27. Morgan
TWENTY-SEVEN
Morgan
The PA clicks on. “This set of waves looks like a bitch,” Cole says. “If I beep the buzzer, take cover.”
“Roger,” we all mumble, except for Lawrence who yells, “Aye aye, Cap,” with enviable energy.
We don’t make it very far before the buzzer sounds, and we abandon the crab pot to take cover under the eave sheltering the foredeck. A wave slams into the starboard side, but it might as well have been a train with the force of impact.
Thousands of pounds of green water pour over the deck, teetering Briar toward the opposite side.
It’s the type of wave that’s going to break shit, and sure enough, the coiler tips over, wrenched from the screws strapping it to the deck.
Alejo loses his footing, and the water sweeps his feet out from under him.
I grab the strap of his lifejacket, and yank him back before he slams into the bait station.
“Thanks, Skipper,” he shouts as the ship rights.
“No problem.” I release him and scan the deck for damage.
The force of the water peeled a few boards off the deck. The coiler survived the fall, but we’ll need to screw it back into position.
“Everyone okay?” Cole asks.
“We’re good,” I say.
“The deck not so much,” Lawrence yells.
“Yeah. Sorry. Keep your heads on a swivel and listen for the buzzer.”
Lawrence and Javi hoist the coiler off the deck. Wes ducks into the forepeak for the drill. Alejo and I shift the broken boards back into position. We all know the routine. This happens every season. Sometimes more than once.
The alarm for the engine room bleats across the boat.
“I lost steering,” Cole says, calm and unruffled.
“On it!” I jog across the deck, careful to avoid the wreckage.
Time is of the essence. Without steering, Cole can’t point Briar into the waves. If we get stuck in the trough between waves in seas this high, she could easily capsize.
“Watch out!” Cole shouts over the PA.
Another wave crashes into us, but luckily only the less dense white water splashes over. Muscle memory from fifteen years at sea keeps me upright, barely slowing me down. I shrug out of my rain jacket on my way through the gear room, tossing it onto a hook without stopping.
Shit breaks on a boat all the time. The Bering Sea turns ships twice the size of ours into tin cans. Sometimes a good engineer—especially one who knows the boat and all her quirks—is the difference between a few tense moments and a sinking ship.
Cole knows the Briar pretty well, but I get why he was so upset when I said I wasn’t coming.
You need a strong captain and a strong engineer for situations like this, which is why I probably would have ended up on this trip regardless of what I told Cole.
He’s too precious to me to send off without everything he needs, even if what he needs is me.
I open the door to the engine room and check the alarm panel. It looks like the hydraulic pipe I patched and sealed a few days ago is leaking again. I’ll probably have to weld it, but we don’t have time for that, so I’ll just patch it for now and take care of it before bed.
I pick up the phone to the wheelhouse.
“What’s the damage?” Cole asks.
“Same hydraulic pipe. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”
He sighs. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Oh, and Sunshine? You’re doing a damn good job.”
I hang up before he can argue. The deck is almost in working order by the time I finish, and we’re back to hauling pots not long after.
“So, what happened last night?” Lawrence asks as we crowd around the table full of crab.
“Lawrence,” I warn. He always runs his mouth while I’m trying to count crab.
“I’m not talking about sex.” He shoves four massive crab toward the chute. “What was with the solo swim attempt last night?”
Alejo becomes very focused on the crab in his hand.
“Let me guess, you guys held a deckhand meeting over my welfare while I was gone, and Lawrence drew the short end of the straw?”
“Nope. I volunteered.” He tosses another crab in, and casually adds, “You weren’t trying to jump, were you?”
“Lawless!” Javi shoots him a scandalized look.
Lawrence shrugs. “What? No one else was going to say it.”
“It wasn’t like that.” And now I lost count.
“What was it then?” Lawrence asks.
“None of your business?” Last night was hard enough. I don’t want to rehash it.
“Swear on Finn,” Lawrence says.
“What? No, I’m not swearing on an orphan.” This whole discussion is pissing me off. “I don’t need to. I would never just leave him like that.”
Javi nudges his arm against Lawrence’s. “If he says he’s good, he’s good.”
Lawrence shakes him off. “My dad said he was fine, and we all know how that turned out.”
My stomach drops. “Shit. Lawrence, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“What we went through last year was traumatic,” Wes says, meeting my gaze across the table. “If you’re having a hard time, you can talk to us.”
“Look, I appreciate your concern, but the only thing traumatic is dissecting my mental health at the sorting table that nearly killed my husband.” I push back from the table. “I’m not suicidal. Sleep deprivation just got the best of me, or maybe it was the ocean playing tricks. I don’t know.”
