Bright Midnight

Oh my god.

I throw the door open and start running across the parking lot, nearly stumbling as I go. I hear Shay yell after me, hear her footsteps splashing through the puddles, but I keep going. I go through the crowd of people, past the news cameras, past a few arms that try to hold me back.

It’s like my world goes into slow motion.

I see the boat pull in, people huddled on it, and my eyes are frantically searching for familiar faces. But I don’t see any, not really. It’s so dark and they’re huddled under blankets and I’m starting to fear that worst, that Epsen and Dag haven’t been found.

Then I start to recognize one of the faces as the boat comes to the dock. It’s a guy I’ve hired before as a deckhand. Yes. Erik Andersen. That’s him.

And then I start to see everyone else more clearly.

I see Dag.

And I see Epsen.

Both of them alive, wet, pale. Here.

I let out a choked cry and suddenly Shay is at my side, holding onto me.

“I see them, I see them, they’re alive,” she says.

Oh thank god. I’m not just seeing things.

I nearly collapse right to my knees.

They’re alive.

I can’t help but exhale loudly, a tear running down my cheek even though I’m smiling, and when Epsen and Dag see me, they manage to light up too, as much as they can. I was so certain I’d lost them, so certain that they went the same way my father did. The relief pouring through me is indescribable.

They’re alive.

They get off the ship slowly, the search-and-rescue team helping them, and it’s obvious that they were all pretty close to death out there. They can barely walk, huddled under blankets, moving like zombies.

They shuffle up the dock toward us, Dag giving me a solemn nod, looking weary and ashamed, barely glancing at me, while Epsen’s eyes are frantic and brimming with tears.

“We lost the ship, Anders,” Epsen says to me, shaking, his voice harrowed. “She’s gone. She’s at the bottom of the sea.”

I refuse to let those words sink in. “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,” I say to him, making a move to embrace him. “You’re here.”

But the search-and-rescue guy pulls Epsen along, just as two ambulances wheel into the parking lot, red lights flashing. “We have to take them to the nearest hospital,” the man says to us.

I nod, trying to hold it together, watching as they lead Epsen, Dag, and the rest of the crew up the docks, toward the ambulances. At least they’re going to be okay.

But am I going to be okay?

“I’m so sorry, Anders,” Shay whispers to me. “About the boat.”

“All that matters is that they’re alive,” I tell her. And while that’s the truth, it’s not the whole truth. That I bury deep inside, for now.

Time starts to pass in a daze. Because it’s so late, I don’t have the energy to drive to Trondheim, but the owner of a local guesthouse decides to put everyone, including the search-and-rescue crew, up for free, May still being the slow season out here.

They give me and Shay a small room with a view that’s probably beautiful when the sun is up, and I’ve barely just closed the door to the room when I feel like I’m sucked into an undertow.

I collapse to my knees on the wood floors, feeling like I can’t stand a moment longer, like every part of me is sinking inward, into the darkness. It all hits me at once, like a sledgehammer to the ribs.

Shay rushes over to me, dropping to her knees, arms around me, and I lose it.

I fucking lose it.

I gasp for breath, tears flooding through me, and I cry.

I cry because I’m losing Shay.

I cry because I almost lost my friends.

And I cry because I lost my father, that I never got to tell him that I loved him, that I was sorry for acting the way I did, that I didn’t want to hurt him. I lost my father and I never got a chance to properly grieve him, instead I was just handed his life, the life he left behind, and I knew I needed to keep it going.

And it’s not like anyone passed me the torch and forced me to become a fisherman, to keep the boat. My sisters never did. Per didn’t. My mother, well, she never cared enough, but she didn’t either. I chose to take on my father’s legacy and live his life, I chose to do that because it was the only way I could come to terms with what happened. With his death. It was the only way I could make amends and forgive myself and pray that somehow, somewhere, he was forgiving me for being the rotten son that I was.

But now, now it’s been taken from me. The boat is gone, my father’s legacy is gone. It was the only part of him that I had left, and now they’re both at the bottom of the sea and I have nothing but memories and wishes that things could have gone differently.