Daughter of Deep Silence Read Free Page A

though he himself couldn’t believe it. “Just
gone
.”
    In the silence that follows, the Senator squeezes his son’s shoulder. One of the reporters shouts, “How were you able to survive?”
    Grey’s eyes widen, his expression one of bewilderment. The Senator steps in. “Had to be luck, plain and simple. It was late and because of the rain everyone else was inside, probably asleep in their cabins. I was so angry at Grey for losing his phone, but if he hadn’t . . .” He inhales sharply. Grey stares at his feet. “We wouldn’t have been up on deck and thrown free when the wave hit.”
    “No!” I shout, the sound raw in my throat. “That’s not how it happened!”
    “Once we got to the surface and saw the wreckage . . .” Here the Senator pauses and takes a water bottle one of the rescuers holds out to him. “We tried to find other survivors, but . . .” He shakes his head and a shudder passes through Grey. “The only choice we had was to try to stay alive. We found a life raft that must have broken free and just prayed that someone would find us.”
    I’m gasping for air. “But . . .” I close my eyes remembering. Libby and me dragging our arms through the water, trying to put distance between us and the burning
Persephone
. Flames choking out her windows, undaunted by the rain. It wasn’t until dawn that we saw the extent of it: nothing.
    Not a scrap of the ship remained. No hint of other survivors. No other life rafts anywhere in sight.
How had Grey and his father survived without either of us seeing them?
    On TV the tenor of the reporters changes as the camera pans and zooms in on a middle-aged woman running down the pier, her perfectly coiffed blond hair loosening in the breeze. She’s wearing a skirt that hits just above her knees and she pauses briefly to kick off her heels so that she can run faster. “Alastair! Grey!” she cries, the sound primal.
    The cameraman knows how to do his job and he instantly focuses in on Grey’s face, capturing the moment it crumples and he mouths the word,
Mom?
And then they’re hugging, sobbing, reunited. His father’s arms around them both.
    The video pauses on this perfect image. The intimate snapshot of an all-American family newly reunited, their heavy grief finally lifted. A miracle. The Senator with his sunburned face and lightly tousled hair. His wife barefoot, tendrils of hair pulled loose around her tearstained face. And their beloved only son between them.
    My chest tightens as though it were collapsing in on itself. Father. Mother. Child. All together. All safe.
    It becomes impossible to breathe.
    I’ll never hug my parents again. My mother will never come running toward me. My father will never place his hand on my head and tell me he loves me. I’ll never feel safe ever again.
    I’ve lost everything. And somehow, Grey hasn’t.
    The anchorwoman’s voice cuts into my thoughts, and I listen with a mounting sense of incredulity as she continues. “News of another survivor certainly comes as a surprise. As you may recall, the coast guard called off the search for survivors last week after interviewing Senator Wells and his son and concluding that a rogue wave capsized the
Persephone
, sinking it before those belowdecks could escape.”
    The camera switches angles and the anchor swivels, continuing. “Though they’re considered a rare occurrence, this isn’t the first time a rogue wave has been suspected in the disappearance of a ship. In fact, it’s widely believed that it was a rogue wave that took the SS
Edmund Fitzgerald
in 1975, and just as with the
Persephone
, there was no wreckage found in that case either.”
    It takes a moment for this information to take shape in my mind. For the implications of it to settle in. The coast guard called off the search days ago. When Libby and I were still out there. When we both still had a chance to be rescued alive.
    All because of Senator Wells and Grey. Because they lied.
    I don’t