He pauses, shakes his head. “The wave came out of nowhere. I’ve never seen anything like it. It just . . . took the whole ship out.”

Wave?
I find that I can’t breathe, his words grinding my thoughts to a halt.
That’s not what happened. There was no wave.

Senator Wells steps aside, leaving his son facing the microphone. Every heartbeat echoes through my water-slogged veins, causing my entire body to throb and rock as I wait to hear what he has to say. Grey blanches, but doesn’t retreat. The familiarity of his gestures is jarring. The way he holds himself with his weight slightly on his right leg, the furrow between his eyebrows as he sorts through his thoughts before speaking.

The way he unconsciously rubs his skull, just behind his ear, whenever he’s about to lie.

It’s amazing the little things you can pick up about someone in such a short amount of time when you’re falling in love. Every nuance, every sound and movement a code to understanding them.

“Like Dad said, it happened fast,” he starts, and then he clears his throat, choked up. In my head I see it all. I
hear
it all and taste it all. Again.

Grey pulls me against him and threads a strand of hair behind my ear. When he brings his mouth closer, I stop caring about the rain. All I care about is devouring this moment as though to imprint it into my memory forever.

Rivulets of water wash down his face, dripping from his chin and coursing along his neck. The way his shirt plasters to his chest allows me to see the outline of every muscle. I press my fingers against them, tracing the edges.

I laugh, a bubble of euphoria too large to keep contained. He kisses me right then, like he could take my laughter into himself and make it a part of him. And still, all around us the rain crashes but we don’t care.

The reporters huddling around Grey barely breathe as they wait for him to continue. “The rain was awful, and as Dad mentioned, we were . . . uh . . . out on deck by the pool.” He glances toward his father before continuing. “It was unlike . . . anything. It came out of nowhere—this massive wave. And it just was there—a wall of water. It rose higher than even the top of the ship—much higher.” He pauses as if reliving the moment, eyes haunted.

I’m trembling now. I don’t understand. Why isn’t he talking about the attack? Why isn’t he mentioning the guns?

Grey inhales slowly, his shirt lifting just enough to lay bare the strip of pale skin along the edge of his shorts. He begins to rub that spot behind his ear again. “And then . . .” His voice breaks.

And then the guns. Men slamming through the corridors, cutting off the emergency exits, and locking the ship down. Panicked passengers in robes and nightgowns run, screaming. Making it no more than a few steps before bullets tear them apart.

Water drips down my back, my hair still wet from kissing Grey in the rain. I press myself against the cold metal wall of the dumbwaiter, watching through the mirrored window as a tall, narrow man makes his way efficiently down the hallway. He kicks a broken body aside. Forces his way into a room. It takes seconds—a loud spattering of gunfire—and then he’s in the hallway again, moving on to the next.

Moving on to my family’s room directly across from where I’m hiding.

A high-pitched whine climbs its way up the back of my throat, coated in acid. I clamp my hands over my mouth, knowing without question that if they hear me, I am dead.

I’m dead either way.

As Grey speaks, the reporters hang on his every nuance and gesture. They’re enraptured by him. I wait for him to mention the armed men. The gunshots. The murder.

But he never does. “It’s like what Dad said. The wave just swallowed her whole. Like a toy in a tub. And then . . . the
Persephone
was gone.” He shakes his head, as though he himself couldn’t believe it. “Just
gone
.”

In the silence that follows, the Senator squeezes his son’s shoulder. One of the reporters shouts, “How were you able to survive?”

Grey’s eyes widen, his expression one of bewilderment. The Senator steps in. “Had to be luck, plain and simple. It was late and because of the rain everyone else was inside, probably asleep in their cabins. I was so angry at Grey for losing his phone, but if he hadn’t . . .” He inhales sharply. Grey stares at his feet. “We wouldn’t have been up on deck and thrown free when the wave hit.”

“No!” I shout, the sound raw in my throat. “That’s not how it happened!”

“Once we got to the surface and saw the wreckage . . .” Here the Senator pauses and takes a water bottle one of the rescuers holds out to him. “We tried to find other survivors, but . . .” He shakes his head and a shudder passes through Grey. “The only choice we had was to try to stay alive. We found a life raft that must have broken free and just prayed that someone would find us.”

I’m gasping for air. “But . . .” I close my eyes remembering. Libby and me dragging our arms through the water, trying to put distance between us and the burning
Persephone
. Flames choking out her windows, undaunted by the rain. It wasn’t until dawn that we saw the extent of it: nothing.

Not a scrap of the ship remained. No hint of other survivors. No other life rafts anywhere in sight.
How had Grey and his father survived without either of us seeing them?

On TV the tenor of the reporters changes as the camera pans and zooms in on a middle-aged woman running down the pier, her perfectly coiffed blond hair loosening in the breeze. She’s wearing a skirt that hits just above her knees and she pauses briefly to kick off her heels so that she can run faster. “Alastair! Grey!” she cries, the sound primal.

The cameraman knows how to do his job and he instantly focuses in on Grey’s face, capturing the moment it crumples and he mouths the word,
Mom?
And then they’re hugging, sobbing, reunited. His father’s arms around them both.

The video pauses on this perfect image. The intimate snapshot of an all-American family newly reunited, their heavy grief finally lifted. A miracle. The Senator with his sunburned face and lightly tousled hair. His wife barefoot, tendrils of hair pulled loose around her tearstained face. And their beloved only son between them.

My chest tightens as though it were collapsing in on itself. Father. Mother. Child. All together. All safe.

It becomes impossible to breathe.

I’ll never hug my parents again. My mother will never come running toward me. My father will never place his hand on my head and tell me he loves me. I’ll never feel safe ever again.

I’ve lost everything. And somehow, Grey hasn’t.

The anchorwoman’s voice cuts into my thoughts, and I listen with a mounting sense of incredulity as she continues. “News of another survivor certainly comes as a surprise. As you may recall, the coast guard called off the search for survivors last week after interviewing Senator Wells and his son and concluding that a rogue wave capsized the
Persephone
, sinking it before those belowdecks could escape.”

The camera switches angles and the anchor swivels, continuing. “Though they’re considered a rare occurrence, this isn’t the first time a rogue wave has been suspected in the disappearance of a ship. In fact, it’s widely believed that it was a rogue wave that took the SS
Edmund Fitzgerald
in 1975, and just as with the
Persephone
, there was no wreckage found in that case either.”