across the country with her new life and family. She probably wouldn’t even notice if he was gone.
So what was he waiting for?
He got up and walked to the maps. He ripped them from the walls. He wouldn’t need them where he was going. The room was spinning fast now. He reached out for a lamp to steady himself, but he lost his balance and fell to the ground. He landed with a thud, and his head slammed into the wood floor. He lay there stunned for a few moments and tried to focus his bewildered mind. He couldn’t even remember what he had just been thinking about. His vision was fuzzy, and his head throbbed.
Then the thought came back to him again. It was the perfect solution to his problems, and only one question remained to be answered:
How would he take his own life?
TWENTY-EIGHT
COME FIND ME . . .
When Charlie awoke, he saw the words right there in front of him on Tess’s note. His body ached, and he had an awful taste of booze in his mouth. Coruscating shafts of light angled down from the windows. The dismal rain had obviously cleared. He looked around and saw the mess on the floor: destroyed maps, shredded sunset tables, the empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
He sat up and rubbed his head. What time was it? He checked the clock over the fireplace. 5:35 P.M. Wow, he had been out for almost an hour. The last thing he remembered was ripping everything from the wall. Then he must have passed out.
Through the grogginess, a sliver of a dream, tantalizingly incomplete, lingered in his consciousness. He was on the water in a storm. The waves were high and rolling. He was in a Coast Guard cutter. And that was all. The rest was just out of reach. He tried to bring it into focus, but the memory eluded him. The whiskey was blurring everything.
He scooped up the torn scraps on the floor. Like a simple puzzle, he put together three ripped pieces of the chart covering the North Shore from Deer Island and Nahant around the Cape to Plum Island and Newburyport. Then he reassembled four scraps of paper stretching from Hampton Beach to Cape Elizabeth, including Boon Island and Cape Porpoise.
Looking around again he saw that surprisingly one chart had survived his attack and lay apart with a ray of sunlight glancing across the Isles of Shoals. A draft of air nudged the page toward him, and Charlie wondered: Was Tess trying to signal him or lead the way? He grabbed the map and turned it around and around. It showed the area from Provincetown to Mt. Desert Island, Maine, and the stretch from Cape Ann all the way across Bigelow Bight. He studied the contours of the coast and ran his finger over the little islands five miles offshore.
The adrenaline surged, and the hangover instantly was gone. His mind was racing. Did Tess leave the map for him to see? Was this a message? Or was this flat-out drunken craziness?
He hugged the chart to his chest. As a boy, he had sailed every inch of that rugged coastline. He had explored the nine rocky outcroppings of the Isles of Shoals and had climbed to the very top of the old White Island Light. He knew where the waters were shallow and the ledges were hidden at high tide, and on countless fishing trips there he had caught bushels of mackerel and bluefish.
Come find me . . .
These desolate islands off the border of New Hampshire and Maine were nowhere near the Coast Guard’s search area. In fact, the first wreckage had been picked up eighteen nautical miles due south off Halibut Point, and the burned life raft had been floating even farther away.
It was incredible: They had been searching in the wrong spot.
How could he have missed it? What a fool! Tess was waiting for him. And he had already wasted a day.
Charlie jumped up and seized the phone. He would call Hoddy Snow first and then alert the Coast Guard. Dear God, please make them listen. Maybe it wasn’t too late. He dialed the numbers and heard La-Dee-Da pick up.
“Harbormaster’s office, may I help you?”
“It’s Charlie St. Cloud. I need to speak with Hoddy. It’s urgent.”
“Hold, please.”
“I can’t hold—”
He heard the Muzak. Damn. There wasn’t any time. They needed to get out there right away. Then he tried to plan out exactly what he would say: He had reason