Page 109 of The Scars I Bare
“Sutherland Fishing Company, this isEndeavor. I’ve found him. I can see the lights in the distance.”
The dam broke, and tears fell from my face. Tears of joy, tears of relief.
He was alive.
He was—
“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!” he yelled, making my heart fall to the floor as I jumped to my feet. “Taylor, the boat is capsized. Jesus, I don’t know for how long. I’ve got to go in. I’ve got to go after him. Tell Cora I love her.”
And then the static returned as Taylor turned to me with wide eyes of terror.
I’d thought my heart broke a long time ago. The moment Blake had betrayed my trust and his fist collided with my face.
But I was wrong.
Turned out, it wasn’t quite done.
That night was the longest of my life.
The waiting.
The constant, never-ending waiting.
I didn’t know how long Taylor, Lizzie, and I were in that office at the marina, listening to that radio for some sort of answer. Every glitch and jump in the otherwise mundane sound of the static would send my heart into overdrive as I prayed that it would be followed by Dean’s voice.
I didn’t know how long we sat there.
It could have been minutes, days…hours.
But, finally, when I’d nearly lost hope, imagining Dean out there, in the angry black water, fighting for his life, thinking about those horrible, angry words I’d said to him, hoping they wouldn’t be my last, we got the call.
The Coast Guard had found them. Both of them.
And they were en route to Virginia Beach.
Taylor and I looked at each other, knowing this nightmare wasn’t over yet.
“Why are they going to Virginia, Mommy?” a sleepy Lizzie asked as we headed out toward the car.
I swallowed deeply, knowing this was one of those moments as a mother when I had to make a decision. Lie to protect her innocence or trust her with the truth, knowing she deserved to know everything just as I did.
“It means, they’re doing everything they can to take care of Dean and Daddy, sweetheart. And, like you know, the hospital Mommy used to work for in Virginia Beach is the best place to do that, isn’t it?”
She nodded, looking more childlike than I’d ever seen her. Sometimes, with so many big words and thoughts coming out of her head, it was hard for me to remember how young she really was.
“You know we can’t drive up there yet,” Taylor said the minute we were seated in the car.
My hands gripped the wheel as rain pounded down all around us. If it were just me, I would have said screw it and done everything in my power to get to him.
Bribed a pilot, stolen a boat…
Whatever it took.
But it wasn’t just me.
And that kind of selfish thinking was what had gotten us into this mess. Blake had been so hell-bent on getting off this island, getting away from us, that he put his own needs before anyone else.
I couldn’t do that.
