April 27th, 1990

He awoke in the night, to find the house strangely quiet. A glance at the clock told him it was about one in the morning—a time at which Lee and Victoria would usually still be in the makeshift den of the small, desolate shore house, laughing over the nighttime waves, sometimes with the radio in the background when Victoria wasn’t nursing little Emma.

Brian had gone to bed early that stormy night—he did so every once in a while, both to give them time to themselves and to give himself a rest from having the pleasure and the task of spending the day with the two people he loved best—who also happened to be the most exhausting and reckless. And whenever he woke, he heard their voices through the waves until the early hours of the morning. Except the nights when they took the boat out—but there would be no boating on a night like this.

Brian’s ears began ringing eerily then, a sound that intermingled with the waves and the thunder and the unsettling quiet from the den room and made him feel suddenly very alone. Sure that he would feel very silly in the morning, he slid out of bed and crept down the hallway, taking a quick peek into the baby’s room as he past. Eight-month-old Emma was sleeping peacefully among the blankets in her crib, and Brian’s heart slowed just a little. Surely his thrill seeker best friend and his dark-eyed, intense, laughing wife wouldn’t do something stupid in this storm.

He went to the kitchen for a drink of water. Victoria had put the baby to sleep, and she and Lee had gone to bed earlier than usual, that was all. He moved about the small kitchen quietly, now feeling quite silly and not wanting to be found. He wandered into the den with his water, and by chance glanced towards the door.

He didn’t know what possessed him to open it, except that the eerie ringing had started back up in his ears again and the waves crashed even more menacingly and the lightning cracked even louder. Rain poured down in torrents as soon as he opened the door, spraying the inside with rain and saltwater blown in from the sea. He closed the door behind him, and somewhere his brain reminded him that he didn’t even have a raincoat on. He would have gone and gotten it at that moment if it hadn’t been for the boathouse. The empty boathouse.

He was dimly aware that he had dropped his mug, but he didn’t even feel some of the porcelain pieces dig into his barely clad feet as he whirled around and squinted through the drenching rain, looking desperately towards the waves.

Water, water, more water. Lightening, ten feet in front of him, and he didn’t care. Wind, rain. And finally—a light on the water.

The small fishing boat was being tossed upon the waves mercilessly. Brian caught his breath. No. Victoria’s handmade flag was waving from the top like a badge of triumph, and he knew that she and Lee were on there, probably still laughing at the thunderclouds without knowing that now—

CRACK. Lightening. Brian didn’t know if it was him or the wind screaming as he ran forward only to be caught by the furious waves and knocked off of his feet. Choking on seawater, he was on his knees as he watched the scene in horror—the boat nearly jumping out of the water, crackling and sparks as the electric currents ran through the boat, fizzling underneath the rain, and then the hole filling up with more and more water, overbalancing…

…and then as if in slow motion, going under. The eerie ringing became louder in Brian’s ears, tune-like, unreal.

Inside the house, Emma woke and cried for her mother.

April 26th, 1991

Lee’s voice, frank, young, reverberated in his ears. ‘Spring vacation…shore house…abandoned…it’ll be fun, Brian, I promise.”

“Emma…”

“Victoria and Emma will love it. Victoria’s been wanting a trip…hasn’t been on one since the pregnancy…Emma can play in the sand…you’ll love it.”

Her brown eyes swam into his head, sparkling, devious, wonderful. “Lee invited you, didn’t he? You must come, Brian, it’ll be just like old times…”

Lee started talking again, about the summers between school that they spent together. Football…boating…hitchhiking…Victoria talking about the baby, how he would have so much fun practically being her uncle, how she would grow up adoring him…and then their voices melted into a drone that started to fluctuate and sound like the humming that Brian had heard that eerie night, walking down the silent hall. They hummed, and suddenly the waves crashed, and he saw Lee and Victoria’s faces in the clouds, laughing at him as they threw a bolt of lightening…

He woke up sweating, and when he heard no sound from Emma, went back to sleep.

April 28th, 1991

“Bwian! Seesell!”

He wished that she didn’t love the sea so much. He had the nagging feeling that it was slightly unholy, but came to her anyway and peered down at the dead jellyfish she carried in her hand, wincing.

“No, sweetie, that’s a jellyfish. Put it down, now.” He scrabbled in the sand fanatically, and lit upon a cracked sand dollar. “Here you go, now. It’s no seashell, but it’ll do, won’t it? Isn’t it pretty?”

“Pwetty!” squealed Emma, and grabbed it in both hands, cracking it in half. Her mother’s eyes scrunched up in her face and she crumbled the sand dollar up some more, finally throwing it to the ground in boredom. “Up,” she commanded Brian.

He lifted her, and aimlessly wandered along the shore, back towards the lake house. There was no more boathouse next to it—it had been destroyed in the storm, the rotting wood nearly all swept away by the raging water and the gales of wind.

He looked at the ruined foundations absent-mindedly, and realized with a jolt that he was standing in the same place as he was when he saw the ship go down—a year and a day ago, and yet only yesterday. It still felt unreal to Brian—as if Lee and Victoria would come out of the sea one day, laughing at the joke, with Lee crying, as he had always done, “Fooled you again, mate. Better luck next time, eh?”

“Wha?” Emma looked up at him, her chubby face looking comical with the serious expression on her features. Brian blinked—he hadn’t noticed that he’d muttered those last words aloud.

“Wa’er,” remarked Emma, pointing out toward where Brian was staring. “Wo, wo, wo, you boat, gently down the stweam…”

Brian tried very hard not to wonder at that particular choice of song. He thought vaguely of rowing out there, to where he had seen those lights upon the water, for old time’s sake and to pay tribute to his lost friends.

He looked at the sky, hoisted Emma up higher in his arms, and went inside to listen to the radio instead. In the distance, thunderclouds approached.