09-Twelve Mile Limit (18 page)

They were to have a boy. They knew it from the first ultrasound—an infant so obviously a boy that it was the subject of many whispered bedtime jokes. Thomas Roger Mueller.

Janet barely survived the shock of her husband’s death. Their child did not. She went into labor prematurely, and the doctors could not save the boy, though young Thomas fought valiantly to live for three nights and four days, rabbit-sized, tiny fists clenched, lying inside the oxygen spherical in the preemie ward, Toledo General Hospital.

Her husband was killed the day after Thanksgiving. Thomas Roger died one week later, the first day of December. That was seven years and a different lifetime ago, it had come to seem. Almost as if it had happened to another person, a person with her name and face who’d dreamed all those peaceful times with Roger, and then, still sleeping, slipped into a nightmare that was the deepest of horrors.

That was Ohio. This was Florida. Her new life. The elementary school teacher who, to save her own sanity, traded in expectations of a suburban house and conventional family for a quirky little houseboat at a quirky little marina. Her new life in the tropics with parties, devoted friends, great sunsets, and, finally, a second good man—though she and Jeth had had their problems. Everyone did.

Once browsing through the library of her friend, Marion Ford, she’d found a chapter in a book about certain lizards, members of the Iguanid family, that could change colors as required, even grow new tails if they’d been injured—chromatic transformation and cellular regeneration. Janet felt an unexpected kinship with those creatures because she had learned that, if sufficiently traumatized, a woman must employ chameleon capabilities to endure.

Janet Mueller had lost her heart but was slowly growing a new one in this, the life of her own invention. A good life, too. Until this day. Until this dive trip.

She would survive it. She had to. She’d survived worse.

Now, holding on to the rope, frightened to the point of emotional exhaustion, Janet repeated the prayer that had become her bedtime mantra, her savior during those worst of times: I am strong. My faith is stronger. I am strong. My faith is stronger. Over and over in her mind, she spoke the words by rote. There was another mantra that she’d sometimes used during the day when the pain threatened to overwhelm her. It was one of her favorites because it was both reassuring and assertive: This evil stands no chance against my prayers.

She switched to that mantra now, finding comfort in the old, familiar rhythm of the words, repeating the phrase silently as all four of them clung to the rope in single file.

This evil stands no chance against my prayers!

She’d been in the water now for nearly four hours, and her body was beginning to complain, give her little signals that it was time to step back on to the dock, get into a hot freshwater shower, then change into clean clothes, something dry and warm.

If only she could!

Janet wore a pink neoprene shorty wet suit. Beneath that, she wore what divers call a “body skin,” a one-piece undergarment made of nylon and lycra that’s soft and stretchable. Even so, the wet suit was beginning to chafe at the ridged areas where the seams were glued, under her arms and on the inside of her thighs. The nylon was also beginning to chafe around, her nipples, which were naturally supersensitive, anyway.

Salt water made the chafed areas burn. Janet’s neck-length, chestnut hair was caked with salt, too, and salt was so heavy on her tongue that her breath now had a metallic odor, which she could taste when she swallowed.

Still, she repeated her strong assertion: This evil stands no chance against my prayers!

Janet was closest to the bow of the boat. Holding on to the line behind her were Grace, then Michael, then Amelia. Amelia had volunteered to take the end of the rope because she said she’d been a competitive swimmer in high school, and so was probably the best swimmer of the group. Plus she, like Janet, still had her fins. If a wave knocked her away from the rope, she’d have the best chance of making it back without requiring someone else to release the rope to help her.

For Amelia to volunteer to do such a thing, when they were all so frightened and in such danger, impressed Janet tremendously. She’d known Amelia for only a few days but liked her, trusted her on a level of perception that was qualitative, and now her trust was confirmed. Amelia was a strong woman who felt an obligation to the welfare of others. Someone who could be relied on to act and who wasn’t afraid to take charge.

