Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
Angie felt like Bàba’s Toyota Tundra ran over her. Twice.
The day after she left Kaden, her throat itched. It took one more day for it to turn into a sore throat and runny nose. Chest congestion and repeated sneezing arrived soon after.
Her blackout curtains were pulled shut, not allowing a sliver of sunlight through. She would do anything to stay in her bed the rest of the day.
Working overtime, swallowing seawater, and freezing her ass off in forty-degree weather was a very, very bad combination.
Just as Angie was drifting back into deep sleep, extra weight appeared on her bed coupled with an effortful chitter. Twitching whiskers tickled her nose, followed by a furry paw on her cheek.
“Lulu, not now.” Lulu’s large eyes searched her expression while sniffing her face, pink nose twitching, tapping her forehead like Angie was a small rodent she was coaxing closer.
The cat’s mouth opened, and she mewed into Angie’s face, cat breath prominent. She gently nudged Lulu toward the edge of the bed. With a meow of protest, Lulu jumped off and returned to her window perch, throwing Angie one last, haughty, “I-won’t-forget-this” look over her shoulder.
“Beibei!” Bàba’s booming voice drifted up the stairs into her room. “Breakfast is ready! If you’re not going to work for the second day in a row, the least you can do is eat something!”
Angie groaned into her pillow.
“Coming.” Leave it to her father to make her feel guilty for not going into work or eating his meals while she was sick. Bàba, the man who would only put his life on hold if he were on his deathbed.
Angie pulled herself out of bed and wrapped a robe around herself. She slid into her soft, velvety slippers, shuffling down the stairs and sniffling every other step.
If she could muster up an appetite for anything, that would be great.
Bàba stared at her, holding a mug of steaming tea. “Feeling better?”
“Slightly. Thanks, Bàba,” Angie grumbled, moving to the kettle and turning on the switch to boil water.
She reached overhead for a cylindrical container of dried chrysanthemum flowers, wincing at the stretch, and filled her tea steeper with them.
“Probably stress. And falling into the freezing cold ocean.” The kettle gave off a pop!
Signaling the water inside had come to a rolling boil.
She filled her cup, inhaling the soft scent with honey undertones.
“You still haven’t told me what exactly happened.”
Angie swallowed a proverbial rock. Carrying her tea to the table, she stirred in a tablespoon of raw honey from their local apiary. “I’ll tell you the whole story once I feel better.”
“I’m holding you to that.” Bàba sat and pushed a plate of deer sausages and toast with watermelon-berry and crowberry jam toward her, half the portion that they normally ate.
It would sate her in her ill condition. Her belly protested as soon as she laid eyes on the meal, mouthwatering steam still drifting from it.
She undertook the Herculean task of forcing herself to reach for her fork.
Having enough food on the table now was one of those times she appreciated her father’s near-neuroticism about keeping the fridge, freezers, and pantries overstuffed to the point where they barely closed.
He grew up in a poor family in rural China, where they didn’t know when or where their next meal would come from.
When he immigrated to the States with his family at eighteen, and joined the Navy at nineteen, he had vowed to make something of himself.
He had vowed that his family would never be without food or have to suffer the way he did as a child.
She pulled out a chair, a subtle scritch following it. Bàba narrowed his gaze at her.
Angie sat, lifting the chair with her in it and walking it under the table before setting it back down.
Bàba returned to his breakfast. He was protective of the hardwood floors he’d installed himself and made it clear that whoever damaged the floors would be responsible for coughing up the cash, or time, to fix them.
Salmon jerky was noticeably missing. Bàba always loved a serving in the morning before the fish had disappeared. Angie had a taste for it herself, but after what Kaden had sneered about how humans treated marine life, she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to eat seafood again.
Bàba fixed her with a glare like cold steel. “Beibei, is there something happening I should know about?” His voice took on a hard edge, and she stopped chewing her bite of toast.
Angie knew where the pointed comment came from.
She and Mia were rambunctious as teenagers, missing curfew numerous times to be with their friends, and Bàba had taken it upon himself to punish them, by grounding them or worse, locked outside the house for every hour they missed curfew by.
Then at sixteen, he’d caught her sneaking alcohol because her friends were drinking after a school dance.
His quiet disappointment when he found out was enough to keep her from alcohol again until she was twenty-two and found out Māma had passed. He never yelled. He never had to.
Bàba was in his late fifties now, and even with deeper wrinkles around his brown eyes and more gray hairs, he wasn’t any less intimidating when he glared at her like she’d done something horribly wrong.
Even now, the hardened look on his face resulted in instant obedience.
A trait that Angie both envied and feared.
And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him about Kaden.
She swallowed, moisturizing her dry throat. “I-I’m just stressed, Bàba. There’s always so much work to do.” She forced down a chunk of sausage, smooth and firm and rich on her tongue, and wished she could savor each bite.
Bàba grunted and polished off his own plate.
“Have we lost anyone else?” she asked.
“Not since Elise and Abigail.” Bàba shifted his weight in his chair, visibly uncomfortable.
“I’ve been talking to some friends in Sitka and Whittier, and I’ve talked to Beau and Emily about this too.
They also cannot make enough catches and worry about losing their livelihoods, feeding their people.
If only we knew where the mer were coming from.
We need to strike where they live.” He shook his head sadly and moved to the sink to wash his dishes and ceramic tea mug.
