Last Night, page 7
“She settled because she wanted peace. We only knew Genevieve from that single semester aboard the ship. She wasn’t even a close friend, but she latched on to us, especially Maddie. She wanted to be an artist, but that was laughable. All she ever did was copy what Maddie was doing.”
“Yet Genevieve claimed Maddie had stolen her idea about the whale and the swan and the stars.”
“That was such a lie.”
“Where did the idea come from?” Kate asked.
Hadley bowed her head, buried her face in CeCe’s blanket scrap, looked up again. When she did, her eyes looked calm. The anger had left.
“Maddie and I saw the most amazing thing,” Hadley said. “We were on watch just before dawn one day, the two of us alone on the bow. The ship was anchored just off the shore of Newfoundland. Several swans were close to the boat; they appeared to be asleep, heads tucked under their wings. It was still dark.”
“Sounds magical,” Kate said.
“It was. And then we heard a loud whoosh—we’d been on board long enough to know it was a whale surfacing for air. We saw its glossy black back, illuminated by starlight. But the amazing thing was, it came up right beneath one of the swans. And when it did, the swan stayed balanced on the whale’s back.”
She closed her eyes, as if picturing the moment.
“Only you and Maddie saw that?” Conor asked.
“Yes. And once we were relieved by the next watch, Maddie ran below and immediately painted the scene. It was just a watercolor, about four by six inches. Years later she did it as an oil, and it became her iconic image.”
“Genevieve wasn’t on deck?” Kate asked.
“She was on the watch that took over—we saw her as we left the deck.”
“And was the swan still on the whale’s back?” Conor asked.
“No—that lasted only a few seconds before the whale sounded and the swan flew away. No one else saw it, just me and Maddie.”
“Did Genevieve see the watercolor?”
“Maybe,” Hadley said. “Maddie was never sure. Genevieve was so obsessed with being an artist like Maddie; we had the feeling she spied on her, maybe even went through her things.”
“Could she have been spying on you that night, seen the whale and swan at the same time you did?”
“I’m sure not,” Hadley said. “She didn’t see them.”
“The article says that Genevieve produced sketches and watercolors of the whale and the swan and claimed that she had done the original painting that became so famous,” Kate said.
“Did you and Maddie tell your shipmates about what you’d seen?” Conor asked. “Even if Genevieve wasn’t actually there, could she have heard the story and truly made the work on her own?”
Hadley shook her head. “Maddie and I kept it to ourselves, just for us. We never told anyone, not even our parents. Talking about it could never have done justice to what it was like.” She closed her eyes, as if seeing the scene, reliving that moment.
“How did Genevieve know the details? During the lawsuit, she described exactly what you just told us—about dawn, and the stars, and being on watch on the ship’s bow,” Kate said.
“We never knew how she found out,” Hadley said.
“Unless she was stalking Maddie and went through her things. Saw the little painting she did,” Kate said.
Hadley nodded. “That’s one possibility. Also, I kept a journal. It was like a private ship’s log, an account of everything I did and saw on that cruise. We wondered if she might have read it.”
“That sounds possible,” Kate said. “If she was so obsessed.”
“What is your relationship with Genevieve now?” Conor asked. “And what was Maddie’s?”
“She disappeared after the settlement and sank into the muck she came from. I guess she’s still living in Maine. She grew up there, and she had an address in Wiscasset when she brought the lawsuit.”
“There was a nondisclosure clause in the agreement,” Kate said. “So she can’t discuss anything about the suit. The documents are public, and the reporter who wrote this piece took all her information from them.”
“A lot of journalists came around Maddie during the suit and just after she settled with Genevieve, but she never spoke to any of them. She was a very private person. Most people who knew her personally had no idea she was MC.”
“I wonder if Genevieve has held a grudge all this time,” Kate said.
Conor thought of the little hollow where he had found Star, and of Maddie lying dead under the thick blanket of snow, and he wondered the same thing.