When Amelia made the offer to take the last space, Michael protested, but in a way that said he was actually grateful. He still seemed to be in shock. It was his boat that had sunk; his responsibility, not to mention what had to be a terrible financial loss. Janet had known Michael for more than a year. They’d had a brief sexual fling—which was very unlike her, but Michael was gorgeous; no one could argue that—and she still enjoyed his company because he was sociable, quick to laugh, and thoughtful in ways that she sometimes found touching. Plus, remaining friends mitigated the probable remorse of a one-night stand—something she’d never done before and would never risk again.

Janet had never seen Michael like this, though. In the nearly three hours of daylight after the Seminole Wind first swamped, the fear in the man’s face was unmistakable in the mottled skin, the glazed eyes. Every few minutes, it seemed, he’d mutter, “I can’t believe this is happening. This can’t really be happening, can it?” When he did try to make conversation, his voice was strained. He couldn’t seem to concentrate or complete a sentence.

None of them, however, was more frightened than Grace. Janet had known Grace for nearly as long as she’d known Michael. He always introduced her as “my closest lady friend” and she almost certainly was. The only thing they didn’t do together was dating and sex—or so they joked—and they were hilarious when they’d get into one of their black woman versus white male mock bickering matches, which had become a kind of shtick, they were so good at it. It was like a comedy routine, they were so darn funny, him the big jock football coach-teacher and not the smartest guy in the world, Grace the successful realtor and black community activist.

It was a friendship that seemed unlikely but really wasn’t. Five years earlier, only a month or so apart, they’d coincidentally bought adjoining duplexes on Avenida del Mare, just across the canal from Palm Island and only a couple of blocks from Siesta Key Beach. Both were trying to restart their lives after ending ugly, destructive marriages. Both were wary of beginning new relationships, both loved cooking, fitness training, lived far from their own families, and each owned a dog—Grace, a miniature Doberman; Michael, a yellow lab named Coach.

After a wary few months, they entered into a mutually beneficial acquaintanceship that began with dog-sitting and gradually became a more dependent and far more complex friendship. By the time Janet met them, Michael and Grace had become indispensable, each to the other, as confidant, advisor, protector, and as the quick and dependable judge of potential lovers who circulated in and out of their own small, stable orbit. They were workout partners, swing dance partners, and safe, steadfast escorts in those social situations when an escort was needed but a decent date couldn’t be found.

The two were so clearly at home with each other that they quickly put people around them at ease. Almost everyone they allowed to be a part of their friendship said variations of the same: You two should form a comedy team. You two should have your own television show, because you’re such a riot!

Grace and Michael hadn’t made any jokes in the last few hours, though. Soon after leaving to make the dive, Janet knew it had been a mistake to bring Grace. A mistake for any of them to come so far offshore, probably. Especially, though, for the Sarasota realtor.

What was immediately evident as they headed out Marco Island Pass, into the rolling seas, was that Grace was nervous and uncomfortable in a boat. It was plainly seen in the way she hung next to Michael Sanford, often grabbing his arm when jolted by an unusually big wave, and in her repeated questions: “Are you sure it’s okay for us to be out here, Sandman? You sure it’s safe? You get the Princess Grace hurt, Sandman, the Princess is going to open up a can of whoop-ass on you, my friend.”

Despite Grace’s use of the pet names reserved for their private use, as if making light of their situation she was scared, no disguising that. A couple of times, Janet and Amelia made eye contact, eyebrows raised, both acknowledging that Grace was frightened, didn’t like boats, didn’t like water. She wouldn’t be here at all if Michael hadn’t made it his special project to teach her to SCUBA dive. He’d taken her through the PADI classes, then on a couple of dives to the Dry Tortugas, and recently a weeklong trip to Key West and the reefs of American Shoals.

That had been her favorite dive trip, American Shoals. All the great coral heads and big fish at Looe Key and Western Sambo, then eating and drinking at the Green Parrot in Key West, that old pirate town, with its shipwright houses and widows’ walks. On the charter boat to Looe Key, they’d met Amelia and formed a diving friendship. American Shoals was where their little group started. That kind of diving, she liked: glassy, flat seas, and water so clear it was like looking down into outer space, a whole aqua-bright universe of color and light.

This, though, Grace hated. Big waves, gray water. Too much wind and salt. This wasn’t like the Keys where there were lots of boats, lots of fun. This water was wilderness, alone and open to the sky. It terrified her.

