The Invisible Husband of Frick Island - Colleen Oakley Page 0,2

he radioed out for help this morning, during that little rain shower we had. Old Mr. Waverly got the call. Said he was taking on water, but the connection was bad and it went out ’fore Waverly could get the coordinates. Coast Guard’s been looking for him since, and we’ve got some of the guys out there, too. Like I said, I’m sure we’ll find him ’fore long and everything’ll be fine.” He twisted the bill of his cap one more time, and Piper wasn’t sure if it was that movement or the grim look in BobDan’s eyes that caused her stomach to go hollow.

And then Piper remembered the Teredo navalis. Three months earlier, Tom had spotted damaged wood on the hull of his trawler—a few drill-size holes, as if someone had shot a BB gun clear through the wood. Upon further inspection, he discovered he had shipworms, a parasite that fed on docks and boats and had been wreaking havoc at marinas for centuries—there was even a mention of them in Moby-Dick. To kill them, Tom had the boat pulled out of the water and sprayed it down with a hose, and after a few days without saltwater, the worms curled up and died, their carcasses like little circles of copper wire. (Piper, of course, took one home to study under her microscope.) The boards needed replacing, but by that time, they had already run through most of their winter savings—and the little bit they had left needed to go to new crab traps for the season. Tom hoped, until he could scrape the money together, that any water that came in through the tiny holes could be handled by the bilge pump.

Piper wasn’t sure why she was thinking of the worms, except that Tom was an experienced boater and maybe she was searching for what could have possibly gone wrong. But she quickly dismissed the thought, because speculation wasn’t going to get her anywhere, not to mention it ran counter to the only thing BobDan said that she wanted to believe—that everything was going to be fine.

“I believe I might join the search effort, if you want to tag along,” he said. “Shirlene is gonna man the marina, in case anyone calls with news.”

Piper considered this offer, but decided she wanted to be there, on the dock, when Tom’s boat came chugging into the harbor, his mouth bursting to tell the wild story of his day’s adventure on the sea. And so she waited, on the bench, not noticing the growl of her stomach when suppertime came and went, and trying not to notice the other watermen that came in to dock one by one, their hats in their hands like BobDan’s, their heads bent toward the ground, their eyes avoiding Piper’s at all costs.

Four days later, the boat was recovered by a diver at the bottom of the sea.

Tom’s body was not.

* * *

—

While the rest of the town knew the worst had happened, Piper held out hope. Maybe Tom got disoriented and swam in the wrong direction, washed up on a deserted island, and was currently eating coconuts and writing messages in palm fronds for passing airplanes. Or maybe a ship of Somali pirates picked him up and he was being held against his will, unable to negotiate his release due to the language barrier. Or a whale swallowed him whole and he was contemplating his escape from the depths of its belly. Each of her theories was more outlandish than the next, but to Piper, none were as ridiculous as what the rest of the town believed—that Tom was gone. That she would never lay eyes on him again.

In the days following the Coast Guard’s announcement that they were calling off the search for Tom, Piper found herself growing increasingly intolerant. And not just with the rescue teams who were, in her view, prematurely giving up. She couldn’t stand the way people started looking at her, their eyes filled with pity. She couldn’t abide the way they began referring to Tom in past tense. But the final straw was when the members of the island’s Methodist (and only) church—where the Parrish family had been attending for as long as the church had been on the island, and where Tom and Piper had exchanged vows and thin gold bands—started planning a memorial service for Tom. Upon receiving that news, Piper locked herself in her one-bedroom carriage house behind the Oleckis’ bed-and-breakfast. She didn’t answer the phone,