8
Hadley was restless. After she’d said goodnight to Kate and Conor, she’d wandered around the hotel. It was past midnight now, and she saw no other guests. She’d kept her phone with her and checked it constantly. The hotel corridors were filled with art. Grand landscapes in museum-quality gilded frames, but also two collections that fascinated Hadley: work by Ludwig Bemelmans—the author of the Madeline books—and drawings by the French artist Sem. A caricaturist of the Belle Époque, Sem had drawn the upper classes in Paris, Deauville, Monte Carlo, and other playgrounds of the rich.
Along with the art that filled the lobby and every hallway, there was a little jewel box of a gallery down the grand staircase. The Bemelmans Gallery had walls painted Buxton Blue, an oceanic blue-gray that perfectly set off the owners’ extensive collection of Bemelmans’s work.
One wall featured “Adieu to the Old Ritz,” an array of pen-and-ink drawings Bemelmans had done to illustrate essays inspired by his fifteen years of working at the post-Depression New York Ritz. They were charming and comforting—chefs and the maître d’ and sommeliers and diners. Hadley gazed at them, reading the note that said the collector had acquired them all at once after seeing them displayed in a window at Bergdorf Goodman, on Fifth Avenue.
She took the beautiful old elevator upstairs and continued wandering. Seeing art calmed her. It seemed uncanny to see so much of Sem’s work here; she wondered how Maddie had felt about it. Hadley could understand how she would love the Bemelmans pieces, especially those of Madeline, but Sem was another story. Bernard owned a folio of his work focusing on theater and horse racing. It was bound in red leather with gold print, and Hadley remembered seeing it when she had visited their house in Malibu. Bernard was incredibly proud of it and shared how Sem’s real name was Georges Goursat, and he had been born in Périgueux, in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. Bernard came from that region as well; he’d been born and raised in a small town outside Bordeaux.
“He relates to Sem,” Maddie had said during Hadley’s last visit, before the separation. It was late afternoon, and they were sitting on the deck of Maddie and Bernard’s house in eastern Malibu, just above the mouth of Topanga Canyon, where it met the Pacific.
“What is it about Sem?” Hadley had asked.
“They both came from upper-middle-class families and had family money that gave them an advantage in life. Bernard feels he had it almost too easy—or at least that’s the perception of the public. Of his peers. That it would have been more impressive if he hadn’t had that leg up.”
“You can’t buy talent,” Hadley had said. “And Bernard obviously has it. He wouldn’t have made it the way he did if that wasn’t the case.” She watched her sister. Bernard may have been born with money, but he had lost it, and now he was relying on his wife for support—not just of their lifestyle but of some of his film projects.
“I know he comes off as confident, and even brash,” Maddie had said. “But his financial position is his Achilles’ heel. He started out with too much, and now, when he should be at the top, he’s completely out of money. The other day he said to me he feels like a kept man.”
“Do you feel that way?” Hadley had asked. “That you’re ‘keeping’ him?”
“Of course not,” Maddie had said. “It would be different if he sat around all day, but he’s constantly working. He still has a very good agent, and he gets offered wonderful roles. The problem, he says, is that they’re all ‘prestige’—they might get him a nomination, but what he really wants is an action film.”
“Can’t he do both?” Hadley had asked.
“Maybe when he was younger, when he was too snobby to take anything like that. Now he looks at Liam Neeson and can’t figure out why he can’t have the same roles. He’s angling to be the villain in the next James Bond, but it will most likely go to Dirk Von Briels.”
“Isn’t that the guy with the patch over one eye? He did some dystopian space movies?”
“Yep,” Maddie had said. “Bernard’s archrival, or at least that’s what he thinks. It’s true, they’re the same age and often up for the same parts. Different styles, though.” She paused. “He’s mad at me because I wanted him to do a guestie.”
“A what?”
“Guest spot on a TV series. He hates to do anything where he’s not one of the main stars, but this would have been a great chance for him. Top-rated show, brilliant cast, and last year Dirk did it and won the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor.”
