Sabrina joined Henry in the great room, where he was supervising the waitstaff. While the great room at Nirvana was larger and grander than any other Sabrina had seen, it lacked charm and felt more like a hotel lobby. Classic Caribbean great rooms were comfortable living rooms in which the natural environment of the outdoors was brought inside and incorporated in the design: small palm trees, stone walls, indoor fountains, flowering plants, and large open windows inviting in the sunshine and trade winds.
Most of the guests seemed to enjoy going out to the truck, where Amy and Erin bantered with them as they made their selections. The Sammy, with two eggs, bacon or sausage, and a cheese of the guest’s choice on a homemade biscuit, seemed to be the biggest hit, followed by the Breakfast BLT.
“Any luck?” Henry asked.
Sabrina motioned for Henry to follow her into the kitchen, where guests wouldn’t hear their conversation.
“Not unless you mean bad luck. Now we can’t seem to find the sister-in-law either.”
“Do you mean Lisa or Heather? Heather’s in the great room having brunch with her father and the company CFO. I wouldn’t blame Lisa for taking off from that bore for a husband, Gavin. What an egomaniac. But she’s got those three girls, so she’s probably just off for a morning walk.”
“Run. Sean says she runs. Remind me, who’s Heather?” Sabrina asked as she admired how professional the Ten Villas’ waitstaff looked in their new party shoes. Sabrina had been horrified when her entire waitstaff showed up for the dry run of the wedding event in flip-flops in varying degrees of decay.
“You can’t wear those to serve at a wedding. Come in shoes for the event,” she’d told them. Except they didn’t own shoes, which was common on St. John, where fancy flip-flops were as dressed up as people got. Ten Villas had to spring for twelve pairs of black Tevas at full price.
“Heather’s Sean’s half sister,” Henry said, as if Sabrina should know this information. Sabrina could never keep the names of the guests coming to and leaving from Ten Villas straight without her notebook, although she remembered the details of everything else like Rain Man. Henry kept names all in his head like the manifests from his days as a flight attendant. Before things became so tense between them, they would joke that between the two of them they had a whole brain.
“Heather’s a chiropractor from San Francisco. She’s Kate Keating’s daughter from marriage numero uno. Seems nice. Must look like her father,” Henry said, diplomatically omitting the fact that Heather was not as attractive as her mother or half brother. Tall with broad shoulders and narrow hips, she had a masculine look, which was only underscored by her short, frizzy salt-and-pepper hair.
“No. No sign of Elena,” Sean said, dashing into the kitchen, almost out of breath. Sabrina felt her sense of urgency growing. Two women missing. The prenup and the wedding seemed less important now.
“Henry, why don’t you and Sean check downstairs and then meet me back here,” Sabrina said, needing time to think. She knew Henry was counting on her to come up with Plan B if they couldn’t locate Elena and, now, Lisa. He knew she was a survivor who always had an alternative plan in her back pocket. If Plan A didn’t work, on to Plan B and down through the alphabet. Somehow, it didn’t seem fair that Henry had insisted they add this eleventh villa to Ten Villas but expected her to bail him out now that the event seemed to be going up in flames. Even after their interview with Sean and Elena, when Sabrina had cautioned Henry that she had an immediate sense that Elena would be difficult to work for, he wouldn’t listen. Then he had done worse. He had accused her of being jealous.
“Are you sure you’re not just reacting to having to answer to a powerful woman because that’s what you once were?”
He could have slapped her across the face and she would have been less shocked. But she also wondered if he was right. She had fallen off a skyscraper of disgrace.
Sabrina checked the clock on the kitchen wall. It was still early, she told herself. There was plenty of time to find Elena and Lisa and keep the wedding plans on track. And so far, other than the missing bride and her future sister-in-law, things were going well. Guests who were staying at either the Westin or Caneel Bay, the two island hotels, had begun to arrive for breakfast. The sound of jovial chatter came from the great room, where Sabrina returned to make certain things stayed on track.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sabrina saw Sean’s mother, Kate Keating, practically power walking up the slight incline from the front drive. Kate was a wiry, thin woman in her sixties. Her thick, short white hair accented a tan face with just enough wrinkles to suggest she’d been smart enough to wear sunscreen. Kate looked older as she drew closer, almost sprinting toward Sabrina, who rushed forward to meet her.
