The Shell Collector

12

“You’re doing what?” Henry asks me.

“I’m going back up there,” I tell him. “For one week. And you’re sitting on my cable.”

Henry gets off my desk, and I unplug the charger for my laptop, wrap it up, and shove it in my bag.

“What do you mean, you’re going back up there? We’ve got to get your second piece out next week. We’re running part one again on Sunday. Everyone wants to know when you’re getting to Ness.”

“Sounds like she already got to him,” Dawn says from her desk.

I flip her the bird.

“This is bigger than that piece,” I tell Henry. I lower my voice to a whisper. Everyone in the newsroom is watching us. “This is front page. Real news. I’m telling you. Have I ever been wrong about these things?”

“You really want me to answer that?”

I check my email one last time. Nothing that can’t wait. I shut down my computer.

“If you leave here without telling me what in the hell’s going on, you won’t have a job when you come back.”

“I won’t need this job when I come back.” I turn and walk past Margo’s desk toward the elevator. Margo smiles and wishes me luck. I don’t ask her what she means.

Henry hurries after me. We both know the other is bluffing: he won’t fire me and I won’t quit.

“Do you hear yourself right now?” he asks. “You’re the one who didn’t want to go in the first place. Is this the feds? What’re they investigating? You’re not fucking him, are you?”

I whirl around at Henry and point a finger at him. He nearly crashes into me. “I’m not fucking him,” I say. “Ness Wilde is exactly who I thought he was. His family stands for everything wrong in this world, and he sits on his private estate where everything is fake, nothing is real, and he sits in the middle of these… these shells within shells, and he is working on something awful. I’ve seen a glimpse of it. I mean—Henry, he has these trees that don’t belong there. Palm trees. Thousands of them. He’s totally messed up. His driveway is a freaking fortune in crushed shells.”

“That’s why we have to run these stories, Maya. The one on his grandfather is brilliant. It sounds just like him. Living alone, buying up land that he knows will be beachfront one day—”

I shake my head. “No. I told you, you can’t run that piece. Promise me. We skip to his father.”

Henry crosses his arms. I place a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to bring you the piece of our lifetimes, Henry. I swear. I can feel it. You’re the one always saying that real journalism is dead. Dead as the seven seas. Well, this is the kind of story that will bring it back to life.”

“I need more than that, Maya. C’mon. Give me something. A hint. A headline.”

I hesitate. If I had the shells, I would show him those. And then I remember I have something a fraction as good. I dig my phone out of my bag and bring up the image gallery, sort through the recent pics. I find the one of the three lace murexes sitting on my kitchen counter. It’s the pic I sent to my sister as a gag.

When I show Henry the picture, his eyes widen. “So he bought you,” he whispers, his voice dripping with disappointment.

“They’re fake,” I tell him.

Henry pinches the picture to zoom in. Studies the image closely. “Are you sure?” he asks.

“I’m sure.” I lower my voice. “Henry, he cracked these open in front of me and tried to convince me they’re real. The feds are investigating where they came from. I’m telling you, they’re fakes, but they’re good fakes. They could crash the shelling market. Or send it skyrocketing. Hell, I don’t know.”

“So why are you going back up there?” Henry asks.

“Because I think he wants to come clean. He said he wants to show me his secrets. The guy is losing it, Henry. The feds say he never leaves his property. I think he trusts me, and he wants to let me in on something. I think he wants to confess. But Henry, you have to promise to keep this between us. He insisted on no leaks for a week. No stories. He made me promise.”

Henry nods. Slowly. I have to pull the phone away from him. I slip it into my bag.

“I’ll call you when I’ve got something,” I say.

I leave Henry rooted in place and hit the elevator call button. Dawn is standing a few paces away, getting a cup of water from the cooler. She smiles at me. As I step inside the elevator and ride down to the lobby, I wonder how long she’d been standing there. I wonder how much she heard.

13

The drive up to Ness’s estate is different this time. At first, it’s hard to say why. I stop at the same service station in Massachusetts to quick-charge the car. I see the same scenery as before. The trip takes the same five hours on the expressway. But then I realize that no journey is ever truly the same the second time around. What felt interminable the first time now passes with a quickness borne of familiarity. It makes me wonder if life seems to accelerate as we get older simply because our days and our experiences become routine. The things we recognize flash right by, where once they held our attention. Only the new bears careful contemplation, and the new gets harder and harder to come by.

As I cross into Maine, I remember to call my sister. I haven’t told her about this trip, partly because life has been hectic the past few days, partly because I know she’ll worry about me. Which is a bad sign that I’m making some kind of mistake.

She picks up after three rings. Her greeting is a half-whisper, like I’ve caught her in a meeting. “Hey,” she says. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Sorry if it’s a bad time. Just wanted to let you know I’ll be out of town for a week in case you don’t hear from me.”

“Assignment?”

My sister works for an investment bank and lives vicariously through what she calls my “abnormal life.” Of course, my life feels perfectly normal to me. I did have to admit to her the day before that the Ness interview was a little out there, which she called a colossal understatement. I brace now for what she’ll make of this.

“It’s kind of an assignment. I’m in Maine again.”

“Shut up,” my sister hisses. I can hear movement on the other side, like she’s trying to get some place where she can scream. “I thought you weren’t going back.”

“I changed my mind.”

“What’s gotten into you? I thought you loathed this guy.”

I flash back to a couple years’ worth of phone conversations while I was hip-deep in research for my piece. I may have cursed the Wilde family name a time or two.

“I’m not up here to date him,” I say. “It’s for the piece I’ve been working on about him.”

“Good, because you know how you hate men with better shell collections than yours.”

“I do not.”

My sister laughs. “You totally do. But I’m single. Put in a word, okay? Is he still gorgeous?”

“Sarah, stop.”

“He is, isn’t he? Oh, God, are you falling for him? Tell me you aren’t falling for him.”

“No—of course not. He’s got issues, Sarah.”

“So why are you up there?”

“Because… it’s complicated. Let’s just say the FBI is involved.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Seriously.”

“Your life is bizarro. I’m undergoing death by PowerPoint over here and you’re… I don’t even understand what you’re doing.”

I laugh. “I just called to tell you I love you and not to worry if I don’t get in touch for a few days. Talk to you next week if not sooner.”

“So jealous,” Sarah says. “Love you, you lucky ass.”

