North of Boston Read Free

on TV. Sparks fly, buildings dissolve, cars burst into flame.
Ho-hum.
    I take the paper place mat from under the plate my BLT is on and turn it over. With a pen borrowed from the waitress, I sketch the coastline from Cape Cod to Maine. I put in the islands in Boston Harbor and roughly shade in Georges Bank. “Your dad and I were here,” I say, pointing to a spot that correlates to about twenty-five miles northeast of Boston. “The fog came in thick. Your dad was in the wheelhouse. I was in the stern baiting lobster traps. It was really quiet. I couldn’t even see the bow. The next thing I knew, something huge crashed into us. Huge, Noah. A freighter. It hit starboard, broadside. That means right in the middle of the boat. I bailed, and when I broke the surface and looked back, your dad’s boat was in splinters and the freighter was passing by.”
    â€œMy dad swam away, like you did.”
    â€œThe Coast Guard looked for him for about five hours that day, until the sun went down, and then from daybreak to sunset the next day. They had two patrol boats, two helicopters, and a C-130 search plane. Almost twenty hours of searching, Noah. Some fishermen were out there, too—your dad’s friends. A lot of people were involved. They searched an eight-mile radius from where I was found.”
    â€œCool,” he says. His eyes are vacant, as if he doesn’t know what I’m saying is real.
    â€œThey didn’t find him, Noah.”
    â€œHe got away like you did. He swam underwater.”
    â€œHe’d have to come up for air sometime.”
    â€œNot if he went to Atlantis.”
    â€œAtlantis is a made-up place.”
    â€œNo, it isn’t.” He looks at me reproachfully.
    I’ve babysat him since he was an infant. I’m his good fairy godmother, the one who plays games and willingly accompanies him on flights of fancy, who doesn’t ever tell him to be sensible or brush his teeth. This is a new me he is seeing.
    I wait.
    Noah dips another fry in the ketchup. He draws it several times across the thin paper at the bottom of his hamburger basket, leaving reddish streaks. Maybe he’s writing a hieroglyph, trying to communicate. If he is, I’m probably the only person left in the world who would try to decipher it.
    â€œA monster killed my dad,” he says, attempting.
    â€œHe drowned, Noah,” I say gently. “He’s gone.”
    Fury knits his brows together, makes his tiny nostrils flare. “Why did that boat crash into him? Why didn’t they look where they were going?” He’s been told that a hundred times.
Be careful. Don’t run. Watch what you’re doing
. But he’s already figured out that adults don’t play by those rules.
    â€œIt was an accident, Noah. Collisions at sea happen more often than you’d think.” I could kick myself for making it sound mundane.
    â€œWhy didn’t the people stop to look for him?”
    â€œGood question,” I say, buying time.
    I feel helpless to the point of despair. I don’t want Noah to see my rage. If the captain had stopped the freighter immediately, as soon as he realized what had happened, he could have saved us both easily. But he didn’t. He just kept going. He probably wanted to spare himself an official inquiry and whatever damage his reputation would suffer.
    I can’t say that to Noah. So I give the typical response. “The Coast Guard is looking into it. They’re going to find the people on the boat and ask them that.”
    He looks at me with the weary, perplexed eyes of a disappointed man. He knows I’m holding back.
    â€œIt’s possible that the people on the ship didn’t even know they hit us,” I say. “That freighter could have been five hundred feet, and I don’t even know how many hundreds of tons. Double steel hull. Bridge about three stories up. And in fog like that, what’s the point of