now
Lana leads Denny from the corridor into the waiting room. He slumps into a chair and sits with his head hanging forwards, the weight of it held in his hands. Whatever today is for the rest of them—for Denny it will always be the day his brother died.
So many things begin quietly slotting into place, as if the missing pieces of the jigsaw she has been searching for could only ever be found here on land, all these months later. She now understands Denny and Aaron’s loyalty to each other—that quiet respect they displayed, and that particular way they functioned, as if each knew the exact moves the other would make before he’d even made them.
She also sees just how important—no, vital—The Blue was to Aaron. It makes sense that Aaron was furious when he discovered Joseph had stowed away because it put The Blue in jeopardy. She remembers Aaron pinning Joseph against the bulkhead, a vein in his neck throbbing lividly. He was leaning in close to Joseph’s ear, saying, “Don’t forget, I know you, Joseph. I know what you are.”
And then something clicks.
Meth. It’s just a word, but the four letters of it unlock a door in Lana’s mind beyond which she hasn’t been able to see.
Aaron’s wife and unborn baby were murdered by Mills Weaden, a meth addict. Then, the day the crew were preparing to set sail for Palau, Aaron discovered that Joseph—a crew member he’d invited into the sanctuary of The Blue—was suspected of killing his parents while high on meth.
There’s no doubt in Lana’s mind that that’s why Aaron kicked Joseph off The Blue. But what none of them could have foreseen was that two days into the passage to Palau—and on the anniversary of Lydia’s death—Aaron would discover that Joseph had stowed away. Trapped at sea with no way of getting rid of Joseph, Aaron’s fury seemed to consume him. She remembers how hard he drank that night, and how his mind was elsewhere—somewhere separate from the yacht and the crew. Denny was the only one who seemed able to communicate with him, the two of them sitting close and talking intently.
And then there was Joseph. He didn’t keep out of Aaron’s way. It was almost as if he got a kick out of antagonizing him. Lana guesses that, at some point that evening, the two men found themselves alone together. Did Joseph push things too far—and did Aaron snap?
Did Aaron kill him?
Perhaps Kitty was there, too, and witnessed it—and that’s what she meant in her e-mail.
“Denny,” Lana says, turning to him, her heart beginning to race. “What happened to Joseph?”
Denny lifts his head, holding her gaze. His eyes have lost their glimmer and seem dulled, vacant. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t move a muscle. Denny is the one person who knows the full truth about Aaron’s past. The one person in whom Aaron would confide.
Lana says, “You know, don’t you?”
She waits for him to say something.
Anything.
Denny leans back in his chair, exhaling hard.
She stares at him. There was a time when she thought she knew him so completely that she would have been able to guess where his thoughts had taken him. She could once tell that when he stood at the bow and his gaze turned distant, he was often thinking about home. Or when she was speaking and his lips turned up into a smile, it was because he’d already skipped ahead to something funny he was going to add. Their connection on The Blue felt powerful and real—yet perhaps it never was. She didn’t even know that he and Aaron were brothers. Denny protected that secret for Aaron’s sake, and now she has to wonder what other secrets he’s kept for his brother . . .
“What happened?” she repeats, the muscles in her jaw tightening. She has carried her suspicions with her for months, trying to convince herself that she has been making too much of the missing pieces: Aaron’s shoulder that he claimed was injured in the shower, Aaron being so adamant that they should not report Joseph missing, the crew’s insistence that no one saw anything on their watch, the bloodstain on the deck. Pinpricks of perspiration begin to bead at her temples. “Did Aaron kill Joseph?”
If it was murder, they are all complicit by not reporting it. What will happen to them now that Aimee Melina is here? Aaron is dead and no one can prove what happened.
“No,” Denny says firmly, his eyes on hers. “Aaron didn’t kill Joseph.”
She waits, her pulse ticking in her throat.
He stares at her, thef color draining from his face. “I did.”
• • •
Time slows and warps. Lana hears the faint wash of the wind outside, notices the slow ticking of a clock somewhere nearby.
Denny rises to his feet and moves to the window. He stands with his hands in his pockets, his head thrown back towards the ceiling, exposing the pale skin on his throat where his beard ends.
She doesn’t dare speak. She looks carefully at Denny, as if searching for something she’s missed before. But all she sees is how sad his face is, how deep the shadows are beneath his eyes.
She thinks of what he’s been through today: drifting on a paddleboard in the open sea as he and Kitty fought to survive, and then learning that his brother has drowned. He must be physically exhausted and emotionally wrecked; he can’t mean what he is saying. “You didn’t kill Joseph.”
“Yes,” he says. “I did.”
Denny’s firm and resolute tone scares her. She waits, afraid to ask more now.
Little by little, Denny begins to recount what happened. As he talks, only his lips seem to move. The rest of him remains rigid, as if the memory of the event has him pinned to the spot.
“You remember what it was like that night,” he begins, his gaze fixed on something beyond the window. “The drinking. The tensions between all the crew—even us.”
Us. That word. She feels a fresh twist of loss.
“It’s strange, but I had this . . . feeling . . . that something was wrong about it. Like something terrible was going to happen.”
