All Hands Down by Kenneth Sewell & Jerome Preisler

Author:Kenneth Sewell & Jerome Preisler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster

When she opened the door, Barbara instantly registered two things: the storm clouds had broken to reveal wide patches of blue, sunny sky, and the person standing in front of her wasn’t Vernie after all. Rather, it was her neighbor, the same woman who’d watched Holli.

Barbara invited her inside, but she didn’t budge from the doorway.

“Bill wants you and Holli to come to our house,” the woman said. Bill, her husband, served on another boat.

Barbara looked out at her and noticed she was standing very stiffly. It gave her a nervous feeling. Then she saw the concern in the woman’s eyes.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

The woman just repeated that Bill wanted her to wake the baby and bring her to their house. Now Barbara’s nervousness inched toward a more ominous feeling. It was the woman’s tone. And the way she just stood there with that terrible, grim look in her eyes.

Barbara pressed the woman to tell her more. Something was wrong, she was sure of it. She didn’t intend to go anywhere until she found out what it was.

At last the woman relented. She and Bill had been watching television when a report came on the evening news. A sub had been declared missing and it was Scorpion.

Everything that followed was a confused whirl for Barbara. She knew that her neighbor Bill was a chief, a lifer. That meant he earned enough to afford a telephone. Because of his status, Barbara hoped it also might mean he’d have better luck than she would in getting more information about the boat.

Her heart slamming in her chest, struggling with her composure, she rushed to snatch Holli into her arms and went next door. As the evening wore on, and no further news arrived, Barbara’s neighbors urged her not to go home. They had an extra bedroom, and she and the baby were welcome to stay the night.

Barbara accepted their offer. She needed to be around someone, if not for her own sake, then for Holli’s. Earlier in the week, right around when Scorpion was originally due in, Barbara had suffered from insomnia and numbness in her face and arm. It had gotten so bad that she’d kept going over to the mirror to inspect herself. But each time Barbara looked there’d be nothing visibly wrong with her, and she would figure she was okay, rub her arm to get its circulation flowing, and go back to bed trying to forget it. Then the numbness, that strange sensation on one side of her face, would return. She’d never experienced anything like it, and it scared her out of her wits. What if she was having some kind of seizure? Being stuck without a phone in her apartment had given her a helpless feeling. Say she passed out—or worse—and nobody knew? What would happen to the baby?

Barbara hadn’t really believed anything might be wrong with Vernie. But tonight was different. Tonight she didn’t want to sit staring at her television set alone.

Soon after she got to her neighbors’ place, Barbara asked to use their phone to call Illinois.

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