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The day Remy Victoria Reed fished a drowning man from the Atlantic Ocean began in the most ordinary way.
Her phone alarm woke her at 8:00 a.m. in her cottage on Islehaven Island, twenty-four miles off the coast of Maine. She defrosted her usual breadless turkey sausage egg’wich in the microwave. She consumed it along with one tall glass of water (hydration was key) and one cup of coffee (morning caffeine—also key). She engaged in a thirty-five-minute power walk through mid-September foliage just beginning to shimmer with autumn color. Dutifully, she completed fifteen minutes of yoga on her living room floor followed by ten minutes of meditation. After she showered, it took four minutes to don a gray waffle-knit shirt and jean overalls. She wrestled with her long blond hair for thirty seconds before conceding defeat.
Her appearance would do seeing as how she had no expectation of seeing another human today nor, indeed, for the next few days. Even when she did see humans, they were locals well known to her. Most were much older. All were rugged types who’d be baffled to see her in makeup and disdained the notion that clothing had any purpose other than utility.
By 9:45, she’d entered her studio. After selecting her Masters of Classical Music CD, she fired up her boom box, tied on her canvas apron, and settled her safety glasses onto her head. It didn’t take her long to submerge into the world of imagination she inhabited when working on her wooden sculptures. Today, she chipped away at a two-foot-long block of lignum vitae, a gouge in one hand, a mallet in the other. She followed the chalk lines she’d sketched on the block, but even more she followed the whispering of the wood—which told her what it wanted to become.
Her next alarm sounded at 12:45, startling her. She switched off her music, then played her frequent game of where-did-I-leave-my-phone?
Her trusty microwave once again defrosted her lunchtime meal. She settled herself and a spicy chicken bowl (nutrition was key) at her kitchen table. As always, she sat in the chair facing her living room. Beyond the large picture window at the living room’s end lay her front deck, and beyond that—ocean. Pine trees pressed close on the sides of the house but like polite audience members, they didn’t infringe on the scene framed by glass.
As she ate, her attention alternated between two things. One, texting with distant friends and family. Two, staring at the sea . . . which had whipped up considerably since her morning walk.
Her view through the picture window was her constant companion and source of fascination. Incredibly familiar. Endlessly new. It changed with the seasons, yes. But its mood could also change within a matter of minutes, on a quicksilver whim. At times it smiled beguilingly immediately before gnashing its teeth.
She made herself down more water (hydration was key). Just as she set the glass back on the table, a cloud slid in front of the sun, slanting shadows across the floorboards.
An ominous chill slid down the back of her neck. No longer a woman who overrode her instincts, Remy went still.
She heard nothing amiss. Neither did she see or smell anything amiss. Stuffing her phone in her overalls, she neared the window and peered out. The trees rattled and swayed more than usual, but overall, everything was as it should be.
The sense of foreboding remained, insistent.
She played her second-most-frequent game of where-did-I-leave-my-glasses? Once she had her frames in place, she carefully scanned the setting.
A scrap of white out at sea caught her attention. Too far away to tell if it was a wave or . . . something else. She scooped her binoculars from the side table and swept their magnified field of vision back and forth across the water. Where was the scrap of white?
The circle moved to the left, catching a corner of the object she sought. There. She moved the binoculars back to it.
It wasn’t an object. It was a man. In a white shirt. Swimming with difficulty. Struggling. In clothing, not a wet suit. No boat nearby.
A man. Overboard.
Her pulse leapt into overdrive.
She threw the strap of the binoculars around her neck and rammed her arms into the waterproof jacket she kept on a peg by the front door. Today’s temperature had reached the mid-sixties, but the ocean water surrounding Islehaven was dangerously cold. Stuffing her feet into duck boots, she called her friend and nearest neighbor.
“Yep?” Leigh answered.
“I just spotted a man overboard. He’s trying to keep his head above water and he’s pretty far out there.” Her pitch was too high, her words too fast. “We need to go and—and rescue him. Right now. Immediately.”
“I’m still twenty minutes from home.”
“No!”
“Yes,” Leigh said in her gruff, no-nonsense voice. A lobsterwoman, Leigh started her day well before sunrise and drove back from the harbor around this time. “Go and bring him in. I’ll meet you at your dock.”
“Leigh!”
