DOUBLE KNOT (16 page)

“What are they?” My mother asked.

“I’ll crack Poppy’s computer in a minute,” I said. “And hopefully I’ll be able to
communicate with someone. If that doesn’t work, we wait for the ship to start moving
again so we can use your phone to call for help.”

“What if the ship doesn’t start moving again?”

A terrifying proposition.

“Then we’ll wait until after the Tie the Knot wedding when the casino opens and get
a flare up the wall.” I went in the back door of the laptop’s software programming
and found
control userpassword2
.

Jess raised a hand. “I volunteer myself as tribute.”

“What is she talking about?” Mother asked.

“It’s a line from a movie, Mother.”

“So, I’ll climb that wall.”

“Wearing your housecoat?” my mother asked.

“My clothes will fit you, Jess,” Fantasy said. “You need to put some clothes on.”

If someone had told me this morning that Fantasy would be offering clothes to Jessica
tonight, I wouldn’t have believed a word of it. Not that I’d have believed at breakfast
that Burnsworth and Poppy would be dead before dinner. What we’d been through in this
one day of surviving 704 would make friends of even the worst enemies. Part of it
was knowing we had to work together or we’d never get out, but mostly, it was widespread
shellshock.

“And because my clothes will fit you,” Fantasy said, “you can’t climb the wall. You’re
too tall.”

“Earlier today, we actually considered sending Poppy up the wall,” I said.

“So, that’s not happening.”

All four sets of eyes went in the direction of the sundeck past the pool.

“You know what that’s for?” Jess asked.

“Sex,” my own mother said. “That’s where people go to have sex.”

“Mother!”

“What, Davis? You think I don’t know these things?”

I finally hacked far enough in to change Poppy’s password. I hit Enter. “I’m in.”

“Hot damn,” Fantasy said. “For God’s sake, get the police.”

“I’m getting in touch with my husband, then the Coast Guard,” I said. “Give me two
minutes.”

Jess leaned in. “You can make phone calls from the computer?”

“Email, Jess. I had to break into Poppy’s computer the hard way and now I have to
hack into the Bellissimo mainframe so I can send emails from a secure site.”

“How do you do that?”

“It’s my superpower,” I said.

“So cool.”

“She’s good with the cable television too.”

“Thank you, Mother.”

The browser on Poppy’s computer was Firefox, which saved me a ton of time on the way
to the deep web, because if the
Probability
server was watching Poppy’s laptop for unusual activity, it might notice her downloading
Firefox but it wouldn’t notice her
on
Firefox. She could be rolling through her Facebook newsfeed or window shopping at
Killers R Us. From her Firefox browser I downloaded and installed TOR Browser Bundle
(torproject.org) then filtered through to kpvz7ki2v5agwt35.onion. From there, wiki,
index, php, then main page, enter, ta-da! I was deep and dark and had access to (all
manner of places I didn’t want to go) the Bellissimo hard drive.

Wouldn’t you know it. I couldn’t get past the encryption software
I’d
installed on the Bellissimo system.

“Mrs. Way?” Jess leaned over me and the irony of it all, then spoke to Mother. “Can
I ask you something?”

“Well, I don’t know. Can you?”

“If you get it, like, you know that’s for sex,” Jess pointed to the (morgue) private
sundeck, “why don’t you talk about being sick or her being pregnant?”

There was no taking it back.

In one breath, Jess managed to ask her everything the rest of us couldn’t.

Mother took a breath so deep, it surely filled her toes with oxygen. She addressed
her words to the stars. “I don’t talk about the cancer,” she said, “because it’s done.
It was caught before it could do me any great harm and it wasn’t any bigger than a
minute to begin with. To tell you the truth, I wonder if I really
had
cancer. Or if that was just the doctors having fits. But that’s done. I’m not sick
and I’m going to be fine. So, what’s to talk about?”

Not a muscle moved. Not one.

“And I don’t go on and on about Davis making me a grandmother because she already
has. Davis made me a grandmother forever and a day ago. And when she’s ready to talk
about the child she already had, then I’ll be ready to talk about the two she’s going
to have.”

The dam burst and I broke into wracking raging sobs.

FIFTEEN

Throwing myself overboard would do nothing but punish the sea, so I dragged my sobbing
self off the sun chair and blindly batted a path to my stateroom. I didn’t want to
see anyone ever again. I didn’t want to talk to anyone ever again. And to tell the
truth, I didn’t want to draw another breath. Ever again. I didn’t care if I ever got
out of 704 or off
Probability
. None of it mattered in the least. And it never would. Ever again.

Ever.

