Dieter is a wealthy German who loves the lazy, kicked-back lifestyle of Dinkin’s Bay, but he is also an internationally respected physician who’s an expert on human behavior and the chemistry of the brain. There were about fifteen of us, beers in hand, platters of steamed shrimp and fried conch on the picnic tables nearby, and at the center of our little group was Jeth. Jeth with the Cherokee black hair and Beverly Hillbillies accent, wearing filthy khaki fishing shorts and shirt, a plastic cup in his hand that we all knew was filled with vodka plus a little fresh grapefruit juice from the grapefruit tree behind the shell shop. Jeth, who’d once had a mild stutter, but who had not stuttered once since Janet’s disappearance. Not that he’d said much at all after our little fleet returned from Marco Island. He was sleeping too late, not bathing, and drinking way, way too much. Lots of red flags.
Standing while the rest of us sat, Dieter spoke in a guttural, booming Teutonic accent and used sweeping arm gestures. He outlined the list-numbness, yearning, and disbelief, then disorganization and denial, before anger kicked in. Then came the final stage, which was the beginning of the healing process.
Jeth, I was not surprised to realize, was displaying all the symptomatic stages except for the last.
He was not healing, nor did he seem to have much interest in allowing himself to heal. Janet was dead because he’d insisted that they date other people. She’d been with Michael Sanford on that Friday dive trip because Jeth had refused Janet’s pleas that the two of them go away for the weekend and attempt to sort out their problems.
That was the way he saw it, anyway, and why he was clearly punishing himself.
I listened to Dieter say, “Emotional numbness, if unresolved, can impair a person’s ability to be deeply intimate or to interact with people and situations in a spontaneous manner. In other words, my friends, you will not haf fun anymore! In fact, you will be the pain in my ass, and we have enough pains in my ass on this island!”
We all laughed. Everyone except Jeth, who yawned, took a gulp of his vodka, and watched a pelican collapse its wings in mid-flight and crash like a crate into the bay.
As Dieter talked about the second and third stages of mourning-deep yearning, disbelief, and then denial-I noticed a green Jeep Cherokee pull into the shell parking lot and a lean, leggy redhead get out. It was Amelia Gardner. I recognized her from photos I’d seen in the newspaper and from television, too. For the brief period in which the disappearances got a lot of press, she, as the lone survivor, was the center of attention-Gardner and the families of the three people who’d vanished. As a group, they’d held press conferences and commented jointly on what they believe happened to the pleasure boat Seminole Wind and had issued occasional opinions on the job the Coast Guard had done.
Their comments about the Coast Guard’s efforts were always positive, and deservedly so, yet their group hadn’t wanted the search to end when Dalton Dorsey and his superiors pulled the plug. I didn’t blame the families. Even if the three were dead-and there seemed no other possibility-their loved ones wanted the remains found because they desperately wanted and deserved closure.
As Dalton told me on the phone, “I don’t blame them one tiny little bit. But we’re in the business of saving lives, not recovering bodies. People don’t realize, you get out there in international waters, beyond the twelve-mile limit, there’s only so much help you can expect.”
Janet’s representative family consisted of a younger sister, Claudia Kohlerberg, who was a stockier, more athletic version of Janet. She’d traveled down from an Ohio farm town called Bryan, returned home two days after the search was ended, and now was back again to see to Janet’s personal effects. She’d been staying on the little blue houseboat at Jensen’s Marina: a nice woman with a strong smile and a jock-like informality, but who clearly showed the pain of her sister’s disappearance. There was a familial similarity both in appearance and depth of sensitivity, but Claudia did not give the impression of shyness, as Janet had. I had the feeling that, under happier circumstances, Claudia would have been the rowdy partier and the sisterly confidant of a long list of guy friends.
Claudia seemed to like Dinkin’s Bay, and we all liked her.
I wasn’t the only who recognized Amelia Gardner. Tomlinson and Ransom-who’d apparently hammered out a separate peace during their six days at sea-stood and walked toward the parking lot to intercept her. Dieter was saying, “When we lose someone we love, there is a deep yearning for what was lost followed by a desperate search for a way to replace that person.
“This can be a very dangerous time! We blame ourselves. We say, ‘If only I’d done something different. ’ We have many regrets. Then we do a very human but stupid thing. We rush into bad rebound relationships. We try to replace the person with alcohol or drugs. During this period, we feel we have a hole inside ourselves that cannot be filled, a thirst that cannot be quenched.”
I watched Tomlinson and Ransom introduce themselves to Amelia Gardner. Watched her nod as Ransom gestured to our little group, then as she leaned into her car and retrieved a small backpack, then walked with an easy-hipped grace across the white shell.
She was a wearing a red tank top, khaki shorts with starched pleats, and thin sandals. A woman as tall as Ransom, but flat-chested, with pale Irish skin, freckles, and curly red hair clipped boyishly short. The bright red of her tank top made her hair the color of old copper. Take one look at her and you assumed certain things from her appearance, the muscle tone, and the way she carried herself: She probably had green eyes, didn’t tan, was a high school athlete, maybe competed in college, too. Good at endurance sports, almost anything outdoors, and had inherited a family passion for St. Patrick’s Day through her father, whom she probably adored. Not unusual among women athletes.
There was something else I knew about her, even though we’d never met: Amelia Gardner was a survivor. On a black and windy night, out of four desperate people, she was the only one who’d made it to the light tower.
Dieter finished by talking about “free-floating” anger that seeks physical relief and how, if we dealt honestly with our emotions and recognized them for what they were-symptoms of loss-it would enable us to pull wisdom and meaning from pain. “It will deepen and strengthen our relationship with ourselves and increase our resilience in living. That is Janet’s gift to us, but we must choose to accept her gift.”
Jeth, at least, seemed to hear that. I saw him sit a little straighter, listening.
Then it was Tomlinson’s turn, just as we planned. He stood and tugged at his ratty, gold paisley surfer’s shorts, his sun-bleached hair hanging long, and stood scratching at his goatee until he had everyone’s attention. Then he held up his hands for quiet and said, “The party’s gonna be a little different tonight. The rules are the same-you put ten bucks in the bucket, then eat and drink all you want. But one thing everyone needs to know. This party’s going to be in Janet’s honor. We are going to celebrate the life of our sister, that good, good woman, and it is going to be one hell of a party!”
A couple of people hooted and there was gradual applause, then louder applause.
Tomlinson raised his voice a little. “I already talked to Claudia about it. It’s time to stop feeling bad about Janet being gone and start talking about what a great life she had. About what she contributed to the lives of us all. Man, I miss her! Damn right I do! Janet Mueller was a spiritual horse. There was no load so heavy that it took the light out of her eyes. She had energy, my children, a great karma, and here’s what I can tell you: Energy can’t be destroyed. That’s a fact of physics. Janet may have taken a different form, but her energy’s still here.”