“You can do this. Keep your phone with you. I’m on my way.”
No point calling anyone else because no one could reach her dock in less than the twenty minutes Leigh had quoted. Remy pounded down the dirt path from her deck to the cliff’s lowest edge, where her grandfather had built wooden stairs to the dock below. She hardly needed to look as her feet flew along planks her memory knew by heart.
This was terrible! What if the man slipped beneath the surface by the time she got out there? What if she couldn’t find him? What if he died? Her brain circled down a toilet hole of horrifying possibilities.
She reached the dock. From the storage chest there she yanked on a life jacket, then tossed a second life jacket and a life-saver ring attached to a rope onto the floor of the only vessel waiting—a small boat with an outboard motor.
Pausing, she shielded her eyes with her hand. She could no longer see the man. She held up the binoculars. There. His head was still above water.
She freed the mooring and clambered inside the boat. It rumbled to life and she took off toward the man’s position as fast as the aging boat could go. Not fast enough.
The weather had taken a metaphorical eggbeater to the water, forming choppy peaks. Overhead, charcoal-tipped clouds rolled toward her angrily.
She leaned forward, willing the boat to go faster.
Twice she lost sight of him and panicked, thinking he’d slipped under the waves for good. Both times she idled the motor and, bracing her legs apart, rose to her full height of five foot seven. Both times she spotted him and continued forward.
Islehaven’s residents served as the local emergency rescue force. She’d helped retrieve people from the water a few times in the past. Once after a boating accident and once after a small plane with engine failure had landed on the water. Those times, she’d assisted others.
This time, Remy was it.
She neared the man’s position and slowed her speed. “Don’t worry,” she called in a highly worried tone. “Everything’s going to be okay.” This situation was not okay. SOS! SOS! Emergency situation, her mind shrieked. “Can you put on a life jacket?” If he could, that would keep him afloat and face-up even if he lost consciousness.
He didn’t respond. He continued to swim for shore but was so exhausted, he made no progress. Life-preserver ring it was, then.
“I’m going to throw this to you.” She brandished the ring. “Hang on to it until we get you on board.”
He gave no sign of awareness.
“Sir!”
Still nothing. With shaking hands, she knotted the ring’s rope to the metal cleat on the side of the boat, then heaved the ring toward him.
He didn’t appear to notice.
“Grab it!” she yelled. “Grab it!”
He paused his swimming motion, which caused him to bob more upright. He was maybe in his mid-thirties. Skin very pale. Short, brownish hair slicked to an angular head.
“Grab the ring!”
At last, one of his arms streaked out of the water and came down on it.
Remy killed the boat’s motor. The sounds of sloshing water, squealing gulls, and her harsh breathing filled the void. She towed the rope in, hand over hand. He’d need to enter from the back of the boat via the ladder at its lowest point.
“Sir, can you hear me?”
Apparently not.
Once she’d pulled him close, she leaned her upper body over the boat’s edge and gripped the cold fabric of his white windbreaker. “Look at me.”
He tipped his face to her profile. His expression was blank. However, his glazed eyes did meet hers. All around him, churning water threatened to suck him down, down, down.
“There’s a ladder right in front of you. Climb up. I’ll pull as you climb.”
No response.
If he couldn’t climb, they were going to be in serious trouble. He was much larger than she and she didn’t think she could haul his dead, wet weight into her boat.
“Climb!” she ordered, tugging upward on his windbreaker.
He tried to climb, more in a dreamlike state than a conscious one, but his arms and legs refused to work as a team.
She looped the ring’s rope around his back. You are going to survive, she thought fiercely, the desperation to save herself that had once driven her to this island tangling with her desperation to save him. Remy threw all her body weight up and backward.
One of his feet found the lowest step of the ladder. He straightened that leg, which pressed his body higher.
Remy pulled the rope again and he landed in a heap inside her boat. Shaking. Waterlogged. In addition to the windbreaker, he wore black track pants and sneakers.
“Are you all right?”
Chattering teeth were the only answer.
She needed to get him warm and dry as soon as possible. Grunting, she dragged him away from where she’d sit to steer the boat and propped him against the bow.
Instinctively he drew his arms close to his chest.
“Was anyone else out here with you?”
No answer.
