Page 9 of Let It Snow

Cap nodded his head and poured himself a coffee.

“Don’t pretend you know what he’s talking about,” Dane said.

Cap grunted. “And you do?”

“Supplementary Aviation Weather Reporting System. Vendi is the co-operator collocated with a commissioned automated system.”

Vendi raised a brow and nodded. “We’re also a MARS station. I’ve been trained, but our weather specialist is on holiday. Of course.”

“So what are all your gadgets telling you now?” Dane asked.

“Right now the sampling frequency is off. But we may have a meso-weather situation—small surface area with weather differing from the general district’s weather.”

Dane said, “Who’s in this meso-weather situation? Us or the ferry?”

“The ferry.” Vendi licked his lips and took measure of Dane like he had more to say and didn’t want to.

“Spit it out. I won’t hit you.”

Vendi snorted like he hadn’t been worried. “The ferry is headed straight for it—straight into—something. Not sure how big. I need to make some calls.” He looked back at his computer screen but didn’t pick up his headset for the call. Hell if Dane was leaving the room. Vendi could damn well make the calls with him standing here.

Dane prompted him. “They’re headed across the channel to Woods Hole—how bad could it be?”

Vendi looked up from his screen. He didn’t say anything. He reached out and took the cup of coffee from Cap and put his radio headphone set over his ears. “I’m using channel 16 marine VHF-FM.”

Dane knew that was the emergency channel.

Cap handed Dane a cup of black coffee. Steam rose from the mug, but he took a sip, not caring about a singed lip. It was clear Cap knew Dane’s head was still up his own ass, not caring about anything, especially not concerned about small details. To his surprise, Dane was thinking big now, though. He was thinking of Shana and the useless padre on a sea-tossed ferry.

But what was the worst that could happen? The ferry was a good-sized boat and steady. The passengers would hit some high seas and roll a little, likely not suffer more than mild nausea, but the image of high seas was enough to disquiet Dane’s otherwise numb soul.

The ferry left the dock like a fugitive on the lam. Shana stayed on deck at the rail to watch the island disappear faster than she’d expected.

“You’re looking for him? What would you do if he came to take you back? Would you go with him?” The padre gave voice to the dark swirl in her head that refused to become thought.

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. Didn’t turn to look at him. Padre Pedro had one of those annoying mirror qualities about him. She stood at the rail. Her hands frozen to the metal. She might have kept the unhealthy pose of an ice sculpture had the padre not put an arm around her shoulder to guide her away. It was a gentle floating nudge in the direction of the nearly empty cabin of the boat. There was a line at the snack bar and the smell of coffee in the cozy inside air.

“Looks like we got past the worst of it.” The padre stood next to her while she still looked out the window at the falling snow swirling harmlessly around the boat. She could no longer see land. Martha’s Vineyard had disappeared.

“It’ll be—”

“Don’t say it,” she snapped her head around to slice him with an accusing look, unfair and mean. The anger erupted from nowhere like a dormant volcano. Except she’d been anything but dormant with her emotions simmering and bubbling in a cauldron of heat.

He only smiled in that way he had that she still hadn’t learned to trust, but that she knew she should. She felt raw. The sounds of other people’s merry Christmases around her and small laughs and soft music in the background clawed at her, every one of the noises opening cuts so that she felt like she was exposed and bleeding and pathetic.

“I’ll get us some coffee.”

Normally she’d have protested that she’d already had a cup and another cup in the afternoon would keep her up all night. Normally she’d have asked for a shot of something or at least spiked eggnog. But she turned back to the window to where Martha’s Vineyard had been floating minutes ago, to where she’d lived and breathed and loved for so short a time it seemed like forever.

Her life had now split in two. The woman she was before Dane and the woman after. She had no idea who the woman after would be. The girlie version of Dane Blaise.

Shana was about to turn from the window when a dark cloud caught her eye on the eastern horizon. She turned more fully to it and felt her heart give a seismic thump then accelerate. She went back outside to the deck to get a closer look.

The cloud—or whatever it was—was dark and swirling and looked ten times the size of Martha’s Vineyard. Would she measure everything against her one-time home now?

Pedro found her. He returned to her side and handed her coffee. The warm cup barely registered.

“Look at that. It can’t be good.” She nodded in the direction of the approaching cloud. Or the cloud they were approaching.