Teardrop

25 LOST AT SEA

Early Saturday morning, the twins bounded into Eureka’s room.

“Wake up!” Claire bounced onto the bed. “We’re spending the day with you!”

“That’s great.” Eureka rubbed her eyes and checked her phone for the time. Her browser was still open to the Google search “Yuki Blavatsky,” which she’d been refreshing continually, hoping for a story on the murder.

Nothing had come up. All Eureka got was an old yellow pages listing for Blavatsky’s business, which she alone seemed to know was out of business. She had driven by the strip mall on Tuesday after an unbearably long day at school, but at the turn into the empty parking lot, she’d lost her nerve and sped up, until the unlit neon palm sign was no long visible in her rearview mirror.

Haunted by the lack of obvious police presence, by thoughts of Madame Blavatsky decaying alone in the studio, Eureka had driven to the university. Setting off the fire alarm clearly had not been enough, so she sat down at one of the free student union computers and filled out an anonymous crime report form online. It was safer to do it there, in the middle of the bustling student union, than to have the police Web page on her laptop’s browser history at home.

She kept her report simple, providing the name and address of the deceased woman. She left blank the fields asking for information on suspects, though Eureka was inexplicably certain she could pick Madame Blavatsky’s murderer out of a lineup.

When she’d driven by Blavatsky’s storefront again on Wednesday, yellow crime-scene tape barred the front door and cop cars crammed the lot. The shock and grief she’d refused to feel in the presence of Madame Blavatsky’s body had washed over Eureka, a rogue wave of crippling guilt. It had been three days since then, and she’d heard nothing on the radio or TV news, online, or in the paper. The silence was driving her crazy.

She’d suppressed the urge to confide in Ander, because she couldn’t share what had happened with anyone, and even if she could, she wouldn’t know how to find him. Eureka was on her own.

“Why are you wearing water wings?” She squeezed William’s inflatable orange muscle as he wiggled under her covers.

“Mom said you’d take us to the pool!”

Wait. Today was the day Eureka had agreed to sail with Brooks.

It is your destiny, Madame Blavatsky had said, piquing Eureka’s curiosity. She wasn’t eager to spend time with Brooks, but she was at least ready to face him. She wanted to do what little she could to honor the old woman’s memory.

“We’ll go to the pool another day.” Eureka scooted William aside so she could climb out of bed. “I forgot I have to—”

“Don’t tell me you forgot you were watching the twins?” Rhoda appeared in the doorway wearing a red crepe dress. She worked a bobby pin into her tightly coiffed hair. “Your dad’s at work and I’m delivering the keynote at the dean’s luncheon.”

“I made plans with Brooks.”

“Rearrange them.” Rhoda tilted her head and frowned. “We were doing so well.”

She meant that Eureka had been going to school, had suffered through her hour of hell with Dr. Landry Tuesday afternoon. Eureka had forked over the last three twenties she owned, then dumped out onto Landry’s coffee table a battered sack of nickels, dimes, and pennies amounting to the extra fifteen dollars she needed to pay for the session. She had no idea how she would afford to suffer again next week, but at the rate the past few days had crawled, Tuesday was an eternity away.

“Fine. I’ll watch the twins.”

She didn’t have to tell Rhoda what they’d be doing while she watched them. She texted Brooks, the first communication she’d initiated since Never-Ever: Okay if I bring the twins?

Absolutely! His response was immediate. Was going to suggest that myself.

“Eureka,” Rhoda said. “The sheriff called this morning. Do you know a woman named Mrs. Blavatsky?”

“What?” Eureka’s voice died in her throat. “Why?”

She imagined her fingerprints on the papers on Madame Blavatsky’s desk. Her shoes unknowingly dipping into the woman’s blood, screaming out proof of her visit.

“Evidently she’s … missing.” Rhoda lied badly. The police would have told her Madame Blavatsky was dead. Rhoda must not have thought Eureka could handle hearing about another death. She didn’t know one percent of what Eureka was handling. “For some reason, the police think you know each other.”

There was no indictment in Rhoda’s voice, which meant the cops weren’t treating Eureka as a suspect—yet.

