The Pandora Box (21 page)

“Don’t.” He pointed a warning finger at her. “Don’t do that.”

Tears began to course down her cheeks in a magnitude she hadn’t experienced in years.

“I’m not going to fall for this, Dee, you hear me?”

“Go away!”

“Stop playing games with me! Give me the maps, notes, and whatever else you’ve got and I’ll get out of here. I’ve had it with you! “

She opened one of the drawers beneath her bed with her foot and took out the canvas bag. She reached inside and found, more by feeling than sight, a medium-sized leather notebook with a zipper closure, and tossed it onto the bed in front of him.

“You sidestep me again, for any reason, I’m going to dump you off the first chance I get. I don’t care whether it’s another boat or a harbor. And I don’t care what harbor—you got that, sugar?”

She opened her mouth to answer but a sob came out instead, and it was all she could do to snatch up a pillow to hide her face in before she broke down completely.

“Very convincing.” The tone held no trace of sympathy. “But since I’ve sat through this kind of act before, I think I’ll skip the rest of the show. My instincts may be off, honey, but my memory’s working just fine.”

He slammed the door on his way out, and Dee cried for nearly half an hour. Even when Marion came in to check on her, she was still too upset to communicate anything more than a nod or shake of the head to assure she was all right and, no, Hawk had not hit her.

“The nerve of him!” Marion fumed. “The absolute nerve! Why only a monster would treat a woman like that in this day and age! If it hadn’t got quiet in here so fast I would have barged in with a frying pan! Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Oh, Marion!”

“What is it, Dee? You can tell me.”

“I―I feel just awful!”

“Oh, no...” Marion’s face went pale. “Dee, he didn’t… you didn’t…”

“I hurt him so!” She sobbed with renewed remorse.

“Hurt him? Why, Dee Parker! Sometimes, I think I hardly know you at all. I better go make you a cup of tea.”

But nothing was the same after that.

He switched the watches, and that night, it was Starr who woke Dee when it was her turn. Along with the next night, and the next.

And as the days slipped by, one after the other, a depressing cloud began to settle onto
Pandora’s
crew. There were no more gatherings of everyone together in the cockpit. Even the chatter of daily living dwindled to a mere trickle as each of them began spending more and more time to themselves.

The second time Dee failed to respond to a simple wake up call, leaving her new partner waiting on deck for half an hour, he developed a method of his own for getting her out of bed in the middle of the night.

Instead of a polite knock and an announcement that it was her turn at the watch (which she always answered, but was never really awake when she did) he brought in a steaming cup of coffee.

“Sit up and drink this, Dee.” Then he would place it in her hands after she spontaneously responded to the direct order. When he returned a few minutes later to refresh the dwindling supply, she was always agreeably ready to shuffle up on deck. He even made the concession of helping her into her jacket (though it went against his grain to pamper any crew member, male or female). He only did it because he felt sorry for the way Hawk was treating her.

He hadn’t spoken a word to her for days.

Then, as if the very ocean were reflecting
Pandora’s
doleful atmosphere, they began to move into the cold latitudes. Ski clothes and long underwear replaced jeans and tee shirts, and more and more the sky was heavy with icy, cloud-bearing winds that blew whisper breaths down from the sleeping arctic sea.

Nearly two whole weeks went by.

Hawk remained distant and aloof, as if his belief that Dee was “just another user” made him lose any interest he once had in her. Most of his off watches he spent reading or poring over charts in his cabin. And he had little success trying to befriend Marion, who stayed stubbornly loyal to Dee.

On the other hand, Dee was sure she had personally destroyed whatever plans God might have been setting up to win Hawk over and open up connections between them. Connections that might have very well led to the kind of marriage she had always dreamed about. Because, if there was one thing she was certain about after all this, it was that she had fallen hopelessly, and completely, in love with Wayne Hawkins. Whether it was one-sided or not, the slightest touch or glance from him, even now, still sent her emotions careening in every direction.

But Hawk stuck to his decisions. His expressive eyes no longer softened when they met hers. His gaze always turned away too quickly, refusing to rest on her for any length of time. If he spoke to her it was only out of necessity and always with the utmost casualness. Which was more hurtful than if he had stayed angry.

