ENTRY #8: IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

The waves outside our beach villa had been pounding all day and all night. The noise was thunderous. The combers kept rolling in long after I wished they would stop. With each wave, tons and tons of sand-filled water would heave up all the way along the shore, curl into a crest, and fall with a BOOM under its own weight into tumult and foam. Then there would be a moment of respite while the sea fell back and regrouped before rushing ahead and falling again with another BOOM. It had been this way for hours, and the waves kept rolling in from the ocean without end.

The wind was relentless. It did not breathe softly in and out as on a summer's day. It did not rise and fall the way it did during storms back home. It just continued to blow ceaselessly through the night, whistling through the thatched roof, never letting up.

The palm trees would be fine. They had been through this countless times before. Their long trunks bent and their fronds succumbed, letting the wind rip past.

I lay wide awake on the couch in the living area. It was creepy. My parents were sleeping in a real bed in the actual bedroom on the other side of the wall, door closed. Heavy rains pounded the roof, causing odd drips and noises inside.

It was dark. I don't remember if there was power or not, since there were few lights, and in any case everything was turned off for the night. It must have been well after midnight.

I watched the blades of the ceiling fan moving idly in the darkness - a reminder of the hot, still afternoons when any touch of air was a relief. The blades slowly circled and circled as the wind found its way through every crack in the little beach house. I could not sleep at all.

There was a sudden pounding on the door, very loud. Not a polite knock, but someone bashing on the door a few steps from my couch. I was terrified.

My father roused himself and answered the door. It seemed like a very manly thing to do, answering a pounding in the middle of the night in the middle of a typhoon - a time for my father, the war veteran, to step up. Like checking for intruders, or killing huge spiders. Not a job for womenfolk.

The man at the door was soaked through, leaning into the wind and rain, carrying an old-fashioned lantern. The two men had a brief conversation. My father had to go to the hotel office for an urgent phone call. There was no phone in the villa, and of course there were no cell phones in those days.

In the future, I refused to stay anywhere without a telephone. Today I never go anywhere without a cell phone. I even sleep with mine. The hell with "getting away from it all." We should never have gone away.

My father returned and informed us with a minimum of words that we had to leave. Immediately. My mother panicked. What was wrong? My father refused to say.

We packed our things fast, and somehow a taxi was found by the hotel. The driving was terrible. As dawn arrived, we made the 20 mile trip to the airport in Grand Cayman. This was back when the island was still remote, slow, and undeveloped. It had not yet become the darling of billionaires and financiers hiding their millions in offshore accounts.

We waited a long time at the airport. The storm was subsiding. Flights were few, and fully booked. Someone was bribed to give up their seats to the family of three with an emergency.

WHAT emergency? My father clenched his teeth and would not say.

We had to change planes several times, but each time room was found for us somehow. We did not speak to each other. My mother, eyes wild, was reduced to asking my father over and over, "Is it Richard? Is it Richard?" My father said nothing. He had to bear the truth alone because he knew she would go psycho if he said anything, and first he had to get her home.

I looked out the airplane window. I was 13. I knew it was Richard, my oldest brother. I talked to him in my head. I denied the obvious. I bargained with him. I said I understood that he had to get away from my parents, but I asked him to please, please just pretend to be dead. He could come back later, some time when they were gone. Maybe he could secretly visit me. Just knowing he was still alive somewhere in the world, even if I could not talk to him, made all the difference.

By the time we got home it was night again. Our house was full of people weeping. How did they get in? I wondered. How did they know? No one told me anything.

That was March of 1968, and no one ever did tell me anything. Later I found a black binder full of Richard's stories and pictures. My other brother, a year younger than Richard, had spent the entire summer, every day, typing up Richard's original works and copying them so we would never forget.

I opened the binder fearfully. The front page read: "Death Certificate." Below that: "Cause of death: Decapitation." Richard had thrown himself in front of a train. They had interviewed the engineer. I closed the book and tried not to vomit.

It was absolutely wrong, wrong, wrong to take a Caribbean vacation without access to a telephone while Richard was in distress. What a message to send your child. Feeling blue? We have just the answer! A nifty vacation to an obscure Caribbean resort with rum drinks and fresh barracuda for dinner - just for us. You? You get nothing.

I still dream that Richard has returned, and it was all an elaborate hoax just so he could escape my parents. In my dreams he is alive and well and I am overjoyed beyond anything to see him. But he can never stay.