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Chapter Twenty






Annabel gazed up at the leaden sky with ill-concealed frustration. “Looks okay to me, ” she said.

Bevan shrugged impassively. “At the moment.”

“We’ve got hours before it hits, and I have to get back to the island and batten down the hatches.”

“I radioed this morning and Cody’s got all of that under control.”

“Cody—” Annabel bit back the urge to ask about her.

“Smart cookie, that one, ” he said. “The place has been running like a well-oiled machine.”

Annabel frowned at him and tried not to feel irrational envy at the idea of anyone having seen Cody regularly for the past two weeks, especially a man.

She indicated the Dominie. “So how long before she’s ready? ”

Bevan waved his mechanic over. “The lady pines to fly the silver sky, my friend. Are we making any progress? ”

Smithy wiped his hands on the rag dangling from his back pocket and sucked in his breath wetly. “’Bout another two hours guvnor, and that’s without testing ’er.”

“You hear the forecast? ”

“Yep. They reckon it’s the big one this time.”

“Hurricane Mary, ” Bevan mused out loud. “She’s five hundred miles northeast and nowhere to go but here.”

“The gulls are in, ” Smithy said, indicating the squabbling ranks congesting the tarmac.

Bevan lit a cigarette and turned to Annabel. “We won’t be flying today, ” he said bluntly. As Annabel glared across his shoulder at the forlorn Dominie, he explained, “Even if we get the new struts welded we’re not going to have enough time to test her before the storm hits.”

“There’s always some damned thing wrong.” Annabel cursed, coming to the rapid conclusion that she would soon have to buy a decent plane. “How long does testing have to take, for God’s sake? ”

“We’d have to circle Raro a couple of times, put down and inspect her. That’s at least another two hours on top of repair time. It’s not happening.”

Annabel glanced at her watch and scanned the sky again. The horizon was condensing into a deep bruised purple and the air felt thick and humid. Bevan was right. They would never get to Moon Island in time. The hurricane would be there long before it reached Rarotonga. She wondered briefly whether Silk & Boyd had a freighter leaving and contemplated heading into Avarua to check them out.

Bevan seemed to read her mind. “All shipping’s canceled, ” he said dryly, “And air traffic’s been diverted. You’re lucky you got here when you did.”

Annabel snorted. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it. A hurricane fetishist would be thrilled. Isn’t it unusual to have one at this time of year? ” she noted with a frown.

“Sure is, ” Bevan agreed. “Round here most of the action happens November to March.”

“That’s mid-summer in this part of the world? ”

Bevan nodded. “Mid-summer to autumn, the wet season.”

“So how long before it gets here? ”

“Depends how fast she’s moving. The tide’s way up. By early evening the outer winds will be here. She’ll hit Moon Island before then, of course.”

Annabel shoved her hands into her pockets and paced in frustration. If only she had left Boston a little sooner—not that traveling to the Cook Islands was exactly a garden party. It had taken two days and four changes of plane.

For a moment she felt a pang of homesickness. It had been so reassuring to slip into the comfortable routine of a Boston week, catch up with friends, wander the Freedom Trail like a tourist. Somehow the city had seemed more relaxed than she remembered, or perhaps it was just her. Boston was beautiful in the summer, the cobblestones mellow and warm, yachts bobbing on the Charles River.

To Annabel’s surprise she actually enjoyed herself spending whole days in her mother’s company. She survived shopping expeditions to Newberry Street and lunch at the Ritz Carlton with Laura and her cronies. She had listened to her mother complain about the Desecration of Our National Heritage in Back Bay without once defending her own apartment.

For the first time in her life, Annabel was aware of feeling totally relaxed around her mother, unafraid to be herself. She sensed it was different for Laura, too. It was as though each of them was taking tiny tentative steps toward the other, creating safe passage across uncharted emotional territory.

As they drew closer, it pained Annabel deeply to look back at her childhood and realize how much she had missed out on, how badly she had been affected by an agenda she had known nothing about, a lie lived by the people who loved her best. The veiled comments and underground messages had not been her imagination. She was not paranoid or hysterical. There was nothing wrong with her. There never had been.

Annie was gone. She grieved for her—for the relationship that might have been. Yet at the same time, she began to feel curiously light. It was such a relief to know the truth. That she was Annie’s daughter. That Annie had loved her and had tried her best to do right by her. The times were very different back then.