“Mrs. Keating, are you all right?”
“Something is wrong. Really wrong. In the water.”
Sabrina wondered if the next challenge of her day might be giving CPR to Kate Keating, who looked ready to faint. What could be wrong in the water that she would be so upset? She obviously hadn’t been in the water. Her skirt and blouse were bone-dry other than what looked like little splattered drops of paint.
“What do you mean?”
“Come see for yourself.” Kate pulled Sabrina by the hand, dragging her down the small hill at the bottom of the driveway, in the direction of Ditleff Point Beach. The small beach bordered a tiny cove, which was the only place to swim, launch a small boat, or paddleboard in the area. Arriving at the beach, Sabrina could see an easel sitting on the bluff above them.
Kate pointed out at the water to the right where waves rolled in, crashing against the jagged rocks that rose up from the sea in a gentle rhythm.
“I’ve been painting the waves all morning. I love how they slide in and over the rocks. They break into these white foamy lines that look like lace curtains blowing in a breeze,” Kate said.
Sabrina nodded. That was exactly what she thought of when she watched those waves breaking. They reminded her of the white Irish lace curtains in Ruth’s motel cottages back in Allerton, the coastal Massachusetts town where she’d grown up. Distracted by how uncanny it felt to hear someone else share the same impression, Sabrina was jarred back by the urgency in Kate’s voice.
“Look. Can you see that the symmetry is off at the nearest point where the waves are breaking? There’s something white moving with the waves but not in line with them. It doesn’t break into foam like the rest of the waves do. Something’s not right.”
Sabrina scanned the area, looking from left to right and back again several times. She had watched the waves in this cove a thousand times, in the distance, from her tiny cottage up above on a hill in Fish Bay. It was Sabrina’s form of meditation. Kate was right. Something was very wrong.
“Has it moved at all?” she asked.
“Just a little when a wave comes. I didn’t notice it at first. I was filling in the clouds and sky when I started. Do you think it’s a person? Maybe a dead shark?”
She was grateful Kate didn’t know there were two women missing from Villa Nirvana. She knew once again she had the misfortune to stumble upon a situation that at the very least called for action. Oh, she could wait and send for help, but if that really was a person, people would want to know why she hadn’t just done what needed to be done.
“I’m going to go out on the paddleboard and find out,” Sabrina said, grateful that her boyfriend, Neil Perry, had given her one for her birthday the month before and that she had mastered it enough to at least not fall over much.
She kicked off her flip-flops, placed her cell phone and keys on top of one, and picked up the yellow paddleboard that was sitting on its side in a rack on the sand. She brought it down to the edge of the water.
“Kate, please hold the board so it doesn’t float away,” Sabrina said as she went back to the rack and grabbed a paddle.
The shallow water, having already been heated by the sun, felt warm on her feet. She pushed the board in until she was waist deep and climbed on, placing one knee down at a time. She moved to the center of the board and placed her hands in front of her, gradually raising her body to a standing position. She tucked her pelvis and gave a slight bend to her knees and reminded herself to breathe, just as if she were in mountain pose during yoga.
Normally, Sabrina would have moved toward the right where there were fewer rocks, but what she needed to explore was to the left. She hoped there was enough water between the rocks and coral that the board wouldn’t scrape against them and topple her over. She paddled out, keeping her eyes on the surface of the water. Reaching the area where the waves were breaking, the paddleboard began to rock. No, standing was not going to work. She was going to have to use the board on her belly.
Sabrina bent at the waist, placed her hands back on the board and lowered herself onto her abdomen. Placing the paddle next to her, she began paddling with her hands toward what she could now see was a white object undulating with the surf about thirty feet away. Checking the depth of the water for clearance, she moved toward the object.
Sabrina could see the white lace moving on the top of the water, back and forth as the waves moved in and out. No one had to tell her she had found the missing bride.