Jenn gave her a look. Ivar was a good customer of her dad’s bait business, and she didn’t much like getting into a tangle with him. So she said, “It’s about that oil spill down at Possession Point, Ivar. Annie’s studying it for her dissertation,” because it seemed the best way to end their conversation and, more than anything, to keep it from veering in the direction of Nera.
She heard Annie hiss in a breath. Jenn gave her a glance and saw her face was stony. For his part, Ivar looked, if anything, more suspicious. Jenn was forced to wonder if she’d just blown it.
Ivar said, “How c’n you study an oil spill that happened . . . what? . . . seventeen, eighteen, years ago?”
“She’s studying its effects,” Jenn told Ivar.
“It was bilge oil,” Annie added. “You’re a boater, right? So you know what that means.”
“A ship’s engine oil,” Ivar said. “What about it?”
“What about it?” Annie asked, eying him like someone surprised at another’s lack of outrage. “For starters, when it spills from a ship, it either sinks to the bottom or it clumps into tar balls that wash onto the beach. If it stays on the bottom, it leaches into what’s there: soil, sand, pebbles, whatever.”
“And you think the oil’s still out there? That what this’s about?”
His tone told Jenn he was leading Annie to something, and she knew she’d been stupid to mention that oil spill at all. Ivar wasn’t an idiot. He would connect all the dots: Annie Taylor’s presence in town, her dissertation, her interest in Nera at the seal spotters’ meeting.
Annie said pleasantly, “What I think is that the oil caused mutations in animal and plant life. My theory is—”
“You hold on right there.” Clearly, Jenn thought, Ivar wasn’t about to let the word mutations flutter past him. “This’s about our seal. Bilge oil and leaching into the seabed and animal mutations and this is about our seal.”
Annie stood her ground. “I think it’s the seal, Mr. Thorndyke,” she said. “It’s not our seal or your seal or anyone’s seal. The animal’s wild. Wild animals can’t be owned.”
“They’re not supposed to be messed with either.”
“I have no intention of ‘messing’ with anything,” Annie snapped.
“Yeah? Well, you watch your step ’cause I’ll be doing the same.”
With that, Ivar Thorndyke strode back to where he’d left his truck. Jenn watched him go and she became aware that next to her Annie was breathing hard. She glanced at Annie to see her face was pink with some kind of emotion she was trying to hold in. She glanced back at Ivar to see him climbing into his truck and slamming the door, hard.
It came to her that something was going on . . . beyond what was going on. It also came to her that she might want to find out what that something was.
Cilla’s World
The road has been long and although time has passed in the form of light and darkness, I have no idea how many days have come and gone. The rain and the snow have fallen on me, and the wind has blown so fiercely that its force has cracked the limbs from trees. I have been afraid only of this wind, so when it has come, I have kept far away from the forests. Instead I have wandered the country lanes that weave and wind throughout the landscape.
There have been few cars, for I am very far now from the road that I first walked upon. I have followed a route that has climbed many hills, sunk into valleys, and taken me deep into forests. I have not felt lost, but I have felt called. I have felt required to keep walking.
Sometimes I have remained hidden for a day, sometimes for two, once for three. But always I have risen at last and begun to move on, dragging along the wheeled suitcase that the mommy and the daddy left behind them.
I must present a curious sight, for I hobble. I’ve lost a shoe somewhere in the mud along the route I’ve taken, and I have not sought another to replace it. I examine my foot when I stop. I have cut myself. I have bled. The bleeding has stopped and started again. And stopped and started. The foot feels afire but I cannot remain in one place and wait for it to heal. Moving is the only answer I have to the question of why I am alone in this place.
SIXTEEN
Becca was surprised when she found out that Ivar Thorndyke and Sharla Mann were housemates only. She’d figured they were live-in lovers, just as every one of her five stepfathers had been before her mom had married each of them. But it turned out that Sharla did the cooking and the cleaning in exchange for an upstairs bedroom and the use of the downstairs mudroom as her beauty salon. That was it. For his part, Ivar looked at Sharla with puppy eyes but didn’t seem willing to do anything to change the way things were.
