dehydration, that none of them would never see their families again. So he carved the story of what had happened to them on thin pieces of coconut tree bark, found a bottle in the ship’s wreckage, and set his rough, knife-hewn notes adrift before he himself passed away. More than a century later, the bottle turned up—on the shore of his tiny Japanese village.
Then there was the story about two friends walking around a lake in Wisconsin. They had just buried their friend Josh, who had completed a tour of duty in Iraq only to return home and die in a car accident. They asked each other why. They railed against the senselessness of it all. And then one of them spotted a bottle bobbing on the water’s surface. A vanilla bottle. Inside the bottle was a note that read, “My name is Josh Baker. I’m ten. If you find this, put it on the news.” It was from the boy version of their friend, recently put to rest. Josh’s mom had confirmed it to them, and then to the media outlets. She remembered him dumping her whole bottle of vanilla out when he was a kid, said her house smelled like it for weeks.
Nash would pepper the stories with interesting facts—that bottles are the most seaworthy vessels, capable of sailing unfettered through hurricanes and storms that would capsize anything else. That you couldn’t predict the direction a bottle would travel, even if two were dropped together: like the two bottles sent off the Brazilian coast, one drifting east and washing up on a beach in Africa, and the other heading northwest to Nicaragua. That the United States Navy used floating bottles to conjure detailed charts of the oceans’ currents. Or that Queen Elizabeth I’s fleet of ships had used them to send ashore information about enemy positions and that “Uncorker of Ocean Bottles” was an official post in her court.
But it was the stories that Macy clung to now: A shipwrecked Japanese sailor’s bottle reaching his native village a hundred and fifty years after he set it afloat. A vanilla bottle finding its way to the very people who needed it most, at just the right moment. Was it really so much for Macy to ask that just one of the notes Nash wrote to her wash back up here on Miracle Beach? Things like that clearly happened throughout the world. Was it too much to ask that it happen to her, just once?
But as far as she could see, there was nothing but water. And Macy reminded herself that the only thing that had washed ashore there lately was a severed right foot, still wearing its shoe.
Still, she walked. Until the sun sank and the water rose higher and Macy grew dizzy from the constant scanning. Looking over her right shoulder, she could see that the thick stretch of Miracle Beach where people tended to congregate had emptied. The water, as clean and clear as the air, had turned opaque below her without the sun shining on it. Three fires flickered on the sand in the almost-night. The mountains that stood dark and tall across the strait now nearly blended with a deepening sky. Soon, in a matter of minutes, not hours, they would look less like shadows and become almost invisible as night closed in around them. And her.
Macy had run out of time. Her day—their day—had ended.
She gulped the last of the wine from her glass and tossed it as hard as she could. She thought she heard it break, the sound like a wind chime. Take that , she thought. She wished she had another to whip at the water.
She did, she realized. She had another glass, and a bottle. And then she felt foolish. The glasses, the corkscrew, the wine. Hauling it all out here in a bag at exactly three p.m. central time. For what? So that her dead husband could conspire with the universe and send her a message in a bottle? And what if he had? What difference would it make?
Because Nash wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. He was just gone. And he wasn’t coming back.
Chapter Eight
THE BLACKNESS OF THAT NOWHERE TIME BETWEEN MIDNIGHT and dawn settled on
Then there was the story about two friends walking around a lake in Wisconsin. They had just buried their friend Josh, who had completed a tour of duty in Iraq only to return home and die in a car accident. They asked each other why. They railed against the senselessness of it all. And then one of them spotted a bottle bobbing on the water’s surface. A vanilla bottle. Inside the bottle was a note that read, “My name is Josh Baker. I’m ten. If you find this, put it on the news.” It was from the boy version of their friend, recently put to rest. Josh’s mom had confirmed it to them, and then to the media outlets. She remembered him dumping her whole bottle of vanilla out when he was a kid, said her house smelled like it for weeks.
Nash would pepper the stories with interesting facts—that bottles are the most seaworthy vessels, capable of sailing unfettered through hurricanes and storms that would capsize anything else. That you couldn’t predict the direction a bottle would travel, even if two were dropped together: like the two bottles sent off the Brazilian coast, one drifting east and washing up on a beach in Africa, and the other heading northwest to Nicaragua. That the United States Navy used floating bottles to conjure detailed charts of the oceans’ currents. Or that Queen Elizabeth I’s fleet of ships had used them to send ashore information about enemy positions and that “Uncorker of Ocean Bottles” was an official post in her court.
But it was the stories that Macy clung to now: A shipwrecked Japanese sailor’s bottle reaching his native village a hundred and fifty years after he set it afloat. A vanilla bottle finding its way to the very people who needed it most, at just the right moment. Was it really so much for Macy to ask that just one of the notes Nash wrote to her wash back up here on Miracle Beach? Things like that clearly happened throughout the world. Was it too much to ask that it happen to her, just once?
But as far as she could see, there was nothing but water. And Macy reminded herself that the only thing that had washed ashore there lately was a severed right foot, still wearing its shoe.
Still, she walked. Until the sun sank and the water rose higher and Macy grew dizzy from the constant scanning. Looking over her right shoulder, she could see that the thick stretch of Miracle Beach where people tended to congregate had emptied. The water, as clean and clear as the air, had turned opaque below her without the sun shining on it. Three fires flickered on the sand in the almost-night. The mountains that stood dark and tall across the strait now nearly blended with a deepening sky. Soon, in a matter of minutes, not hours, they would look less like shadows and become almost invisible as night closed in around them. And her.
Macy had run out of time. Her day—their day—had ended.
She gulped the last of the wine from her glass and tossed it as hard as she could. She thought she heard it break, the sound like a wind chime. Take that , she thought. She wished she had another to whip at the water.
She did, she realized. She had another glass, and a bottle. And then she felt foolish. The glasses, the corkscrew, the wine. Hauling it all out here in a bag at exactly three p.m. central time. For what? So that her dead husband could conspire with the universe and send her a message in a bottle? And what if he had? What difference would it make?
Because Nash wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. He was just gone. And he wasn’t coming back.
Chapter Eight
THE BLACKNESS OF THAT NOWHERE TIME BETWEEN MIDNIGHT and dawn settled on
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