The Art of My Life (24 page)

Starr pulled up her hood and wrapped
the bulky sweatshirt more tightly around her. From the dock she
watched Jackson and Jesse climb aboard the borrowed Boston Whaler,
open up the throttle, and careen into the Intercoastal to look for
the
Escape
.

Missy paced the length of the pier,
arms locked across her waist.

The marine emergency channel blared
from Fish’s radio. He sat in his pilot’s chair swiveling one
direction, then the other in a steady rhythm.

Evie, thank God, was nowhere to be
seen. She loved the girl, but she didn’t know if she could handle
Evie’s hysterics at a time like this.

Starr scooted onto Cal’s dock box. The
coolness of the fiberglass seeped through her jeans, and she pulled
her legs up and wrapped her arms around them. She rested her
forehead on her knees.

Van Gogh’s tags clinked as he trotted
past, but she didn’t look up. She just wanted to pray for Cal
undisturbed.

Jackson said every man asks,
Do I
have what it takes?
And she’d told Cal in a thousand ways that
he didn’t. No wonder he’d turned to Henna’s unconditional
acceptance, flunked out of college, embraced drugs, never tried to
find his niche in life or God.

She wanted a chance to look for the
good and praise Cal. A do-over. Terror and twenty-five years of
regret pressed down on her back.

Someone shuffled up beside her, but
she kept her head down. Couldn’t a person think in
peace?

She smelled patchouli oil, her
mother’s signature scent.

Starr opened her eyes and glimpsed
matted slippers, wool socks, sweats and the shin-length hem of a
bird-of-paradise muumuu. Maybe if she didn’t move, Henna would go
bother Missy or Fish.

The dock box creaked as Henna hefted
her weight onto it.

Water lapped against the piling. Damp
wind chilled Starr’s hands and wrists, but she didn’t move them to
warmth. Inside she begged God to save Cal and Aly.

Henna’s hand settled on Starr’s
shoulder. “Cal has a good heart. He’s going to be peachy
cream.”

Starr didn’t know whether to scream or
laugh.

As though called up by Henna’s
peachy cream
, snapshots paraded through her head—Cal tending
a wounded squirrel, throwing out a hand to keep Missy from stepping
into the street when she was small, carrying Henna up the porch
stairs when she sprained her ankle, rough-housing with Jesse’s
kids.

“
I had Cal dig out the
garden and get rid of the plants,” Henna’s voice broke into her
thoughts.

Starr’s head jerked up, and she looked
at her mother.

“
Leaf was madder than a
wet pelican and took off for” —Henna took her hand from Starr’s
shoulder and waved it in the night air— “the happy hunting
grounds.”

Starr frowned. Henna could have meant
anywhere from Okeechobee to the hereafter.

“
He’ll be back sure as
fish poop in the sea. Love makes the planet go ‘round.”

A hot flash started at Starr’s sternum
and radiated outward. She flopped the hood off her head and
slithered out of her jacket. “Why did you rip out the garden?
You’ve kept it for fifty years.”

“
For you. For
Cal.”

Starr reached out and squeezed Henna’s
papery hand. “Thanks, Mama.”

“
I like
Mama
.”

Starr’s mouth dropped open. “I thought
you wanted to be called Henna.”

“
Leaf’s dim
idea.”

Starr pushed her hands into the arms
of her jacket. Henna had done the best she could raising her. Just
like Starr had with Cal. Maybe they had something in common after
all.

Maybe it was time she accepted Mama
the way she was—along with Cal.

Jackson and Jesse motored into the
Escape
’s empty slip, their shoulders slumped, eyes
hollow.

Her heart tumbled to the dock and
cracked, jagged, like a broken cement block.

Evie marched up the pier toward her,
followed by Aly’s mother.

Henna grunted, straining to heft
herself from the dock box. “Giddyup, Napoleon.”

Forty-five minutes after passing
through the Flagler drawbridge, Cal’s hope deflated with every
bone-jarring hammer fall. After Cal set their course on the GPS,
Vic had shut Cal and Aly into the master suite head. Now he pounded
enough nails into the door to lock them in the rest of their
lives.

If Cal hadn’t pressed Aly to help him
with the business, she’d be safe in her condo now. He might even
consider Vic’s boat-jacking a favor—getting him to the Bahamas
where he planned to hide out to avoid jail.

The pounding ceased. He heard Vic move
up the companionway and shut the hatch.

Aly took her hands from her ears where
she leaned against the counter beside the sink. She turned wide
hazel eyes on him where he sat on the john lid.