Now, as she came to terms with her past, she suddenly saw a future she could never have imagined and a relationship with Laura on a whole new basis. How strange it was, she thought. In losing a mother, she had found one, too.

When Laura had kissed her goodbye at the airport and said to come home soon, Annabel knew she meant it and had said impulsively, “I’d like to bring a close friend.”

Her mother had looked a little nervous. “A woman friend? ”

“Yes. Her name is Cody… er Cordelia.”

Laura gave a quick nod. “I shall look forward to meeting her.”

It was a little stiff, but the genuine openness in her eyes had both startled and touched Annabel, and she hugged her mother warmly.

Recalling that hug, Annabel felt a rush of emotion for Laura—her mother. Love. It was the simplest truth of all.

She looked again at the congealing horizon and cursed the weather. Short of swimming, there was no way she could get to Moon Island now. Damn it all to hell, Annabel thought, and her stomach lurched. What if something happened to Cody?

Bevan must have glimpsed her expression, for he delivered a comradely slap across the shoulders. “She’ll manage, ” he said and something in his voice caught her attention.

He knew. Annabel was immediately uncomfortable. She stole a second glance at the pilot and comprehension slowly dawned. Bevan was gay. The man he lived with on Atiu was his partner. Annabel felt like an idiot. Why hadn’t it clicked sooner? Stereotypes, she thought cynically. Bevan was a tough flier with a past she knew better than to inquire about. He was tall and lean, a kind of dog-eared version of Robert Redford. What had she expected a gay man to look like? She knew plenty of them back home, and none conformed to the hairdresser stereotype.

For that matter, what was a lesbian supposed to look like? Annabel thought about her own appearance and almost laughed. “Let’s go hole up at the Banana Court, ” she said with cheerless resignation.

“Sounds good to me.” Bevan stubbed out his cigarette and paced around the Dominie. “Time to tuck her up, Smithy.”

The wiry little mechanic shook his head. “I’ll carry on if yer don’t mind, guvnor. I’d like to see ’er airworthy before the storm ’its. You never know, ” he added obscurely.

Annabel pulled off her jacket and tossed it over her bags in the rear cabin. “Smithy’s right, ” she said briskly. “Let’s get her in shape. The Banana Court will still be there tonight.”

An apprehensive silence descended and they looked at one another then laughed uneasily. “Tempt fate, why don’t you, ” Annabel muttered.

Bevan fiddled with the radio set against the wall, and Annabel felt her heart leap as she caught the sound of static, then Cody’s voice drifting in and out of range. “Moonbase to shuttle Dominie. Moonbase calling Dominie, do you read me? ”

“Roger, I read you Moonbase. Over, ” Bevan responded.

“When do you expect touchdown Dominie? The natives are getting restless. Over.”

Annabel exchanged a look with Bevan and hurried over to take the handpiece. “Not today Moonbase, ” she said huskily. “We have a gravity problem. Over.”

More static, then, “Annabel! Oh! Are you really here? ”

“Seems like I’m just in time to be too late. We’re grounded here. Over.”

“What does that mean. When are you coming? ” Cody sounded panicky.

Annabel was aware of the handpiece sliding in her wet palm. She felt sick at heart, desperate to be on her island, to be with Cody. “We’re not going to make it before the hurricane hits. Are you okay? Over.”

There was a pause. The radio whistled and Annabel frantically twisted the dials. “I wish you were here, ” Cody’s voice faded in and out.

“Me, too, ” Annabel said hollowly. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise. Over.”

“Oh, Annabel, ” Cody said. “I’ve missed you so much. Over.”

Annabel noticed Bevan had moved discreetly to the plane and was helping Smithy with a welding iron. “I have to go help the others, ” she said, controlling her voice with difficulty. Trying to inject some confidence, she added. “We’ll be there as soon as we can get off the ground. What are your plans for the storm? Over.”

Cody immediately sounded businesslike. “It raining here on and off, and the wind is getting pretty bad.” A wave of static swallowed her next few words, then the transmission become miraculously clear. “Mrs. Marsters went back to Rarotonga yesterday, and I’ve evacuated all the guests to Villa Luna. We’re going to spend the night in the Kopeka Cave. I walked Kahlo in with the supplies this morning, and now we’re all loading up to leave. Over.”

