“I TOLD YOU it was going to get rough.” Tom Roberts checked the weather warning yet again before looking back at his younger brother, his expression darkening. “I warned you, Bobby, you should never have asked her along in the first place. Night fishing in October is not a holiday jaunt. I make the decisions, remember, it’s my call, and if this storm really kicks in then the last thing we need is a woman on board, especially a total rookie... Anyway, your problem, because no matter what happens there’s no way we’re giving up on this fishing trip.”
Bobby glanced out at the raging black sea beyond the cabin window. The Sea Hawk was already being buffeted by the waves that crashed onto the deck. “I’ll watch out for her,” he said determinedly, balancing with long practiced ease as the boat lurched up beneath their feet, then plunged back down with the rolling waves.
Tom resolutely held it on course. “It’s like a roller coaster,” he yelled over the thumping engine and the roar of the ocean. “No...!” His dark eyes shone. “It’s better than a roller coaster because it’s real life.”
“I’ll go see where Ali is,” Bobby said. “And don’t worry, I’ll make sure she stays off the deck.”
Tom leaned across so he could hear. “Tell her to stay away from you, more like... You’re only twenty, Bob. She’s way too old for you and you’ll only end up getting hurt.”
Bobby frowned. “Don’t be daft, she’s just a friend...and she’s married anyway. She promised to scatter her dad’s ashes on the ocean... He was a fisherman, too. She’d just met him for the first time only a few months before he died and it all came as a bit of a shock. Have a heart, Tom. She just wants to do right by her dad.”
“I think it’s your heart that’s the problem,” Tom responded with a wry smile, focusing all his attention on the controls of The Sea Hawk. “She’s got way too deeply into it if you ask me.”
“I’m not asking you,” Bobby snapped. “I’ll go and see where she is.”
* * *
DESPITE HAVING BEEN ordered to stay inside, Ali stood on the deck clutching her precious urn. She wanted to scatter her dad’s ashes at just the right moment, a moment he’d have gloried in, when the sea was at its wildest. And surely this must be it. Holding tightly on to all she had left of the father she’d barely known, she remembered the days just before he died, when she’d sat with him and he’d opened up to her about his life. He’d told her things then that her mother never had; the things she’d always wondered about.
Allowing herself to sway with the movement of the boat, she clung to the rail, tears in her eyes. Hearing his voice inside her head as clearly as if he was standing right beside her.
I loved your mother so much then...still do if I’m honest. It broke my heart when she left me and I missed you both every single day. You mustn’t blame her though; it was the fishing, you see. I was always going off in the boat, leaving her alone, worrying and wondering. I guess she just couldn’t live with the sea...and I couldn’t live without it—it’s in my blood. Promise me, Ali, that you’ll make sure I end up in the wildest ocean you can find. Scatter my ashes on the rolling sea and I’ll be a very happy ghost.
They’d laughed about it at the