“What kind of tricks?” Wes asks.
“I thought I saw Cole out on the bow.”
Lawrence whistles. “Shit.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t Seb?” Javi asks.
“I guess it could have been Seb. I just assumed it was Cole for the obvious reason that he’s alive.”
Javi and Wes trade glances.
A chill curls inside the collar of my jacket. “What?” I ask, but I already know.
We all saw Dan on the boat that first season after he died.
We mistook shadows for his silhouette or saw him in our peripheral vision.
Nothing dangerous though. Poor Cole had it the worst. He couldn’t work nights in the wheelhouse alone, kept thinking he heard his dad coming up the stairs leading out to the deck.
I used to sleep behind his chair to guard his back. I forgot all about that.
“A few days ago, I saw Seb,” Javi says, light brown skin paling like when he first joined the boat and battled seasickness for days on end. “I was last out on deck, looked up at the wheelhouse, and saw him standing at the center window.” He points to the windows, illuminated in the dreary weather.
“That could have been Cole,” I suggest.
Javi shakes his head. “Cole was at the wheel.”
I suppress a shiver. Hopefully Cole isn’t listening.
The ocean is so loud, you have to crank the volume up pretty high to hear people talking on deck, and at that decibel, the ocean sounds more like static screaming through the speaker than white noise dreamscapes.
We usually only turn the speaker on when communication is absolutely necessary.
Did Seb only haunt Cole’s dreams, or has he struggled in the wheelhouse alone, unwilling to ask for help?
“The other night, I thought I heard Seb,” Alejo says. “He told us to go break ice. I jumped out of my bunk and turned on the lights, which Wes wasn’t thrilled about.”
Wes laughs. “No, I was not.”
“Did you hear him too?” I ask Wes.
“I was asleep.”
“I saw Seb,” Lawrence says. “It was creepy as fuck. We were all out here working, and Seb walked to the rail and looked down at the ocean. None of you noticed. I almost asked if you could see him too, but he vanished.”
“Wow. Thanks for that horrifying image,” Javi says.
“Don’t worry. If you get scared, you can sleep with me.” He blows him an air-kiss.
“Maybe that’s who I saw then,” I say. “Seb would make the most sense.”
“Or maybe you did see Cole,” Wes says. “We’re all trying to process what happened, and this stuff comes out when we’re dreaming, or when we’re tired as hell.”
The intercom clicks on. I jump. Alejo drops his crab.
“Next pot’s coming up,” Cole says. “Make sure you don’t step on the crab that escaped while you told ghost stories.”
“Asshole,” Lawrence mutters, scooping up two runaways. “Do you have any stories to add?”
Cole laughs. “Luckily, no. Sometimes I feel him here, but it’s not like with my dad. It’s an echo of the good times we had.” His sigh snuffles over the speaker. “Whatever you guys think you’re seeing or hearing isn’t Seb. He took care of us. He’d never lead us toward the rail. This is my fault.”
Lawrence snorts. “You’re our captain, but you’re not in charge of our hallucinations.”
“I know. It’s just… We never talked about what happened as a crew.
We bottled it up, and that’s my fault. But grief doesn’t fade, it goes dormant, and it always finds a way out.
Maybe that’s why you guys feel like Seb is still here.
I’m sorry I haven’t been there, but I’m here now, and I promise to listen. ”
“You had your hands full,” Lawrence says.
Javi rolls his eyes. “We’ve all had our hands full.”
I get it. Cole’s abandonment hurts. It’s hard to trust that he won’t hurt us again. It’s hard to trust anything he says because he’s made himself a stranger to all of us. I still have my guard up, especially for Finn, and the guys haven’t heard half the apologies I have.
“I think we should work in twos from now on, just to be safe,” Cole continues. “No more solo nights at the wheel, no one alone on deck for a single second.”
The weather forces us inside a few hours later. We still have twenty pots to haul, but we haven’t had much downtime, and we could all use it. After a quick weld job, I head to the wheelhouse.
“Hey there, Sunshine.” I gently squeeze his shoulders, tug the hood of the sweatshirt he stole from me down, and kiss his cheek. “Miss me?”
He exhales, some of the tension in his shoulders relaxing, then takes my hand and kisses it, keeping his gaze on the mammoth waves stacking in front of us. “I hate watching you down there when the seas are this high.”
“I know. It’s hard as fuck, but you keep me safe, even from up here. You called us in.”
“Maybe I only did that because I wanted to see you.”
I lean closer and rest my chin on his shoulder. “Mm. You smell so good.” I nuzzle my nose into his neck and kiss him.
“That tickles.” Cole laughs. “Stop distracting me.”