The Sky Beneath Her(16)

While I hoisted my first school backpack onto my shoulder and headed off to high school, Mom became a regular at the history center in Manteo. She’d said she was hunting for treasure, and her focus quickly settled on the Oceanus, submerged in two hundred feet of water off the town of Southern Shores in the northern Outer Banks.

The Oceanus had been sunk by a German U-boat on April 24, 1942, when its torpedo had struck her broadside and hit her boilers and fuel tanks. The twelve-year-old passenger ship had been carrying 6,612 tons of chrome ore, wood, hides, and asbestos, along with 132 souls. Nineteen passengers or crew hadn’t survived the attack.

What had caught Mom’s attention was a passenger named William Weller. Born in New York City in 1900, he was an industrialist who had really made his money as a dealer of secrets and guns.

Mr. Weller had fled Vienna in December 1941, after the United States had declared war on Germany. Before he’d left Austria, he’d sold secrets to the Germans in exchange for gold bars. According to a cable sent the day of departure to his wife in New York City, he’d overseen the loading of his gold into the hull of the Oceanus.

I’d soon become well versed in the history of the Oceanus, and when Mom suggested we check out the location where she’d sunk, I’d been thrilled and anxious to get out of the classroom. On May 1, 2019, seventy-seven years after the Oceanus had sunk, we boated out to the site, less than three miles off the coast.

“You look lost,” Kaitlin said as she opened the back of the van and loaded her supplies and bag of dirty linens.

“Remembering.” I placed my supplies next to hers.

She closed the back hatch. “That’s not a good thing, is it?”

“It didn’t used to be. Too many broken hulls scattered in my past.” I thought about the manuscript in my suitcase.

“I hate looking back,” she said.

That was true. Kaitlin hated talking about last week, let alone seven or, worse, eighty years ago. “Nice to learn from old mistakes.”

In the front seat, she started the engine. “What mistakes?” she asked.

“Don’t marry a man you don’t love.”

Kaitlin put the van in reverse. “I thought you loved the land shark.”

“I thought I did. And a part of me still cares. I wish the best for him.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“It really is.”

We drove down the beach road, but she took a quick left into a parking lot near the fishing pier. “Let’s meet the beach now.”

“No.”

“Don’t be a baby. Come on.”

I drew in a breath. Too prideful to wimp out in front of her, I got out. We crossed the warm sand and stood by the pier’s massive pilings.

“Take off your shoes,” she said. “Only way to experience it.”

I removed my sneakers. The sand felt rough against my soft feet.

“Now, we step a little closer,” Kaitlin said.

I watched her move with confidence toward the water. When I didn’t follow, she clucked like a chicken. I followed.

As soon as I reached her side, a wave crashed against the shore and raced up to our feet. Cool water playfully ran between my toes and pulled the sand from under my feet as it slid back to the ocean.

“You mentioned mistakes earlier. Don’t marry a man you don’t love and . . .” Kaitlin let the statement dangle.

“The ocean will always be able to kill you.”

“Only if you ignore her. Isn’t that what you used to say? Listen to her, read her moods, notice the winds, and she won’t let you down. I think about that all the time when I’m watching the waves. High peaks, sharp angles, or fast speeds, the water is always communicating.”

“Sometimes she doesn’t share every secret. She always has a trick or two up her sleeve.” From the shore, the waves barreled up in an easy, timeless rhythm. Out on the water, it was less predictable. Sandbars shifted constantly, waves arrived in clusters, and rip currents tunneled out to sea with a gripping, swift force. This stretch of ocean was stunning, but its beauty didn’t fool me. She could be dangerous.

“Do you miss it?” Kaitlin asked.

I’d grown up on the water, and being under or riding the waves had felt so natural. Now, it did not. “I miss feeling free.”

“You are free,” Kaitlin said softly.

I scooped up a handful of sand and let it drain through my fingers. “The Oceanus still haunts me.”

“Then tackle it head on. Resharpen your diving skills and go see her again. Have a conversation with her. Tell her she’s not welcome in your headspace anymore.”

Mom had always said disasters weren’t triggered by one big event. She’d said calamities erupted after a sequence of errors and failures. The first misstep for the Oceanus was the storm off Africa, which delayed her five days and cost her a spot with the convoy traveling to the United States. The second blunder belonged to Captain Stoddard, who thought his ship could outrun trouble. The next link in the tragic chain of events had been forged by the well-seasoned U-boat commander Korvettenkapit?n Schulz. The German hadn’t fulfilled his quota of sunken tonnage and refused to return to port with a torpedo still chambered. Schulz had taken a wild shot as the Oceanus turned. Miraculously the projectile had found its mark. When the torpedo struck, the damage would have been survivable if not for the last bit of bad luck. The explosion had ignited the ship’s boilers and extra fuel.