Her discomfort was even more obvious when she got into her dive gear and jumped off the boat. Grace not only wasn’t a good swimmer, she didn’t enjoy being in the water, all those waves lifting and rolling, spraying salt water into her face, beading in her African hair, causing her to squinch her eyes tight, this tall, muscular woman making faces like a little girl.

Once again, Amelia had demonstrated her strength by risking offense when she tapped Michael on the shoulder and said, “Are you sure Grace is up to this? Maybe she should stay on the boat and just the three of us dive.” But Grace interceded immediately, saying, “I’m not staying up here on the boat alone. No way, sister! Big wave could come along and suck me right outta there!” And Michael had agreed, laughing, saying, “You think I’m going to let anything happen to the Princess? Where I go, she goes.” Waiting while Grace rinsed her face mask and pulled it on, Michael had shouted, “We’re a team, right, Gracie?”

Once again, Janet and Amelia communicated via eye contact only: No way was Grace going to complete this dive.

They were right. Pulling themselves in single file down the anchor line, into the green dusk below, Grace had stopped at about thirty feet. She knew the hand signs from her classes: Her ears wouldn’t clear. She’d have to go back up. She wanted to go back up.

Michael returned to the boat with her, of course. On the buddy system, buddies stick together.

The two of them were still together when Amelia and Janet surfaced nineteen minutes later to find the Seminole Wind upside-down, floating bow-high on its taut anchor line, wind sharpening out of an afternoon sky with a horizon the color of winter clouds, like moonlight on ice.

During hurricane season in that year, July through November, there was less activity than usual in the southern meridians. There were seven tropical storms but only two became hurricanes, which is significantly below the average of ten tropical storms and six hurricanes during that five-month window. Also, there were no major hurricanes (category three or higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale, meaning winds greater than 110 mph), which is also unusual—though one storm did approach that strength, Hurricane Gordon.

On an average, there are two major hurricanes in a season that make hard landfall somewhere in the tropics. There are death tolls. There are estimates of property damage. There are coordinated relief efforts that include many agencies, sometimes many countries. The year that Janet and her friends disappeared was an exception.

As far as tropical weather, it was a rare, peaceful season—with the exclusion of one short period, the first week of November, the week that the Seminole Wind sank. It was during the last week of October and the first seven days of November that the season’s only two hurricanes formed, and they formed almost simultaneously.

Hurricane Florence began to take shape on November 2 as a subtropical depression at latitude 23.20 and longitude 47.70, which is on a line with Cuba and west of Florida Channel, that tight water exit between Key West and Havana.

At the same time, above the Isthmus of Panama and east of the Miskito Reefs of Nicaragua, Hurricane Gordon began to gather heat and convective energy, the slow formation of its tropospheric circulation visible to Tropical Satellite Analysis and Forecast (TSAF) weather monitors along its track. Gordon followed an unusual, erratic path over Nicaragua, the western Caribbean Sea, then drifted toward the Gulf of Mexico’s second constricted water space, the Yucatan Channel.

By November 4, the day that Janet, Michael, and Grace were set adrift, both narrow entrances into the Gulf of Mexico were dominated by these two massive and conflicting low-pressure systems, though the effects on the Gulf were not obvious in terms of wind and rain. Between November 1 and 3, Florida residents from Sarasota to Marco Island awoke to read similar, repetitive weather forecasts in their daily papers: partly cloudy, chance of showers. Highs in the upper eighties, lows in the upper sixties. Winds east to southeast, fifteen knots, seas one to two feet, bay and inland waters a moderate chop.

It was good boating weather, nothing obvious out there to fear.

On Friday, November 4, the weather grew more brisk, although newspapers still predicted winds only to fifteen knots. The forecast that Michael Sanford and the others heard that morning on the VHF radio as they left Marco Island was slightly more severe, and more accurate. A recorded voice for NOAA Weather Radio repeated several times each hour: “From Cape Sable to Tarpon Springs, and fifty miles offshore, small craft should exercise caution. Winds will be out of the east fifteen to twenty knots, seas four to six feet, with bay and inland waters choppy.”