Float Plan - Trish Doller Page 0,25
to make room for him. They smile at each other first, like the rest of us aren’t there.
“Good morning!” Rohan booms in a voice too loud for such an early hour. “Sleep well?”
My dreams were about Ben, leaning forward to whisper something in Sara’s ear. About Ben sailing off with her, leaving me on a beach full of pigs, desperately flailing my arms and going hoarse from screaming for him to come back. I woke up crying and my throat hurt, as if I’d really been screaming. But out in his bunk, Keane was sleeping soundly. I crept up on deck and finished the night wrapped in my comforter, waiting for my racing heart and shaking limbs to realize it was only a dream.
“Yeah,” I lie. “Thanks.”
It’s a short trip to shore and we drag the dinghy onto the beach near the Deveaux mansion. Keane explains the property was deeded to Andrew Deveaux to use as a cotton plantation, a reward for his role in resisting the Spanish at Nassau in the 1780s. Most of the house is still standing, including a few thick roof timbers, but the inside is a hollow shell, littered with plaster and old wood. James kicks through the rubble, a burning cigarette in hand, while Rohan uses an expensive camera to take photos of a tree that has grown through the wall. Every window facing the bay has a gorgeous view and I lean in the open door frame, looking at the blue-green water and the pretty blue boat that brought me here.
“Some of the islanders believe the spirits of those who once lived in a house remain among the ruins.” Keane moves up beside me. “They’ll build new houses beside the ruined ones so as not to anger the spirits. It’s a lovely way to live, don’t you think? Letting the present peacefully coexist alongside the past.”
He steps from the doorway and heads toward the beach, where Sara lies on a towel in the sun. He sits down beside her and trickles a bit of sand on her bare stomach until she lifts her head to look at him. I turn away and move on to the kitchen house, where the bricks of the hearth are exposed, some blackened by cooking fires, others green with moss. If there are spirits here, I doubt they are any happier than when they were alive, with fortunes built on their backs and at the tips of fingers bloodied from picking cotton. I feel haunted, but I’m not entirely sure I haven’t brought my own ghosts.
Rohan comes to snap photos of the kitchen house remains. “I could use a drink.” He drags a hand through the sweat beaded across his forehead. “There’s a bar at the resort just up the highway.”
“Oi!” James shouts toward the beach, where Keane is patting his prosthetic shin through the fabric of his jeans. He must be telling Sara about his leg. “Drinks!”
Keane helps Sara to her feet, and they walk together toward us, his arms going every which way as he talks, and her smile hasn’t diminished. Maybe she’s worthy of him after all.
“She fancies him rotten,” James says, and I’m about to say that the feeling seems mutual when he continues. “For today, that is. She’ll lose interest by morning.”
Rohan nods. “She always does.”
Keane and Sara reach us, and Rohan—already tired of being on land—fills them in on his plan to spend the rest of the day drinking rum. James and Sara quickly jump aboard this new plan, but Keane looks less than enthused and I’m not about to start drinking rum at ten thirty in the morning.
“I’d like to hike up to the Hermitage.” Keane turns to me. “You’ll come with me, won’t you, Anna?”
“Sure.”
We walk along a “highway” of crushed shells—a one-lane road with no traffic—to a small resort. It’s not fancy. Simply a row of bright yellow beachfront rooms, sandy grounds, and beautiful flowering trees. The three divers head immediately to the bar, while Keane borrows the front desk telephone to call a taxi service.
We find Sara, James, and Rohan at the honor bar, fixing their own cocktails, and tell them we’ll be back in three or four hours. They seem cheered to know they’ve got that much time to drink.
“I don’t know how they can drink so much,” I say as Keane and I backtrack to the highway to wait for our ride. “I mean, you’ve seen what happens when I’ve had too much beer.”
“You never told