She hangs up, and I have one more person to call before I reach the estate. I find Agent Cooper’s number in my call log and dial it. I met with him yesterday and handed over the wire. What I didn’t tell him was that I’d already decided to take Ness up on his offer. As far as I’m concerned, my story and his investigation are two separate things. He promised me the scoop if they turn up anything, and I promised to sit on what I already know.

“Hello?” he says.

“Agent Cooper. It’s Maya Walsh.”

“Stan,” he reminds me. As if I could ever call him that.

“Just wanted to let you know that… I took Ness up on his offer. If I learn anything that might help you, I’ll fill you in.”

“Where are you now?” he asks.

“I’m in Maine. About half an hour away.”

“You should have told me. This is a bad idea, Maya.”

“Maybe. But it’ll be good for my piece. And he promised to show me where the shells came from, so if I learn anything, I’ll pass it along.”

“I appreciate that. But please be careful.” I hear him take a deep breath. “I wish you’d told me. I would’ve talked you out of it.”

“Seriously? You talked me into coming the last time.” The truth is, I knew he would’ve objected. Probably why I didn’t say anything. “Look, I’ll check in when I get back into town—”

“Oh, Maya?”

“Yeah?”

“I was thinking about the marks last night. Inside the shells. One way they could do that is to move a non-extinct species in after they cast the shell. We’re thinking here that it would be cheaper than unique molds.”

“Yeah, I thought of the same thing.”

“Okay. Good sign that we aren’t crazy. So be safe.”

“I will. Thanks for everything.”

We hang up, and I stay lost in thought until I reach Ness’s estate. I allow myself to daydream about the shelling ahead, the access I may have to raw beaches, the fact that Ness told me to bring a wetsuit and my snorkel gear.

What I try not to do is allow myself to think of Ness as a regular guy, as a man my age. Being taken on a tour of—whatever he has planned for this week—excites the sheller in me far more than the journalist. I remind myself that this person has an ugly history, that he’s the face of one of the companies I blame for the encroaching sea. I also remind myself of the exquisite fake shells and whatever it is they portend. And as I reach the edge of his estate, I let his misplaced palm trees remind me that all with Mr. Wilde is not as it seems. That his outer shell is not to be trusted.

The guard at the first gate smiles at me in recognition. He tips his hat and “ma’ams” me as I hand him my ID. After jotting something on his tablet, he leans out of his booth, peers down the driveway toward the estate, and whispers something into his radio. He nods at some inaudible reply. “Just one second,” he tells me.

This is different. I wonder if maybe someone is coming out to meet me.

I tap my fingers on the steering wheel and wait.

I lower the visor and check myself in the mirror.

I pull out my phone to see if there’s anything urgent in my inbox.

“Okay,” the guard eventually says. He hands me my driver’s license and press pass, and the tall iron gate swings open in greased silence.

I enjoy the long driveway this time, because it holds no surprises. I leave the windows down and take in the smell of moss and mulch, search the air for that sea breeze, watch out for any stray coconuts. The car chews up the road, and I try not to think of what the gravel is made of. Racing along, the back end of the car sliding with each small adjustment of the steering wheel, I enjoy this feeling of being on edge. This dangerous place. Here is where time slows down, where we can take it all in, where life becomes digestible, each moment new and therefore able to be savored.

Trees that don’t belong whiz by. The bent trunks of palms. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Bright birds flit across the road, searching for bugs and worms. And then I notice that the air is dusty, that I’m entering a fog, but it’s just a plume kicked up by a vehicle ahead. I roll the windows up to keep the dust out. As it thickens, I ease off the accelerator in case the other car is going slow. I watch for taillights, wonder if I’m overtaking one of the guards who works the inner gate. It’s a little after five. Might be when they change shifts.

And then I break through the dust cloud and back into clear air. Checking the rearview mirror for a car on the shoulder, I see nothing. I almost let the mystery pass—almost think nothing of it—but I find myself braking to a dead stop. The dust kicked up by my car trails after and swirls around me. I hesitate for a moment before deciding to throw the car into reverse to go back and investigate.

The road is still choked with the thick plume my car stirred. I stop where I think I broke into clear air. There isn’t room on the shoulder to park, so I hit the hazards and leave the car in the center of the narrow drive. I let the dust settle before stepping out.

There is a breeze, the scent of pine and salt air. Leaves whisper against one another, and I think I can hear the distant crash of the sea, but it could just be wind chasing wind through the branches, or the rustling together of palm fronds.

“Hello?” I call out.

The silence that answers makes me feel silly, makes me want to scurry back to my car and keep driving. I walk along the road instead, and my eyes are drawn to the gravel, to the crushed shells. I’m reminded of the meandering swath of shells that used to lie along the tideline at the beach where I grew up. I remember crawling along that path, even years after I could walk, searching for the rare intact jewel that everyone else had overlooked. Hard not to do that here—like the impulse to search a field of clover for that one mutant with four leaves—

My fixation on the road is the only reason I spot it: a place where the shells spill onto the shoulder. Bits of white and pink mix with the mulch and the sparse grass. The dust has cleared from the air. I search up and down the long drive, but it’s just me, my car, the trees, and the soft wind.

The grass is flattened in places. Tire treads. They head into the woods, though there is no drive marked here. Just mulch, a gap in the undergrowth, and enough space between two trees for a car to squeeze through. Peering deeper into the woods, I see a black gate. There’s a keypad beside it, glittering in the wan light filtering through the canopy above. I start into the woods, want to explore further, when the cry of a bird jolts my senses, and the darkening hour reminds me that I am expected elsewhere.

Torn and reluctant—duty overpowers my curiosity, and I hurry back to the car. Its red hazard lights throb a mild warning to no one. As I pull away, the double guard gates finally make sense. Whoever comes through the outer gate has access to this hidden drive but not to the house. For all the sense of mystery, I’m certain I’ve just discovered the rear entrance for the estate’s help, which grounds like these invariably have. An access road for the gardeners, the arborists, the housekeepers. I decide to ask the next guard if this is the case. It’s a dumb detail, but I’ll feel proud for having deduced it all on my own, just from a disappearing trail of dust and little more.

