The Sky Beneath Her(38)
On that trip, Mom had been hired by several well-off men to dive a Spanish galleon that had sunk in a storm off Key Largo in 1700. I remembered Mom explaining to the divers that the wreck had been explored often for the last fifty years, and the chances of finding anything of value were small. But the men had wanted to dive, and Mom, never one to miss an opportunity, took them down to the wreck. Cookie’s husband, Bert, laughed at my scowling face when I grumbled that I’d wanted to dive. He told me stories of his navy days and cautioned me about spending too much time in the sun. His sun-weathered skin, etched with wrinkles, was covered in tattoos, and I’d worried about tattoos appearing on me if I stayed in the sun too long.
The next article was from 2019, and it was about Mom and me. Her bright smile contrasted to my moody teenage grimace. Local Returns to Find Gold. We’d been in town a couple of weeks when the reporter, Mr. Lex Green, had tracked us down on the boat dock in Wanchese.
I wondered if this was one of the last articles Dr. Brooks clipped before he died in 2019. He would have been close to 118, and I still couldn’t imagine anyone living to be that old.
Why would Dr. Brooks care about Mom’s career? She wasn’t from the Outer Banks, and though she was known in diving circles, she’d never had a national or international reputation. Maybe Dr. Brooks had been a sort of fan of a good treasure hunter and someone else had shared his interest. Many of the people on Mom’s dive expeditions were lawyers, accountants, and real estate agents. All shuffled paper behind a desk, and all longed for a grand adventure.
The next series of articles were far more sobering. They headlined basically the same news: Local Diver Lost at Sea.
I hadn’t read any of these pieces when they’d first appeared, but I’d heard the kids at school talk about them. That was the spring of whispers, long stares, and a few snide remarks about Mom and about my failure to save her.
High school. If God really wanted to punish me, he’d send me back to high school.
I read the first article, printed in 2019. It detailed Mom’s life, her adventures around the world, and her fixation on the Oceanus. The reporter, who’d interviewed Mom just before the last dive, noted that Mom had said the only reason she’d returned to the Outer Banks was for the Oceanus.
The next piece detailed the accident again and was a rinse and repeat of Mom’s background. The last line mentioned that Mariah Cassidy had left behind a daughter, Tula. The website for my trust page was listed.
I checked the author’s byline. Again, it was Lex Green. I grabbed my phone and searched his name. He was still living in the area but had retired to the town of Manteo on Roanoke Island. He was the author of several books about Outer Banks history, but nothing more about Mom or the Oceanus.
Suddenly very tired, I closed the box. I sipped my cooling tea and leaned back in the chair. I pressed the mug to my temple, trying to cut off an emerging headache.
Rising, I shut off the lights, left the office, and crawled into the double bed. The mattress was firm and the bed frame solid, saving me a night of endless squeaking. I pulled the sun-soaked sheets up to my chin and rolled into a ball.
The Outer Banks were a long, thin strip of land. Nothing was close to anything, and a forty-five-minute drive for groceries or supplies wasn’t unheard of. But the population was small. And though full-time residents could be spread over a hundred miles, gossip, if it wasn’t buried deep, traveled fast.
This fascination with Mom appeared to be one of those bits of information no one spoke about. Dr. Brooks and Mom might have both lived briefly on the Outer Banks at the same time, but she had never mentioned him.
My eyes drifted closed. Despite my exhaustion, my mind buzzed. I wanted nothing more than to sleep and forget about the doctor, his lawyer great-nephew, the flattop house, Mom’s death, and Nathan’s offer to dive the Oceanus.
Even as questions prattled in my head, sleep floated around me. Images appeared of me struggling against a dark current as I swam away from the Oceanus and toward my last dive boat.
My hand slipped once off the dive platform’s handrail, but I regripped it and hauled myself up. I’d stared at the choppy waters, searching for Mom. She didn’t surface.
I wiped the water from my eyes and adjusted my mask. I clamped my teeth around my mouthpiece and sucked in a breath. I still had enough air to get down and back to the surface. In what couldn’t have been more than seconds, the sea’s churning sped up, and the boat rocked violently.
“Mom!”
More choppy waters splashed my face.
“Come on, Mom.”
Then the waves grew higher. Even if I reached Mom, then what? The boat might not survive the rising waves. I scooted back onto the boat and wrestled off my tanks. I shrugged on a life jacket and stumbled to the wheel and radio. I called in a distress message to the coast guard. Mom wouldn’t like me calling for help. She’d always gotten herself out of dangerous situations before. But at that point I was too terrified to care.
“Mayday, Mayday.”
And then, just like that, I jostled awake. I was back in Dr. Brooks’s bed and sucking in a lungful of air.
I’d known coming back here was going to be hard. And it was.
Chapter Thirteen
Gertrude
Tuesday, April 21, 1942, 9:30 a.m.
Three days until the Oceanus is torpedoed