Becca picked up whispers from both of them, especially on the two occasions when Sharla asked her to stay for dinner at the end of her workday in Ivar’s chicken coop. Ivar’s whispers tended to be along the lines of when . . . if she ever . . . what if I asked . . . no way after what happened to her, which was pretty interesting, while Sharla’s were of the been there, done that, and have the certificate for it variety, suggesting she’d had a husband in her life once and didn’t wish to repeat the experience.
This made Becca curious about them both, so she did a little digging around in her spare time. What she uncovered from dropping by the office of the South Whidbey Record and going through old copies “for a school report” was a connection between Sharla and the man Eddie Beddoe, who’d been shooting his rifle into the water at Sandy Point. They’d been married. When Eddie Beddoe’s boat had gone down in Saratoga Passage, his “wife of ten years, Sharla Mann” hadn’t wished to discuss with the paper Eddie Beddoe’s claim that a dangerous seal had had a hand—or a flipper, Becca told herself sardonically—in the accident. A reporter had tried to get her to make a comment of some sort, but Sharla hadn’t gone for it. “You’ll have to talk to my husband,” was her only comment.
Becca considered all of this, and particularly she considered Eddie Beddoe and the air of danger that seemed to seep from him. She remembered how his whispers had been about “killing her,” and she felt a stab of fear for Sharla. But they hadn’t been married in years from what she could discover from the paper, so perhaps the her that Eddie felt like killing every now and then was indeed the seal.
More and more it seemed to Becca that Nera loomed large in everyone’s legend. In Ivar’s case, according to Sharla, the seal had broken his arm years ago. This turned out to be the reason he was determined to keep everyone at a distance from her. So when, less than a week after Becca had begun working for Ivar, he came into the chicken coop in a rush of whispers claiming going to hurt . . . dangerous game they’re playing . . . nothing to them and why would she be because . . . Becca concluded in short order that it was the seal Nera he was thinking about.
He said to her, “Got a job for you. It’s a real one, too, not just messing around in here trying to make sense of my mess.”
Job with its implication of long-term steady work plus an income made Becca’s ears prick up. She set down the rusty pitchfork she was holding and got ready to hear whatever Ivar intended her to do.
It turned out to be scuba diving, and he explained it all quickly. A scientist new to the island was having a kid learn to dive so she’d have a partner in going into the water and getting after Nera. They weren’t saying as much, but Ivar knew that was what they were up to. He needed Becca to learn to dive, too. “I need you to be my eyes and ears on this, Becks,” he told her. “I can’t dive no more and I can’t see a thing without my glasses anyways. But you can do both.”
“I don’t know how to dive.” She could tell he was anxious; she picked up no for an answer and when they’re underwater and then she can watch; and she wanted to help him because she liked him. But diving? She couldn’t manage that one. She told him all this, but he brushed it aside.
“There’s a young fella giving lessons to this kid who’s gonna dive with the scientist. He??
?ll give lessons to you. I’ll be paying for it, so you got no worries on that score. It’s deadly important, Becks. It’s life and death important.”
“But how d’you know they’re going after Nera?”
“They more or less said it straight out down at the marina in Langley. And let me tell you, that can’t happen. Becks, the law says people got to stay one hundred yards away from marine mammals and that’s the law for a reason, which is everyone’s safety, both the people and the animals. Now this woman intends to get up close to Nera along with this kid and believe me there’ll be hell to pay.”
“Sharla told me Nera broke your arm,” Becca said, more to herself than to Ivar.
Ivar grew red in the face at the mention of Sharla. “And so she did,” he said.
“But why does the scientist want to get close to her?”
