The Bay at Midnight

to…where do you want to go?”

“I live on the canal,” I said. I wanted to be home in the worst way.

He grunted as though he wasn’t crazy about my answer. “Okay,” he said. “Your boat’s not going anywhere. Come on.”

I waded back to his boat with him, and as his fellow sailors were helping me in, I spotted the Chapmans’ Boston whaler not more than fifty yards away. I saw my grandfather in the boat with Ned, and I was so exhausted and confused that it didn’t even register as odd to me that the two of them would be together.

“Hey!” I yelled, startling the people in the boat. “That’s my grandfather,” I said to them. “Hey,” I yelled again, and the guy who had tried to help me start my boat laid on his horn.

My grandfather looked toward us and I waved my arms over my head again. Instantly, Ned’s whaler changed direction and headed for me. When the boats were side-by-side, I thanked my rescuers and transferred to the whaler, my grandfather holding my arm. I sank down onto one of the seats, so relieved to have my ordeal over that I wanted to cry, but I wouldn’t do that in front of Ned.

“Where’s Isabel?” Ned said as the other boat pulled away from us.

“What do you mean?” I asked. A slow horror began to fill my chest.

“We woke up this morning and you were both gone,” Grandpop said.

I froze. Instinctively I started thinking of lies to protect myself.

“I…I forgot to tell her you couldn’t meet her last night,” I said to Ned. “And I…” I remembered my prayer of the night before. Keep Isabel safe and I’ll stop lying. “I didn’t forget,” I admitted. “I didn’t tell her because Bruno wanted to talk to her, so I told him she’d be on the platform at midnight.”

Ned stared at me. It was so early that he didn’t yet have his sunglasses on, and for the first time I could remember, I saw anger in his blue eyes.

“You set her up with Bruno?” He looked at me with disbelief.

“What’s this about a platform?” my grandfather asked.

Ned took a step toward me. He put his hands on my waist, lifted me up and threw me overboard.

I shot through the water like a stone, then sputtered to the surface. Ned leaned over the edge of the boat. “You little bitch,” he said.

“Hey, hey,” my grandfather said. He held his hand in the air to stop Ned’s words, then he leaned over to help me climb back into the boat. I was shivering, although the air had to be eighty degrees and the water was not much colder. My stiff neck sent shards of pain up the back of my head. “All right, you two,” my grandfather said, taking charge. “Whatever differences there are between you, put an end to them now. This is serious and I want the truth.” A larger boat sailed by and the wake lifted us up and then let us fall. I felt sick. Ned and I looked at each other. We both had things to hide, and I could tell that he knew as well as I did we could hide them no longer.

“Isabel and I meet on the platform at the beach sometimes,” Ned said. “At midnight.”

I could see my grandfather struggle with his anger, not letting it show on his face. “All right,” he said. “And what happened last night?”

“I asked Julie to tell Isabel that I couldn’t meet her last night.”

“And Bruno stopped by and asked where he could find Isabel and I said I didn’t know right then but I knew he could find her on the platform at midnight. And I was out here then, and I…” I was afraid to say the words out loud.

“You what?” Ned asked.

“I heard her scream. I heard her call for—”

“Hit your horn!” Grandpop said to Ned, but he stepped past him and blew the horn himself, waving with his other hand. Ned and I turned to see the Marine Police clipper he was trying to flag down.

We were quiet as the clipper came beside us. “We’ve got the twelve-year-old—Julie,” Grandpop said to them, and only then did I realize they’d had the Marine Police out looking for me. “But the older girl’s still missing.”

“They weren’t together?” one of the officers asked.

Grandpop shook his head. “Check the platform at the Bay Head Shores beach,” he said. “This one heard a scream there around midnight last night.”

We followed the clipper in the direction of the beach. Grandpop stood next to Ned, holding on to the windshield, staring straight ahead.

“Grandpop,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t reply. Maybe he hadn’t heard me over the deafening sound of the engine as we sped toward the beach. Ned slowed his boat when we reached the water near the empty platform. The only person on the beach was a woman walking a large brown dog.

The Marine Police clipper pulled alongside the platform, but Ned was staring toward a clump of sea grass at the edge of the beach. Suddenly he stood up.

“Oh, God,” he said. He pulled off his T-shirt and dove from the boat. I grabbed Grandpop’s arm as we watched him swim toward the reeds and cattails, and it took me a long time to realize that there, among the low grass and seaweed, was the body of my sister.

My strongest memory from the rest of that day was of a dull pain in my chest and throat. I thought I was having a heart attack. It was the day I learned what the word keening meant. And the day my mother hit me. She’d never before laid a hand on me, but she slapped me hard across my face when she learned about my part in my sister’s death.

“How could you do such a terrible thing to her?” she asked me.

My cheek stung and tears flowed freely down my cheeks.