Safe Harbor (42 page)

But he was alone. Where was
Eden
? Again Holly lost sight of Sam as he dove below the surface in search of her, with the
Vixen
drifting steadily to the east, and the valise of money who knew where.

Call in a Mayday,
a voice told Holly, but another voice said,
Don't take your eyes off him, not for a second.
She listened to the louder instinct—and listened to Sam, putting the Robalo in gear only enough to keep from drifting too far downwind from them. Even so, her stomach tightened at the thought of what a spinning propeller could do to someone in the water.

She heard Sam finally shout in a watered-down cry, "I've got her!"

Thank you, oh, thank you.

Holly's concentration was ferocious as s
he maneuvered the Robalo into a
position downwind of Sam and Eden and then put the boat into neutral. "Hold on, hold on," she cried, dumping a float cushion and an inflatable fender into the water next to Sam for extra insurance.

She grabbed the hood of the unconscious
Eden
and held her heavy, waterlogged weight, freeing Sam for his hand-over-hand struggle up the dock line she'd thrown over the side. He managed to get aboard without her help, then immediately relieved Holly of the weight of her burden. Between them, and with the help of the sturdily-made, zipped-up jacket that
Eden
was wearing, they were able to pull her lifeless form aboard.

"CPR," was all Sam said after a quick examination of her on the cockpit sole. "You breathe."

He assumed that Holly would know what to do, and she did, because her father had insisted she learn. Tilting
Eden
's head back, she began mouth-to-mouth breathing without waiting for Sam. Sam positioned
Eden
's body for external cardiac massage, counting aloud, cuing Holly to her part in their CPR effort. Holly's mind was absolutely blank as she focused on one wish only:
Let her live.
If there was a single reason why
Eden
didn't deserve to be revived, Holly couldn't think of it.
Let her live. Just, please, let her live.

Sam pumped
Eden
's heart and Holly supplied
Eden
's breath until finally Holly felt a breath coming from
Eden
on her own. "Sam... you feel it?"

"There's a beat!" he said, breathing heavily from his efforts so far. "Call the Coast Guard."

Holly radioed for help while Sam kept up CPR on his own. After being grilled by the Coast Guard about their knowledge of the treacherous passage through Woods Hole, and after being informed that the squall line had now passed completely through, Holly and Sam agreed that they should begin ferrying
Eden
to a dock there.

A Coast Guard cutter came out to intercept them, but they were close enough to their destination that the cutter, lights flashing and sirens wailing, simply blazed a trail in front of them to the dock and waiting ambulance.

Eden
was rushed, semi-conscious, to nearby
Falmouth
Hospital
, and Holly found the time at last to contact her father. She had to raise him on the marine radio because, almost inconceivably, she did not know the number of his cell phone. The only person who had that number was now in no position to use it.

Sam returned to the Robalo just as Holly signed off. "How did he react?" he asked as he gave her a hand out of the boat.

"He was devastated for
Eden
, of course," said Holly, sinking onto the dock's edge in bone-weary exhaustion. "But I think the enormity of the mess he's made has begun to sink in. He sounded scared and alone and more at sea than the
Vixen
right now."

"Speaking of which, how did he take the news that his boat is wandering the Sound without a care in the world?"

"More shock; he's calling a salvage outfit to rescue it. What did the hospital say?"

"They'll keep her under observation awhile, watching for delayed reactions."

"Fluid in the lungs, that kind of thing?" asked Holly, skirting around the big question.

"Mmm. Lung infections, inflammation, cardiac problems..." His voice trailed off.

"Sam?" she said timidly. "Did they say anything about
... about the possibility of brain damage? She was under for what seemed like an eternity."

He
s
hook his head. "They wouldn't; how could they know yet?"

It was a somber moment, the realization that someone so smart, so daring, could end up incapacitated—and possibly die from complications.

Holly was having trouble dealing with it. "It's so overwhelming," she said softly. "I thought I hated her. I was sure of it. And yet when I saw her go overboard
... well, I don't, that's all. I just don't."

"I know," said Sam. "I know."

They sat side by side in silence, with their legs dangling over the dock, like two kids playing hooky to go fishing.

Only there were
no poles. There was no joy. And unlike two kids, they knew that life was finite.

"Sam?"

"Mmm."

"The money's gone. We'll never find it now. If this were a movie, we'd discover the valise—I think it was the kind that floats—tangled in a line hanging overboard on the Robalo."

"Yeah, but you're too good a sailor to leave a line dangling overboard," he teased.

"You know what I mean. No one is going to turn the money in, and even if they did, how could we claim it? Legally, I mean."

"See? This is where thinking like an outlaw got you. Bitter disappointment when your hopes went amuck."

"Because it's not
fair."

"Life isn't fair. If you hang up on that, you die miserable and unhappy. The money's gone. Assume it's at the bottom of the sea; for all practical purposes, it is. We move on. My ma and pa will be fine. I'll see to that." He added a little wistfully, "It's just that I know how proud they are. They wanted that independence."

"At least now you can tell them the engraving's a fake," Holly realized. "They'l
l feel better about that after
this."

He smiled and put his arm around her and pulled her close. "Now yer talkin'. Come on," he said, standing up. "It's going to feel like a long way back to the Vineyard."