Annabel heaved a sigh of relief. The cave was a perfect shelter. It was only a little more than an hour’s walk from Villa Luna across the makatea, a fossilized coral reef now covered in jungle. Like many on the neighboring islands, the cave was a nesting place for hundreds of tiny Kopeka birds. Cody and Annabel had picnicked there one day and Annabel had been amazed at the chambers full of stalactites and curious limestone formations. There were even some human bones stacked neatly along the walls of a small antechamber, and Mrs. Marsters had explained that some of the caves were ancient burial sites for the one-time inhabitants of Moon Island, and very tapu, or sacred.

“The cave is a great idea, ” Annabel said. “Be careful, won’t you. The makatea is sharp.”

“We will, ” Cody promised and said something else that was lost in a flurry of static.

Annabel quickly adjusted the frequency. “Cody…” She felt awkward. “I know this is silly, but if anything goes wrong I just wanted you to know you mean a lot to me. Over.”

Through the fading signal, she could not make out most of Cody’s reply, catching only, “—be careful. This is hard.”

Hoping Cody had heard what she said, she found a positive note to end on. “Have fun camping out. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye, darling. Over and out.”

Both women sat for a long moment staring at their crackling radio sets and wanting to cry. Overhead the sky darkened and a few hundred miles away, above a warm oily sea, Hurricane Mary gathered strength.

 

“There’s no way we can take all that.” Cody pointed at a set of luggage stacked on the verandah next to the supplies and bedding rolls they would be taking to the Kopeka cave. This time they would be hiking in and could only take what they could carry.

Dawn, the young Australian staying in Frangipani cottage, stamped a belligerent foot. “Well, I’m not leaving it here. What if this place blows down? Anyway, ” she pointed a finger at one of the other guests, “she’s taking an extra back pack.”

“Yes, but she’s carrying it herself.” Cody held her temper in check. What they didn’t need right now was to have their well-organized evacuation thrown into chaos by some bratty teenager. “I’m storing everyone’s personal gear in the basement. We can only take what we absolutely need.” For Dawn’s benefit, she added. “Water and toilet paper are more important than your make-up kit, in other words.”

Catherine, the woman Dawn was glaring at, opened her pack and offered, “I can probably squeeze a few extras in here if there’s something you really don’t want to leave behind.”

“Don’t worry about it, ” Dawn said with such ill grace Cody wanted to slap her.

Catherine, a high school teacher, was unfazed. Obnoxious teenagers were nothing new for her, Cody supposed. “We’re not going to be there long, ” she said in a reassuring tone. “Maybe a couple of days at the most.”

“Do we have a first aid kit? ” inquired an older woman, sitting on the verandah steps tying her bright orange shoelaces.

Brenda was an accountant from Wisconsin, Cody recalled. So far her approach to the crisis had been calm and pragmatic.

Cody handed over the saddlebag she was packing. “It’s in here. Want to look it over? ”

“One of us should in case anything happens to you.” Brenda extracted the case and opened it, inspecting the contents like someone who knew what to look for.

Catherine stood over her, also taking an interest. Sounding exactly like every teacher Cody could remember from her school days, she said, “Show of hands, girls—how many of us have done first aid training? ”

“I can do CPR, but that’s all, ” Dawn said as the other three women raised their hands.

“Looks like we got it covered then, ” Brenda slid the kit back into the saddlebag and returned to her load.

Catherine gazed up at the brooding sky. “How long have we got? ”

“Four hours before it turns really stormy. Maybe five.” Cody said, trying to sound like she knew what she was talking about. So far she hadn’t been able to get anything more accurate and radio reports mostly referred to Rarotonga, not to the more far flung islands of the Cook group.

A gauzy rain veiled the island, and she wanted to set off before it got any heavier. Already the trail was slippery, a menace when you were crossing the makatea. Coupled with the poor light, their progress was going to be slow. They could not afford to risk injury—the first aid kit was not designed for anything more serious than minor cuts and sprains.

Gathering Dawn’s luggage together, Cody hauled it beneath the verandah into the basement and dragged a plastic sheet over everything. Because of its elevation, Villa Luna was not built on stilts as were many island homes, especially those in low lying areas. Storm surges were a frequent occurrence in this region of the Pacific, so the locals built their homes to cope with an inundation of salt water. The villa must have survived plenty of severe tropical storms, Cody thought. Hopefully this would just be one more.

She wondered where Annabel would take shelter. Most of Rarotonga’s buildings were single story to reduce the danger of collapse. Remarkably the island had emerged unscathed from most of the cyclones that had flattened its neighbors in recent years. This knowledge provided no comfort. Annabel was miles away and in peril. Cody had never felt more powerless.

 


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