Thinking back, Lana recalls how on edge Denny seemed that night—he wasn’t drinking with the others and kept himself glued to Aaron’s side, talking to him in a quiet voice, his gaze moving away only to look out over the dark water, as if watching for signs that the weather was going to turn. It was as if he was trying to keep a lid on a pot that was slowly beginning to boil.
“It was the anniversary of Lydia’s death,” Denny says, “and Aaron, he was in a bad place, a really bad place. I hadn’t seen him like that since the early days when he’d just lost her.” Denny rubs the corner of his mouth, saying, “He was fixated on Joseph. It was like Joseph had become this . . . this embodiment of Mills Weaden and everything he’d done. He told me Joseph was polluting The Blue, destroying it all.
“When everyone had gone to bed, it was just Aaron up on deck doing his watch. I stupidly thought being on watch would be the best place for him. There’s this . . . peace Aaron found on the water, and I hoped the solitude might do him good. Only—Joseph came back up on deck. Maybe he couldn’t sleep, or maybe he was looking for a fight, or maybe he just didn’t realize it was Aaron’s watch.”
Denny pauses for a moment before continuing. “I heard them talking through the hatch in my cabin. There was something in their tones that I didn’t like. I’m not even sure how the argument started—I only caught snatches of it—but Joseph began demanding his notebook back, and I realized Aaron must’ve snatched it from him. From what I could tell, Joseph lunged for the notebook, but Aaron tossed it overboard.”
Lana’s eyes widen. She remembers how important those notebooks were to Joseph, how he dedicated so much time and care to writing his apologies.
“Joseph just lost it—started raging at Aaron in French and English. Aaron wouldn’t listen—he shouted back, calling Joseph a sick bastard. I was willing Aaron to shut up, to leave it alone—but he couldn’t. It was like . . . I don’t know . . . like he was standing in front of Lydia’s murderer, finally having his chance to confront him. He kept saying, ‘I know who you are. What you’ve done. You killed your own parents! You’re a fucking murderer!’ ”
Beads of perspiration line Denny’s top lip, and his skin looks deathly white. He swallows and goes on. “Then I heard a rush of movement in the cockpit—and I knew, I knew then what was about to happen. I should’ve been up there sooner . . . I was only just climbing on deck when I saw Joseph pulling the helm knife from its sheath.
“The next second Joseph was on top of Aaron, forcing him back against the lifeline. I heard Aaron’s gasp as the knife went into him. I lunged at Joseph, grabbing him by the neck of his T-shirt and pulling him off.” Denny pauses, his brow furrowed. “But . . . I threw him too hard. I heard it—heard the clunk as Joseph’s head hit the edge of the cockpit. I turned . . . and his body seemed to slump as he rolled towards the edge of the yacht. He slipped under the lifeline like a deadweight.”
Denny shakes his head, saying, “I didn’t even help him. I went straight to Aaron—he had his arm clamped across his body, and I thought the knife had gone into his chest. I was freaking out, remembering how I hadn’t got there quickly enough with Lydia . . .” He swallows. “When Aaron lifted away his arm, I saw that the knife had punctured his shoulder. It looked bad—but not life threatening. He kept telling me he was fine, that he just needed something to stop the bleeding. I grabbed a rag and tied it around his shoulder.
“It was then—only at that moment—that I gave Joseph another thought. A minute or two had already passed—maybe more. That’s enough to change everything if someone’s gone overboard.” Denny looks shaken as he says, “I should’ve tried to rescue him straightaway—should’ve left Aaron and immediately thrown out a life ring or done something.
“Eventually I got it together—logged the GPS, then furled the headsail, while Aaron managed to start the engine. That’s when I saw someone standing on the foredeck. For a second I thought it was Joseph and that, somehow, we’d got it wrong—he hadn’t gone overboard. Only it was Kitty. She’d passed out in the hammock, I think. Must’ve been woken by the noise.
“A moment later, Heinrich came lurching up onto the deck, too. He’d heard the commotion and was asking what was going on.”
Lana is struggling to take in everything she’s being told. She tries to picture Kitty stumbling from the hammock and Heinrich rushing from belowdecks—both of them still half drunk as they took in the scene: Aaron hunched over with a bloodied shoulder, the headsail furled in, the engine running.
Denny says, “I told Kitty to wake you and Shell, get you both to help search, but Aaron said, ‘No. No more people! Everyone’s too fucking pissed. It’s too dangerous! We’ll manage.’
“So Kitty and Heinrich fetched the searchlights, and I mapped out a search course, then we started making the pattern. Aaron was reading out the distances before each turn, I was on the helm, and Heinrich and Kitty took a side each. The four of us were watching the water, but even with the searchlights it was hard to see. The wind was increasing, and we had no idea how far he could’ve already drifted.”
Denny looks at her as he says, “We searched and searched, Lana. But we never found him.”
Lana thinks about how she and Shell woke the following morning to find Joseph missing. They began looking for him—rushing through the cabins, checking the heads and sail lockers and hatches. “Why didn’t you say anything to Shell and me?”