She scoured the view, 360. No one was calling for help and she saw nothing except a distant boat—little more than a miniature brown smudge—several miles to the southeast.
Remy sent the boat whizzing across the worsening waves toward home. Her urgency to save the life of her passenger distorted time, pulling the minutes unbearably long.
Gradually the façade of her cottage, covered in shingles that time had weathered to gray, drew nearer. She could make out
Leigh’s stout, reassuring form waiting for her on the dock.
At last, she pulled even with Leigh, who helped her secure the boat. The older woman stepped aboard wearing a green plaid flannel, jeans, and rubber boots. She’d stuffed her three-inch-long ponytail through the hole at the back of a faded ball cap.
“He hasn’t said anything,” Remy told her friend. “He’s semi-conscious.”
“Hypothermia can mess with a person’s abilities. It mimics drunkenness.” Leigh hunched near the man. “There's blood at the back of his head.”
“What?”
“I think he has a head injury. Let’s lift him out, as carefully as possible. I’ll hold under his arms, you get his feet.”
Remy followed her instructions.
“One, two, three,” Leigh said. They heaved him onto the dock.
He groaned, shut his eyes, and rolled onto his side. His lean, muscular body rattled.
“I’ll get one side, you get the other.” Leigh braced him into a sitting position and settled one of his arms across her shoulders. Remy did the same, feeling the coldness of it through her jacket. The two women pressed to standing in unison, the stranger staggering between them, head lolling forward. He was over six feet tall and heavy.
They started up the stairs.
Unlike Remy, Leigh had been born and bred on Islehaven. She was forty-eight, with a face that looked a decade older but a body that had the strength of someone two decades younger. Her thighs were the circumference of office wastepaper baskets. Leigh didn’t stop to rest and so Remy didn’t stop either, despite that her limbs were screaming in protest.
“We can,” Remy said between gasps of breath as they pushed through the cottage’s door, “put him on my bed.”
“Ayuh, but not until we’ve gotten these clothes off him. Let’s lay him on the rug in your bedroom first.”
They did so.
Leigh unzipped his windbreaker to reveal a white T-shirt beneath. Remy got out her electric blanket, spread it on the bed, and turned it on high. Then she rushed to the linen closet and returned with clean towels.
Both of them worked to peel the clinging windbreaker and T-shirt from his body. Doing so revealed nasty red and purple
bruises across his ribs.
Remy swallowed hard. What had happened to him?
Shivering miserably, he tried to return to the fetal position.
She pressed the towels to his hair and skin while Leigh made short work of his shoes and socks. They’d stripped him down to his track pants, a metal watch, and a platinum wedding band on his ring finger. When Leigh gripped his waistband in preparation to pull downward, Remy focused intently on his clavicles.
“Towel,” Leigh said like a surgeon asking for a scalpel. Remy passed her one, then prepared her bed by folding back the covers and stacking pillows so his head would be elevated.
The two women transferred him to the mattress, Remy’s vision once again glued to his clavicles.
Leigh drew the sheets and blankets over him. “He might have cracked ribs or a concussion. I’m going to call Michael.” She strode from the room.
Islehaven had a year-round population of forty. That number could swell as high as 120 in the summer months, but even then, they had no doctor. Nor did they have restaurants, a gas station, or a grocery store (except for the few items stocked at the post office). Their one-room schoolhouse educated four students. The ferry from the mainland came once a month. The nearest islands—to the north and west of Islehaven—were all smaller, all uninhabited.
Their community’s medical needs were served by a ship that carried a nurse to Maine’s unbridged islands. However, Nurse Ann was not a maritime emergency room. She came according to a schedule and had been here recently, which meant she wouldn’t return for weeks.
The closest thing they had to a medical professional was Michael, Islehaven’s resident EMT, who also worked as their air traffic controller and plumber.
The question What will happen to me if I need medical help? had plagued Remy when she’d moved here. She’d learned to deal with that fear and many others. Except now, that old question was snapping back like the tail of a whip. What will happen to him if he needs medical help?
They’d retrieved this man from the water, but he still might die. If he did, it would happen here. Inside her house. In her bed.
She took a step closer and leaned forward slightly.
