The Traitor's Stain (wattys 2019)

Chapter Fifteen: Long Island Sound

"Anna, are we crazy?"

Anna looked up at Ophelia. The two of them were in the Strong basement, getting themselves ready for the job that night. Ophelia and Anna would set out for Norwalk by ship, to "sell and buy some wares". There, they would tow... something into the water. Ophelia still wasn't clear on that. Caleb would finish the job, they would tow him back, and they would go back to Setauket in the morning. Caleb and Anna said that it wouldn't have too much risk attached to it, but... she still couldn't get over the awful feeling that something bad was going to happen, that night.

"I think most people are, to some extent or another," Anna said as she cleaned out Selah's rifle. The one she planned on taking and hiding underneath a blanket in the boat, just in case. "I'm going to guess that your question has something to do with what we'll be doing, tonight."

"This could get us killed," Ophelia said. "I could die and leave my daughter without either of her parents, and I'm still doing this. Why?"

"Because it's the right thing to do," Anna suggested. "It's what you believe in."

"But... am I really willing to die for this?" Ophelia asked to nobody in particular. "When it comes right down to it, and this ends up being my last night on Earth... will I think it was worth it, or will I just wish I'd just stayed home?"

"God, Ophelia; you can't let yourself think like that!" Anna said, putting the gun down. "We're going to be just fine: once this war is over, you'll just go back to living a quiet life with Noah and Constance, and after a few years, you might even start to wish for the adventure of this life back."

Somehow, Ophelia doubted that.

Soon after that, Selah came down the stairs to the cellar. Looking very, very unhappy.

"Afternoon, dear," Anna said, not even bothering to look up at her husband. "Is the boat ready?"

"Just finished up with it," Selah confirmed. "You know, Anna: it isn't too late-"

"I'm not backing out of this, Selah," Anna said stubbornly. "Stop asking." She looked back up at Ophelia. "Are you ready to go?"

Ophelia didn't respond for a moment. "Do I have much of a choice?"

***

When had Ophelia last been on a boat in the Sound?

Not since she was kid at the very least, she realized as she rowed the boat towards Norwalk with Anna. She'd never lived all that close to the water, even as a kid: her family had lived in town. She only ever went down to the water when the kids her age decided to go swimming. The girls would just wade a little ways into the water, of course, maybe splash each other; the boys, however, would swim out, make their friends think something had bitten them, and wouldn't come back in until they were nearly too exhausted to swim back. Ophelia was happy for the need for propriety the girls all shared: as a child, she'd been terrified of the water. Ever since Abraham got bit by a fish, and that fear only increased the summer she turned eleven, when one of the younger kids in Setauket drowned out there. She'd long since gotten over it for the most part, but even then, she felt uneasy on the Sound where most people in town didn't know how to live without it.

Anna seemed very calm on the Sound: she just kept her eyes trained on the horizon, where Ben and Caleb were. Rather than look in the water on either side of them to see if there was something coming up from the depths to snatch them and drag them to the bottom, never to be seen, again-

Ophelia shoved those thoughts out of her mind. Why did her mind always have to jump to the worst possibilities imaginable? It was just like Noah told her once: some days, she was afraid of her own shadow.