“Cat and I went to her storefront once.” Eureka tried not to say anything that was a lie. “She’s a fortune-teller.”

“That junk is a waste of money, you know that. The sheriff is going to call back later. I said you’d answer some questions.” Rhoda leaned over the bed and kissed the twins. “I’m almost late. Don’t take any chances today, Eureka.”

Eureka nodded as her phone buzzed in her palm with a text from Cat. The freaking sheriff called my house about Blavatsky. WHAT HAPPENED?

No clue, Eureka responded, feeling dizzy. They called here, too.

What about your book? Cat typed back, but Eureka didn’t have an answer, only a heavy weight in her chest.

Sunlight glittered on the water as Eureka and the twins walked the long cedar planks to the edge of Brooks’s Cypremort Point dock. His lean silhouette bent forward, checking the halyards that would raise the sails once the boat was in the bay.

The family sloop was christened Ariel. It was a long-seasoned, weather-stained, beautiful forty-foot sailboat with a deep hull and a square stern. It had been in the family for decades. Today its bare mast stood up stiffly, cutting the dome of the sky like a knife. A pelican sat on the line that tethered the boat to the dock.

Brooks was barefoot, in cutoffs and a green Tulane sweatshirt. He wore his father’s old army baseball cap. For a moment Eureka forgot she was mourning Madame Blavatsky. She even forgot she was mad at Brooks. As she and the twins approached the boat, she enjoyed his simple movements—how familiar he was with every inch of the boat, the strength he displayed tightening the sheets. Then she heard his voice.

He was shouting as he moved from the cockpit to the main deck. He leaned down the stairs, head level with the galley below. “You don’t know me and you never will, so stop trying.”

Eureka stopped short on the dock, holding the twins’ stiff hands. They were used to Eureka shouting at home, but they’d never seen Brooks like this.

He looked up and saw her. His posture loosened. His face lit up.

“Eureka.” He grinned. “You look terrific.”

She squinted toward the galley, wondering whom Brooks had been yelling at. “Is everything okay?”

“Never better. Top of the morning, Harrington-Boudreauxs!” Brooks lifted his cap at the twins. “Are you ready to be my double first mates?”

The twins jumped into Brooks’s arms, forgetting how scary he’d just been. Eureka heard someone climbing from the galley to the deck. The silver crown of Brooks’s mother’s head appeared. Eureka was stunned that he would say what he’d said to Aileen. She stood on the gangway and held out a hand to help Aileen up the steep, slightly rocking steps.

Aileen offered Eureka a weary smile and held out her arms for a hug. Her eyes were wet. “I loaded up the galley with lunch.” She straightened the collar of her striped jersey dress. “There are plenty of brownies, baked fresh last night.”

Eureka imagined Aileen wearing a flour-dusted apron at three in the morning, baking her anxiety into sweet-smelling steam that carried the secret of the change in Brooks. He wasn’t just wearing Eureka down. His mother seemed like a smaller, faded version of herself.

Aileen slipped off her kitten heels and held them in her hands. She turned her deep brown eyes on Eureka; they were the same color as her son’s. She lowered her voice. “Have you noticed anything strange about him recently?”

If only Eureka could open up to Aileen, hear what she’d been going through, too. But Brooks came and stood between them, putting an arm around each of them. “My two favorite ladies,” he said. And then, before Eureka could register Aileen’s reaction, Brooks removed his arms and walked to the helm. “You ready to do this, Cuttlefish?”

I haven’t forgiven you, she wanted to say, though she had read all sixteen groveling text messages he’d sent this week, and the two letters he’d left in her locker. She was here because of Madame Blavatsky, because something told her that destiny mattered. Eureka was trying to replace her final image of Blavatsky dead in her studio with the memory of the woman at peace under the willow tree by the bayou, the one who’d seemed convinced there was good reason for Eureka to sail with Brooks today.

What you do once you’re there is up to you.

