She lay back in bed and sunk her head into the pillow, pushing away all the confusing thoughts that hid in the shadows of her mind and waited to surface each summer when Avery made her trip home. She couldn’t allow those thoughts to distract her from what she needed to do. She had the summer to tie up the frayed and loose ends of her family’s saga. What happened after that would be out of her control. If, at that point, the floodgates opened and all the sordid details of her past spilled forth, at least she would have done her best for the ones she loved.
CHAPTER 8
Sister Bay, WI Friday, June 18, 2021
A VERY WAS BACK ON THE ROAD BY 6 A.M. THE FOLLOWING MORNING with a tall coffee in the console—two creams, two sugars—smooth reggae on the radio, and open road in front of her. East of Denver she slipped onto I-80 where she’d stay for two days. Lincoln, Nebraska, was her second overnight. On Friday morning, she crossed the entire state of Iowa before finding the Wisconsin boarder. She headed northeast, conquering the state on a diagonal track. White cedar and jack pines soon dominated the landscape as far as the eye could see. The lodge pole pines reminded her of her teenage years and the summers she spent in this part of the country.
By 3:30 p.m. Friday afternoon she made it to the southern edge of the thumb of the Door County peninsula. She drove north on Highway 42 and followed the two-lane road for forty miles. The shores of Lake Michigan’s Green Bay were to the west as she passed through the towns of Egg Harbor and Fish Creek. Eagle Harbor glistened in the afternoon sun as she navigated through the busy town of Ephraim. The red-striped awning of Wilson’s ice cream parlor filled her mind with memories of long, hot summers as a teenager—the best of her life.
Toward the tip of the peninsula Avery found Sister Bay, Wisconsin, the town where she had spent every summer of her childhood. Avery’s parents had shipped her from Manhattan to Wisconsin, where she spent the summer, starting in the sixth grade, along with other wealthy kids from around the country, at Connie Clarkson’s School of Sailing. Eighty percent of the kids at the summer camp came from the Midwest. The rest traveled from the West and East Coasts and were kids whose parents were hungry for them to learn to sail at one of the most prestigious and soughts after institutions in the country.
Avery’s parents had done the same for her older brother, Christopher, whose return home at the end of every summer came with grand tales of life on the water, harnessing the Lake Michigan winds and gliding through Green Bay. The names and places became legend to Avery. Washington Island, Rock Island, St. Martin Island, Summer Island, Big Bay de Noc, and Peninsula Point Lighthouse. Avery couldn’t wait for her turn. When it finally came, she seized the opportunity. By the time Avery was in eighth grade she could manage a twenty-two-foot schooner by herself. During high school, Avery returned to Sister Bay each summer as a sailing instructor—a position typically reserved for college students but one Avery earned from her advanced skills on the water. At seventeen she was a more polished sailor than any of the college-aged kids who taught at the school, and she could give many of the adults a run for their money. During college her summers were spent running Connie’s school as the chief instructor. Avery owed her work ethic and indomitable spirit to the summers spent in Sister Bay, and specifically to Connie Clarkson, the owner of the sailing school and Avery’s mentor. As she navigated the last mile of her journey, Avery’s thoughts shifted from those wonderful summers of her youth to the troubled times of recent. Things were easier as a kid, when all she cared about was being on the water and harnessing the wind. Things were easier then, before she learned that everything in her life was a fraud.
She pulled the Range Rover through the long, canopied drive that led to the parking lot of Connie’s sailing school. Sitting on ten acres, the property was forested and nestled along the bay. Twelve Northwoods-styled cabins were situated around the property to house thirty-two students each summer. Avery parked and stared out at the waters of Lake Michigan. A dozen boats were moored at the dock, with two lifts anchored in place to pull the skiffs from the water. In the middle of June the place was busy with students and instructors. Avery allowed the flood of emotions—from her time here as a young woman, to her relationship with Connie Clarkson, to the memories of her brother, and to the betrayal and destruction her father’s lies had caused—to overwhelm her.
She didn’t bother to camouflage her red-rimmed eyes or smeared makeup before she crossed the parking lot and walked up the steps of the main house. She knocked twice and waited. A minute later, Connie Clarkson answered. A smile came to the woman’s face. They embraced like mother and daughter.
“Claire,” Connie said into her ear. “I’m so glad you made it.”
CHAPTER 9
Manhattan, NY Friday, June 18, 2021
IT HAD BEEN THREE YEARS SINCE WALT JENKINS LEFT NEW YORK; 1,140 days since he exchanged the hustle and bustle, the congested streets, and smog-filled air for the quiet tranquility of Jamaica. The time had passed in random stretches of achingly slow weeks and blink-of-the-eye months. By any measure he was doing better today than when he had left. Not fully back to where he had been, but fixed to whatever degree that time heals all wounds, both physical and emotional. He was back in New York for just one night, the same night for which he had returned each of the past three years. Keeping with the tradition of his life, Walt’s return to New York was counterproductive at best, blatantly destructive at worst. He was too smart to believe anything good would come from this night, but too stupid to stay away.
As June approached and the annual survivors meeting crept closer, Walt found himself checking airfare. He returned each year for the annual meeting, selfishly took from the participants whatever spiritual enlightenment he needed to make it another year, and then hopped on a plane back to Jamaica where he drank rum in quiet isolation and tried to undo the damage the trip had caused. It was no way to exist and could not continue. Yet here he was again, caught in a downward spiral from which he could not escape. Something needed to change or he’d swirl down the drain of life and never be seen again. He’d been on the brink with alcohol before the Bureau fired him—retired him, he corrected himself, with his full pension. That was three years ago, and he definitely overindulged now. He hadn’t talked with his parents or siblings in three years, save for a phone call at Christmas. He’d lost just about every friend he’d ever made. The reason behind it all was a woman. The very one he went to New York to see each year. Walt Jenkins gave self-sabotage new meaning.
The New York chapter of Trauma Survivors held its reunion each June in Ascent Lounge of the Time Warner building in Manhattan. It was an annual gathering of trauma victims who had miraculously beaten the odds to cheat death and come out on the other side of life. Alive, yes. But different from the people they had once been. The night consisted of speeches and awards, guests of honor and distinguished charter members, old stories and new. An entire portion of the night was reserved for honoring the doctors and nurses, EMTs and firefighters, and other first responders whose quick thinking and skill had saved every life of every survivor present.
Present this evening were survivors of every kind: A woman who was the only one to walk away from a plane crash that killed eighty-two other passengers; a man who had jumped from a burning car just before it exploded as it crashed down a mountainside; a hiker who had endured two weeks in the wilderness with no food and little water; a motorcyclist who had no earthly reason for walking away from the crash that turned his bike into a jagged ball of steel; and Walt Jenkins, the federal agent who had survived two bullets to the torso—one that tore his neck to pieces, the other that pierced his heart. Ninety-nine times out of one hundred, his trauma surgeon told him, such gunshot wounds were fatal.