“I wondered where you two had disappeared to.” Rusty had stayed behind to prepare the boat.
I pointed to the north end of the dock. “Rusty’s boat.” I sat down on the bench next to her, and Solange squeezed in next to me. “I don’t get him, Jeannie. On the one hand, he does a damn good job of playing the rustic redneck type. But then there’s this condo with a million-dollar view, finished like something out of Southern Living magazine. And his boat down there? It’s old, but it’s immaculate. He wants me to think otherwise, but my guess is it’s professionally maintained. Where does a Border Patrol agent get the money for all this?”
“You like him, don’tcha .”
“What?”
“Seychelle, my friend, you are so transparent. Soon as you like a fellow, you start picking on him. I pity the poor man you marry.”
“Marry? Why’s everybody got to talk about marriage all the time?”
“Everybody? Seems like I’m the only one around here just now.” She leaned forward and looked past me at Solange. “Tell me, missy, did you discuss marriage with this lady?”
Solange giggled and hid her face behind my back. Whether or not she understood Jeannie, the tone of voice and the face were enough to make anybody crack up.
“Seems to me, Seychelle, that you are the only other one around here who could have been contemplating marriage just now. Hmm ... Was it to B.J.? Or to Rusty?”
Rusty came bounding up the steps from the docks.
“You ready?”
“Oh, uh, Jeannie and I were just talking. Jeannie, Rusty and I are going to run up to Tugboat Annie’s in his boat and get some dinner. That is, if you don’t mind.”
“You go on. After all, this is just what I went to law school for—to be a babysitter.”
“I’m sorry. Forget it. We’ll stay.”
“Girl, you are taking me way too serious today. You two go on. You’ve got a lot to talk over. Besides, my boys are always with me. And this little thing?” She reached over and poked Solange in the belly button. “She’s so quiet you don’t hardly notice she’s around.”
“You want us to bring you something back?”
“Barbecue? Absolutely!”
I told Rusty I would meet him at the boat after I put a note on the Jeep for Pit. He ran upstairs to grab his wallet. I peeled Solange’s hand out of mine, knelt down next to her, and told her good-bye for now. The look on her face made me feel like a real creep, and I could feel her eyes on me as I crossed the pool deck on my way to the parking lot.
After I’d finished the note to Pit, I noticed the dark clouds gathering out west over the Everglades, and I decided to take the time to snap the side windows back onto the Jeep. I didn’t have a rain jacket, but I did find an old zip-front hooded sweatshirt.
Rusty and I arrived back at the boat at nearly the same time. Without a word, I untied the dock lines while he started the engines. We were like a couple of kids trying to sneak off.
“So,” Rusty said over the noise of the idling outboards when we were about five yards from the dock, headed north up the Intracoastal. “I hardly recognize you without your shadow.”
I turned away from him and looked through the windshield, up the waterway toward the Sheridan Street Bridge. The sun had slid behind the mass of clouds and squalls out to the west, bringing on an early twilight, and the cars driving over the metal grate in the bridge already had their headlights on. The air had that thick, menacing feel of an impending storm.
“I know what it’s like,” I said, “to really want to have a mom. At least when I was Solange’s age I still had my dad.” Rusty put his hand on the back of my neck and squeezed lightly. I felt his touch course through my body like heat lightning.
“Hey, I was just kidding,” he said.
“I know, but I can’t get over thinking about how alone she must feel.” I looked into his eyes. “Sometimes ‘alone’ feels really rotten.” I turned away again and spoke to the mangroves on the west bank of the Intracoastal. “The thing is, I don’t know how to be a mom, and I can’t be her mom.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re doing all right with the kid. In fact, it’s kind of neat watching you with her. There’s some kind of special bond between you two.”
“Thanks,” I said, keeping my face toward the mangroves, not wanting him to see how much I wanted that to be true.
XXIII
We squeezed into the last little bit of space at the restaurant’s dock. Before long, boats would start rafting up, tying to the outside of other boats, and later in the evening, they would be three deep in places. The restaurant was already crowded, but we got one of the high bar tables outside with a low powerboat at the dock in front of us. There’s nothing quite like waterfront dining when your view turns out to be the glossy fiberglass sides of fifteen-foot-high sportfishermen. Although we were a little downstream of the port, I sat on the side of the table that looked up the canal and had a great view across the water to Port Laudania. The lights around the port were blinking on as the last traces of daylight were swallowed by a low, dark sky.
Directly across from the restaurant, the pitted concrete dock was empty. The only things tied to it were the huge tires that served as bumpers along its entire length. A hundred feet or so back from the dock was a large white aluminum building with a green sign that read “G&G Marine, East Terminal.” A crane, tractor-trailers, and containers all sat idle. It was well after quitting time, and if there was anybody over there, I sure couldn’t see them. There wasn’t any sign of the Bimini Express. But, really, I wasn’t even certain this was where the little freighter was likely to dock. Here or in Miami? For all I knew, Capitaine had already left. On the other hand, would Malheur leave without tying up that last loose end that was Solange?
Once again, I flashed on the image of the girl Margot on the concrete floor at the Swap Shop when Collazo had pulled back the tarp. She would still be in the shop, scowling at Madame, if she had not spoken to me.
“What are you thinking?” Rusty asked after the waitress left with our orders. My eyes had been focused on the docks across the way, but my mind was filled with images from the past few days. The sound of Rusty’s voice brought me back to the restaurant.
“Huh? Oh ... I don’t know. I guess I was thinking about the people who are so desperate to get to this country that they’ll get involved with monsters like this Capitaine Malheur. Think about how bad it must be if the alternative to Malheur is even worse than he is. They climb aboard these crowded, rickety boats, leaving behind their families and all that was familiar. For freedom. And then they end up in the hands of a man like Capitaine. God, Rusty, what he did to that girl?” I pressed my hands against my eyes, trying to wipe the images away. It didn’t work. I tried to focus on Rusty’s face. “It probably wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t talked to her.”
“Hey, stop talking like that,” he said.
“Think of the courage it took. She went against her culture. She spoke to me, told me Malheur killed her brother. She was trying to bring Malheur down for that.”
“See, so if it hadn’t been you, she would have talked to someone else. It certainly wasn’t your fault.”
I propped my elbows on the table and leaned my chin on my clasped hands. “Maybe. But your saying that won’t make this feeling in my gut go away. He’s got to be stopped. I’ve got to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to Solange.”
“Seychelle, why do you think that hasn’t happened yet? Malheur could have killed her. I mean, let’s go all the way back to why she was alive in that boat. Why did he take the risk that someone would find her?”
“We don’t know that he put her in the boat. Maybe she escaped?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and his eyes focused on something in the distance on the other side of the canal. It was almost totally dark, but across the way, in the branches of a dead tree, I could see the silhouette of an osprey against the pinkish gray sky. “I think if she was just any restavek, she would be dead by now.”