Even the name-calling disappeared. Which, rather than being a relief, made Dee feel even more miserable.

“Take my advice,” Starr said to her one night when they were alone on deck together, “and don’t let yourself fall for him.”

It was one-thirty in the morning and the wind was bitter cold.

Dee was sitting in the lee of the canvas they had laced along the cockpit railing for a windbreak, sipping her hot coffee and brooding. “Is it that obvious?” she asked.

“Obvious—I’ve got sympathy pains just watching you torture yourself with guilt. It’s not your fault. Hawk has a lot of his own problems to deal with. No use getting yourself tangled up in something that started a long time before you ever came along.”

“What is he, a monster in disguise?”

He got up to lean over and check something on the side of
Pandora’s
hull for a moment before sitting back down again. “You can hear what people say up here clear as a bell if the side port’s open,” he explained. “But he’s got it closed. Where was I?”

“Monsters.”

“He can be one, all right. How’s the saying go? When he’s good, he’s very, very good, but when he’s bad…”

“He’s horrible,” she finished for him. “How come you stick so close to him, then?”

“Because he picked me up out of the gutter, that’s why.” He got up again, lifted the locker beneath his seat and retrieved a bottle of Southern Comfort from its recesses. He poured a liberal portion into his coffee, looked over at Dee to offer, but she put a hand over the top of her cup in reply.

“That doesn’t sound like any monster to me,” she said.

“I’ve been married three times,” he confided. “First wife died. Second two... ah, they were just pass-times, mostly. Anyway, when Hawk drifted through, the last one had just finished cleaning me out. My fishing business was about to go bust, and I was pretty low. Met him in the bar one night. Next thing you know he had invested in the business. Bailed me out of debt is more like it, and we were partners.”

“That doesn’t sound like a man with such problems, either.”

“He did it in spite of his problems. Like it was second nature to him, like… breathing. That’s the thing about Hawk. He always does what’s right, even if it’s for the wrong reasons. He just crashed and burned ten years of marriage in a messy divorce and what does he do? He helps out a drowning old duffer like me nobody else will give the time of day to.”

“Ten years?”

“Ten miserable years to hear him tell it. I guess she really did a number on him. Rich, lawyer-type career lady that walked all over him to get to the top, then dumped him once she got there. No kids. Just money, money, and money.”

He tipped a little more whiskey into his cup. “Anyway, that’s why Hawk has a vendetta against anything female. At least he did until you came along. Between you and
Pandora
, I thought maybe he found the right road again. Now, I don’t know. All the old symptoms are back, and he’s closer to toppling over the edge than ever.”

“What kind of symptoms, Starr?”

“It isn’t my place to say. I already said too much. But I’m getting a little attached to you myself these days. You’re a nice gal. I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt. Truth is, Hawk’s not the kind of person someone as nice as you ought to be chasing after. After he gets what he wants…he’ll just cut and run.”

26

Suspicion

“‘Don’t worry,’ I said encouragingly, as I was unable to speak that dreadful word…”
~
Nellie Bly

“What’s this?” Marion asked when Hawk emerged from the companionway at dawn and handed her a folded wool blanket.

“A peace offering,” He sat down in the seat across from her and reached for the coffee thermos. “It’s one hundred percent wool. Even if it gets wet it’ll stay warm.”

She was quiet.

“Come on, Mare. It’s been almost three weeks. How many times do you want me to say I’m sorry?”

“I’m not the one who needs to hear it, Hawk. Dee’s miserable.”

He sighed, took a sip from the steaming cup, then put a hand in the pocket of his jacket to keep warm. “She isn’t miserable because I lost my temper, Marion. She’s upset because she lost the reins on this whole thing, and I’m not playing into her hands anymore.”

“That’s the farthest thing from the truth there is. Dee’s not that kind of person. It’s just a...twist of fate that it even looks that way.”

“It’s a twist, all right.”

He looked tired.

