Page 40 of Leave No Trace
Biting my lip, I gave her a hesitant pat on the back. ‘Dad says seasickness comes when your body insists on being vertical. If you let go of that need, stop focusing on the horizon and what you think should be up or down, then the sickness will pass.’
She squinted across Superior, where the gray below met the gray above. ‘There is no horizon.’
I tried not to smile. ‘One less problem. Just try to remember: up isn’t up. Down isn’t down.’
Dad came over and, after hearing the situation, offered to take her back to the cabin. She accepted his arm, too queasy to even grumble about being led around like an old lady, while he told her about theOnoko’s hull failure and spectacular flipping explosion and sinking, presumably to cheer her up. When Bryce took Lucas inside for a supervised bathroom trip, I climbed the stairs to the second deck and curled up beneath the sightline of the captain’s bridge, using it as a buffer against the unrelenting wind. The gales had begun.
Shivering, I watched the churn of the water until Lucas appeared on the stairs. Bryce’s head popped up behind him and I waved him off, agreeing to supervise. Negotiating the deck unsteadily, Lucas leveraged the winches and coils of rope to make his way to the bench and sit down. Silently he gripped the rails of the seat and I wondered if he was going to be sick, too.
The boat progressed up the shore where the sprawl of Duluth gave way to secluded mansions, towering homes sitting regally on the cliffs, and then we turned and headed into the open water toward the site of the wreck. Dad climbed up to the captain’s bridge and passed us without comment or hurry, seemingly immune to the blast of wind, the Arctic’s first attempt to take Superior.
As the shoreline receded, I felt Lucas relax and start to absorb the morning. This.Thisis what I wanted to show him, the moment I’d secretly hoped for when I planned these field trips with Superior lurking behind every outing – first a view from the hill, then a trip to the docks, now cruising over the water itself. Duluth lived at the mouth of this inland sea, at the whim of the water. We took the wind, the squalls, the snow, and the flooding. We took everything the lake gave to or inflicted on us, knowing there would always be more. This was a resource we could not exhaust. It wasn’t protected like the Boundary Waters, it didn’t sink quietly into your soul; it dominated everything it touched and we were the ones who needed protection from it. The water would always win, no matter if it was beating at the basalt cliffs that tried to contain it or reforging our empty bottles into lake glass as beautiful as gemstones. This gray wind-tossed water, raging at the gales, the water that sucked ships into oblivion, that roared so loud you forgot the storm in your head, this was what I loved most about Duluth – the absolute reign of Superior.
I didn’t realize I was shivering until Lucas slid over, closing the gap between us and slipping his arm around my shoulders. I stilled. Even the tremors died as I felt the length of him press into my side, offering his own body heat.
‘Your ears are red,’ he murmured, so close I could hear him above the wind and the roar of the engines. Too close.
I pulled away, putting distance between us. Someone was walking in the bridge behind our heads and Bryce and Dr Mehta were right under our feet. I should have joined them downstairs and ended the insanity of this stolen, frigid moment before someone discovered us, but not even that threat was enough to make mesever it completely. I threaded our gloved fingers together on the bench, trying to pretend I was watching the few gulls screaming overhead, fighting the immense pull of the air currents.
Lucas gripped my hand. I could feel him searching my profile but after a while – when I refused to do anything more than stare at the birds – he turned to the water. ‘The search party.’
‘What about it?’
‘I won’t lead them to him. I told you we had to find my father alone.’
I’d already explained to him several times that working with the police and the US Forest Service was the only chance of getting Congdon’s approval for the trip. It was the only door we could walk through. The problem was he knew part of the plan, but not the whole thing. I couldn’t share everything, not with staff and patients constantly prowling around our sessions. Here, though, where the wind whipped our words away, where there was no one to overhear, I took a deep breath and told him the rest.
‘You’ll go alone. I have to organize the search party so Congdon will let me get you up there, and then I expect you to disappear, okay? We’ll get the medicine, the supplies, and then it’s up to you to slip into the shadows. Understand?’
The surprise on his face was almost funny, but he quickly recovered and another emotion flooded his eyes. ‘I shouldn’t have doubted you.’ Then he thought of another obstacle. ‘The ankle bracelet. How am I supposed to disappear if they’re tracking me?’
I squeezed his hand. ‘Don’t worry. I have a plan.’
‘Do you always have a plan?’
He turned his head, studying me, waiting patiently for my answer, and it struck me how absorbed he was in every single thing I said. I’d revealed my big secret; I’d told him I killed a man and all he wanted to know was whether I’d bashed his head in hard enough. If anyone else had asked me a direct question about myself I’d shrug it off with an easy lie, something to redirect the conversation. With Lucas, though, I wanted to excavate the truth. Right now, sitting here together, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t tell him.
‘I guess the worse things are, the better prepared I am. I started working at Congdon because it felt like home. Sad, I know, but I can’t help it. People are honest about who they are in a psychiatric facility. They don’t pretend things are fine. My job reviews always say I’m good in a crisis, that I’m the first person to jump into a dicey situation.’
‘Like wrestling down a patient who tried to strangle you and escape?’ Lucas grinned.
‘Yeah.’ I smiled at the stern. ‘They think I’m brave. The truth is I’m not comfortable unless something’s on fire or someone’s having a meltdown. I don’t know what to do with things that aren’t broken. The quiet times... it’s like I’m just waiting for things to go bad.’
‘And they always do?’
‘I’ve never had to wait too long.’
Moving carefully, a fraction of an inch at a time, Lucas tugged my zipper down to trace my neck with one finger, the faint but still visible line where he’d choked me the first time we met, and his expression filled with regret.
‘Lucas.’
He tilted his head, leaving his hand on my neck, his touch falling somewhere between penance and petting. ‘Are you waiting for me to break, too?’
‘You know this is completely inappropriate.’ I glanced around us to make sure the deck was still empty, wondering how much longer this privacy could last. ‘Dr Mehta will remove me from your case.’
His answer was entirely nonverbal; he leaned in, pushing my hood back to nuzzle my temple and smell my hair, as though he needed to learn as much about me as quickly as possible.
‘It’s unprofessional. Unethical.’ I turned into the bulk of his jacket, trying to make myself get up, to end this now.
