Never Have I Ever(88)
In the end she shrugged and handed me the paperwork, saying, “Okay. Consider me on alert. God. What a puppy.” She rolled her eyes. “I told him not to get attached.”
I left to help Jay and Winslow with the final checks and to decide a destination. Maddy and the Babbages sat in on that conversation. She was still set on the English Freighter, named for the enormous cargo ship that had been sunk there to form an artificial reef. I suggested an easier site. The English Freighter’s stern was in a trench eighty feet down. Maddy kept pushing, though. The bow rested at fifty-five feet, on a plateau with plenty of life, perfect for Luca. I knew why she was pressing. Last time we were there, we’d seen a bull shark. Luca was wild to see one. The Babbages chimed in on Maddy’s side, reminding me I had only one student to watch out for. Everyone else was an advanced diver with multiple certifications, and dive conditions were near perfect. Calm seas and sunshine. I gave in.
“The English Freighter it is.”
We were ready to go, but Roux and Luca weren’t on board. She’d called him out to the picnic table, and they were locked in an intense conversation. She was dressing him down pretty good by the looks of it. She put a firm hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged her off, shaking his head in an emphatic no.
I wondered exactly what he was denying. She wouldn’t mind a crush; all kids got them. But she’d care passionately if Luca had been spilling secrets. He turned his back on her and stomped toward the boat, still shaking his head in adamant denial. Maybe he really hadn’t told Maddy anything. If they were being chased by the man who had beaten his mother so brutally, he might well have kept his mouth shut. When I confronted Maddy this afternoon, treating her exactly the way Roux was treating me, demolishing her trust in me, would it be for nothing?
Luca came aboard, sitting down by Maddy at the back of the boat, squarely in the sunshine. Roux followed, her face deliberately blank, manually leaking the tension out of her body like it was so much air. The Babbages had all chosen seats under the canopy. Instead of joining Luca, Roux went into the shade and took the open seat by Mark, giving him a brilliant smile.
We set out, and I chose a spot between the two groups, trying to eavesdrop in both directions. The kids leaned over the side on a dolphin watch, hoping some would come and give us an escort. They liked to play in the wake. Maddy was in high spirits. Luca seemed to be as well, but he kept stealing little sideways glances at his mother. The fight had looked like a whopper. I’d need to make sure his head was fully in the game before I took him under.
Roux, for her part, seemed oblivious that she had ever borne a child named Luca. She gazed up at Mark Babbage, asking him how he got into scuba. He was a good-looking fellow, tall and broad and athletic. He and his brother had grown up on the coast of Texas, he was saying, and they’d both been diving since they were kids. They’d met Leslie on a scuba trip to Roatán, and she was as rabid about it as they were.
“What about your wife?” Roux asked him.
“She never got into it,” Mark said, and then his smile turned wry. “That’s one reason she’s not my wife anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” Roux said, not sounding it. “I’m separated myself. I know how hard that is. So what do you do when you aren’t diving?”
“I’m a lawyer,” he said, and almost instantly her body angled itself toward him. He was already turned so far her way that his back was to his brother. I knew then that we’d lost Roux for the duration. She was pathological, unable to stop seeking marks and stories and lawyers. This must have been how she’d looked at Tig, how she’d gotten him talking. I didn’t like to think about her hands on him, her claws working into him.
“Want to buddy up? I don’t want to watch kids doing skill checks,” she said, smiling up at him. “I want to go all the way down to the stern.”
“Heck yeah,” he said.
I was glad of it. I didn’t want her anywhere near Maddy. Plus, I’d have more focus without her eyes on me, and since she and Luca were in a fight, I didn’t want her presence distracting him. Luca was still shooting unhappy glances in her direction, so I went to the sunny part of the boat and got my fish ID cards out of my dive bag. I gave them to Maddy, and she started showing him the animals we would most likely encounter. By the time we neared the site, he was deep into it, more relaxed.
We all began putting on our wet suits and doing our final gear checks. I supervised Luca as he set his dive computer. He did a good job, eyes on the screen and not his mother, but when we were done, he said, “Is she not coming with us?”
I shook my head. “She wants to go deep, is all. You have to stay above sixty feet until you do your advanced class, mister.”
His nostrils flared. “Sure,” he said, sounding just like her.
I understood his disappointment. This was supposed to be a family outing, and his mom had made it into a singles mingle. She was turning now to have Mark zip up her wet suit, giving him a coy smile over her shoulder.
We anchored near the bow of the freighter, and one by one all three Babbages giant-stepped expertly off into the water. Roux paused at the brink, her regulator in her hand.
“Hey, Madison,” she called. It was the first time she’d ever said Maddy’s name. “You want to come on the deep dive with us? Or stay in the kiddie pool?”
I could feel the little hairs on my arms trying to rise, even compressed by my wet suit. I would not send my girl out of sight, into the sea, with Roux. Not with Luca’s secrets likely locked up tight inside her.