Denny’s expression is thick with guilt, eyes defeated. “Aaron wanted as few people to know as possible. Joseph didn’t trip and fall overboard—I threw him. I killed him. If the authorities knew that, I don’t know what would’ve happened to me—but I do know it would’ve been the end for The Blue. And Aaron knew it, too.”
• • •
For a long while, the two of them stand in the waiting room in silence.
Lana looks down at her hands. They are clasped in front of her, her knuckles white. She releases them, letting her arms hang at her sides as the blood flows back into her fingertips.
Finally, after so many months of wondering, Lana has the truth. She allows it to work slowly through her, beginning to make sense of why Denny withdrew from her in the days following Joseph’s death; why Aaron claimed he’d injured his shoulder in the shower to cover for the knife wound; why Aaron, Heinrich, and Kitty were so adamant that the authorities shouldn’t be informed.
She suddenly looks up at Denny, thinking of the group vote. “But you voted with me. You wanted to tell the authorities Joseph was dead.”
Denny nods slowly. “I couldn’t live with it, knowing what I’d done. I hated that you didn’t know—that I couldn’t talk to you about it.” He looks at her closely. “I knew how hurt you’d been by your father lying to you. I didn’t want to be that person, too. It felt like this secret we were all keeping was . . . destroying everything. The yacht. Me. Us.”
She sees the defeated slump of Denny’s shoulders, the gray tones of his skin, the flatness of his eyes—and it reminds her of how he looked in the days following Joseph’s death. He barely ate or slept, focused only on getting them safely to land. His usual enthusiasm and buoyancy had vanished—and Lana barely recognized him.
“It was an accident, Denny,” she says firmly.
He looks haunted as he says, “Was it? I’d have done anything to protect Aaron.”
The door to the waiting room opens. Kitty walks in, her gaze flickering between the two of them, a question forming in her expression.
There is a long silence.
Then Lana rubs a hand over her forehead, saying to Kitty, “Denny’s just told me about Joseph.”
Kitty stops. Her lips press together as she shakes her head. “I’m so sorry, Lana. We should’ve told you at the time. We thought it was for the best. We thought we were protecting you.”
“Does Shell know now?” Lana asks.
Kitty shakes her head.
“She needs to be told,” Denny says.
Kitty agrees, then she takes a step towards Lana and says quietly, “I don’t know if Denny’s explained—but that morning you found me in his cabin—we’d been talking about Joseph. That’s why I was in there. Nothing happened.”
Lana stays very still, as if a dawn light is beginning to rise inside her, shedding light over the darkest memories in her heart.
She is aware of Denny nodding, saying, “I was in such a state about what happened with Joseph. I was reliving every moment, looking for how it could have been different. I wish I hadn’t yanked Joseph so hard, wish I’d tried to get the knife from him, wish I’d woken everyone to help search. I just wish every single thing had been done differently.” He looks up at her and says, “I saw what his death did to you, Lana—and that made it even worse.”
Guilt is scored into the lines above his brow as he explains, “Kitty was the only person I could talk to. I couldn’t go to Aaron, and Heinrich . . . he just shut down—he wouldn’t even say Joseph’s name. But for me . . . I was the one who’d done it. I killed him. And I just kept replaying what’d happened, needing to make sense of it. I was losing it—totally losing it. The night before we reached Palau, I spoke to Aaron and said we had to tell the authorities when we arrived. The two of us had this terrible fight . . .” he says, his eyes clouding at the memory.
Kitty takes over. “Afterwards I went to check on Denny—to try and calm things down. We talked and talked, right through the night. Eventually we must have crashed out. That was it, Lana. Nothing happened.”
Even after all the hours Lana has spent picturing that morning, replaying the way Kitty’s arm was draped over Denny, the guilty expression sliding across his face as he woke, Lana can tell that this is the truth. Now she understands why, at the time, Kitty couldn’t explain what she was doing in Denny’s room—not without explaining about Joseph.
Lana can’t stop herself from asking, “What about later?”
“Later?” Kitty repeats.
“The eight months you’ve spent on the same yacht.”
“Nothing went on—not that night, or any night.”
Slowly, Lana nods. She believes her.
“I’m so sorry for not being honest with you about Joseph,” Denny says. “For not being honest with everyone. I felt like I couldn’t tell you—or the authorities—because if Aaron lost The Blue, he’d have lost everything. It doesn’t mean I think it was the right decision—it wasn’t. Believe me, I know it wasn’t.”
But Lana doesn’t blame Denny—the whole crew were responsible for what happened on board. Aaron might have provoked Joseph, Denny might have thrown him across the deck, and Kitty and Heinrich might have kept quiet about what they’d seen—but Lana and Shell were on that yacht, too, and neither of them told the authorities. All six of them have to live with that. “You never meant to kill him,” Lana tells Denny. “You were protecting your brother.”
But even as the words leave her mouth, she thinks, Will Joseph’s sister see it like that?
She glances out of the waiting room window and across the tarmac towards her car. Aimee Melina is still standing there, arms at her side, staring towards the building.
Lana takes a deep breath, steeling herself. She needs to tell them that Joseph had a sister—and that she’s here at the Maritime Rescue Centre, waiting to find out what’s happened to him.