The young guard from my previous visit is manning the inner gate. He steps out of his small booth and holds out a flat palm, signaling me to stop. As if I would bash through his bright blue steel bar if he weren’t there to warn me. I have my info ready, including my registration, but he doesn’t ask for these. Just asks if I’m okay.

“Uh… yeah,” I say. “I guess.”

The guard frowns at me. “No car troubles?” he asks.

“No.” I shake my head.

“It’s just that—” He rests his forearms on the roof of my car, leans his head down close. “You checked through the outer gate quite some time ago, is all.”

I can smell the coffee on his breath. “Oh, that,” I say, and the plan to ask him about the hidden drive vanishes in a puff of paranoid self-preservation. “I saw a cardinal. Haven’t seen one in ages. So I got out to take a picture.”

He glances toward my bag, which is sitting on the passenger seat. “Get any good shots?” he asks.

“No,” I tell him, in case he asks to see. “Never saw it again. Beautiful time of day though. You’re lucky that you get to work in an office like this. You should see the view from my desk.” I laugh. I realize I’m babbling. It’s what I do when I’m nervous.

The guard just smirks. He pats the roof of my car in a way that’s mildly possessive, mildly offensive. Like I’ve said something cute. Like I’m adorable. Like he might pat a waitress on the ass as she passes a booth full of him and his friends.

“Go on in,” he says, stepping away from my car. He tips his cap, the bar lifts up, and I hit the gas before he can ask any more questions, or before my mouth can get me in trouble.

14

I don’t know what I’m expecting when I get to the house. Ness said we would spend the day shelling, so I imagine something extravagant, like a helicopter with its blades slowly spinning, a pilot flipping switches above his head, and word that a private island somewhere is staging for our arrival. Or maybe a large yacht docked behind his estate, a giant crane on its upper deck that scoops sand from the depths and sifts it through complicated onboard troughs to unveil ancient, fragile treasures. Anything other than Ness sitting on the front porch, waiting for me, in a t-shirt and a loud pair of bermuda shorts.

“You’re late,” he says, glancing at his watch as I get out of the car. The bridge of his nose is white with zinc oxide. As he gets off the bench, he dons an oversized hat with a full brim. All he needs is a bulky camera dangling around his neck to complete the tourist outfit. He looks like he belongs in Times Square, gawking at the electric billboards or getting his picture taken with Spider-Man.

“I got a late start,” I tell him. I pop the trunk and grab my two bags, one full of clothes, the other with my snorkel gear, wetsuit, and toiletries. Ness takes both bags from me and leads me into the house.

“First rule of shelling,” he says. “Don’t be late. Every single thing you do with the ocean depends on the tides, depends on the cycle of the moon.” He glances over his shoulder. “It’s a lot like relationships.”

I think he means to amuse me, but I’m startled instead. I nearly launch into my theory about how shelling is exactly like relationships in hundreds of little ways, but Ness’s manic energy has me struggling just to keep up with him. I follow him down a flight of stairs and through a hallway. He has to set one of the bags down to get the door, and then we’re out through the back of the house and on a rear deck, facing the Atlantic.

The sun glints off the sea, a field of jewels on a blue tapestry. Waves chase each other in jagged white lines toward the beach. Two peninsulas of rock jut out into the ocean. One is natural; the other was made to look natural, but it curves out and then runs parallel to the beach to shelter a small bay to the north. An empty dock and a boathouse sit in the bay. The boathouse would be a fine main residence anywhere else. Boardwalks and a labyrinth of stairs lead down to the bay as well as to the beach directly below the house—which is where I descended after dark on my last visit. I try to take it all in, but I have to hurry to keep up with Ness.

“I’m putting you in the widow’s watch,” he tells me. His voice is nearly lost in the hiss of the distant waves and the wind. We descend several flights of wooden stairs, follow a boardwalk that runs parallel to the steep dunes, and head to a house separate from the main estate. An in-law suite. But Ness called it something else. To me, it looks like a dollhouse swelled up to accommodate grown people. A little bigger than my New York apartment, it juts out from the dunes on thick beams. And there appears to be an even smaller house nestled on the roof. Ness lets me in and follows with the bags.

Somehow, the spectacular view outside is even better when framed by the floor-to-ceiling windows along the east side of the house. There’s a bed in the middle of the room, facing the view. White linen curtains are pulled back. I imagine the sunrise that will greet me in the morning. The house seems to levitate over the beach, and the windows compress the view to just the sparkling sea. It’s a dream. This will be like sleeping out on the clouds.

“Gorgeous,” I whisper.

Ness places the bags on the bed, then turns and studies the view for a moment, like he’s forgotten what it looks like. I try not to feel dismayed by the possibility that this room hasn’t been stepped in by anyone other than the housekeeper for years, that it just sits here empty and unappreciated.

“The better view is up top,” he says. “I figured you’d be more comfortable if we weren’t under the same roof. Considering my… reputation.” He smiles at me. Wags his eyebrows. I can’t decide if he’s being crass or if his sense of humor is just that unseemly. It’s like he’s forgotten my accusations the other night, or just wants that spat behind us. “Since you write for a living,” he says, “I also thought you’d enjoy the reading nook.” He leads me to a spiral staircase just off the small kitchen. The metal treads ring as he hurries up. I tear myself away from the view and follow him.

“I built this place for Holly, before she was born,” Ness calls down the stairs.

I laugh at the thought. “Most people paint the bedroom they’ve been using as an office, install a crib, change the outlet covers. You build this.”

“It didn’t seem like much. My dad bought a chain of islands when I was born and named them after me. That seemed excessive.”

I swallow any rude response. Several come to me with little bidding. At the top of the stairs, I find myself in the small room nestled on the roof. Four walls of glass, with a cushioned bench running along three of them. Two shelves of books ring the room beneath the bench, and more books are lined up along the deep sills. Ness cranks one of the windows open—they’re the kind with a spinning lever at their base. I turn and work the window opposite him. The sea breeze courses through the small space, whistling its way inside, between us, and then back out again. I glance up at the exposed beams overhead where a wind chime made of seashells softly rattles.

“Holly never really took to the place. It was my fault for making her sleep out here by herself when she was little. She got scared, tried to find her way back to the house in the middle of the night, and got lost.” Ness opens the door on the front of the small room and steps out onto the deck. He invites me to join him, then points down at the boardwalk leading toward the enclosed bay. “She fell asleep behind the rocks down there, out of the wind. I found her the next morning. It was the first really big fight Vicky and I ever had. I don’t think Holly has been in this house since. I just use it for guests now. Replaced all the children’s books with classics.” He waves his hand at the collection behind us. “I don’t think any of them have even been cracked.”

