Chapter 41
Lucy
Present Day
I try calling Fisher again as I slowly make my way through the flooded streets in town, but all I get is a voice recording telling me that all systems are down. Tossing my phone across the seat angrily, I flip the wipers from low to high and lean forward against the steering wheel, trying to see better.
I drive past every business on Main Street, I drive by Barney’s, I drive by the beach and I drive by Trip’s house, but I don’t see Fisher’s truck anywhere. The storefronts were boarded up as soon as the storm started picking up earlier this afternoon, and I’m the only idiot out on the streets right now.
A trip to Bobby’s house produces the same results, but when I get to Ellie’s, I see both her and Bobby’s cars parked in the driveway. Her house is on a hill right in the middle of the fork in the road that splits Main Street into two separate streets and one of the few houses that doesn’t sit directly on the beach. Aside from the inn, which is a huge structure, and the evacuation center, Ellie’s house is one of the safer places to be right now since it’s further inland than anywhere else, and I’m glad that she and Bobby are holed up in here instead of his beachfront cottage.
I pull the SUV up behind their vehicles and make a mad dash up to the house, noticing that Ellie’s hurricane shutters are wide open and smacking against the siding. Finding the front door unlocked, I start shouting their names as I move through the house, but I don’t get an answer. The faint sound of snoring comes from the finished basement that she uses as an extra living room, so I quickly make my way down the carpeted stairs.
I find Bobby and Ellie curled up together on the couch, fast asleep. While I’d normally find the sight in front of me so sweet that I’d immediately want to snap a picture of it with my cell phone, I don’t have time for that now.
Saying both of their names softly so I don’t scare them, I rush over to the couch and shake Ellie’s shoulder. She jerks awake and stares up at me in confusion, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“What’s going on? What time is it?” she asks in a raspy, sleep-filled voice.
Bobby yawns and stretches behind her, blinking his eyes open and staring up at me with the same confused look as Ellie.
“Have you guys seen or heard from Fisher today?” I ask them frantically as they both swing their legs down the front of the couch and sit up.
“What time is it? Jesus, what day is it? Why the hell are you sopping wet?” Bobby asks with another yawn as he stares at my wet clothes, which are dripping all over the floor.
I’m about ready to shake the shit out of them both if they don’t get with the program.
“What is WITH you two?” I ask in irritation.
“Sorry, I was up every hour last night throwing up. Every. Hour. From nine last night until nine this morning,” Ellie explains. “We moved down here on the couch this morning to watch a movie once it finally passed. We must have fallen asleep.”
Bobby looks down at his watch. “Shit. We’ve been asleep for like seven hours.”
He starts to joke with Ellie and I lose it.
“PAY ATTENTION! HAVE EITHER OF YOU SEEN OR HEARD FROM FISHER TODAY?!”
They stop laughing and look at me in shock.
“Uh, he stopped by here this morning, right before we fell asleep on the couch. Jesus, Lucy, what’s the big deal? You’ve been ignoring him for a week, what’s another day?” Bobby asks sarcastically.
Ellie punches him in the arm and tells him to shut up and he immediately apologizes.
“The big deal is that we’re in the middle of a hurricane and I can’t get ahold of Fisher!” I yell.
Bobby jumps up from the couch. “Are you fucking kidding me? We’ve been sleeping through a hurricane?”
He races up the stairs, Ellie and I right behind him.
“Jesus Christ!” he shouts as soon as he gets to the top of the stairs and looks out the windows in the kitchen. “Did I completely miss the news that we were getting a hurricane?”
Ellie comes up behind him and slides her hands around his waist, standing up on her toes to look over his shoulder at the rain and wind beating against the window.
“I guess now we know my basement is soundproof,” she mutters. “Dammit, there goes my hydrangea bush.”
We all watch as the bush in question flies right by the window.
“SHIT!” Bobby suddenly shouts, moving out of Ellie’s arms and reaching for his cell phone on the counter.
“The phone lines are down,” I tell him. “What’s wrong?”
Bobby ignores me, trying to use the phone, cursing again when it doesn’t work.
“Shit, motherfucking shit!” he yells, tossing the phone on the counter. “No one else has heard from Fisher, either?”
Panic overwhelms me as he rushes to the hall closet, throwing the door open and quickly digging through a collection of scuba equipment. Bobby has slowly been moving his things into Ellie’s home since they got engaged. Her house is larger than his cottage and there’s plenty of room here for a new baby as opposed to his tiny bachelor pad cottage.
