Charlie St. Cloud Page 0,60

the heavens and saw a brilliant flash, then a zigzagging web of lightning. It spread out like lace across the sky. Even in the maelstrom, she appreciated its beauty. But she also knew the lightning rod had been swept away with the mast and with it her only protection.

She leaned back toward the controls and tried to calculate her location. She had been running without steering for a few hours. It was hard to tell which way the wind and current had carried her, but she estimated that she was somewhere between—

Tess never finished the thought. The boat breached violently, and she toppled toward the lifelines. She skidded along the deck, slammed into a stainless-steel stanchion, then felt her safety harness cutting hard into her ribs. Now she was lying flat on the deck, staring up into the darkness.

Her side ached, and she wondered how long the boat could take this beating. She pulled herself back to her feet, inched toward the cabin, and peered inside. The water had already swallowed the bunks and was rising fast.

It was a surreal moment, but Tess recognized it was time literally to abandon ship. Every good offshore sailor knew that you waited until the last possible moment and never got into a life raft unless you were stepping up into it from a sinking ship. Indeed, many sailors had perished over the years by deserting boats that managed to stay afloat, only to be swamped by the seas in an inflatable dinghy. But Querencia was going down. So she pulled the cord on the thick bundle strapped in the back of the cockpit, the CO2 canister hissed, and the raft began to inflate.

Now she had two choices: hurry below and activate the distress signal, or stay above and contact the Coast Guard on Channel 16, the emergency frequency. The radio in the cockpit was faster and, incredibly, it was unscathed. She reached for the mike.

Before she could even say “Mayday,” without any warning of thunder, a lightning bolt slammed into the deck. Tess felt the blast of heat from an explosion, then saw fire on the starboard side of the boat where the fuel tank was stored. Even in this tempest, the flames leaped high in the air.

Suddenly, the boat pitched to starboard, Tess lost her footing, and she felt the full force of her body slam against the jack line. For an instant, she was dangling upside down over the transom. Then she felt the safety wire snap and the tension release on her harness. Now there was nothing keeping her on the boat. She began to slide into the churning ocean.

In that instant, dragged away by the waves, she looked back at her beloved boat, and those were the last images she could remember: Querencia on fire and the white sky and sea closing in all around.

TWENTY-FIVE

“WOULD YOU EVER LEAVE SAM?”

Tess’s question lingered in the glow of the fireplace. Perhaps they were simply in denial about the facts or maybe they were swept away by each other, but they had abandoned the gloomy subject of the shipwreck and were dreaming out loud about what life would be like together.

“Would you ever leave the cemetery?” Tess asked. Her face was tucked into Charlie’s neck. “I mean, would you ever come with me around the world?” She couldn’t believe she was asking the question, but it was true. She didn’t want to go solo anymore. She wanted to be with him.

“You’ve never seen me sail,” he said. “Be careful what you wish for.”

“Don’t joke. I’m being serious.” Then she found herself asking a question that seemed almost too direct: “Are you going to stay here forever with Sam?”

Charlie stroked her hair. “Remember that bullfighting book I told you about?” She nodded. “There’s a pass called al alimón, where two matadors challenge a bull while holding on to the sides of just one cape. It’s suicide unless they’re in perfect harmony. In Spain, they say that only two brothers know each other’s thoughts and movements well enough to pull it off.”

“You and Sam.”

“I couldn’t face life without him.”

He kissed her softly on the forehead, and she felt safe enough to ask once more, “So what about us? What’s going to happen to you and me?”

He pulled her closer. “trust your heart / if the seas catch fire,” he whispered, reciting the poem from her father’s funeral.

“(and live by love / though the stars walk backward),” she answered.

“That’s what I want to do with the