“God knows. All I get’s cagey answers when I ask. Like ‘No one means to hurt that seal, Mr. Thorndyke.’ And ‘Seals do not attack human beings.’ Well, it’s not a seal, is it? It’s Nera we’re talking about, and she’s been different from the first. She broke my arm like you say, and Eddie says she sank his boat and people say it’s all hogwash, but I’m not taking chances. No how. No way. So will you help me, Becks?” It would be another part of her job, he told her. In fact, he’d already spoken to the diving instructor. The other kid’s lessons had just begun, and Becca could join them easy as anything. Would she do it? She could be saving a life.
“I guess so,” Becca said, and she was surprised at Ivar’s reaction to his.
He hugged her fiercely and kissed the top of her head. “That’s my lady,” he said huskily.
• • •
AT LEAST IT would be something extra to do. And it would get her out of the tree house. That was the way Becca thought about the diving. It wasn’t as if her days were crammed with activities, after all. Aside from working for Ivar at Heart’s Desire and keeping low on the radar of Langley life in case Jeff Corrie put in another appearance, her days consisted of going to school, doing her homework in the village library, trying to mold her Western Civ project into something Mr. Keith would find acceptable in spite of Tod Schuman’s stubborn refusal to use anything other than the Internet, and returning to her tree house to eat and sleep and begin the exact same list of activities on the following day. The only diversion from this relentless pleasure was getting to witness Derric and Courtney Baker do the boyfriend/girlfriend bit at school.
What made life worse was that something called Carnation Day was coming. This was, she discovered, an annual fund-raiser put on by the seniors to help pay for their all-night party on graduation day. For one dollar, you could purchase a carnation to send to another student, along with a message. The more dollars you spent, the more carnations you sent. It was, Becca thought morosely, a perfect opportunity for Derric and Courtney to wear complete mantles of the flowers as declaration of their feelings for each other. As for herself . . . She figured she was going to be one of the girls who tried surreptitiously to send themselves a flower or two so as to avoid the humiliation of having nothing to carry around on the Big Day.
The only bright spot Becca saw in her life was that her hair didn’t look disgusting any longer. On the other hand, the new style and color hadn’t done a thing to alter her world, since the only person who’d even noticed the change was Jenn McDaniels. And her comment had burst Becca’s small balloon of pleasure soon enough. She’d given the hair a look, said, “Nice try, Fattie. Think that’s going to make a difference?” in her typical Jenn McDaniels way.
So Becca was ready for something different to enter her life. At the moment the something different appeared to be scuba. So be it, she thought.
SEVENTEEN
Jenn wasn’t used to naked women. She didn’t like showing off her body, since she had no body to speak of, and she always felt weird when other girls stripped after soccer games, casually walking nude to the showers. So when Annie Taylor pulled off her clothes in the locker room of South Whidbey Fitness Center, Jenn felt a little awkward. She felt even more so when Annie stood there fully naked and chatted for a minute, not the least self-conscious about putting her nipples and pubes on full display. It was five in the morning, so at least Jenn was the only other person in the locker room. But still, she wasn’t sure where to look. She knew where she wanted to look—everyone made comparisons when they had the chance, right?— but that felt odd when it came to Annie.
Annie was talking about the scuba lessons. Not to worry, she said, Jenn would pick up diving quickly. And what she didn’t get straight off the bat, Annie would help her with in additional sessions. She finally got around to dressing herself in a bathing suit, which prompted Jenn to ask if Annie was going to be part of the lesson, too. It turned out, though, that Annie intended to use their time at the fitness center to swim laps. This made sense, although Jenn had to wonder how well Annie would be able to swim laps in a butt floss bikini.
Chad’s jaw dropped at the sight of Annie when they walked from the locker room to the indoor pool. He snapped it back into place fast enough, though. He said, “Uh . . . okay . . . great,” when Annie told him she herself would exercise during Jenn’s scuba lesson. Then, while she walked to the far side of the pool, Chad never moved his eyes off her butt cheeks.
“Too old for you, bro,” was what Jenn said to Chad since Annie herself had already mentioned the fact. But if Annie was too old for Chad, it was pretty clear that her butt cheeks weren’t.