But then Eureka thought about Ander, who insisted Brooks was dangerous. The scar on Brooks’s forehead was half hidden under the shadow of his baseball cap. It looked like an ordinary scar, not some ancient hieroglyph—and for a moment Eureka felt crazy for thinking that the scar might be evidence of something sinister. She looked down at the thunderstone, flipping it over. The rings were barely visible in the sun. She’d been acting like a conspiracy theorist who’d spent too many days cooped up with only the Internet to talk to. She needed to relax and get some sun.

“Thanks for lunch,” Eureka said to Aileen, who’d been chatting with the twins from the gangplank. She stepped closer and lowered her voice so that Aileen alone could hear. “About Brooks.” She shrugged, attempting lightness. “Just boys, you know. I’m sure William will grow up to terrorize Rhoda someday.” She tousled her brother’s hair. “Means he loves you.”

Aileen looked out at the water again. “Children grow up so fast. I guess sometimes they forget to forgive us. Well”—she looked back at Eureka, forced a smile—“you kids have fun. And if there’s any weather, turn back right away.”

Brooks held out his arms and looked up at the sky, which was blue and immense and cloudless but for an innocent cotton puff in the east just underneath the sun. “What could possibly go wrong?”

The breeze rustling Eureka’s ponytail became bracing as Brooks started Ariel’s engine and steered away from the dock. The twins squealed, looking cute in their life jackets. They balled their hands into excited fists at the first jolt of the boat. The tide was soft and steady, the air perfectly briny. The shore was lined with cypress trees and family camps.

When Eureka rose from her bench to see if Brooks needed help, he waved for her to sit down. “Everything’s under control. You just relax.”

Though anyone else would say that Brooks was trying to make amends and that the bay today was serene—a sun-blasted sky making the waves glisten, the smallest shimmer of pale fog lazing on the distant horizon—Eureka was uneasy. She saw the sea and Brooks as capable of the same dark surprise: out of nowhere they could morph into knives and stab you in the heart.

She thought she’d hit the bottom at the Trejean party the other night, but since then Eureka had lost both The Book of Love and the only person who could help her understand it. Worse, she believed that the people who killed Madame Blavatsky were the same ones hunting her. She really could have used a friend—and yet she found it nearly impossible to smile at Brooks across the deck.

The deck was made of treated cedar, dimpled by a million dents from cocktail-partiers’ stilettos. Diana used to go to Aileen’s parties on this boat. Any of these marks could have been made by the single pair of high heels she’d owned. Eureka imagined using her mother’s dents to clone her back to life, to put her on the deck right now, dancing to no music in daylight. She imagined that the surface of her own heart probably looked like this deck. Love was a dance floor, where everyone you lost left a mark behind.

Bare feet slapped the deck as the twins ran around, shouting “Goodbye!” or “We’re sailing!” to every camp they passed. The sun warmed Eureka’s shoulders and reminded her to show her siblings a beautiful time. She wished Dad were here to see their faces. With her phone, she snapped a picture and texted it to him. Brooks grinned at her. She nodded back.

They glided past two men in mesh baseball caps fishing from an aluminum canoe. Brooks greeted each of them by name. They watched a crabbing boat coast by. The water was rich blue opal. It smelled like Eureka’s childhood, much of which had been spent on this boat with Brooks’s uncle Jack at the helm. Now Brooks was steering the ship with easy confidence. His brother, Seth, always said that Brooks was born to sail, that he wouldn’t be surprised if Brooks became an admiral in the navy or a tour guide in the Galápagos. Whatever kept Brooks on the water was likely what Brooks would do.

It wasn’t long before Ariel left behind the camp houses and trailers, rounding a bend to face broad, shallow Vermilion Bay.

Eureka gripped the whitewashed bench beneath her at the sight of the small man-made beach. She hadn’t been back since the day Brooks had almost drowned here—the day they had kissed. She felt a mix of nerves and embarrassment, and she couldn’t look at him. He was busy anyway, cutting the engine and hoisting the mainsail from the cockpit; then he raised the jib up the forestay.

He handed William and Claire the jib and asked them to tug the corners, making them feel they were helping to bring the sails aloft. They squealed when the crisp white sail slid up the mast, locked into place, and filled with wind.