Pulling an empty bag off of the middle shelf, he curses again as he throws the bag angrily against the wall.
“What the hell is going on, Bobby?” I ask nervously.
“When Fisher stopped by here this morning, he asked to borrow some scuba equipment. It was cloudy, but there weren’t any reports of a storm coming in,” he explains as he paces back and forth in the small kitchen. “He wanted to get in one last day of diving before the weather started turning bad. I told him I was too exhausted to go out with him and that he should give me a few hours to catch up on some sleep. He fucking knows better than to dive alone, that son of a bitch!”
My hand flies to my mouth and Ellie immediately comes up to me and pulls me into a hug.
“He probably didn’t go, Bobby. I’m sure he’s just holed up somewhere waiting out the storm,” Ellie explains.
“That bag is the one I keep filled with HIS equipment, Ellie. It was there this morning when he stopped by. I told him to let himself out because I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore, and that I’d call him when I woke up. He must have taken it when I wasn’t looking.”
Ellie squeezes me tighter, still trying her best to convince us that Fisher is fine.
“It’s okay, there’s no way he would’ve gone diving in this storm,” she reassures me.
“If he was down under the water, he might not have known the storm was coming until he surfaced,” Bobby tells us.
“I drove by the dive hut and his truck wasn’t there. Would he have gone anywhere else? That’s where you guys always dive,” I tell him, my stomach churning with dread.
Bobby stops pacing and runs a hand through his hair. “He’s been a fucking downer and out of sorts all week. I told him I’d keep the entire afternoon open so he could take his time and enjoy the underwater scenery, clear his head. He mentioned something about wanting to dive somewhere different, somewhere that reminded him of you, whatever the fuck that means.”
There’s a light that guides all of us to where we’re meant to be.
I pull out of Ellie’s arms and race for the front door.
“LUCY! You can’t go back out in this storm,” she shouts.
“Lucy, just WAIT! I’ll go with you!” Bobby yells.
I ignore them both, moving as fast as I can through the storm, holding my arms over my face, battling the wind and the rain to get to Trip’s SUV.
The only reason I know I’m heading in the right direction is the beacon of light that circles around in the sky, shining bright even through the torrential downpour. I’m driving faster than I should, considering I can barely see a few feet in front of me. Trip’s SUV rocks from side to side with the force of the wind and bounces up and down along the gravel drive that takes me up to the lighthouse. The sight of Fisher’s truck parked about a quarter of a mile from the lighthouse, right in front of the walkway that leads to the beach, has me throwing open the door and racing to the driver’s side window. I peer inside, finding it empty, and I take off through the ankle-deep puddles, not even bothering to shield my face as the rain batters against my skin.
I scream Fisher’s name as loud as I can as I follow the walkway, running in between the giant rock formations. The water has moved so far inland that there is only about a hundred yards of beach left where there is usually at least three times that. I continue screaming for Fisher, but the wind blows the sound right back at me. The waves crash angrily onto the shore, one right after another, pounding against the sand like God himself has come down and is slamming his fist into the beach.
Shielding my eyes, I blink rapidly, trying to see through the rain hitting my face, but it’s no use. I can’t see anything beyond the waves. A shift in the wind switches the direction of the rain so that it’s beating against my back instead of my face and I can see a little more clearly. I try to hold my sopping wet hair away from my eyes as the wind whips it in every direction. Quickly scanning the beach, something not too far down catches my attention. My stomach drops and I take off running, falling to my knees in the wet sand. Resting in a puddle on the beach is a backpack and harness with the two air tanks packed inside. The same type of pack that Fisher wears when he dives.
Why would he do this? Why would he come out here, even if he didn’t know about the storm? He’s been diving all of his life, so he knows how dangerous it is out here by the lighthouse. The current is unpredictable near the rocks and there have been numerous accidents over the years involving people who chose to ignore the warnings because they wanted to see what was down at the bottom of the ocean near the lighthouse. He knows better, dammit!
The crashing waves inch closer and closer to me and I know I need to get off of this beach, but I can’t move. My body is frozen in place when something bright yellow tumbles around in the wild crest of the wave that just battered the beach. The object floats on top of the quickly advancing water as it ebbs towards me, getting lodging in the sand as the water leaves it behind and goes back out to sea. I crawl on all fours across the wet sand, tears and rain blurring my vision. I grab the yellow and black scuba fin from the sand, cradle it to my chest and scream as loud as I can at the angrily churning ocean.