“Must’ve hurt, finding her out there.” I peer down at the rocks and think about what it must’ve been like for his daughter, running around in the pitch black, the crashing sea deafening and the wind chapping her face with her tears.

“I think I’ve overcorrected since then. Never really put pressure on her to be adventurous, to try new things. I have more regrets over all the stuff I didn’t do later in life than I do over that night.”

If this were a normal person, a normal conversation, I would ask how old his daughter is. But it’s Ness Wilde, so I know she’s twelve. If this were a normal person, a normal conversation, I might reach out and place a hand on his arm, let him know he’s not alone, that we all have regrets, that I feel his sadness, and that I’m sorry for him. But it’s not a normal conversation. In fact, I feel a sudden out-of-body sensation, the same surreal and disjointed feeling I felt in the White House, shaking the President’s hand. Like the Earth is tilting beneath me.

As my sister would say, my life is already strange enough day to day, with devoted readers recognizing my name as I make a reservation or hand them my credit card to buy groceries, that it takes the truly absurd before I realize how dumb lucky I am, how bizarre my life is. I’m standing above this commanding view with one of the most infamous and now most inaccessible men on the planet. Moments like this come with my job, but some still fill me with vertigo.

“I’m sorry, what did you call this place?” I ask Ness, trying to reel myself back down to reality. “Some kind of a watch?”

“A widow’s watch,” he says, perking up. He seems just as glad for the change in topic. The breeze tries to steal away his hat, but he grabs it in time and tucks it under his arm. He points toward the horizon. “A lot of the houses up and down the coast here had these before the sea swallowed them. They don’t build them as much anymore. Back in the day, women whose men went to sea would sit up here and watch for the sails that told them their husbands were returning. Often, they would come up and watch the empty horizon long after there was any hope. I have to admit, it’s a morbid name, when you think about the literal meaning.”

“I think it’s sweet,” I say. I stop myself from saying “romantic.” But that’s what I mean. The idea of such powerful longing, of hoping for a return, a reunion, is incredibly desirable. Most of the relationships I’ve been in lately, one or the other party was just looking for a way out, not a way back.

“Well, we’ve already missed the tide, and now it’s more my fault than yours, but if you want to get changed, we’ll hit the beach. I’ve got a very precise sequence of days laid out to show you where those shells came from.”

Ness shields his eyes and studies the shore below. Then he peers down the coast, and I turn and notice the lighthouse for the first time. The widow’s watch is just high enough, and the guest house juts out of the dunes just far enough, to see the tall pillar of mortar and stone sitting on the high bluff south of the estate.

“You brought sandals, right?” Ness asks. “The boardwalk will be warm. You can kick them off once we get to the beach.”

“We’re shelling right here?” I try not to sound disappointed. It would be anyone else’s dream. “It’s just… I would’ve thought those shells you showed me came from someplace far away from here, someplace exotic. I mean, no one’s seen a lace murex in years. And the quality—”

“They didn’t come from all that far away, in fact.” Ness turns and heads back inside. I follow him, close the door behind me, and we take the stairs. “Besides, we’re not going to look for the murexes right now. I’ve got to show you what led me to them. It was years in the making, but I think I can tell the story in a week.”

“Why not just show me the molds?” I say, unable to stop myself from coming right out and doubting their veracity. “I was thinking maybe you move other slugs in, like a different species, after the shells are cast.”

Ness laughs. “You’re jumping ahead.”

“Of course I am. I’m a reporter. As much as I look forward to the shelling, I want to know where the murexes came from. I want to see this mythical beach you seem to believe in where extinct shells just roll up with nary a mark on them.”

Ness stops at the bottom of the stairs. Turns to me. “Let’s say you wrote a piece in four parts,” he says. “Each part is thousands of words long. And your readers decide to skip all the way to the last paragraph of the last part and read only that. What would you think?”

“I think that would suck,” I say.

“Exactly,” Ness says. “So don’t suck. Let me show you the whole story. No skipping ahead. Promise?”

I hesitate. Ness gives me that intense look of his, that unwavering gaze. “I promise,” I finally say. And then, perhaps because of the morbid nature of the guest house, I add: “Hope to die.”

“That’s the spirit. And don’t worry, I’m going to show you where the shells came from, but I want you to understand a little history first. See what led me to them. Which means you’re going to have to tolerate my little cliffhangers.”

“I think you probably mean teasers this time,” I tell him. “And I feel like you’re just delaying this because whatever you’re doing with those shells isn’t legal.”

“Oh, it’s not legal,” Ness admits. “It’s highly illegal. But you promised not to jump ahead.”

15

I’m not sure how I can jump ahead when it’s difficult enough just to keep up. I’m a fast walker. You can’t live in New York City without also being on the cusp of qualifying for the speedwalk event at any given Olympics. And yet I find myself trotting across the boardwalks and taking stairs at an unsafe clip, while Ness seems to casually stroll ahead of me.

“There used to be homes all along here,” he says.

I descend the last set of stairs and find myself back on the beach I visited a few nights ago. I kick off my sandals. Ness and I both have our shelling bags, our hats pulled down tight against the breeze, the smell of sunscreen in the air. Scanning the beach, I see why the bay is so loud. The two jetties of rock—the natural one and the manmade one—funnel the sea up the beach. They also corral the noise, so you get the crash of the ocean as well as the echoes of those crashes. Sound waves pile up like sea waves, overlapping and amplifying. In an east swell, I imagine the break here is amazing. It makes me wish I’d brought my board.

“So did the sea take the homes that used to lie along here, or did you?” I ask Ness. It’s an honest question, but it sounds harsh now that it’s out in the air. As if I mean to say that, either way, his family had a part in clearing out whatever beach communities used to lie here, either by purchase or by environmental ruin.

“The sea took them,” Ness says. “We like to build on the edge, don’t we? Right on the edge of disaster. Because if we don’t, it leaves room for someone else to build between us and whatever it is we desire. We’re all like Icarus in that way.” Ness points toward the natural jetty to the south. “Let’s walk the shell line this way.”