Angie hung her head, thinking the same. They could be anywhere in the mysterious sea, the least-explored place on Earth.
“But I have to go to work. Take care of yourself, okay? I’ll see you tonight.”
“Bye, Bàba.”
Half a sausage and toast remained on her plate, and she resolved to eat it.
After all, there were people starving in her village, and she’d be damned if she didn’t at least give it her best effort to finish her food.
She’d need the strength to recover and return to the docks.
There were fish that needed to be found.
She was supposed to meet Kaden tomorrow, but she wasn’t sure if that would happen.
The guilt that previously jabbed at her now swallowed her whole.
“I brought you soup,” Mia said. The evening came quicker after spending most of the day sleeping. Mia and Rosie made a surprise visit, Mia with a small container of creamy and salty roasted carrot and potato soup. “There’s not much, but we can share.”
Angie lay stretched out on the couch, finding comfort in front of the fireplace, her thick, childhood fuzzy blanket wrapped around her. Where it once bundled her up like a cocoon, now it only covered her torso down to her ankles, but she didn’t mind.
Across from her, Lulu prepared to pounce, watching one of Rosie’s bracelets. Angie let out a loud, sharp hiss of air, and Lulu backed down. The cat pawed at the end of the bracelet dangling from Rosie’s small wrist, tilting her head to study it. With big questioning eyes, Rosie looked up to Angie.
“It’s okay. She won’t scratch.” Angie sat up and reached for the soup bowl in front of her, taking a ginger sip.
Lulu lost interest and galloped to Angie before hopping on her lap, curling into a fuzzy ball, contented purrs sent soothing vibrations down the tops of her thighs.
“How are you feeling?” Mia sat on the couch angled by Angie’s feet.
“I’ve had better days. But this soup is amazing, thank you, jiějie.” The warmth and salt coated her insides and filled her with deep relief, however fleeting it would be. One nostril unblocked, and she took in the aromatic steam with notes of ginger and thyme. “Where’s Nick?”
“I asked him and a few of the boys and girls to stay late. Make sure the docks are cleaned up,” Bàba interrupted, walking in and sitting across from Mia, who quirked an eyebrow.
“What were they cleaning?” Angie held her shoulders rigid, anticipating his answer.
“Mm. This I want to hear, too.” Mia reached for a butter cracker topped with a slice of reindeer sausage and smoky pepper jack cheese from the charcuterie board on the living room table.
There were four slices of meat and cheese on the table accompanied by eight crackers, less than they normally set out.
Angie watched them in envy. When her appetite returned, she vowed to eat an entire tray if there was an entire tray to be had by then.
Rosie nibbled a cracker, sitting on the floor next to Mia’s chair. Bàba left to refill his whiskey glass. Seeing the whiskey gave Angie an idea, and she walked to the kitchen to whip herself up a hot toddy. She followed Bàba back to the living room, and she and Mia turned their ears to him.
“We found traps buried in sand by the shore. Some of our workers were caught, leg traps, tripwires, even quicksand, which I don’t understand how that’s happening. Two of them escaped, thankfully, but Paul Bay didn’t make it. Dragged underwater before we got to him.”
“Paul, the maintenance worker?” The glass stopped before it reached Angie’s lips.
“Yes.” Bàba sipped his whiskey, his expression vacant. He looked at the charcuterie board for the second time that evening, but still, he didn’t touch it. “Now we will need to find somebody else for the job. But who will want it?” Bàba dropped his head back against the armchair.
Angie wasn’t about to volunteer for that.
“So, what’s going to happen?” Mia squeaked.
Angie thought she knew why. If she knew Mia, she didn’t want Nick to be called in for the job and work even longer hours.
Mia hadn’t wanted Nick to take the dock job in the first place, knowing it meant irregular hours and unpredictability, things Mia despised.
She had protested until Bàba promised her Nick would keep regular hours, putting Mia’s mind at ease about childcare and household chores.
“I’ll try to pull in a few favors to fill the position. Speaking of missing people. Beibei, you never told me how you got back to the coast by yourself.” Bàba pointed his gaze directly at her. “And where your phone is. I must have tried calling a hundred times.”
“My phone is at the bottom of the ocean somewhere.” That answer was easy enough. As for the other…
She swallowed a bit too much of her drink, choking on the whiskey and lemon juice. After a cough, she cleared her throat, breath hitching. “A-a lifeboat happened to be in the area and took me b-back.”
Bàba slanted his eyes at her, and even Mia looked at her in disbelief. Before either of them uttered a peep, Rosie shrieked. “I’m so happy the lifeboat found you, Angie āyí! And you didn’t get killed by those fish people!”
Angie swallowed hard and nodded, the motion a little too exaggerated. “Nick told me what happened,” Mia chimed in. “I was so worried. My blood pressure went back to normal after Bàba told us you were okay.”
Angie took another sip of her drink. Another awkward silence passed, and Bàba set his glass on the table with a loud clink.
“Well, it’s clear she doesn’t want to talk more about it. Rosie, I just noticed your bracelet. Looks like sea glass.” He sat back in his chair and took another sip of his drink, giving his full attention to his granddaughter. “Where’d you get it?”
“Angie āyí gave it to me from the ocean.” She beamed.
“Did she now?” Bàba asked.
Angie slumped back onto the couch. Thankfully Bàba dropped the subject.