The sails billowed, then grew taut with the strong eastern breeze. They started on a close haul course, at forty-five degrees to the wind, and then Brooks maneuvered the boat into a comfortable broad reach, easing the sails appropriately. Ariel was majestic with the wind at its back. Water split across its bow, sending smothers of foam splashing softly onto the deck. Black frigate birds swooped in grand circles overhead, keeping pace with the leeward glide of the sails. Flying fish soared above waves like shooting stars. Brooks let the kids stand with him at the helm as the boat clipped west past the bay.

Eureka brought juice boxes and two of Aileen’s sandwiches up from the galley for the twins. The kids chewed quietly, sharing a lounge chair in the shady corner of the deck. Eureka stood next to Brooks. The sun bore down on her shoulders and she squinted ahead at a long, flat stretch of low-lying land overgrown with pale green reeds in the distance.

“Still mad at me?” he asked.

She didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to talk about anything that might scratch her brittle surface and expose every secret she held inside.

“Is that Marsh Island?” She knew it was. The barrier island kept the heavier waves from breaking in the bay. “We should stay to the north of it. Right?”

Brooks patted the broad wooden wheel. “You don’t think Ariel can handle the open seas?” His voice was playful, but his eyes had narrowed. “Or is it me you’re worried about?”

Eureka breathed in a gust of briny air, certain she could see whitecaps beyond the island. “It’s rough out there. It might be too much for the twins.”

“We want to go out far!” Claire shouted between gulps of grape juice.

“I do this all the time.” Brooks moved the wheel slightly east so they’d be able to slide around the edge of the approaching island.

“We didn’t go out that far in May.” It was the last time they’d sailed together. She remembered because she’d counted the four circles they’d made around the bay.

“Sure we did.” Brooks stared past her at the water. “You’ve got to admit your memory has become disorganized since—”

“Don’t do that,” Eureka snapped. She looked back in the direction they’d come. Gray clouds had joined the softer pink clouds near the horizon. She watched the sun slip behind one, its rays frisking the cloud’s dark coat. She wanted to turn back. “I don’t want to go out there, Brooks. This shouldn’t be a fight.”

The boat swayed and they stepped on each other’s feet. She closed her eyes and let the rocking slow her breathing.

“Let’s take it easy,” he said. “This is an important day.”

Her eyes flashed open. “Why?”

“Because I can’t have you mad at me. I messed up. I let your sadness scare me and I lashed out when I should have supported you. It doesn’t change how I feel. I’m here for you. Even if more bad things happen, even if you get sadder.”

Eureka shrugged his hands away. “Rhoda doesn’t know I brought the twins. If anything happens …”

She heard Rhoda’s voice: Don’t take any chances, Eureka.

Brooks rubbed his jaw, clearly annoyed. He cranked one of the levers on the mainsail. He was going past Marsh Island. “Don’t be paranoid,” he said harshly. “Life is one long surprise.”

“Some surprises can be avoided.”

“Everybody’s mother dies, Eureka.”

“That’s very supportive, thank you.”

“Look, maybe you’re special. Maybe nothing bad will ever happen to you or anyone you love again,” he said, which made Eureka laugh bitterly. “All I meant was I’m sorry. I broke your trust last week. I’m here to earn it back.”

He was waiting for her forgiveness, but she turned and gazed at the waves, which were the color of another pair of eyes. She thought about Ander asking her to trust him. She still didn’t know if she did. Could a dry thunderstone open a portal to trust as quickly as Brooks had closed one? Did it even matter? She hadn’t seen or heard from Ander since that rainy night’s experiment. She didn’t even know how to look for him.

“Eureka, please,” Brooks whispered. “Say you trust me.”

“You’re my oldest friend.” Her voice was rough. She didn’t look at him. “I trust that we’ll get over this.”

“Good.” She heard a smile in his voice.

The sky dimmed. The sun had gone behind a cloud shaped strangely like an eye. A beam of light shot through its center, illuminating a circle of sea in front of the boat. Somber clouds rolled toward them like smoke.

They had sailed past Marsh Island. The waves were rolling in quick succession. One rocked the boat so violently that Eureka stumbled. The kids rolled around on the deck, shrieking with laughter, not scared at all.

