Bright Midnight

“I must have been tired,” she says, and then I take the exit onto the 707, away from the city and heading toward the coast. Her chance to leave me disappears in the rearview mirror.

She knows it too. She watches the exit disappear and a look of soft determination comes across her brow, her eyes focused on the road ahead. The road forward.

From where we are, it’s another three hours to the fishing village, and we’re silent most of the time. Sometimes the radio is on, but the pop songs and chipper yammering is too much for me to handle right now. Sometimes Shay talks about the villages we’re passing through, sometimes she brings up small talk, but she’s not taking any pictures and there’s this heavy weight that’s descended inside the car.

We’re both hanging on by a thread, waiting for what happens next.

Eventually, we reach the fishing village of Bessaker, nothing more than some old weathered red buildings along a rocky and lichen-covered coast. It’s hard land out here, bare and unforgiving, and though the sun would normally be out, right now the storm has swept most of the light away. It’s dark, almost as dark as night, and the wind flings itself off the Norwegian Sea, whipping against the car.

The docks are full of activity, with a news van from Trondheim, and other cars parked in the lot, people milling about, flares and flashlights at the ready for when the world plunges into night.

It’s so stormy, wet and rough out, that I tell Shay to stay in the car, pulling my Helly Hansen jacket out of the backseat and slipping it on, the rain already soaking me.

But Shay remains stubborn as always. She’s out of the car, yelping as the wind nearly knocks her over, and goes to the trunk, grabbing her flimsy rain jacket and pulling it on.

I grab her hand, part of me grateful that she’s by my side, even though it’s safer inside the car, then I’m pulling her along toward the crowd of people.

I make myself known, barely heard above the roar of the storm, and one of the search-and-rescue guys pulls us aside.

“You’re the captain of the Midnight Sun?” he says to me in Norwegian, looking me up and down. I get that a lot. Not that I don’t look like a fisherman, but that it’s not usual to have a twenty-five-year-old as the captain and owner of a fishing vessel.

“Yes, I lent the boat to my first mate, Epsen Larsen,” I tell him. “And Dag Nilsen is in charge of it for this round. They’re both very experienced, I don’t understand how this could happen.”

My voice is starting to crack, and I feel like whatever I’m being held together by is slowly unraveling. Even though Shay can’t understand what we’re talking about, she holds my hand tightly, giving it a strong, reassuring squeeze.

The search-and-rescue guy nods grimly. “I know. They started heading in when it got bad, but it was too late.”

I can’t breathe. “You know for sure the boat is gone?”

He shakes his head. “No. We don’t. But we can’t get a read off the boat. No signal.” He pauses. “We did pick up the signals from the survival suits, though. Six in total. That would be Dag, Epsen, and the deckhands, Erik, Tor, Hagen, and Vik.”

It’s happening all over again.

The survival suits.

They knew they were in trouble, they knew they were going down. The last radio transmission said they were bringing on water, so they put those suits on and activated the beacons, knowing they’d be sinking.

The signals often lead searchers to the dead.

My father went down the same way, except he was never found.

I stumble back on my feet, feeling dizzy, like there’s no air, and then Shay is holding me up, and the search-and-rescue guy has his hand on my shoulder, steadying me.

“Go and sit down,” he says to me. “I’ll let you know when we have news.”

I try to swallow, but it’s like I have chalk in my throat.

Shay leads me back to the Datsun, making me lie down in the backseat, the wind and rain battering the car. There’s so much darkness and fear in my heart, that it feels like I’m drowning too.

I lie there in agony, only Shay’s hand reminding me that I’m still alive, that she’s still here, and then darkness descends as the day turns to night. The only relief is that the storm abates, just a little.

But the vice around my heart, that clamps down even harder.

I must be drifting off to sleep at some point because I hear Shay’s sweet voice, sounding so far off. “Something is happening,” she says in a hush.

I open my eyes and slowly sit up and look out the rain-streaked window. The crowd has moved down onto the docks, lights moving around, and out on the water, I can see the spotlight of a rescue ship as it comes through the harbor.