Chapter 12: Search

I ran down the loft stairs in a T-shirt and bare feet and across the wet grass to the end of the railway.

The mooring line was still tied to the float.

I pulled it up out of the water hand over hand.

It ended in a clean, fresh, slanting cut.

The porch light came on at the house.

Seth came down the hill in a pair of jeans and nothing else, with a flashlight.

Bess was behind him in a nightgown and rubber boots.

He shone the light on the rope in my hands.

He didn't say anything.

He looked out at the black harbor, then at the sky, then at his watch.

"Tide's going out," he said. "She'll drift toward the mouth of the harbor."

"Then let's go."

"Charlie. It's two in the morning and there's no moon on that side. We'd run right over her."

"Seth."

"First light's at a quarter to five."

He put his hand over mine on the cut rope.

"I'll have the skiff ready at four-thirty. I swear."

I sat on the end of the railway until four-thirty with Bess's head on my shoulder.

She fell asleep after ten minutes.

We went out in the gray before sunrise, with the fog lying flat on the water and Seth standing at the tiller in a sweatshirt.

I sat in the bow with the flashlight.

We went up the Middletown shore and down the Newport side.

Past the yacht club, where the Sea Sovereign sat on her mooring.

Past Goat Island and around Fort Adams, where I'd floated three weeks before and decided not to scream.

The sun came up red behind us.

Nothing.

We went out toward the harbor mouth, where the water got rough and the rocks under Castle Hill came up black through the swell.

Then I saw her.

She was lying on her side on a shelf of rock below the lighthouse.

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