“Maybe that’s what turned Bernard off,” Hadley had said. “He wouldn’t want to follow in Dirk’s footsteps. It would be like coming in second.”
“That’s exactly right,” Maddie had said. “But it would have brought him a lot of attention and possibly a nomination. Maybe even an award. Casting directors would have started seeing him differently. Bernard is old school and still looks down on television. It used to be that actors like him only did feature films—forget TV—but now streaming series are everything. His agent barely even puts him up for TV because he knows what Bernard will say.”
The sisters had sat quietly as evening began to fall. The mountains were in shadow, and the Pacific gleamed rose gold in the last light. It was January, chilly even in Southern California.
CeCe had been at a play group, but she had just gotten home, and her nanny brought her out to the deck. She was dressed in a navy UCLA sweatshirt, a pink tulle skirt, high-top red sneakers, and a necklace strung with what looked like real pearls. She beamed at the sight of her mother and Hadley.
“Auntie,” she had said, slinging one arm around Hadley’s neck.
“I’ve been waiting all day for you,” Hadley had said. “I was about to hop on the back of one of those whales and go flying to see you.”
“Whales do fly, you know,” CeCe had said solemnly.
“They do?”
“Haven’t you seen Mommy’s painting?”
“I sure have,” Hadley had said. “The Whale and the Swan.”
“I always watch the stars,” CeCe had said, pointing down the mountainside at the ocean. “And I wait for them to rise into the sky.”
Hadley had followed her gaze. The northern migration of the California gray whales was underway, from their winter calving grounds at Laguna San Ignacio on the Baja Peninsula back to the Bering Sea. Mothers and babies swam close to shore, where the shallow water provided safety from killer whales and great white sharks, and Hadley watched spouts, the spray iridescent in the last light.
“What these whales need,” Hadley had said, “are a few swans. To ride on their backs and spread their wings. Then they could fly.”
“Let’s go in for dinner,” Maddie had said, abruptly changing the subject, “and see if Papa is home yet.”
“Yes!” CeCe had said, running through the garden toward the house.
Hadley remembered that now as she walked the corridors of the Ocean House in the middle of the night, feeling the presence of the Lafond family in all the art, and thinking of the conversation she’d had with Conor and Kate, how she had told them about Maddie’s painting, how it had been inspired by a real whale. And how Genevieve Dickinson had reacted with such fury.
Art and rage, art and identity.
She wasn’t sure where one ended and the other began.
9
USCG Commander Tom Reid was at Station Point Judith when the blizzard hit. He was normally the command duty officer in New London, but a temporary assignment had taken him to Sector Southeastern New England. Point Judith was under his command, and he’d wanted to visit the station. His command was at Woods Hole for the next few months, but this was much closer to his home in Connecticut, and to his wife, Jackie, and her daughters. To his brother, Conor, and his brother’s girlfriend, Kate. Family.
The station was located beside the Point Judith Lighthouse, a structure built of wood in 1806, battered and leveled by storms and rebuilt several times since then. It was old and crumbling. The wind was howling, blowing shingles off the roof, and causing the power to go out. Everyone on duty was busy trying to keep it all going, and Tom did his part, too, by making rounds.
The generators were in the building at the foot of the lighthouse, and they needed to be filled with diesel. Same with the ones at the boathouse in Galilee. Tom walked through the dark corridor, feeling the icy cold and hearing the howling of the wind and the ghosts. He had no problem believing this place was haunted by mariners they’d been unable to save, in nor’easters just like this one.
He heard the echo of footsteps and saw Sam Walker—the station’s senior coxswain—hurrying toward him.
“Sir, we have a distress call.”
In the radio room, Tom heard the caller on channel sixteen identify himself as Zane Garson aboard the Anna G, a forty-five-foot Novi lobster boat out of the Port of Galilee. The radio transmission was terrible, and it was hard to make out words over the crackle.
“I’m icing really bad,” Zane said. “Taking on water, swamping on the starboard side.”
“What’s your location?” the radio operator, Irving Jenkins, asked.