“Icarus flew too close to the sun,” I point out. “That story is about ambition.”

“The story is about understanding nature’s limits,” Ness claims. “It’s about craving more than we can possess. It’s about ego. And don’t forget, it was the sea that killed him. Not the sun. Icarus drowned.”

A periwinkle catches my eye. I stoop to pick it up and add it to my bag.

“There’s a better one just over there,” Ness tells me. He points an impossible distance away. I can’t tell if he sees the shell or if he knows it’s there from being down on the beach earlier that day. I inspect my specimen. It’s the finest shell I’ve picked off a beach in years. The lip is cracked, the crown chipped, a hole straight through the apex, and the interior is dull from too much time in the sun. But it’s gorgeous. Rare. I slip it into the bag.

“A week from now, you’ll step right over that shell,” Ness tells me.

“I hope you’re wrong,” I say. “I don’t want to ever get like that.”

He shrugs. I see a nutmeg and an auger. Both worn. I wonder how long they’ve been bouncing along on this beach, no one here to pick them up, to rescue them.

“Are you old enough to remember when everyone had shelling stories?” Ness asks.

“I’m not much younger than you,” I say. “But thanks for asking.”

He turns and smiles at me. I have to remind myself that his family made their fortune by ruining the world. And while the rest of us agonized over the floods and the erosion and news of every sea life extinction, Ness was at a fancy college, rowing boats, getting into trouble, always smiling, always having a good time, not a care in the world. I am constantly reminding myself of this around him. My story is not going to change. I’m just here to write a second story, the story of the lace murexes.

“So, I have a theory on why we don’t hear shelling stories like we used to,” he says. “Why those stories suddenly stopped a few decades ago.”

“You mean because shells have become vanishingly rare? Because sea life is going extinct?” I stop myself from spelling out the ecological disaster that led to this. Or pointing out that most people don’t have gas-burning cars in their garages any more.

“Good shells have been hard to find for a long time, but when the fad hit, and the magazines for collectors came out, and the stupid shows hit cable TV—the Shell Hunters, Diving for Sand Dollars, all that nonsense—there was a flurry of boasts, but then everyone clammed up. No pun intended.”

“Lightning whelk,” I say, retrieving a half-buried shell and seeing that only the lip is chipped. A stunning specimen. I put it in the higher pocket of my shelling bag so it doesn’t rub against any of the others.

“Nice find,” Ness says. He seems sincere. I note he has yet to pick up a shell. The wind catches the end of his empty bag and twists it and flaps it around. “And then News Journal did their big piece about the value of shells, and within weeks, they all seemed to disappear.” Ness snaps his fingers. “Which isn’t possible. What really happened, I think, is that everyone shut up about their finds. Not just where they found them, but that they’d found anything at all. It was about this time that people started calling what you and I do the latest Dutch Tulip Craze.”

I notice that he lumps us together, me and him, as if our shelling is anything alike.

“People were getting up at four in the morning, three in the morning, two in the morning, and grabbing every shell they could scoop up. Shells kept rolling in, but someone would be there immediately to take them. Nobody trusted anyone else not to follow them to their favorite spot. You remember when just a handful of cars by a remote beach would cause rumors and then traffic jams?”

“I remember,” I say. “My dad used to wake us up in the middle of the night, say he got a tip from a friend, or just had a feeling, or that some storm had just hit the beach, and we’d get dressed, grab our bags and flashlights, and jump in the car. It was the only time he let me eat fast food. That’s what I remember the most, when I was young. Breakfast biscuits in the middle of the night.”

The memory is so clear: my mom and dad in the front seat, me and my sister leaning up between them, my mom telling us to buckle up. I pretend to study the sand, lowering myself to one knee, and wipe my eyes.

“It was twenty years before the shells really thinned out,” Ness says. “I mean, they were dying off before. The reefs were dying long before that. Have you ever been to the Great Barrier Reef?”

“No,” I say.

“You should go. Everyone should, as soon as they can. I went when the reefs were at ten percent of their former glory, and I remember thinking before I flew down there, ‘Why bother?’ But you should have seen the reefs then. And if you wait another ten years, you’ll kick yourself for not seeing them now.” Ness points toward something a dozen paces away. “Imperial venus. Still intact. But you’re more of a gastropod girl than a bivalve, aren’t you?”

I find the shell he’s referring to. The two halves are still joined by a sturdy hinge. Shades of pink slide into ivory white. I slide the gorgeous shell into the padded bivalve pouch along the lip of my bag. “I like both,” I say. “I’ve always loved shells. And I can see your point. My dad got real secretive about our favorite shelling spots. And I remember him and my mom arguing about whether it made more sense to stay up until one in the morning or go to sleep early and set alarms for two. It got crazy there for a few years.”

“Exactly. But even my grandfather had memories like that. Back in the eighties, people still got up early on vacation to beat their neighbors down to the beach. Shellers watched the tides. And my dad used to tell me about snorkelers beyond the breakers when he was a kid, swimmers trailing bags of finds behind them—”

“And now people use subs and cranes,” I say. “They mine for them like minerals. They use abandoned oil platforms. Takes the romance out of it, don’t you think?”

Ness inspects a shell on the beach, then places it back where he found it. “I think it can,” he admits. “But not always. One of the most romantic places I’ve ever seen was a gem mine. The way the walls sparkled in our flashlights. Water dripping everywhere. It was industrial, sure, but it was intensely beautiful.”

All I can imagine is it being intense. Overbearing. Then again, the sea is throwing up walls of foam right beside me, roaring like a great, incessant engine, churning up the waters and depositing small finds upon the beach. To me, nothing gets more romantic, more hauntingly lovely, than this setting right here, and yet the surf can be a dangerous and deadly place.

“I don’t want to skip ahead,” I say, “but I’m guessing the murexes didn’t wash up here.”

“This is the first stage of shelling,” Ness says. “Walking the tideline. Picking through whatever is deposited here. The history of what we’ve done to the sea can be told in where we do our shelling. It started on the beach, where a distant abundance of life allowed shells to leak out at the edges. There used to be so much life that it appeared where it was never meant to. You need to see this to understand how my journey started. Because it started with an idea.”

“What idea is that?” I ask.

Ness stops and turns to me. The wind toys with the brim of his hat. He holds up a shell for a moment before tossing it back to the beach. “You and me,” he says. “We collect dead things.”

