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The little boy who’s always acted older than his age is suddenly like any other ten-year-old. He can barely get the next couple of words out. “Is . . . that . . . really true, Mom?”
    “It’s going to be okay,” I tell him.
I hope.
“Just help your brother, okay? No, no. You keep an eye on Carrie.”
    I’m about to turn around to dash for the snorkel gear when I catch a glimpse of the only good thing to come out of this latest drama.
    Carrie.
    Slowly she’s climbing to her feet, wiping away her tears. “I’ll help,” she says softly.
    Maybe she doesn’t want to die today after all. So this flood down below is a good thing?
    I take one step to hug her—to be the mother to her that I so desperately want to be—when I hear Jake’s voice from below. What he yells puts all hugs on hold.
    “Let’s hurry, folks! In ten minutes or less,
The Family Dunne
is going down!”
    Chapter 14
    I FEEL LIKE I’m back in the hospital emergency room, or a badly equipped operating theater. I raid the Hail Mary box, rifling past a first-aid kit, an inflatable raft, and God knows what else until I come upon the desperately needed snorkel and mask. Racing back belowdecks, I toss them over to Jake.
    He’s already assembled the hand pump and is feeding a hose down the hatch. The electric pump in the engine room, he tells me, will be too flooded to work.
    I look down at my bare legs. The water level’s really climbing. The four inches in the cabin are now at least six. It’s cold, too. My ankles feel as if they’re frozen in blocks of ice.
    “You think the boat hit something?” I ask.
    “I certainly didn’t feel anything if we did,” answers Jake, quickly slipping the mask over his head.
    It dawns on me. “Maybe when you were in the water with Carrie. Maybe we were all so caught up in watching you that we didn’t feel it.”
    “I doubt it,” says Jake, straddling the hatch. “If something ripped this hull, you’d feel it, all right. We didn’t hit anything.”
    “Then what do you think it is?”
    “I’m about to find out,” he says. “Just in case, though, do you remember how to work the radio, the emergency channel?”
    “I remember,” I answer. “In case of
what,
though?”
    “Nothing. I’m just making sure,” he says with an unconvincing smile. “You never know. Here goes nothing.”
    Jake shoves the mouthpiece of the snorkel between his teeth and eases into the flooded engine room. As he disappears like some kind of Navy SEAL, I stand almost comatose for a moment before realizing I’ve got work to do. I grab the hand pump and get busy pumping, even though I sense it’s a losing battle.
    The only way we stay afloat is if Jake finds the leak in an awful hurry.
    And can fix it.
    Otherwise the Dunnes will officially be listed in the
Guinness Book of Records
: “The World’s Shortest Family Vacation.”
    Chapter 15
    “WHERE’S UNCLE JAKE?” asks Carrie, the first of the bucket brigade to descend the stairs into the main cabin. Mark and Ernie follow right behind her. I haven’t seen this kind of togetherness among them in a long while.
    “He’s down there, hopefully saving us,” I say, pointing at the hatch. “In the meantime, you need to start bailing while I pump.”
    I get the kids to form a line heading up to the deck. It’s the best way, I explain. Carrie will scoop the water, hand a bucket off to Ernie, who’ll hand it off to Mark, who’ll dump it over the side.
    Simple as that. A definite NB, as I like to say in the operating room.
No-brainer.
    Ha!
    We’ve barely started before the complaining begins. So much for family harmony.
    “Ernie, hold the bucket steady when you pass it! Can you concentrate on one single thought? You keep spilling the water!” gripes Carrie.
    “Yeah, well, Carrie, you’ve got to move faster!” says Mark. “Get with the game.”
    “Look who’s talking, Stoner Boy!” she counters.
    “At least I don’t have a death wish!”
    “Hey, why don’t you shut