But my babies chose that minute to stir and remind me of their father, and in the
depths of my misery, I found a splinter of light and amended the rest of my life to
include (breathing) my husband, my babies, and my cat. We’d live on an unmapped island.
Or deep in a jungle. Or maybe this damn hostage ship would effectively cut us off
from the rest of humanity. I didn’t want to see anyone else ever again. Not even my
sister, Meredith. Or my niece, Riley. Or No Hair. Or Fantasy, Baylor, Bianca, or Mr.
Sanders. Or even Daddy and That Woman he was married to. I
especially
didn’t ever want to see That Woman again, or anyone associated with her
,
any human she’d ever made contact with, anyone who’d ever laid eyes on her, again.
Ever again.

Ever.

I made it through the sitting room and stumbled to the bedroom, but my journey and
my plan came to an abrupt halt when I accidentally caught a glimpse of myself in the
dresser mirror. My knees buckled at my own reflection. Instead of seeing the person
I thought I was—Mrs. Bradley Cole, mother of twins, good wife, daughter, sister, friend—I
saw the sixteen-year-old unwed mother who gave birth those eighteen years ago. Eighteen
years and two months ago. Eighteen years, two months, and five days ago. It was her
in the mirror, the scared senseless stupid girl who didn’t really know where babies
came from until she was carrying one. I wasn’t the contributing member of society
I passed myself off as; I was the young stupid girl who thought she was doing the
right thing. And I did. I did the right thing those eighteen years, two months, and
five days ago. For
myself
.

It was all about me then and it was all about me now.

No wonder That Woman hated me so much.

With the hard look at who I really was, I realized my plan would never work. I couldn’t
reduce my world to my husband, my children, and my cat, because I didn’t deserve a
husband and children. Or a cat. No part of me deserved Bradley—I’d known it all along—and
I certainly didn’t deserve his children, and when it got right down to it, I didn’t
even deserve Anderson Cooper. I made it to the hall leading to the dressing room door
with the rest of my life mapped: I would deliver Bradley’s babies, pass them to him,
then go
away
.

I’d had it with trying to separate right from wrong. I’d had it with trying to live
right, do right,
be
right. The wall it had taken me eighteen years and two months and five days to build
had just crashed down at my feet. And with its destruction, I knew I’d have to live
the rest of my life alone. I’d have to disappear. I’d live alone on the unmapped island,
in the jungle, or on this damn hostage ship. All at once, I understood Fantasy wanting
to get the hell out of everyone’s way. Because she didn’t deserve to be in it.

Exactly.

I let out the breath I’d been holding for eighteen years and two months and five days,
and it was coming out in miserable wrenching sobs that threatened to make me sick
when I finally found the dressing room door, for once so eternally grateful that my
cat was stone deaf and couldn’t hear my heart breaking wide open.

Closing the door behind me, I stumbled to Hers and my stone deaf cat wasn’t in her
bed. I ripped an Alice + Oliva sherelle feather maxi skirt from the hanger, rolled
it into a ball, and used it as a pillow on the round ottoman. I’d rest while I waited
on my cat. Who was surely up the wall. Then I’d tell her what happened. I’d tell her
everything, going back eighteen years, two months, and five days.

Anderson Cooper was a good listener.

* * *

The tapping woke me up. I didn’t move, except to spit feathers. More tapping.

“Davis?”

It was Fantasy.

“Davis, let me in.”

“No.”

“Come on,” she said. “It’s me.”

“No.”

“You can’t stay in there forever. You don’t have food or water. Davis, let me in.”

“No.” I still had a teeny white feather in my mouth. “Where’s That Woman? Wait,” I
said. “You know what? I don’t want to know.”

“She feels horrible, Davis. She didn’t mean for it to come out that way.”

“Oh yes she did.”

“No, Davis. She really didn’t.”

“I don’t even care, Fantasy. And I wish you’d go away.”

“I can’t go away. I love you, Davis.”

“Well, stop.”

“Is this how it’s going to be? A big pity party?”

“Look who’s talking.”

That shut her down. For about three seconds. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I dragged myself up, unrolled my pillow, spread it across my lap, and picked feathers
from it. “I didn’t not tell you, Fantasy.”

“But you never told me.”

One feather, two feathers, three feathers, four.

“Does Bradley know?”

“Of course he knows.”

Five feathers, six feathers, seven feathers, more.

“But you never told me?”

“Fantasy.” I watched a feather float. “There’s no good way to say I got pregnant the
summer of tenth grade. By my twenty-one-year-old History teacher. Then had a baby.
Then gave her to parents who could give her a life. There’s no way to tell that story.
There’s no way to
start
that story.” My heart was in a vise grip. “And why now? Why here? Why would she
do
this to me?”

“It’s why she came on the cruise, Davis. She was looking for the right time to tell
you the baby you had grew up.”

“Like I can’t count.”

“Davis, the baby you had went to Pine Apple to find her birth mother. She found
your
birth mother.”

I was dizzy with motherhood.

An hour or four passed. “When?”

“On her eighteenth birthday.”

Two months and five days ago. When Mother was sick. Really, truly, sick.