He dropped his chin to his chest. He
just couldn’t catch a break. Wasn’t the business tanking and a
warrant out for his arrest enough? What he wouldn’t do for a smoke
right now. But he had to think about Aly—how he was going to get
her out of this.

“
You wish you had a joint,
right?” Aly said.

He sat up, arched his brows. “What,
you’re trying to read my mind now?”

“
I’ve been thinking about
why you smoke—”

“
Can we please have this
conversation when our lives aren’t in jeopardy?”

Aly bunched her lips together like she
did when she was going to fight you on something. “It’s because our
lives are in jeopardy that I want to say this. Times like this we
need to say the important things.” She eyed him, waiting to see if
he’d argue.

He shrugged one shoulder for her to
continue.

“
It’s not like you smoke
every day to de-stress like people have a beer or a glass of wine
before bed. You do it when things go wrong, when you’re giving
up.”

Sometimes he did smoke everyday, but
he wasn’t correcting her. “I haven’t gotten high since before we
tore out Henna’s garden. Twenty-six days.”

Aly smiled softly, her eyes saying,
I knew you’d do it.
“I think Starr’s done a number on you.
Because you know you’ll never live up to her expectations, you’re
conditioned to quit trying too soon in other areas of your
life.”

“
Great. I feel so much
better now that you’ve psychoanalyzed me.”

“
As if you haven’t
dissected my daddy issues, decided touch is my love
language—”

“
Okay, okay. Can you wrap
it up so we can figure out how to get out of here?”

“
If you can find the
switch to turn off trying to please your mother—”

“
Good luck with
that—”

“
Maybe you can learn a
business skill—”

“
Like telemarketing.” He
didn’t bother to hide his sarcasm.

“
No.” Aly ignored his
tone. “Like problem solving. When something goes wrong, instead of
quitting, look for a solution. Like we’ve done with the business.
We tried every way we could think of to use the
Escape
to
make money, but we’re not out of options. There’s always an answer
out there. In our case, I think it has something to do with your
art. But my point is, don’t quit too soon.”

“
Well, I’m not quitting
until I get you safely on land.”

Aly stared at him and slowly wilted as
though she’d had her say and the reality of their situation finally
hit her.

He heard the sheet line strain under
sail. The anchor shifted on the fore deck. The bow thwacked against
a wave and jostled them.

“
I’m scared, Cal, almost
as frightened as when I went overboard.”

He stood and pulled her into his arms.
“Me, too, baby.” He crushed her against his chest and buried his
nose in her forest-scented hair.

His palm rubbed circles on Aly’s back,
but she shivered like she had the night of the storm. He grabbed
the neon yellow towel off the rack and wrapped it around
her.

He held her tight, her cheek pressed
to his heart. Whispers that they’d be alright died in his throat.
He didn’t know.

God, you saved Aly once
before…. Give me an idea.

Gradually, Aly stilled.

He needed to think about getting her
out alive, not how Aly was painted to him like a second skin. He
kissed her eye lid and eased a couple of inches between
them.

She squirmed, grabbed fist holds of
his shirt, and closed the distance.

He took her face in his hands. “God, I
love you.”

Tears pooled in her eyes in the dim
light from the marine battery-powered fixture. “I love you,
too.”

The words whispered across his skin
and threatened to hypodermic joy into his veins. “But you need
someone with disposable income, yard tools.”

Aly’s gaze pierced him. “I need you.
We can always get new jobs, start another business.”

Wonder coursed through him, and he
sealed his lips against hers. It didn’t matter that they were
hurtling into the Devil’s Triangle at gunpoint. It didn’t matter
that if they got out alive, they’d be ripped apart because of his
stupid choices. She loved him. Really loved him.

Everything emptied from his brain but
tasting Aly, breathing her scent, molding his body to
hers.

The kiss ended. Their torsos, wedged
together in the cramped space, expanded and contracted in
unison.

Aly’s eyes darted around the tiny room
and landed back on him. “I thought herpes could be a deal-breaker.”
Her voice went up at the end, half question, half
nervousness.

He brushed a lock of pale hair out of
her eyes. “Nothing we couldn’t handle together. I’ve loved you
since I met you. When I was seventeen, I sat on my board at Bethune
Beach and asked God for your heart.” He gave her a wry smile. “I
got a tattoo instead.”

“
Then why did you, um”
–Aly stared at a button on his shirt.—“reject me after showing it
to me?”