"Oh, Sam, I can't," Holly protested, refusing to be dragged to her feet. "I'm so tired. I'm sick of the ocean, sick of the salt. Let's stay at an inn in
Falmouth
. We'll have a nice shower, clean sheets. We'll want to go to the hospital first thing in the morning, anyway."

Sam thought about it and suddenly snapped his fingers and dazzled her with a eureka-smile. "Or how about this? We go to my place. I wouldn't mind waking up in my bed with a dish like you. I don't suppose," he added with a boyishly hopeful look, "that you brought your diaphragm along?"

Tired as she was, Holly laughed out loud at the notion. "My thoughts haven't exactly been running that way," she admitted.

But now, suddenly, they were.

"Of course, since you bring it up," she said, "I don't really see why we should need a diaphragm at all," she said softly. "Don't you agree? Sam?"

Will we be married and have babies and barbecues and go on vacations mostly on land and prune our forsythia and take your dad on walks in the park and fill stockings at Christmas and teach Sally it's okay to get her hands dirty and have more barbecues and try to get my parents together and tell Jack he can't do that ever again and take ballroom dancing and have more barbecues and teach our kids not to lie and take turns cooking and will you do all the cooking and will we love each other no matter what?

"Sam?"

He tipped her chin up and, still smiling, kissed her lightly, lovingly, on her lips. "Yes, Holly. Yes."

J
une on the Vineyard
is a hit-or-miss thing. Sam and
Holly's wedding day missed a stretch of perfect weather and hit a cold front going through.

They were married under a tent pitched right on the beach not far from the house because the events planner "just had the most fabulous feeling about it" and knew that the day would be perfect. So the ceremony was marked by—what else?—thunder and lightning and drumming rain, and no one except Sam heard the lovely vow that Holly had written, promising till death did them part. (As for Sam, no one would have heard him rain
or
shine, because he barely whispered the vow that
he'd
written. What did he think, that it was only for her?)

As the ceremony proceeded and the tent sprang leaks, the planner, the photographer, the caterer, and the bride's mother all put their heads together and decided to move the whole shebang to the big house on Main, where, if you asked just about anyone, it should have been held in the first place.

So much for the charm of the beach.

It was coming down hard by the time the wedding party (maid of honor, two flower girls, and one best man who owned a seaplane decked out with a Just-Married sign) piled into the two rented minivans pressed into limo service. Sam drove the women (Cissy sat on Holly's lap and Sally sat on Ivy's, to make room for the flowers), and Billy—still red-eyed from sobbing uncontrollably through the ent
i
re ceremony—drove behind them with the cake, the planner, and Charlotte Anderson.

Jim and Millie drove with Eric Anderson. They were too thoroughly intimidated by their first journey offshore and society wedding to go in
Charlotte
's van, despite her entreaties. It was only after the Steadmans saw the bride and her sister in bedraggled hair and soggy hemlines, laughing and sprinting barefoot behind the flowe
r
girls from the van to the house, that they looked at one another and whispered, "Well, maybe this won't be too bad."

They were surprised, in fact, at how many guests were just folks. Ivy's husband Jack from
California
—
he
was just folks. And Holly's artist friends from the
Island
, they were all a bit strange but still very friendly. The elderly couple with the French last name were not just folks, but still so easy to talk to.

It was too bad that their son Sam had so few friends of his own, but that was the kind of man he was. Anyway, he had Billy from way back by his side as best man, and the Steadmans were very fond of Billy.

They were supposed to have been in a receiving line or some such; but the rain and the unscheduled move, praise the Lord, had taken care of all that. Holly, sweet thing, made sure that they met each and every guest, introducing them with a new hug each time as her mother-in-law and father-in-law. It was so different from when Sam had brought
Eden
home from City Hall and then when
Eden
went to the bathroom, said, "Well?
What do you think?" as if she were a brand-new car.

No, this was a different woman, and this was a different Sam.

Of course, sometimes you couldn't turn them around no matter how hard you tried. They'd had a foster son like that once. He lied, he stole, he drank, he fought with everyone and anyone. Eventually he was killed in a fight when he was only fourteen, and Millie had been devastated and had decided that she was unfit for foster parenting, but then the Good Lord had sent her Sam.

"Look at him, Jim," Millie whispered to her husband as she moved his walker out of the way of traffic. "Don't he look handsome? And don't he just look so in
love
with her? I can't remember him doting on
Eden
that way."

And Sam's father, never a man of words, nodded wisely and said, "Boy's older now. He's found what to look for." After a moment, he added, "That's something about
Eden
, no?"

"Yes
... that Marjory woman does seem to know everything about everyone, don't she? To think that
Eden
would have ended up married to an oilman! It's just so hard to believe. Where do all those rich Texans come from, anyway?"

"
Texas
, I expect," said Jim with a wry smile.

"At least he found out her true colors. I wonder how the court fight went."

"One thing's for sure: she'll find somebody else."

"Until she loses that bloom."

"Or runs out of states."

"Oh! Here's
Charlotte
!"

The mother of the bride arrived with plates of fancy food that she had made up personally for each of the Steadmans, and sat down with them a while.

"We haven't had any time to talk," she complained with a really gentle smile. "Please consider staying the night here; I can easily send someone to the inn for your things. I'm upset with your son, you know, for booking that room instead of bringing you here."