“Say hi for me,” he said, kissing her good-bye.
Theresa only nodded, then went to the airport and caught the first flight she could. Once in Wilmington, she went directly to Garrett’s house, where Jeb was waiting for her.
* * *
“I’m glad you could come,” Jeb said as soon as she’d arrived.
“What’s going on?” she asked, scanning the house curiously for signs of Garrett’s presence.
Jeb looked older than she remembered. Leading her to the kitchen table, he pulled out the chair so she could sit with him. Speaking softly, he began with what he knew.
“From what I could gather from talking to different people,” he said quietly, “Garrett took Happenstance out later than usual. . . .”
* * *
it was simply something he had to do. Garrett knew the dark, heavy clouds on the horizon presaged a coming storm. They seemed far enough away, however, to give him the time he needed. Besides, he was only going out a few miles. Even if the storm did hit, he would be close enough to make it back to port. After pulling on his gloves, he steered Happenstance through the rising swells, the sails already in position.
For three years he’d taken the same route whenever he went out, driven by instinct and memories of Catherine. It had been her idea to sail directly east that night, the first night Happenstance was ready. In her imagination they were sailing to Europe, a place she’d always wanted to go. Sometimes she would return from the store with travel magazines and look through the pictures as he sat beside her. She wanted to see it all—the famous chвteaux of the Loire Valley, the Parthenon, the Scottish highlands, the Basilica—all the places she’d read about. Her ideal vacation ran from the ordinary to the exotic, changing every time she picked up a different magazine.
But, of course, they never made it to Europe.
It was one of his biggest regrets. When he looked back on his life with her, he knew it was the one thing he should have done. He could have given her that much, at least, and thinking back, he knew it would have been possible. After a couple of years of saving, they’d had the money to go and had toyed with travel plans, but in the end they’d used the money to buy the shop. When she realized the responsibility of the business would never leave them with enough time to go, her dream eventually began to fade. She began to bring home the magazines less frequently. After a while she seldom mentioned Europe at all.
The night they first took Happenstance out, however, he knew her dream was still alive. she stood on the bow, looking far into the distance, holding Garrett’s hand. “Will we ever go?” she asked him gently, and it was that vision of her he always remembered: her hair billowing in the wind, her expression radiant and hopeful, like that of an angel.
“Yes,” he promised her, “as soon as we have the time.”
Less than a year later, while pregnant with their child, Catherine died in the hospital with Garrett at her side.
Later, when the dreams began, he didn’t know what to do. For a while he tried to push his tormented feelings away. Then in a fit of desperation one morning, he tried to find relief by putting his feelings into words. He wrote quickly, without pausing, and the first letter was almost five pages long. He carried the finished letter with him when he went sailing later that day, and reading it again suddenly gave him an idea. Because the Gulf Stream, which flowed northward up the coast of the United States, eventually turned east once it reached the cooler waters of the Atlantic, with a little luck a bottle could drift to Europe and wash up on the foreign soil she had always wanted to visit. His decision made, he sealed the letter in a bottle and threw it overboard with the hopes of somehow keeping the promise he’d made. It became a pattern he would never break.
Since then he’d written sixteen more letters—seventeen, if you counted the one he had with him now. As he stood at the wheel, gliding the boat directly eastward, he absently touched the bottle nestled in his coat pocket. He had written it this morning, as soon as he had risen.
The sky was beginning to turn leaden, but Garrett steered onward, toward the horizon. Beside him, the radio crackled with warnings of the coming storm. After a moment’s hesitation, he turned it off and evaluated the sky. he still had time, he decided. The winds were strong and steady, but they weren’t yet unpredictable.
After writing this letter to Catherine, he had written a second one as well. That one, he’d already taken care of. Because of the second letter, though, he knew he had to send Catherine’s letter today. Storms were lined up across the Atlantic, moving slowly westward in a march toward the eastern seaboard. From the reports he’d seen on television, it didn’t look as if he’d be able to get out again for at least a week, and that was too long to wait. He’d already be gone by then.
The choppy seas continued to rise: the swells breaking higher, the troughs bottoming out a little lower. The sails were beginning to strain in the steady, heavy winds. Garrett evaluated his position. The water was deep here, though not quite deep enough. The Gulf Stream—a summer phenomenon—was gone, and the only way the bottle stood a chance of making it across the ocean was if it was far enough out to sea when it was dropped. The storm might otherwise wash it ashore within a few days—and of all the letters he’d written to her, he wanted this one to make it to Europe most of all. He had decided that it would be the last one he’d ever send.
On the horizon, the clouds looked ominous.
He pulled on his rain slicker and buttoned it up. When the rains came, he hoped it would protect him for at least a little while.
Happenstance began to bob as she moved farther out to sea. He held the wheel with both hands, keeping her as steady as he could. When the winds shifted and picked up—signaling the front of the storm—he began to tack, moving diagonally across the swells despite the hazards. Tacking was difficult in these conditions, slowing his progress, but he preferred to go against the wind now rather than attempt to tack on the way back if the storm caught up to him.
The effort was exhausting. Every time he shifted the sails, it took all the strength he had just to keep from losing control. Despite his gloves, his hands burned when the lines slid through his hands. Twice, when the wind gusted unexpectedly, he almost lost his balance, saved only because the gust died as quickly as it came.
For almost an hour he continued tacking, all the while watching the storm up ahead. It seemed to have stalled, but he knew it was an illusion. It would hit land in a few hours. As soon as it hit shallower water, the storm would accelerate and the ocean would become unnavigable. Now, it was simply gathering steam like a slowly burning fuse, getting ready to explode.
Garrett had been caught in major storms before and knew better than to underestimate the power of this one. With one careless move, the ocean would take him, and he was determined not to let that happen. He was stubborn, but not foolish. The moment he sensed real danger, he’d turn the boat around and race back to port.
Overhead, the clouds continued to thicken, rolling and twisting into new shapes. Light rain began to fall. Garrett looked upward, knowing it was just beginning. “Just a few more minutes,” he muttered under his breath. He needed just a few more minutes—
Lightning flashed across the sky, and Garrett counted off the seconds before he heard the thunder. Two and a half minutes later it finally sounded, booming over the open expanse of the ocean. The center of the storm was roughly twenty-five miles away. With the current wind speed, he calculated, he had over an hour before it hit in full force. He planned to be long gone by then.