Glancing at the sky, Brooks helped Eureka up. “You were right. I guess we should turn back.”

She hadn’t expected that, but she agreed.

“Take the wheel?” He crossed the deck to tack the sails to turn the boat around. The blue sky had succumbed to advancing dark clouds. The wind grew fierce and the temperature dropped.

When Brooks returned to the wheel, Eureka covered the twins with beach towels. “Let’s go down to the galley.”

“We want to stay up here and watch the big waves,” Claire said.

“Eureka, I need you to hold the wheel again.” Brooks handled the sails, trying to get the bow of the boat to face the waves head on, which would be safer, but the swells slammed the starboard side.

Eureka made William and Claire stand next to her so she could keep an arm around them. They’d stopped laughing. The waves had grown too rough.

A powerful surge crested before the boat as if it had been rising from the bottom of the sea for eternity. Ariel rode up the face of the wave, higher and higher, until it slammed down and struck the surface of the water with a boom that shuddered hard up to the deck. It knocked Eureka away from the twins, against the mast.

She’d hit her head, but she struggled to her feet. She shielded her face from the bursts of white water flung across the deck. She was five feet from the kids, but she could barely move for the ship’s rocking. Suddenly the boat turned against the force of another wave, which crested over the deck and swamped it with water.

Eureka heard a scream. Her body froze as she saw William and Claire swept up in the flow of water and carried toward the stern. Eureka couldn’t reach them. Everything was rocking too hard.

The wind shifted. A gust slam-jibed the boat, causing the mainsail to violently switch sides. The boom slid starboard with a creak. Eureka watched it swing toward where the twins were struggling to stand on a bench in the cockpit, away from the swirling water.

“Look out!” Eureka screamed too late. The side of the boom hit Claire and William in their chests. In one horrifically simple motion, it flung their bodies overboard, as if they were weightless as feathers.

She threw herself against the rail of the ship and searched for the twins among the waves. It only took a second, but it felt like an eternity: orange lifejackets bobbed to the surface and tiny arms flailed in the air.

“William! Claire!” she shouted, but before she could jump in, Brooks’s arm shot across her chest to hold her back. He held one of the life preservers in his other hand, its rope looped over his wrist.

“Stay here!” he shouted.

He dove into the water. He tossed the life ring toward the twins as his strong strokes brought him to them. Brooks would save them. Of course he would.

Another wave crested over their heads—and Eureka didn’t see them anymore. She shouted. She ran up and down the deck. She waited three, maybe four seconds, certain they’d reappear at any moment. The sea was black and churning. There was no sign of the twins or Brooks.

She struggled onto the bench and dove into the roiling sea, saying the shortest prayer she knew as her body tumbled down.

Hail Mary, full of grace …

In midair she remembered: she should have dropped the anchor before she left the boat.

As her body broke the surface, Eureka braced for the shock—but she didn’t feel anything. Not wet, not cold, not even that she was underwater. She opened her eyes. She was holding on to her necklace, the locket and the thunderstone.

The thunderstone.

Just as it had done in the bayou behind her house, the mysterious stone had cast some sort of impenetrable water-resistant balloon—this time around Eureka’s entire body. She tested its boundaries. They were pliant. She could stretch without feeling cramped. It was like a kind of wetsuit, shielding her from the elements. It was a bubble-shaped thunderstone shield.

Free from gravity, she levitated inside the shield. She could breathe. She could move by making normal swimming strokes. She could see the sea around her as well as if she were wearing a scuba mask.

Under any other circumstances, Eureka would not have believed this was happening. But she didn’t have time to not believe. Her faith would be the twins’ salvation. And so she surrendered to her new, dreamlike reality. She searched the undulating ocean for her siblings and for Brooks.

When she saw the kick of a little leg fifty feet in front of her, she whimpered with relief. She swam harder than she’d ever done anything, propelling her arms and her legs forward in a desperate crawl. As she grew closer, she could see that it was William. He was kicking violently—and his hand was clasping Claire’s.

Eureka strained with the strange effort of swimming inside her shield. She reached out—she was so close—but her hand wouldn’t break the surface of the bubble.

