“I TOLD YOU it was going to get rough.” Tom Roberts checked the weather warning yet again before looking back at his younger brother, his expression darkening. “I warned you, Bobby, you should never have asked her along in the first place. Night fishing in October is not a holiday jaunt. I make the decisions, remember, it’s my call, and if this storm really kicks in then the last thing we need is a woman on board, especially a total rookie... Anyway, your problem, because no matter what happens there’s no way we’re giving up on this fishing trip.”
Bobby glanced out at the raging black sea beyond the cabin window. The Sea Hawk was already being buffeted by the waves that crashed onto the deck. “I’ll watch out for her,” he said determinedly, balancing with long practiced ease as the boat lurched up beneath their feet, then plunged back down with the rolling waves.
Tom resolutely held it on course. “It’s like a roller coaster,” he yelled over the thumping engine and the roar of the ocean. “No...!” His dark eyes shone. “It’s better than a roller coaster because it’s real life.”
“I’ll go see where Ali is,” Bobby said. “And don’t worry, I’ll make sure she stays off the deck.”
Tom leaned across so he could hear. “Tell her to stay away from you, more like... You’re only twenty, Bob. She’s way too old for you and you’ll only end up getting hurt.”
Bobby frowned. “Don’t be daft, she’s just a friend...and she’s married anyway. She promised to scatter her dad’s ashes on the ocean... He was a fisherman, too. She’d just met him for the first time only a few months before he died and it all came as a bit of a shock. Have a heart, Tom. She just wants to do right by her dad.”
“I think it’s your heart that’s the problem,” Tom responded with a wry smile, focusing all his attention on the controls of The Sea Hawk. “She’s got way too deeply into it if you ask me.”
“I’m not asking you,” Bobby snapped. “I’ll go and see where she is.”
* * *
DESPITE HAVING BEEN ordered to stay inside, Ali stood on the deck clutching her precious urn. She wanted to scatter her dad’s ashes at just the right moment, a moment he’d have gloried in, when the sea was at its wildest. And surely this must be it. Holding tightly on to all she had left of the father she’d barely known, she remembered the days just before he died, when she’d sat with him and he’d opened up to her about his life. He’d told her things then that her mother never had; the things she’d always wondered about.
Allowing herself to sway with the movement of the boat, she clung to the rail, tears in her eyes. Hearing his voice inside her head as clearly as if he was standing right beside her.
I loved your mother so much then...still do if I’m honest. It broke my heart when she left me and I missed you both every single day. You mustn’t blame her though; it was the fishing, you see. I was always going off in the boat, leaving her alone, worrying and wondering. I guess she just couldn’t live with the sea...and I couldn’t live without it—it’s in my blood. Promise me, Ali, that you’ll make sure I end up in the wildest ocean you can find. Scatter my ashes on the rolling sea and I’ll be a very happy ghost.
They’d laughed about it at the time, but she had promised and she intended to keep that promise, no matter what. And this, she decided with a shiver of apprehension, must surely be about as wild as the sea could get.
The lights of the fishing boat penetrated the blackness of the night, bringing a shimmer to the rolling waves and outlining the dark bulk of the boat that suddenly lurched and heaved beneath her, knocking her off balance. She grabbed for the rail with one hand while turning her face into the wind, alarmed at its ferocity and yet totally intoxicated by the crashing of the waves and the salty tang of the ocean. She felt closer to her dad here than she had in the brief time she knew him, for this was his world. The sea had been his whole life and she owed it to him to make it his final resting place.
The wind howled menacingly in the cloudy black sky above and her apprehension gave way to real fear as the wooden deck seemed to suddenly disappear beneath her, thrusting her back up again as a mighty wave took the boat in its grasp. A wall of water towered above the cabin, crashing down onto the deck in a rushing mass of rippling white foam that almost took her feet from under her as she desperately clung to the urn with one hand and the rail with the other. The water forced her up against the side of the boat, but despite her looming awareness of the danger she was in, she kept her focus.
“I have to do this for you, Dad,” she cried as the next wave rolled across the deck beneath her feet, knocking her off balance. The urn slipped from her fingers and she released the rail, dropping onto her hands and knees to make a grab for it.
“Ali! Ali!” Bobby’s voice sounded distant against the howling wind. She glanced back for just a second and saw his bright young face beneath the waterproofs that hid his thatch of red hair. “Ali,” he yelled again. “Hang on... I’m coming.”
The boat leveled for a moment, and everything went strangely still. This was her chance. Seizing the opportunity, she grasped hold of the urn and unscrewed its lid, fighting back fear as she struggled to scatter the contents of the urn into the sea. The boat rolled violently as the next wave hit, and she hooked her fingers around the rail with a sense of relief. But as she upended the urn, the mighty wind whipped the gravelly dust and hurled it back in her face as if in mockery of her plight. Dust filled her eyes, her mouth. Panic seized her and for a moment everything froze. And then her fingers were slipping...slipping.
Bobby’s voice rang in her ears. “Ali...! Ali... Hang on, I’m coming.”
His words stalled as the next wave hit, lifting her off her feet. She fought for breath as it hurled her against the railing, tossing her like a rag doll up and over the side of the boat, down toward the raging black sea.
As she fell, Ali felt strangely distanced from the events overtaking her. Was this it then, the end? Was she to join her father in the roiling sea? Was that what he’d wanted?
“Ali...! Ali!” She heard Bobby’s voice again, screaming in fear, but it was too far away.
Something suddenly grabbed her, stopping her fall midflight but almost tearing her arm from its socket. The icy water numbed her legs as she hung half in and half out of