She contemplated the handsome, troubled gaze that stared moodily into the dawn and felt sorry for him. Whatever his reasons for withdrawing into himself, he was lonely, spent, and trying to make amends. Who was she to insist that he make them first with Dee? After all, didn’t the deepest wounds take longest to heal?

“You don’t have to give me the blanket off your bed, Hawk,” she finally said. “Apology accepted. I just wish we’d all try thinking the best of each other instead of the worst every time. Including me.” She took a tissue out of her pocket and dabbed at her nose that had long since grown irritated in the wind. “Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning,” she quoted the famous lines then got to her feet. “I’ve been feeling rain in the air all night long.”

“Barometer dropped into the storm zone. Better sleep while you can. It looks like it might be a rough one.”

“Don’t you want to have breakfast before I go down?”

“I’m not hungry, I’ll get something later.”

She handed him the blanket.

“No, you take it,” he insisted. “I don’t have the wet spot...I just have the ghost.”

It was amazing, Marion thought, how much better a person could feel after airing their differences. Keeping things all locked up inside and holding a grudge, that’s what wore a person out. She hadn’t changed her mind about Hawk’s actions or even her opinion of how he was treating Dee. But she felt better about him. At least standing watch with him every day wouldn’t feel so much like the judgment seat anymore.

She missed Starr. She missed that big comfortable hulk sitting there in his worn-out jeans and suspenders, with his plaid flannel shirtsleeves rolled up past the elbows of his long underwear. He drank too much, but he didn’t put on airs. And he made a person feel like they didn’t have to waste time putting on airs for him, either. He thought a little too highly of Hawk. But then it was difficult for anyone not to be taken in by the warmth and friendliness Hawk doled out whenever he felt like it. Hadn’t she just been taken in by it herself?

No matter. If she had to be Hawk’s partner she would rather have him be the smooth-talking charmer who meant only half what he said than the dark brooding stranger he had been lately. Charm she could live with. Dark, brooding secrets gave her chills.

Marion pulled the green, acrylic blanket with the damp center from her bed and shook out the thick, gray wool one to replace it. It wasn’t until she was tucking in the corners that she noticed the black lettering at the hem. She bent down for a closer look and then froze.

It had the words, “Wyngate State Hospital” stamped on it.

Dee had only been asleep since Marion took over the watch at two and was harder to wake than usual. “Now what?” she groaned at the intrusion. “It can’t be my turn already, and I don’t want any coffee!”

“It’s me―Marion!” her friend persisted in a hushed but urgent whisper. “Dee, this is important! You have to come to my cabin for a minute. I have to show you something!”

“Now?”

“You bet your life now. Come on!” She dragged her out of bed. “But be quiet...” She peeked down the companionway to make sure it was empty before darting across to her own door that was still ajar.

“This better be good, Mare,” Dee whispered, “because I’m exhausted.

“Look...” Marion pointed to the blanket hem that was turned up across the corner.

Dee bent down for a closer look. “I don’t believe it! Where in the world did it come from? How did it get here?”

“Hawk gave it to me this morning.” Marion’s tone had the death-bell ring again. “And I think it makes perfect sense!” She closed the door behind them, after a quick glance down the empty companionway and whispered. “It explains everything. Where else would he get a signed-off title of the boat if not from Peterson? You said yourself someone was blackmailing him. And the only people who were ever around him besides you...were Wyngate staff.”

“Marion, that’s just too frightening! What would he be doing there? He’s not a doctor or anything.”

“How do you know? Did you ever ask him what he retired from?”

“He retired from the military, remember? And besides that, he just isn’t the type.”

“They have medical people in the military, Dee. They don’t all just march and carry guns. And he’s been out of the military long enough to have befriended Peterson, just like you did.”

“But do you realize how cold and devious he would have to be to pull something like that off? I can’t picture it, Mare, he’s too... well, he’s just too emotional.”

She gasped. “Oh, good heavens, that’s even worse. But you’re right. It does make more sense.”

“What sense?”

“How emotional he is.” Marion opened one of the drawers beneath her bunk and withdrew a pair of thick flannel pajamas to change into. “Think about it. He’s perfectly charming one minute and then brooding and moody the next. He spends hours in his cabin.”