The stranger’s masculine frame took up the entire length of her queen bed. He was very . . . chiseled. He had a V-shaped jaw
line. Defined cheekbones. A strong, straight nose and symmetrical brows. His pale brown eyelashes rested against frighteningly white skin. Now that his hair had been towel-dried and stuck up in tufts, she saw that it wasn’t brown like she’d first thought but dark blond in color.
Remy caught herself anxiously bending each of her fingers toward her palm. Shaking out her hands, she went to the kitchen to make tea. For the stranger, when he was able to consume it. And for herself and Leigh. She felt wobbly and needed tea right now the way gambling addicts needed Vegas.
As Remy was pouring hot water into mugs, Leigh approached. “Michael’s on his way. He suggested we take his temperature. Do you have a thermometer?”
“An electronic one, yes. It’s here somewhere.” Remy rustled through her messy medicine drawer until she found the thermometer at the back. Did it still have battery? She flicked it on and by some miracle, it came to life.
“Michael says if his temperature’s under ninety-six, he’ll likely need medical intervention right away.”
Remy carried the thermometer to her room and sat on the edge of the bed near the man’s waist. Leigh followed, placing the tea tray on the bench at the foot of the bed.
The man’s eyelids remained closed. His limbs and teeth continued to shudder.
Remy swiped the thermometer from the middle of his forehead to his temple. It beeped and she read the display aloud. “Ninety-six point seven.”
“Good.” Leigh leaned a shoulder against the room’s wall.
“Sir?” Remy asked their patient. “Can you hear me?”
Several seconds slogged by. “Ico,” he slurred quietly.
“What? Please say that again.”
He scowled. “Ico.”
I’m cold.
“Yes, I know you’re cold. I’m very sorry. Hopefully you’ll begin to warm up soon. You’re dry now and I have the electric blanket going full blast—”
“In . . . pay.”
In pain. Empathy gusted within her. “An EMT is on his way. We’ll address your pain as soon as we can. I have tea here. If you’re able to drink it . . . that will help you warm up.”
His hooded eyes cracked open. They were red, no doubt from the salt water. Yet his irises were a rare, first-leaves-of-springtime green. They almost gave the impression of translucence.
Remy lifted his mug. Anticipating that he’d continue to shiver for some time, she’d filled his cup halfway with water that wasn’t scalding hot. She scooted closer, her free hand reaching to support the back of his head. Her fingers met the briny strands of his hair then the drying blood Leigh had mentioned, which concealed a lump. Carefully, she positioned her hand below the injury and brought the cup to his lips.
He turned his face away.
She followed his mouth with the rim of the mug and tilted liquid in.
He grimaced. She tried again, but he shook his head. She could smell the ocean on him—that fresh, salty scent.
“This will help you warm up,” she repeated, bringing the tea back to his mouth.
He growled and shook his head again. “Sh. Grou. Ara. Fee.”
“Hmm? I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Fres . . . grou . . . n Arab . . . a off . . . ee.”
Leigh released her cackle-laugh. “I think he’s requesting fres
hly ground Arabica coffee. I take that as a good sign.”
Remy blinked at the stranger in astonishment. Of all the things he could have said in this moment while barely clinging to life, these were the words he’d chosen? He was placing a—a coffee order? As if she was a barista?
“Tea,” he gritted out. “Stain . . . d ot . . . ter.”
“Coffee is also stained water,” Remy pointed out.
“Ara . . . bica,” he said.
“I have Folgers coffee and Lipton tea. That’s it.”
He studied her with groggy outrage.
“I’ll be right back with a cup of Folgers,” Leigh announced.
His consciousness had begun to return when they’d had him on the rug. All he’d been able to think was that he wanted to go . . . away again. To wherever he’d been. Sleeping? But the way they’d pushed and pulled at him had stolen his ability to go away because pain sliced through his chest whenever he moved. Or inhaled.
What had happened to him? The gears in his head weren’t working right. They were turning too slowly, which made the world blurry and gray.
A long, drawn-out curse word dragged through the sludge of his mind.
The blond woman sitting beside him lifted her eyebrows, so he might’ve said that out loud.
She set his tea aside and reached for a mug of her own. Cradling it with both palms, she took several long drinks.
He tried to shift into a more comfortable position. The movement shot agony through his body, so he stopped. Better to remain motionless. Except he couldn’t do that either. His body was shaking uncontrollably.
