Page 55 of The Trip

I hear something slam, and I pray it’s just the hatch as the boat flips, throwing Emma and me against the skylight window hatches when the ceiling becomes the floor. Pots and pans are thrown about the cabin while water spills over me.

I squeeze my eyes shut and think of my girls, realizing with horror that we’re completely upside down, submerged. My mind flashes to the luxury sailboat that sank last summer while at anchor in the Mediterranean, taking several people down with it. I suck in a breath, preparing for the water pressure to break through the windows.

Adam grunts. Beth screams. The boat sharply tilts again. My back hits the dinette table, knocking the breath from my lungs.

Glass shatters when a window bursts. Water rushes over my head while we begin to flip upright. Emma cries out. My heart hammers into my throat as I roll off the table onto the dinette cushions.

This is it. We’re sinking.

The cabin goes eerily quiet as water stops pouring inside. Adam’s flashlight shines against the wall in the corner of the room. I glance around the space in awe. It feels like we’re bobbing on the surface.Could the boat really have righted itself after capsizing?

I sit up carefully, grasping the edge of the table in case we flip over again.

“You guys okay?” Emma asks from the floor beside the dinette.

Beth groans near the companionway steps. “I think so, but I hit my head pretty hard.”

“I’m okay,” Adam says.

“Palmer, Gigi, you guys all right?” Emma grabs Adam’s flashlight and swings the beam toward the window above my head.

“Yes,” I say, still in shock that we didn’t sink. My heart thumps against my chest.

“We need to patch that window before we get hit by another swell,” Emma says.

Another swell.The words send a bolt of panic up my spine. There’s no way we can fix that window to make it watertight. If we get hitby another huge wave while we have a broken window, we’re sunk. Literally.

“Gigi?” Beth asks. “Are you okay?”

No response. Emma swings the flashlight beam around the cabin, illuminating me, then Adam getting to his knees beside the couch, and finally Beth sitting upright on the floor in front of the steps.

“Gigi?” I say, my chest tightening with fear.

We all made it inside. Didn’t we?

“Gigi!” Emma calls, whirling the light around the room for a second time.

“Didn’t Gigi come inside with you two?” I say to Adam and Beth.

“I thought she came down before me,” Beth says.

“I did too,” Adam adds.

Emma steps over the broken dishes to shine the light inside the two open stateroom doors on either side of the companionway. “Gigi,” she calls.

No, no, no,I think. She had to have made it down. She was right behind Adam. Wasn’t she? I thought the three of them had come down together.

I strain to recall the order in which all of us came down, but after Beth’s ankle got caught, everything seemed to happen so fast.

“Gigi,” I echo.Please let her be down here.

I thought I’d heard Gigi’s voice below, but now I can’t be certain. We were all so panicked, I must’ve mistaken Beth’s or Emma’s cries for—

Emma whips the light around the enclosed space. Above the glow of her flashlight, her eyes double in size. “She’s gone.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Memorial Day Weekend, 2005