Never Have I Ever(107)

I smiled an apology. “I know. I should have.”

Faith was sitting up very straight, clearly wanting to say something else, but it took two false starts before she found the words. “I . . . There was . . .” She shook her head. “This is probably wrong of me. But I don’t care. I have to tell you, thank you. Thank you for—” She stopped again, shrugging helplessly, then turned her face to the window to look out at her beautiful son.

“It’s all right,” Davis said kindly, thinking she was grateful that I’d rescued Luca.

I understood her better. She was thanking me for pulling that trigger. Roux was dead, and she was glad.

I was glad, too. Sometimes. Mostly. I was almost never sorry. But still, there was a hidden corner in my heart that housed regret. I didn’t miss Roux, not exactly. Maybe, in some way, what I was missing was the game. Or the woman I’d been when we were playing, the one who could win it; she wasn’t in the room with us. She did not belong in this sweet house.

“I understand,” I told Faith. She met my eyes, and what happened between us happened in silence. Davis, watching Maddy out the window, wasn’t part of it.

“Do you feel . . .” she started, but then she gave me a shaky smile. “Never mind.”

I was relieved. I had no good answer. When I thought of Roux, I felt a lot of things. Some I couldn’t even name. But I could live with them. I could live with them all. I’d lived with worse.

Faith stood up. “We have a plane to catch.”

The kids were leaning in, so close, talking urgently. Maddy’s eyes were wide, and I thought she might be crying a little.

I said softly, “Give them another minute.”

We waited, and then Luca ducked his head in. He pressed his mouth against hers, just once, and very briefly. It was hardly anything, but Davis rose abruptly. Outside, Maddy’s hand fluttered up to her mouth. They both leaned back, blinking at each other.

“Okay. That’s it,” Davis said, already moving to the door to call them in.

I let him go. It was enough. It had to stop there, because of the ways “Luca” had acted out with Maddy. I recognized in retrospect that what I’d seen on the sofa had been a cry for help, but it hadn’t happened in a vacuum. My girl had been pulled sideways into things she’d not been ready to do or see or know. The “girlfriend,” it turned out, was Roux herself, sending Luca the same kind of headless selfies she’d sent to Panda Grier. Maddy had seen them. Maddy had seen a lot of things.

Her experience with Luca felt so out of order. I hoped that this sweet, chaste kiss might set some of it to rights. Back in Seattle, Luca would hopefully be having all kinds of therapy, but this good-bye was good for him, too. It was her first kiss, and it was as sweet and fleeting as such a thing should be. Considering his age, it should have been a first for him as well. As it was, I hoped that it would help reset his mouth. I hoped he would remember it.

I knew Maddy would.

Now, hovering over the silty bottom, I signaled to my girl.

You lead, I’ll follow.

She gave me an okay, and then she turned us east, down the slope. We were following the side of the barge that I’d searched the day that Roux was missing. Visibility was excellent, at least eighty feet, and as a curtain of baitfish parted around our bubbles, I could see the opening that Roux had penetrated. We paused there, and I looked inside. It was clear. No unsettled silt, no flashing purple fin, only a spotted eel, peeking at us openmouthed from inside a heap of rubble.

We went on past the opening, down to the stern. As we came around the corner, Maddy grasped my arm, hard, her fingers squeezing. I turned to her, and behind her mask her eyes were shining with excitement. She put one flat hand pointed up against her forehead. The sign for shark.

I turned with her to look. It was a bull shark, alone, and it was a big one. At least nine feet, so probably a female. She’d come cruising around from the other side of the wreck. She’d seen us, too. She glided toward us at an angle, curious, giving us side-eye.

We went vertical in the water, hovering side by side and keeping our faces toward her as she did her pass. I checked on Maddy, but she wasn’t worried any more than I was. She glanced at me, clearly thrilled, and I heard her noisy, joyous exhale.

The bull shark wheeled, glorious and beautiful and deadly, coming back for another pass, this time a little closer.

Hanging in the deep blue water, even as I turned to keep my face toward the shark, I began imagining all the things that I would leave here. First, and best, and sweetest, there was Tig Simms. Here, down in these deeps, was the only place I ever let myself wonder how he was doing and if he had answered my last text. I’d blocked him. He could have said a thousand things by now, the words waiting for me to change my mind.

Now that I was under, I also thought about Char, the lines of her dear face and the way that I sometimes caught sight of Lolly Shipley’s baby features in them these days. My years of practicing not looking had been interrupted.

And I thought about how Maddy sometimes looked at me sideways, with a question in her eyes. I had no way to know what Luca had said to her, out there on the swing. Had he told her more than he told the police? He might have. He’d witnessed most of my last encounter with Roux, heard our conversation. He had to know I’d been a client.

Above the water I did not think about these things at all. I was too busy. Oliver was weaned now, and he was walking, too, unsteady and charming on the fat wads of his feet. I was working hard on eating healthily; I’d even asked my meat-and-potatoes husband to try vegetarian dinners with me three nights a week. It wasn’t going perfectly. He only liked it when “vegetarian” meant “swamped in cheese.” Maddy was scoping out colleges, and I was helping; she would be a junior in the fall. At work I was planning the dive trip I was going to lead in Belize come June. Plus, I babysat for Charlotte quite a bit as she learned to be a single parent. I did not have time to think about these things.