Frowning, he squinted at the blonde.
Edgy energy radiated from her. She was young but not very young. Late twenties? Medium sized. Plain. Her oval face might be pretty with makeup, but she wasn’t wearing any. Bad taste in clothes. Her horn-rimmed glasses had water spots on them that she hadn’t seemed to notice. Eyes—no particular color. She’d taken the front of her hair and knotted it on top of her head. It fell wild and wavy in the back.
Where am I?
His line of sight traveled to the closet doors opposite him. Then to the wall that held a window. Rainy weather caused the trees to lean and toss. The bedroom was painted navy blue, the walls covered in stuff. Contemporary art. Metal stuff and wooden stuff. Books had been stacked on the bedside table near the window next to a lamp and wooden head. The head was glaring at him with elongated eyes and a narrow nose.
Cautiously, he looked to the bedside table on the other side and found another wooden head eyeballing him and a lot more junk covering the walls.
The older of the two women poked her head in the doorway. “Anything else I can get you while I’m in the kitchen?” she asked him.
It took him a while to locate the word he wanted. “Morphine.”
The older lady with the weathered, rectangular face grinned. “I’m fresh out.”
“Then twenty-one . . . year-old rum.”
The blonde’s mouth tightened with annoyance. “I have one bottle of tequila on hand in case of emotional emergency.”
“I’ll . . . take it.”
“No can do,” the lady in the doorway said. “In your condition, alcohol will make things worse not better.”
“Then pain . . . killers,” he said. “A bottle . . . full.”
The older woman disappeared.
“Thanks, Leigh,” the blonde called after her.
He was so cold. And naked under cheap, scratchy sheets. He could feel heat coming from the blanket above him so he shouldn’t be this cold. “Did you two . . . drug me?”
“What? No.”
“Kid . . . nap me?”
“Absolutely not. We’re trying to help you.”
“By taking off . . . my clothes?”
She stiffened. “We had to. I saw you through my binoculars, out in the ocean, swimming in your clothing. I brought you here in my boat but now you have hypothermia from being in the water so long. We needed to get you dry and warm, so we took off your wet clothes. But rest assured, I didn’t see anything except your clavicles.”
His clavicles? “My chest . . . and head . . .”
“You have bruised ribs and a head injury.”
“Only . . . an idiot would swim . . . in their clothes. Why . . . would I do that?”
“I have no idea.”
He made a sound of frustration. “I’m going to be . . . disgusted with myself if it turns out . . . I’m an idiot.”
“What do you remember?”
He had a vague memory of sea and desperation, of praying to God and the sense that God was with him, keeping his head above water.
Leigh placed a glass of water, two Advil, and a cup of coffee on the bedside table.
Two Advil? He struggled against a wave of despair. “I’m going to need more medicine.”
“When the EMT gets here, we’ll give you more if he says you can have more,” the blonde answered.
Was this hell? Was he going to spend eternity with wooden statue heads, a woman trying to pour tea down his throat, and not enough medicine to kill the pain?
He wanted all of it gone. The pain most of all. But also this place and these people.
The blonde helped him wash down the Advil with water, then brought the coffee to his lips. The scent of it hit his nose. This time, he cooperated and drank. The coffee was subpar, but better than tea.
Leigh took her tea to the chair in the corner. She sat with her shoulders back, one foot braced on the knee of the opposite leg. He hoped this was her house because she seemed calmer and more normal than the blonde. “Where . . . am I?”
“In my home,” the blonde said.
Great.
“On Islehaven Island, off the coast of Maine,” Leigh added.
“Islehaven?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I don’t . . . know it.”
“Can you explain how you ended up in the water?” Leigh asked. “Take your time. I know it’s hard to think when your body’s that cold.”
He searched his fuzzy head.
“Were you out on a boat?” the blonde asked.
He scowled.
“Were you out on a boat?” she repeated.
He opened his mouth to reply . . .
However, when he reached for the answer, he couldn’t grab it.
Were you out on a boat?
He could feel the answer right there, close. Except he couldn't pin it down. He couldn't come up with anything, in fact, but blankness. “I don’t know.”
“What’s your name?” she asked. “We should alert your family at once.”
Again, he automatically went to pull up the information—
And found that it was gone, too. Missing. He didn’t even know his own name.
