Circle of Bones - Kling Christine - Страница 25

Riley braced herself in a corner of the cockpit and admired the view of the island she was leaving behind. She still hadn’t worked out what she was going to do about her passport situation. The night before, she lay in her bunk staring at the overhead unable to sleep, thinking about Diggory and wondering if she should sail to the Saintes with such thin evidence Bob might be there. She knew she was looking for an excuse to stick around and go find Dig in the morning.

Finally, she got out of bed and dug into her chart table for her old scrapbook. In it were family photos, plastic sleeves filled with yellowing newspaper clippings, her discharge papers, and the various ribbons and medals she’d once worn so proudly. She opened the book to the snapshots from Lima. In one, she and Diggory were sitting at an outside cafe table, smiling for the camera, arms entwined. She looked so happy, so ignorant. Then she’d slammed the book closed, stuffed it into the bookcase behind the settee, and climbed back into her bunk.

Riley saw she had cleared the cape, and she eased off the wind a bit. The boat speed picked up by another half knot. It wasn’t even mid-morning and she was more than halfway there. Her predawn departure had paid off. She had been tempted one more time — when she’d ventured on deck in the dark and found her oars tucked inside her cockpit — to stay and find Dig. But then she remembered what Hazel said. He would never tell her the truth. If only she’d trusted her instincts instead of her libido, she never would have slept with him in the first place. Now, she would have to find the truth on her own. And to do that, she needed to get her passport back first.

Ahead, the small islands rose out of the sea like dark green gum drops. At this rate, she should be able to get the anchor down before lunch, go ashore for a fine French midday meal, and then work it off with an afternoon walking the streets — all the while keeping her eyes open for the elusive Bob.

She checked the GPS chart plotter at the helm and saw that her speed was sometimes exceeding eight knots. Bonefish was flying on her favorite point of sail, rolling as the seas lifted her stern quarter. Riley sighed, sorry that this sail would end too soon, and she would have to get back to the real world of people and officials and finding this jerk who had put her into this situation.

When she began to see the red roofs of the village and the masts of the many boats anchored in the harbor, Riley peeled off her oilskins. The seas had quieted in the lee of the island and she was sweating inside the waterproof fabric. As she tucked her jacket up under the dodger, she heard her cell phone ring inside the velcro-sealed pocket. She fished the thing out and recognized the number of her father’s townhouse in DC.

“Hello?”

“Maggie? It’s Eleanor Wright, here.”

She closed her eyes for moment picturing the woman standing next to the wheelchair where her father spent his days propped up in front of the second story bay window. He liked to watch the neighbors hurrying to work or walking their dogs or pushing strollers on the sidewalk in front of his Foggy Bottom townhouse. “Your father has been asking about you. We haven’t heard from you in a while.”

She opened her mouth prepared to defend herself, then closed it again and breathed in through her nose. “Communication is difficult down here. How is he?”

“He’s having a good day today. Would you like to talk to him?”

It was the last thing she wanted to do, but of course, she couldn’t say that. “Sure. Put him on.”

Even over the sound of the wind, she could hear the muffled noise as Mrs. Wright passed him the phone. He would be talking on the wired handset. He hated wireless phones. Always said he couldn’t hear through them.

“Maggie?”

“Hi, Dad. How are you doing?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m just sailing into the anchorage at the Saintes. You know, off Guadaloupe.”

“What the hell are you doing down there?”

She had to laugh sometimes. Her father had been such a proper man, never swearing before this dementia changed his personality. It seemed to have erased all his protocol filters. “I’m having a grand sail, Dad, on the Bonefish. Remember my boat?”

“I’ve got a boat named Bonefish.”

“Not anymore, Dad.”

“No? I’ll ask your mother when she calls.”

Her parents had been divorced for more than a decade, and he would be waiting a long time before his ex-wife, now remarried and living in France, was likely to call him.

“Where did you say you are?”

Most of the time now, she told him anything, true or false. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t remember the next time she talked to him. She tried to find something that would connect in his muddled memory. “Yesterday, I was in Pointe-a-Pitre.”

“What for?”

“If you can believe it, I ran into someone I knew. He’s a Yale man like you, Dad.”

“Yale? Maybe I knew him.”

“I don’t think so, Dad. You were there a long time ago.”

“You make me sound like an old man.”

She reached for the autopilot to adjust her course. “You are an old man, dad.”

“I’m a Yale man. What’s his name?”

“Diggory Priest.”

“You met a priest?”

She took the phone away from her ear and looked skyward. You had to laugh or you’d cry. “No, Dad, Diggory Priest is the man’s name.”

“I once knew a priest.”

She rolled her eyes. “Did you, Dad?”

“He was a Yale man. He knew Michael.”

She shook her head. This disease mixed everything up in her father’s head. Dig had been more than five years gone by the time her brother went to the school. “Not the same man, Dad.”

“I didn’t think much of him. Priests are supposed to be men of God.”

It was strange how there were moments like this when his voice sounded so sane, and she could almost forget that he was so ill. “Dad, the man I know once told me that his mother named him after the hatter who sailed from England on the Mayflower.”

“I don’t remember that.”

She laughed out loud. “No, Dad, you’re not quite that old. Is Mrs. Wright taking good care of you?”

“Damn woman won’t let me smoke a cigar.”

“It’s your doctor who says you can’t smoke.”

“There’s something I need to tell you, Maggie.”

“No, Dad, don’t worry about it.”

“I can’t keep the secret any longer.”

She heard his voice crack and knew where the conversation was headed. Every time she spoke to him now, no matter where she steered the conversation, it always came back to this.

“It was all my fault.”

“Dad, don’t worry about it.”

“They called me. Told me they were going to throw me out if I said anything. I had to go along with it.”

“Dad, it’s over now. Everyone has forgotten.”

“Not me.”

“I beg to differ, Dad. You’ve forgotten most things.”

“But Maggie, I was so angry. After everything I had done for them, to ask for that sacrifice.” He stopped, choked on a sob. “I wanted to tell you and your mother, but they wouldn’t let me.”

“Dad, I know. It was a long time ago.” Truth was, she didn’t know. She had gone through everything she knew about his diplomatic service career, and she couldn’t come up with anything  this story could be based on. He never went into specifics. His doctor told her it might even not be a real memory at all. This was not unusual in dementia patients. They often started inventing stories. On one call, her father told her that the State Department had just phoned him and asked him to be the new U.S. Ambassador to Taiwan.

He was crying now, sobbing into the phone. Before this illness, she had never seen her father cry. Not even at Michael’s funeral.

“I’m sorry. If I had only known I would have stopped him from coming. Please, Maggie, please, say it wasn’t my fault. Maggie? Maggie?”

She bit her lower lip and squeezed her eyes tight, not knowing if her eyes burned from tears or salt spray. “Dad, it’s okay.”