16

I used to tell Michael until his ears bled all the ways that shelling is the greatest metaphor for relationships. I told him this a thousand times, back when we were married. He got sick of hearing it, but I have hundreds of examples, and now here’s one more: Be careful of the bounty you pine for.

This came to me after my first day of shelling with Ness, which was both the best day of shelling that I’ve ever had and also the most disappointing. Maybe disappointing is the wrong word. How about unsatisfying.

Just as with relationships, you think you know what you want, but once you have it, the hole you thought it would fill is that much bigger. The want is what exists, not the thing we lust after.

I feel very Buddhist, thinking this. I’ve arranged myself in the reading nook at the top of the guest house, my spoils for the day arranged on the bench around me. I washed the sand off them in the sink and dabbed each shell dry with one of the terrycloth towels from the bathroom. None of the specimens are flawless. None are museum-quality. But there are at least four shells here that are in better condition and of rarer variety than any shell I own. And I scooped them all off a single beach in a single afternoon in daylight. The shells in my apartment back home represent two decades of striving. What I collected today was just too easy, and so the victory feels a tad hollow. A little depressing.

The lighthouse to the south swings its beam through the reading nook, and I think back to Jacob Sullivan, my first boyfriend in high school. It’s not our first kiss that I remember, it’s the sudden ownership of a boy that I could kiss at will. The night we made out for the first time—after we had taken a break because of him fumbling for my belt and freaking me out—I remember leaning forward and kissing him on the lips just because I could. Any time I wanted. The forbidden and impossible were now at my beck and call.

So many shells arranged around me. And there’s the knowledge that I could go for more. There’s a beach beyond my door that I won’t have access to forever. There’s a flashlight. My bag. Half a moon. I am dying to lean out for another kiss, to pour goodness into emptiness faster than it can leak out.

But part of me is worried that I can’t take these shells home. Not that I don’t have permission—Ness told me whatever I pick up this week is mine to do with as I please—but that it will break something inside me to add this bounty to what I have labored to collect over the past twenty-odd years. It would be like bringing a harem home to join an otherwise monogamous relationship. The sudden infusion of so much threatens to cheapen the intense enjoyment of so little.

I convince myself that it’s okay, that I can consider this later, even as I decide to go out for more. I grab the flashlight and a light jacket, leave my pajama bottoms on, and work my way down the boardwalk and the flights of stairs. For a moment, I imagine what Ness’s daughter must’ve felt out here that night, alone, as a young child. Ness says the lamps were added to the boardwalk after the event, that he hates the light pollution, but that his ex-wife insisted. And now he just leaves them on.

I wonder if there isn’t some deeper reason that he leaves the lamps burning. The lighthouse throbs against the high clouds, and I think of the signals we put out without knowing, the invitations, the warnings. I think of the way I left my social media status as “married” until a year after the divorce was final. Some part of me wanted Michael to know that it was okay to come back, to watch that reef, that rocky shoreline, that it can be dangerous around here, but look: a clear path to safe harbor. If you choose.

I don’t know what I’m looking for on the beach. Nothing, maybe. In a literal sense. What I hope to see is a blank expanse of sand, exactly what I’m used to, for the world to make sense again. When Michael left, after we lost our child, the suitors were endless. Men I had thought were friends. Coworkers I didn’t know I had. From life in high school and college where dates were nearly impossible to find, to this… scared me. Something was wrong. There were shells everywhere I looked. I assumed they were fake. Lies.

Not much has changed. Abundance frightens me. Or maybe I believe that I only deserve joy when it’s hard to come by.

I’m only a hundred meters down the beach when I see someone heading my way. The bob and weave of a flashlight. Ness and I didn’t talk much over dinner. I was too stunned from the shelling, and he seemed content to leave me to my thoughts. But something changed between us, a sheathing of my sword and a lowering of his shield. An unspoken promise, perhaps, to not play roles this week. To just be.

It was a dangerous sensation. I was reminded over dinner that what I’ve mocked from afar, what I’ve learned to loathe, is only a caricature of Ness. The actual man is just that—a man. However flawed. And it’s hard not to feel something being alone with him. It has nothing to do with what he represents, only that we’re nearly the same age, apparently single, and spending hours alone together along this spectacular beach.

I watch the flashlight approach. All around me are shells scattered in the sand; they flash wet and shine in the beam of my flashlight. I would rather they be pared down to one. A sensible number. The absence of choice. Take these thousand lies and give me one thing that’s real. Something I can cling to, believe in, and trust.

Ness is coming down the walkway for me. He has sought me out while I have gone looking for answers of my own. And I’m in a weakened state, thinking of Michael, of all the opportunities missed, of the sad existence of that lighthouse to the south, spinning its warning, unable to break from its foundations and join the little lights out at sea. Stuck. Dire.

If Ness comes to me and stands too close, I might throw my arms around him. I might cling to him and sob, like a near-drowned sailor who has found a rock. Not because I want him, but because I feel horribly alone here, with the sea crashing at my back, my mind swimming with wine and with recollections, my heart pounding and empty, my emotions strung out like a piano wire.

If he leans into me, I may not resist. I hate myself for this. I loathe myself in that moment, and I know I’ll hate myself even more tomorrow, but I feel in that split second the need to be needed, and I see myself down where the sand is packed and cool, an arm beneath my neck, lips pressed against mine, the lingering scent of coconut and sunscreen and the Merlot we had with dinner, and the mad, selfish, insane desire to be kissed by someone, even him, and told that everything will be all right—

“Ms. Walsh?”

The beam lances me in the face. I recoil and throw my arm up to defend myself.

“Sorry, ma’am.” And the light drops to my feet. “Saw the alarm go off. Thought we were being raided again.”

I catch the glint of a gun before it’s holstered. I see the uniform, the bright buckle, the shield on the chest. It’s the young guard from the second gate. He must work the late shift.

“You should be careful out here,” he tells me. “We get people coming in by boat now and then to take shells. Infrared cameras usually spot them, but all the same it’s not safe to be out here alone.”

I hadn’t thought of this. I’m walking around in the middle of a jewelry store, my flashlight not a beacon of warning but an invitation. “Sorry,” I say.

“I can join you if you like. You lookin’ for anything in particular?”

