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Susan heard Jo make a sharp intake of breath.
“Good grief, Gran. Rob Wingate? He’s still around. Makes a nuisance of himself at the docks just about every day. No one sees him anywhere else, just there. Who knows what hole he lives in. He’s a nasty piece of work, Dare says. Just trying to cause trouble.”
“Yeah, well, he was the same then. I never had much to do with him, and as far as I knew, neither did Chris, they just roomed together. Rarely saw one another. Always had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and smelled like tobacco and stale beer. Thought he was a real ladies’ man.”
Susan remembered that day as if it was yesterday. As she was talking, the memories were playing in her head as if she was living them.
When she approached Rob, she asked him where Chris was and he just kind of grinned.
“Didn’t tell you, did he?” he sneered.
“Tell me what? she asked him.
“That he was leavin’ today. Took off way before sunrise. Said he’d had enough of this hell hole and he was going’ home, wherever that is.”
Jo’s mouth dropped open in disbelief, her anger rising, but by this time Susan had forgotten she was even there.
“Did he leave anything for me?” she asked in a rising panic.
“Hey,” he shrugged. “That’s the way it goes. You win some and you lose some. Think he had a girlfriend back home as well and she was probably after him to come on home. But since you’re here, you need me for anything, Missy?”
“Hardly,” she managed to choke out a reply.
“After that, heartbroken and lost, I pedaled faster than I ever had back to the motel and cried for the rest of the afternoon. Rest of the week, really. It didn’t make sense to me, but, Jo, I wouldn’t have been the first girl to be taken for a ride.
Susan hugged herself tightly and Jo came to her side to hug her as well.
“Back then, I had no way to catch up with him. We had no Facebook, no Google, and how was I going to find a Chris, Smith of all things, in the phone book of a town I didn’t even know? Plus, the listing would be under his father’s name, and the reality of it all suddenly hit me, and I remember just trying not to cry in front of Rob.”
Jo started to say something but Susan shushed her.
“When my parents got back, I put it all behind me and focused on getting ready to go back to school. It wasn’t until I was a few weeks in, doing a biology lab, when I got sick all over the place. Then it hit me.” Susan turned away from Jo, not able to look her in the eyes. “For all my freedom and independence I thought I had, I’d forgotten to be responsible for myself. I was so head over heels with Chris that I felt certain there could be no consequences for our actions. But I was wrong. And once I told your great grandparents, that was it. They took me out of school, I came back to the island, and of course months later, your mom arrived.”
Susan took a shaky breath, as if relieved she had arrived at the end of the story.
“I named her SeaAnna because that was a part of Chris, and when I called her name, I’d always have that connection to him.”
Tears were streaming down Susan’s face but Jo couldn’t look. Her eyes were closed, listening to the relentless onslaught of the storm, finally knowing what her mom didn’t want to know.
Her anger toward Chris burned inside her. He had deprived her of a grandfather and her mother of a father. But equally as important, her grandmother had been left alone and pregnant and devastated. If he had loved Susan, he would have gotten in touch. He’d have found a way. But all those years ago, he disappeared, to be a part of the mass of all the Chris Smiths who lived somewhere “up North,” and he abandoned a family he didn’t know he had.
She sensed movement and saw the silhouette of her grandmother getting up.
“Where are you going, Gran?”
“Just need to go to the bathroom, I can find my way in the dark, it’s my house after all.”
Then Jo heard a thud and a cry. She jumped up and flipped on the nearest light. The generator was clearly working. “Oh God, Gran, what happened?”
“I tripped on the edge of one of the throw rungs that usually isn’t in my way, but we moved the couch. I’ve twisted my ankle,” Susan groaned. “And I still need to get to the bathroom. Help me out, Jo. There’s an old pair of crutches in the hall closet from when I had my knee surgery years ago.”
Jo managed to find them and helped Susan navigate to the bathroom and back to the couch. “I’m getting some ice out of the fridge,” she told her grandmother. “You’ll need to keep it elevated for sure.” Suddenly she stopped and remained silent for a second. “Listen, it’s so quiet.”
She and Susan listened. There was no sound of the wind or rain, and the whistling had disappeared. Looking out of the window, Jo could see a sliver of the moon and a few stars.
“Oh wow. We are in the eye. It’s really something,” Jo exclaimed.
“That it is, but, ouch, we need to get back into this fortress somehow before it cranks up again. There, I think I am settled.”