I found a voice. Not necessarily my voice, because I don’t usually sound so strangled.
“Why didn’t anyone
tell
me?”

“Your parents didn’t know if you could handle it.”

A valid concern. Considering the shape I was in.

“Davis, your dad set this up. He thought it would be a good idea for you to hear it
from your mother.”

What? That wasn’t what this was about. Daddy asked
me
to help That Woman face the truth. And he sent
her
with truth for me? I’d never speak to either of them again. Ever again.

Ever.

Had I not been sitting I’d have fallen down when That Woman said, “She’s going to
Oxford, Davis.”

Another wave of rage, shame, and the end of my life as I knew it knocked me down all
over again at the sound of her grating voice. I opened my mouth to tell her to go
straight to hell, but what came out was, “Mississippi? She can’t. No one graduates
from Ole Miss. She shouldn’t go to Oxford.”

“Oxford in England,” That Woman said. “Not Oxford in Mississippi. She’s very smart,
Davis, like you. And very beautiful. She looks just like you.”

A picture slid under the door. A picture of the daughter I knew I couldn’t do right
by eighteen years, two months, and five days ago. I reached for it with a shaking
hand and laid eyes on my firstborn for the first time since she was an hour old. It
looked as if her adoptive parents had done very right by her. And with the small studio
portrait of this angel eighteen years of questions were answered. Eighteen years of
guilt assuaged. Eighteen years of curiosity satisfied. And eighteen years of love
with no visible target found a home.

I touched her face, I kissed her picture, I placed her against my belly button and
whispered, “It’s your big sister.” Maternal love poured over me in buckets and might
have drowned me had it not been so rudely interrupted.

“So? Will you let
me
in?”

Are you kidding me? I rolled my eyes all over the crystal chandelier above my head.
They were all three sitting in the hall? Then I heard the ungodly sound of an Anderson
Cooper caterwaul. Coming from the wrong side of the door. She wasn’t up the wall;
she’d been in the bedroom. Or the sitting room. The people on the other side of the
door had my cat. They were all four sitting in the hall.

“Anderson Cooper wants in, Davis.” (Fantasy.)

I wasn’t about to open the door. I wasn’t ready. I might never be ready. I wanted
to be alone. With my picture. And my cat. “Leave Anderson and go away.”

Then That Woman tried to bribe me. “I made you a sandwich.”

My stomach growled. “Go away. Leave my cat and go away.” I wondered what kind of sandwich.

“I sliced the chicken real thin,” That Woman said. “It’s on French bread with a little
dab of mayo and shaved provolone. It won’t keep out here forever.”

“I’m not hungry.” I was famished.

“I brought you a pickle spear.”

I love pickle spears. “Leave my cat and leave the sandwich and go away.” Chips would
be good.

“I brought you chips too.”

Dammit. My mouth watered. My babies kicked around.

“Fantasy only,” I said.

“Okay, honey.”

Honey, my ass.

I used the feather skirt to mop my face, because my eyes were still leaking a little.

“Are they gone?”

“They’re gone.” Fantasy spoke through food.

“Are you eating my sandwich?”

“She made me one too.”

With one last look at the picture That Woman would never get back, I tucked it close
to my heart. I unlocked the door, cracked it open, shot out my arm, and said, “Give
me my cat.” I pulled Anderson in, sat her down, then put my arm out again. “Give me
my sandwich.” I hoped it was a big sandwich.

“You can’t hold it with one hand.”

“The sandwich is bigger than Anderson Cooper?”

I repositioned myself, cracked the door a half inch more, and put both hands out.
I pulled in a serving platter piled high with chicken sandwiches. I couldn’t even
count the sandwiches, cut diagonally like That Woman does, and I shouldn’t have been
trying to count them, because the door slammed open. They flew in on the wings of
a cat and chicken sandwiches. That Woman, Jess, and Fantasy marched right past me.

Dammit.

Fantasy had the computer tucked under one arm,
The Compass
under the other, and a bag of Ruffles between her teeth. That Woman had a stack of
dinner napkins and three bar glasses, and Jessica had a bottle of wine and the dead
V2s she dragged everywhere. Did they not bring me anything to drink? That Woman pulled
a bottle of raspberry lemonade from a pocket and held it out. I’d never forgive her,
but I wouldn’t die of thirst just because she was mean. And cruel. And had a little
bitty black heart. I was ready for them to leave, now that I had my cat, and the sandwiches,
and the raspberry lemonade, but when I opened my mouth to kick them out, it stayed
open. Because we heard something solid banging and bouncing its way down the bulkhead
behind the mirror.

We crept in the direction of the noise.

It was a V2. It fell down the wall and landed in the shreds of Bianca’s Monique Lhuillier
strapless gown.

That Woman said, “Look what your cat did to that dress.”

We had a V2. And it worked. Or it would have worked, if we had the right thumb.