Page 141 of What Boys Learn

“He’s saying Mayday! Why is everyone so damn calm?”

Sheriff Bruckner turns to me. “That doesn’t mean he’s sinking. He may just have a broken motor or something. He should have said ‘Pan-pan’ but a lot of boaters, they think they’re the goddamnTitanic. . .”

Another crackle, Curtis’s voice barely audible. “Two . . . I can’t . . . board . . . Copy?”

“Did you hear that?Two overboard.”

“No ma’am. He said he only had one person on his boat.”

“Yes, because two are overboard! That’s my son and the girl! Benjamin and Lenora! Can’t we go any faster?”

We’re motoring into a stiff wind, the sky getting that green-gray tinge I associate with bad Midwestern weather, tornados, downpours, lightning. I smell it, too: that hyperoxygenated smell before the rains splash down.

“Why people are still out in this, you gotta wonder,” the sheriff says, turning back to steering, lips pressed thin. In an outrageously slow maneuver, he passes a large pair of black binoculars directly in front of my face, blocking my vision, holding them out for Robert, who is too distracted to notice until I thump him on the back.

The sheriff drawls, “Paradox, did you report two people overboard . . . ?”

I step back into the open-air stern, hand on my gym bag, keeping a tight grip on my impulse to do something I may or may not regret. The motor kicks up to a higher whine, waves rushing past us, bow lifting higher, fresh water speckling my face. Finally. He didn’t believe me.

I point, shouting. “I can see it! That’s theParadox!”

Robert calls back, his voice twangier ever since he started talking to Bruckner, goddamn chameleon, though I know it works. “We know, honey!”

Robert told me to make a good impression. Be calm and cooperative.Don’t make them think you’re crazy; don’t say anything incriminating about Curtis or about Benjamin either. You don’t know what we’re walking into. You might be forced to repeat all of it on a witness stand. Watch your mouth.

He was right. I’m watching it.

Even if Benjamin did something to the girl, I still love him.

I always will.

I sit with that for a moment, expecting the feeling to fall away, like water poured into the cup of your hand. But it doesn’t. It stays. I think of the day he was born, the first time I saw his face, the first time I heard him cry. Everyone was innocent at one time. Everyone needs one person, no matter what they’ve done or who they’ve become. I tell myself to remember that.

Whatever happened, they’re both in danger now, in the water. There’s no telling how far theParadoxhas moved. The newspaper story about Curtis’s dead wife and daughter flashes into my mind. Bodies found washed up in Indiana, weeks later.

“Benjamin!” I scream at the top of my lungs, over the water, even though I can’t see anything. “Lenora!”

Dark clouds send ribbons of light and shadow over the choppy gray waters. The waves are small but irregular. Ahead and to the right, at one o’clock, I see a glint of something rising up from a patch of confused water. The sheriff’s boat swerves left, and I try not to lose sight of the area as it moves from one to two o’clock and then even farther to the right, almost three o’clock. A cloud parts and a bright ray of light strikes the water and it doesn’t help, it only highlights a horizontal band of water where there’s nothing except for glinting chop. Diamonds sparkling across a graveyard.

I shout for Robert to come out back and I try to point out the spot as we continue veering away from it. “Keep looking! Do you see anything?”

Up at the controls, the sheriff is busy over the radio, talking to the Coast Guard, and meanwhile steering up close to theParadox, which seems to be dead in the water, several hundred feet away.

“There!” I shout again. A thousand feet or more beyond the boat. A spot so far and pale it could be anything. A plastic bag, a lost buoy, a silver beer can. “Do you see?”

Robert raises the binocs. I dare not glance away from the place I’m tracking.

I urge him, “We need to tell the sheriff to aim for that spot, first.”

“He won’t. He’s set on boarding the boat.”

TheParadoxpivots slowly, presenting its side to us, and then its stern, with Curtis at the back, waving and beckoning.

“But if they’re out there?” I reach for the binoculars, but by the time I have them up, I’ve lost it. “Did you see anything?”

“I’m not sure.”

We’re so close now to theParadoxthat I can hear Curtis’s voice, and the sheriff replying. The former, distraught. The latter, still laconic, but lower pitched. The serious voice of a man talking to another man. Believing him.