He didn’t want to douse the joy
mingling with their breath by telling her about the missed
probation meetings. But reality had already slithered back into his
head. “It’s a long story, one I’ll tell you once I’ve got you out
of here, back on land, safe.” His eye caught on the yellow of the
towel that had slipped from Aly’s shoulders—the same shade of
yellow as the EPIRB distress radio beacon mounted on the
stern.

He nudged Aly away from him. “We have
to get out of here. Come on, let’s put our backs against the vanity
and push the door with our legs.”

They scrambled into position and
strained against the door.

A creak filled the head, but the door
didn’t budge.

“
Rest,” Cal huffed out. He
positioned Aly with one foot over the other at the bottom of the
opening edge of the door. He crouched over her and placed a foot
above Aly’s “On three. One. Two. Three.”

He planted his left foot above his
right, sucked in air, and pushed. The rim of the vanity dug into
his lower back.
Come on.

The nails squawked and released the
door half an inch. The sound amplified like a bus crash in the
small room.

They froze. Cal locked on Aly’s eyes,
his heart thumping, listening.

Water swished along the hull as the
Escape
bounded southeast, deep into the Atlantic. Wind
whistled around the head’s poorly sealed porthole, but no footfalls
sounded on deck. No hatch slid open.

Cal stood on the sink and angled his
shoulder against the top of the door.

Aly lined her palms along the edge of
the door beneath him.

“
Push!”

The nails screeched loose and freed
the top half of the door.

They shoved the bottom half the rest
of the way open. Aly gripped his hand.

They waited.

Cal let out his breath. “I’m going to
try to get out the aft hatch without Vic spotting me. I need to
engage the radio beacon mounted on the transom. God only knows how
old the EPIRB is and whether it will actually broadcast a distress
signal and location to the Coast Guard.” The Coast Guard could
probably track his arrest warrant before they ever approached the
Escape
, but Aly’s life was more important than
anything.

He pushed the door open and stepped
into the master suite.

Aly’s hand clamped tighter on his.
“Vic could kill you,” she whispered. Her lips whitened as she
pinched them together to keep from crying.

“
Even sailing by GPS and
compass, he needs me if something goes wrong. We’re safe for
now.”

“
He doesn’t need
me.”

“
Vic’s not stupid. He has
to know if he touches you, I’ll kill him before I’ll help him.” He
yanked her against him, kissed her, and set her away from him.
“I’ll be back.”

Aly’s gaze bore into him—fear swirling
with something much deeper that made him hope against logic they
had a future. She collapsed to her knees, her forehead coming to
rest on the short pile of the master suite carpet.

He stepped onto the bunk and eased the
hatch open in painstaking slow motion. He inched his head through
the two-foot square hole and saw the glow of Franco’s cigarette,
the back of his sweatshirt hood outlined in the soft light from the
GPS and compass on the steering column. He glanced at the sky. A
cloud covered the moon before he could form a prayer.

He slithered up through the hatch into
the night. Wind chilled the exposed skin on his face, neck, and
hands. He flattened himself to the cabin-top. Why hadn’t he thought
to change into dark clothing? He slid onto the aft deck, his heart
racing. Breath shot in and out of his lungs in short
bursts.

He peeked over the cabin.

Vic stretched and swiveled his head
north, then south.

The hand-held VHF marine radio sat in
its holder on the steering column. If Cal could have gotten a hold
of it before they lost sight of land, he could have radioed for
help.

Cal ducked. Fish’s boat likely had a
radio with a twenty-plus mile range since he fished blue water
everyday. If Fish had figured out something was up from Van Gogh,
he’d be doing everything he could to find them. No matter how
pissed Fish was, Cal knew who Fish was underneath. Cal darted
another look at Vic Franco.

Vic laid the gun on the cockpit bench
and rubbed the back of his neck.

Cal went up on his knees and fumbled
with the catch on the EPIRB casing, his eyes glued to the peak of
Vic’s hood. Wind whipped curls in Cal’s eyes.

The device seemed rooted to the
casing. He tugged harder.

It slipped free, nearly toppling him
against the guardrail.

Vic stepped to the port side of the
wheel. He squinted at the barely visible lights of the Florida
coast, his profile facing Cal.

A hydrant of fear shot the taste of
metal into Cal’s mouth. He dropped to the aft deck, cradling the
EPIRB.

Had Franco’s peripheral vision caught
his movement?

Cal’s chilled fingers fumbled for the
manual engagement button. Cold sweat broke out beneath his arms.
Wind blew through his flannel shirt. His heart skittered against
the inert radio beacon fused to his chest.