I don’t know if it’s because of my state or something in the way he says this, something in the way he takes another step toward me, closer than would be comfortable, but this offer sounds like a proposition. He’s either being helpful or coming on to me, and as it tends to work with men, I have no idea which.

“I’m fine,” I say. I no longer feel like shelling. I no longer feel like company. If this man were to touch me, I would scream. His gun makes me feel less safe, not more so. “I was just restless. I think I should go to bed. We’re getting an early start tomorrow.”

I glance up at the main house, where nothing moves.

“You sure?” the guard asks.

“Yeah,” I say. I take a step back toward the boardwalk that leads up to the guest house. “I appreciate it, though.”

“Because Mr. Wilde lets me shell here any time I want. I don’t mind joining you.”

“No, that’s all right. I appreciate it.”

I turn to go. A small beam of light follows me, and another one, larger, arcs across the sky. I am in a dangerous place. I am in a wild place. I wish I could say that reefs were all around me, but the threats I feel all lie within.

17

The following morning, I am awoken by a glowing horizon, by a blooming dawn. No alarm bleeping at six, no traffic noise, no blaring horns or car alarms, no urban cave with curtains closed tight, no headache or grogginess—just the trickling awareness that it is a new day, a slow slide to consciousness, rolling around in fine sheets while the sound of a crashing sea permeates the walls.

It isn’t even six yet, and I’m wide awake and rested. A breeze swirls down from upstairs, where I must’ve left a window open. In the small kitchen, there’s one of those capsule coffee makers. I choose a dark roast and find a mug in the third cabinet I try. Peeking inside the fridge, I find basic staples: milk, eggs, butter, sliced deli meat, cheese. None of it is opened. I’m dying to meet Ness’s housekeeper. Things are seemingly done by magic around here.

While the coffee is brewing, I decide to take a quick shower. The walls of the shower stall are made of transparent bricks the colors of sea glass. I watch the sunrise through them as I soap up and rinse off. It occurs to me that someone on the boardwalk could see my silhouette inside the shower, which makes me feel suddenly exposed. I decide not to care.

I chalk the lack of concern up to my general good mood. And I chalk up the good mood to the great day of shelling the day before. It’s human, I think, to be buoyed by a sudden increase in resources. This is how I try to be clinical about my rising spirits, rather than trust or embrace them. It helps me forget the moment of abject weakness the night before and what might’ve happened if Ness had been the one to find me on the beach.

I towel off and put on a clean bathing suit, a sundress over top. The coffee waits beneath the brewer. I take a sip and find it passable for instant brew. The worrier in me is troubled by how absolutely perfect the first half hour of my day has gone. I expect trouble ahead to balance it all out.

Watching the sunrise from the deck, I cup my mug in both hands and enjoy its warmth. Several gulls cry and chase along the beach, and I try to remember the last time I saw more than one or two sea birds together in the wild. I spot at least four here, a sign of some feeble life in this corner of the sea. I remember being a kid and seeing dozens of birds at a time: high-flying Vs of seagulls and low-gliding pelicans whose wingtips seemed to graze the water. I remember tossing french fries from the aft deck of a ferry once, and not a single fry reaching the ship’s wake; they were gobbled up mid-air by a hovering flock of birds. Years later, on the same ferry, you could toss bread over the rail and nothing would come to claim it. The bread would disappear in the water. Michael told me to stop wasting it.

One of the crying gulls over Ness’s beach tucks in its wings and plummets into the sea, sending up a small geyser. I’m too far away to see whether or not there’s a fish in its beak as it reemerges, but the two birds that immediately give chase let me know breakfast is on. I feel like a child again, witnessing a glimpse of the secret goings-on of Mother Nature. And just as quickly, I’m saddened that such a banal scene has become a rarity to treasure.

There’s a tremble in the wood rail. I turn toward the house to see Ness descending my way. Probably been watching for any sign that I was up. He has two large duffel bags, one on each shoulder, the straps crisscrossed over his chest. They look heavy, just judging by the way they’re pinned to his hips and not swaying. But Ness moves down the steps like they weigh nothing at all.

“Good morning,” he says.

I lift my mug in salute. Ness drops the bags, lifting the straps over his head, and they thud and clank to the deck. “You brought your fins and mask?”

I nod. “Are we going snorkeling today?”

“I had planned to. But something may come up this week that I’ll have to attend to. Just in case, I thought we’d skip ahead to diving.”

“I don’t dive,” I tell him. “Never have.”

“Well, today you start. Have you had breakfast?”

I shake my head.

“Eggs? I’ll make some eggs and toast. You take cheese in your eggs?”

“Sure,” I say.

Ness lets himself inside. I stay on the porch and enjoy the feel of the first rays of sunlight slicing through the morning chill. The air feels dry, the day promising to be warm. I glance down at the duffel bags, butterflies in my stomach. Michael tried to get me certified during our honeymoon in the Caymans. I was too scared to go through with it, chickened out on the side of the pool, said I wanted to spend our honeymoon not feeling any pressure. What I felt the rest of the week was the burn of his disappointment.

Funny how that disappointment made me never want to get certified, even after Michael left, and even though most of my friends dive. So much baggage. Heavier than those duffels with their tanks and all that gear. I watch Ness busy himself in the kitchen, whisking eggs, and consider the decision I need to make. Refuse to get in the water once again? Or, for the sake of the story, soldier through?

For the story, I tell myself. Because I’m a professional. Not because I want to. Not because of any pressure or fear of disappointment. I can’t let this be about that. I can’t be thirty-two, making more of this day—any unimportant day—than I made of my honeymoon nine years ago. But I can’t make the same mistakes, either. I can’t let every opportunity pass me by.

18

After a quick breakfast on the deck, we carry the duffels down to the manmade breakwater and the enclosed bay with the docks and boathouse. I insist on carrying one of the bags. It must weigh fifty pounds once I add my fins, mask, and wetsuit. I let Ness walk ahead of me and thank my Pilates instructor that I’m able to haul the bag without complaint. In fact, I feel strong. Maybe it’s the coffee or the good night of sleep, or the day on the beach, but I feel a power in my limbs. I feel courage and conviction. I’m going to learn to breathe underwater.