She jabbed at William senselessly, but he couldn’t see her. The twins’ heads kept ducking underwater. A dark shadow behind them might have been Brooks—but the shape never came into focus.

William’s kicks grew weaker. Eureka was screaming with futility when suddenly Claire’s hand swooped down and accidentally penetrated the shield. It didn’t matter how Claire did it. Eureka grabbed her sister hard and pulled her in. The drenched little girl gasped for air when her face broke through. Eureka prayed that William’s hand would stay in Claire’s so she could pull him into the shield, too. His grip seemed to be loosening. From lack of oxygen? For fear of what his sister was being drawn into?

“William, hold on!” Eureka shouted as loudly as she could, not knowing whether he could hear. She only heard the slosh of water against the surface of the shield.

His tiny fist broke through the barrier. Eureka pulled the rest of him in with a single heave, the way she’d once seen a calf being born. The twins gagged and coughed—and levitated with Eureka in the shield.

She swept both of them into a hug. Her chest shuddered and she almost lost control of her emotions. But she couldn’t, not yet.

“Where’s Brooks?” She looked beyond the shield. She didn’t see him.

“Where are we?” Claire asked.

“This is scary,” William said.

Eureka sensed the waves crashing above them, but they were now fifteen feet below the surface, where the water was much calmer. She steered the shield in a circle, searching the surface for signs of Brooks or the boat. The twins wailed, terrified.

She had no idea how long the shield would last. If it burst or sank or disappeared, they’d be dead. Brooks would be able to make it back to the boat on his own, to sail it back to camp. She had to believe he would. If she didn’t believe, she could never allow herself to focus on getting the twins to safety. And she had to get the twins to safety.

She couldn’t see above water to determine which way to go, so she stayed still and watched the currents. There was an infamous chaotic riptide just south of Marsh Island. She would have to avoid that.

When the current pulled her in one direction, she knew to swim against it. Cautiously, she began to paddle. She would swim until the tides changed on the bay side of Marsh Island. From there, she hoped, the waves would move with her, carrying the three of them to shore in a smother of foam.

The twins didn’t ask any more questions. Maybe they knew she couldn’t answer them. After a few minutes of watching her strokes, they began to swim with her. They helped the shield move faster.

They swam through the gloom beneath the surface of the sea—past strange, bloated black fish, past rocks shaped like ribs, slick with moss and sludge. They found a rhythm—the twins paddled, then rested, while Eureka swam steadily on.

After what seemed like an hour, Eureka saw the submerged sandbar of Marsh Island, and she almost collapsed with relief. It meant they were going the right way. But they weren’t there yet. They had three miles to go. Swimming inside the shield was less taxing than swimming in open water, but three miles was a long way to travel with half-drowned four-year-old twins in tow.

After another hour of paddling, the bottom of the shield struck something. Sand. The ocean floor. The water was getting shallower. They had almost made it ashore. Eureka swam forward with renewed strength. At last they reached an uphill slope of sand. The water was shallow enough that a wave broke below the top of the shield.

When that happened, the shield popped like a soap bubble. It left no trace behind. Eureka and the twins shuddered back to gravity, touching the earth again. She was knee-deep in the water, hoisting them up as she stumbled through reeds and mud to the deserted Vermilion shore.

The sky was awash with thunderclouds. Lightning danced above the trees. The only signs of civilization were a sand-caked LSU T-shirt and a faded Coors Light can wedged into the mud.

She set the twins down on the edge of the beach. She fell onto the sand. William and Claire curled into balls on either side of her. They shivered. She covered them with her arms and rubbed their goose-bumped skin.

“Eureka?” William’s voice shook.

She could barely nod.

“Brooks is gone, isn’t he?”

When Eureka didn’t answer, William began to cry, and then Claire began to cry, and Eureka couldn’t think of anything to say to make them feel better. She was supposed to be strong for them, but she wasn’t strong. She was broken. She writhed on the sand, feeling a strange nausea enter her body. Her vision blurred, and an unfamiliar sensation coiled around her heart. She opened her mouth and struggled to breathe. For a moment, she thought she might cry.

That was when it started raining.