Millie felt the sun on her face, but everything was still an oil-coated blur. She could no longer feel her feet, but when a piece of wreckage had bumped into her, she’d managed to scramble partially on top of it. Her legs were still in the water, but her chest was out of the frigid waves. Heart, brain, and baby above the waterline. That had to count for something.
Death by exposure was not a simple equation. She’d read about it in the newspapers, discussed it with her husband and her uncle. It depended on a body’s mass and composition, on the water’s temperature, and on the length of time spent immersed. She didn’t know the water’s temperature, so she couldn’t calculate an estimate for how much longer she had. Nor did she know how much the equation changed if half the mass was out of the water. The amount of clothing she wore would matter, too, because each layer slowed the dissipation of heat as her body warmed the water closest to her skin. Perhaps fear kept her from playing with the numbers because the solution in any case would be alarming if no one found her soon.
Rescue had to be on its way, if she could just hold on. Karl wouldn’t leave until they’d scoured every inch of the sea in search of her. Except he was only a coder—he couldn’t make decisions about how long a search would last. He might not even be aware of the Minstrel’s fate.
She tried to wipe some of the oil from her face with her coat’s lapel, but her efforts did little to improve her vision. It would probably take soap—the strong kind that would burn her eyes and leave her skin chapped.
It was her fault. She could have stayed in England, found a tiny flat in Liverpool, and hoped Karl would continue coming back to see her. Or found someone to care for the baby while she worked at BP. They scarcely paid her enough for that, but with Karl’s income, too, they might have scraped by. Either option would have been better than death in the middle of the North Atlantic.
Why hadn’t Bletchley Park and the Admiralty warned the convoy away from the U-boat? Had the Kriegsmarine changed something with their codes again? Added a fifth rotor or updated their bigram sheets? She’d heard nothing about a new blackout, but blackouts could happen unexpectedly. According to rumor, the Americans had been breaking the Japanese military code up until they’d changed the system on December 1, 1941. The Americans had broken it again, eventually, but not before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Or maybe it wasn’t a problem of not being able to read transmissions from U-boats but, instead, a problem of too many enemies to avoid.
Traveling to America now had seemed like such fortunate timing. Early enough that she could arrive before the baby was born. Late enough to give her longer at BP. With a convoy that her husband would also be part of. It had all seemed providential, but it had turned into a catastrophe, at least for her and her family.
Was that what her father-in-law had thought when he’d planned to take his children from Falcon Point? He would have wanted to leave late enough that he could hide the family’s valuables and make all the necessary preparations, including a former nanny to help with the children and false passports to hide the family’s route. And leave early enough that they could escape before he was forced into service. The timing must have felt perfect . . . until he was murdered and his children scattered.
The ocean was silent other than the waves. Too far from land to hear any birds. And unfortunately, too far from any ships to hear their engines. Except perhaps that whine . . . Was that an engine?
If Millie was covered in oil, she would be hard to see. She felt her life jacket, wondering if the oil had stained its surface. Her hands were too soiled with the viscous goop for her to tell. If her hair, skin, coat, and life jacket were all covered in oil, she’d blend in with the water. She couldn’t see the color of the piece of wreckage she floated on. It, too, might blend in with the waves. In any case it was probably too low in the water to be spotted. The fog, if it hadn’t burned away, would make rescue even more unlikely.
She could wait and hope the ship saw her—if it was a ship. If she could somehow widen the radius in which she’d be seen . . . The oil had been on the surface of the water, so she didn’t think it would have stained her pajama bottoms. She could wave them about to get someone’s attention. But that meant being colder, risking her life and her baby’s.
Stay warmer but more invisible, or risk an even worse chill but improve her chances of being spotted? She didn’t have enough information to solve for which option was better, but she’d been waiting for what felt like a long while. Maybe it was time to do something other than wait.
Using one arm to keep herself balanced on the wreckage, she reached a hand down and tried to bring a foot up to it. Putting on and removing shoes had grown more and more difficult, matching pace with her larger abdomen. The water did not make it any easier. Her finger brushed a shoelace, but that was all she could manage. She’d already lost her wedding ring and all her clothes, save one pair of pajamas and a coat. What was a pair of shoes on top of those losses? She scraped and kicked and her numb feet managed to escape their shoes.
Now, the tricky part. She was going to have to let go of her wreckage and hope she could find it again. She didn’t want to let go. Nor did she want the water to slip up to her shoulders again. But she had to hurry. If she didn’t catch someone’s attention soon, the ship or boat or whatever it was she thought she could hear would pass by without seeing her.
She slid back into the water and pulled off the bottom half of her pajamas. Thankfully, it wasn’t a nightgown; otherwise, the coat and life jacket would have to come off, and she wasn’t sure she could do that and stay afloat. She wiggled and strained and finally managed to strip the wet bottoms off and catch one of the hems before the current carried them away. The fabric was woven with stripes of pale blue and white. Lighter in color than her oil-slicked self and the surrounding water.
As best she could without actually being able to see anything other than a blur, she wrung them out and waved them over her head with one hand. With her free hand, she tried to find the wreckage she had pulled herself onto earlier. Wave. Swim a little forward. Feel for the broken bits of ship. Wave. Repeat.
Her shivers grew, shaking her entire body. Whatever engine was making the noise had better see her quickly, or she was going to freeze to death.