Chad said, “Good thing I like ’em older, Aquagirl.”
“My name is Jenn.”
“You’re Aquagirl to me.”
Annie lowered herself into the water. Once she began to swim, Chad managed to tear his eyes off her. Jenn said sourly, “For God’s sake, she’s thirty-three years old. She’s got someone in Florida. What’re you, nineteen?”
He glanced at her. “And what are you? Jealous?”
“As if,” she said. “Are we having a lesson or not? ’Cause believe me, I could be home in bed if all you’re going to do is drool after her. Not, by the way, that you stand a chance.”
“But you do?” he asked.
“What’s that s’posed to mean?”
He shook his head and seemed to shake off whatever was on his mind as well. He said, “Forget it. Let’s get down to work. Into the water. Give me six laps.”
“Huh? What is this? Boot camp or something?”
“Just do it,” he said.
“I’m here to learn to dive.”
“And if you drop your gear, you sure as hell need to be able to swim distance. So give me six laps any way you can. Dog paddle, breast stroke, crawl, whatever.”
Jenn cooperated although to her it sounded like something between a waste of time and a drill sergeant’s punishment. Still, she did the first two laps and she had no trouble. By the third lap, though, she knew that cigarette smoking was well on its way to doing her in. She barely finished at all. She ended up clinging to the edge of the pool panting like a Texas dog in the summer sun. Chad then told her to float on her back for ten minutes. “And no using your arms and legs,” he instructed.
“I just frigging showed you that I can swim. Why the hell do I need to float?”
“Just do it, Aquagirl. D’you always argue?”
“My name is Jenn,” she repeated.
And he said again, “You’re Aquagirl to me. Now get out there and float.”
Jenn muttered a few choice words that she hoped he heard, but she did as he asked. It was tougher than it sounded, floating without using her arms or her legs, but once she got the idea, she managed it. Then Chad told her to join him at a table he’d set up. There he began to recite what seemed like a billion facts. These had to do with air pressure, oxygen, buoyancy, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. Jenn listened and nodded and tried to take it all in, but she was distracted by Chad’s distraction.
He kept looking at Annie, who moved sleekly through the water like some obscure goddess of the sea. When she finally lifted herself from the pool, Chad even stumbled over a few of his words as she padded over to see how they were doing.
Jenn glanced her way. Great nipple shot, she thought sourly as Annie grabbed up a towel and used it on her hair. The rest of her body she left wet and dripping, with her nipples poking out against her bathing suit top like greetings that someone was meant to acknowledge.
“How’s it going?” Annie asked, directing her smile at Jenn.
“We’re just talking about air pressure,” Chad replied.
“What’re you learning?” again to Jenn.
“I’m explaining why it’s important that she clear her ears.”
“Know how to do that?” Annie asked Jenn. “Pinch your nose closed and blow. Like this.”
Her demonstration wasn’t done on herself but rather on Jenn. She pressed her nostrils closed and said that Jenn’s head would feel like a balloon about to explode if she couldn’t clear her ears underwater. Chad, she ignored entirely. To Jenn she said, “You’re going to be great. No worries, Jenn.”
Then she sat at the edge of the pool, her legs in the water to watch the rest of the lesson. She rested her arms on her thighs. She showed a lot of cleavage.
Somehow poor Chad got himself focused in spite of the cleavage and in spite of Annie’s ignoring his general wonderfulness. He told Jenn that their next project was getting used to having the equipment on while in the water, and he helped her into hers and then donned his own. They were going to sit on the bottom in the shallow end, he said. They were just going to see what it was like to breathe through the regulator, okay?
Underwater, Jenn found life wasn’t half bad. She sat Indian style, facing Chad, and they breathed in unison. Chad nodded at her and closed his eyes. She did the same and discovered that she actually didn’t mind the strange new sensations. She began drifting in her thoughts. She considered what she might be able to do if she got good at diving. She was thinking of how she could make some money, just as Annie said, when suddenly her masked was ripped from her face.