“Block Island Sound, running west. I was trying to beach, but the wind is too strong. Can’t see shit, but I’m near Charlestown Breachway.”
“How many aboard?”
“Just me.”
“I advise you to put on your survival suit and launch your life raft,” Irving said.
“I don’t have a fucking survival suit!” Zane said.
As the captain, he was in violation of the Fishing Vessel Safety Act, but he wasn’t the only one trying to save money at the expense of crew lives. Zane advised that he did have a four-person inflatable life raft with an ACR GlobalFix EPIRB—a marine distress beacon—and a weatherproof canopy for shelter. The internal GPS would pinpoint and transmit his location.
Tom was calculating. The wind was fifty knots sustained, gusting to sixty, with twelve-foot seas. Parameters for Station Point Judith were thirty knots sustained and ten-foot seas. Normally a rescue in these conditions would be done by Station Montauk—their forty-seven-foot boat was better equipped than the forty-five-foot RB-M used by this crew—but Zane was in danger of sinking, with imminent threat to life, and Tom knew response time was critical.
“Can we have a waiver, sir?” Sam asked.
As Sector Commander, Tom had the responsibility to decide whether the risk of sending this crew—given the parameters—into the blizzard was worth it. It was up to him to issue the waiver and permit this station to take the mission instead of calling in Montauk. He knew what a fine and experienced crew he had on watch. Stone Crawford was an excellent senior engineer. Tom had had Machinery Technician Petty Officer Second Class Crawford aboard his ships, and he valued Stone’s experience greatly—MK2 Crawford was superb at his job—so he granted the waiver without hesitation.
“Will we get air support?” Stone asked.
Tom was on it. He radioed air station Joint Base Cape Cod. They had the ability to supply an MH-60T Jayhawk helicopter or an HC-144A Ocean Sentry fixed-wing aircraft, and Tom spoke directly to his friend and fellow commander Paul Bristol and requested the helo. Normally it would be up to the pilots, but Paul didn’t even ask.
“Tom, we’ve got zero ceiling, zero visibility. I can’t send them up,” Paul said.
“I figured,” Tom said. He’d already known that would be the answer, but he had to ask.
“I’m sorry,” Paul said. “Be safe.”
The crew put on dry suits, and so did Tom. All five of them—coxswain, engineer, two crew members, and Tom—crammed into the crew cab of the Ford F-450 pickup. The road from the lighthouse to the dock was deep with snow, but the F-450 was equipped with a plow, and they cleared their own way.
Galilee was home to the largest fishing fleet in Rhode Island and to the Block Island Ferry. The ferry hadn’t gone out since the night before the blizzard started, and most fishing boats were in their slips. There were plenty of Novi boats like the Anna G; Tom wondered what had possibly caused Zane to go out in weather like this.
Tom and the crew climbed aboard RB-M 45738. It was a forty-five-foot response boat medium, all aluminum, powered by twin diesels. It had replaced the forty-one-foot utility boats and was much better able to right itself in high seas. That kept the crew safe, which was what mattered most to Tom. As COD—commander on duty—he normally wouldn’t go out on a mission like this, but he didn’t want to send the guys without going himself.
Sam Walker, the senior-most coxswain, drove the boat. They left the fishing village via a channel between the two stone jetties, the salt spray turning instantly to ice. Tom knew this was what had happened to the Anna G; with twelve-foot seas and a fifty-knot wind roaring out of the north, the Novi would quickly ice up. The ice was heavy, and blowing snow would stick to it and make it exponentially heavier, and the boat would start to list.
Tom felt confident with this crew. They knew heavy weather, none more than engineer Stone Crawford. He had been at Station Golden Gate in Sausalito, California, a designated Coast Guard surf station, where twelve-foot seas were not uncommon. He had surfed pretty much every storm in Point Judith. They were nothing compared to the fifty-foot waves he had surfed at Mavericks, in Half Moon Bay, on his days off from duty under the Golden Gate Bridge. He stood at the console, peering into the murk—a combination of total darkness and the wall of falling snow.