Ness leads me across the beach and to the boathouse. At the end of the dock, a metal ramp leads down to a floating platform. The ramp is hinged on both sides so it can move with the tides. There are cleats here for smaller boats to dock up. We set the bags down, and Ness flips a smaller ramp into the water. It’s a beach entry for launching kayaks and the like. I imagine we’ll be walking down this ramp and into the bay.

“A few safety rules,” Ness says. He starts unpacking his bag, and I follow along and do the same with the gear in my bag. “You don’t dive deeper than sixty feet, and you don’t stay that deep for more than ten minutes.”

“How will I know?”

He shows me a fat wristwatch with a black rubber band. “You’ve got one of these in your bag. It shows your depth, how much air you have left, and how long you’ve been diving. I’ll teach you how to use it. Don’t worry, it’s simple.”

“Sixty feet. Ten minutes,” I repeat. I really don’t want to die. I don’t want this story to turn into an obituary. My heart is racing, and it occurs to me that I’m placing my life in the hands of a man I barely trust.

“The most important thing is not to be nervous,” he says, like he can read my mind. “If you’re nervous, you’ll breathe heavy, and you’ll go through your tank in no time. Stay calm and breathe deep, nice and slow, and you’ll be able to enjoy the dive longer.”

I nod. This feels a lot like a piece I wrote years ago, which got me into surfing. I was terrified at first, but I eventually found my footing. The root of a good interview is to throw yourself into someone else’s world with wild abandon. Seek new and scary things. It occurs to me that I could’ve been a better spouse if I’d approached my marriage the way I tackle my work.

Inside the dive bag, I find a black steel tank. The one in Ness’s bag is bright pink. I like that he doesn’t ask to switch, just begins showing me how to hook up what he calls the first stage of the regulator to the tank. He then teaches me how to check the small rubber ring on the tank, make sure there’s no sand or debris there, how to crack the main valve and listen to the hiss of air, and how to blow out any water that might be in the valve. We then begin to hook up the tangle of hoses to the tanks.

“Mine feels loose,” I say. Everything is a worry. A possible danger.

“That’s good. You want it a little loose. It’ll tighten when you open the tank. The air will blow that rubber gasket out.”

That doesn’t sound like a good thing, but I crack the valve, and sure enough, the regulator stiffens where it’s attached to the top of the tank. Ness shows me how to test the air flow from what he calls the “second stage” or “regulator.” I press the button, and the mouthpiece hisses. Ness puts his in his mouth and takes a deep breath. I do the same, not knowing what to expect the air to taste like. It doesn’t. Maybe a little metallic from the tank, or a little plasticky from the hose, but that could be my imagination.

“Okay, second safety rule. When you ascend, you’re always exhaling, okay?”

“Ascending is going up,” I say, knowing this is right but seeking confirmation just in case. My temples are throbbing and it’s hard to think. I really don’t want to die because I assumed something or because I didn’t want to look stupid in front of someone I barely know.

“Correct. When you go down, the pressure of the water around you will compress the air in your lungs and make it take up less volume. But you’ll be filling your lungs with new air. So when you come up, that air is going to expand. As long as you’re breathing out the entire time, that expanding air can’t hurt you.”

I start to say something, but Ness continues. “Don’t worry, we won’t be going deep enough or stay down long enough to get the bends.”

That answers my next question.

“There are a few things that can freak you out when you’re diving, and that’s the regulator coming out of your mouth, your mask filling with water, and losing your sense of which way is up. We’re going to put our tanks on, walk down this ramp, and I’m going to show you how to deal with all three. Twenty minutes of instruction, and you’re going to be a pro.”

Ness smiles, and I believe he’s being sincere, that he knows what he’s doing, that I’m going to live through this day, which started out a bit too perfectly and would be nicely balanced by a gruesome death. In fact, this would be one quick way to put an end to my questions about the shells. I flash to an image of a police boat there at the dock, blue lights flashing, my inert body being hauled up from the break wall, Ness saying he doesn’t know what went wrong. I think back to how calmly he crushed shells that should’ve been worth a fortune. Getting rid of me would be like getting rid of more damning evidence.

“Don’t be scared,” Ness says. I refocus to find that he’s watching me, a look of genuine concern on his face. What I assume is genuine concern.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Just spaced out. What’s next?”

Ness shows me how to attach the tank to something called a BC, then shows me my weight belt, which explains, besides the tank, why the duffel bag was so heavy. I take off my sundress, thinking as I do that at least my sister and Agent Cooper know where I am. Henry, too. No matter what happens, Ness won’t get away with it. And anyway, I’m being paranoid. Unreasonable. Whatever Ness is, he isn’t a killer.

I drill this into my head as I squeeze into my wetsuit, which is an act as awkward and oddly intimate as getting re-dressed past airport security. But Ness is donning his own suit, and he doesn’t glance my way once. He’s either uninterested or a gentleman. And there’s a vast gulf between the two.

“I would’ve thought you’d hire a dive master to be here, doing all this for you,” I tell him.

“I am a dive master,” Ness says.

“No, of course, I assumed you would be, what with your shelling experience. I just mean—”

“You mean hiring someone else to do half-ass what I can do for myself.” He smiles at me.

“I guess. Yeah.” What I really meant was: If you’re trying to murder me, it’s smart not to have witnesses, and I’m on to you, buddy.

“If it makes you feel better, I have Monique packing us a picnic lunch. And Vincent, who takes care of my cars, is going to get the boat ready for us. I don’t do everything around here.”

“Monique?” I ask.

“My housekeeper. You’ve got your valve on? Air flowing?”

I press the button on my regulator, and there’s a loud blast of air. Ness lifts the BC—which is like an uninflated vest that the tank straps to—and helps me get my arms through. There’s a hose that runs from the top of the tank to the vest. Ness shows me what to press to inflate the vest and how to let the air out. With this and the right amount of weight around my waist, he says I can stay level at any depth. And if I need to get to the surface, I can just inflate the vest and enjoy the ride. “Just breathe out the entire time,” he reminds me.

I wonder if I should tell him that when I panic, I tend to either not breathe or hyperventilate. Instead, I tell myself, over and over, to always breathe. To exhale. And to stay fucking calm, Maya, you’re not going to die.

“It’s not deep at the bottom of the ramp, so remember that you can always stand up if you’re uncomfortable for any reason. And I’ll be right there beside you.”

“Okay,” I mumble around my mouthpiece. I get my mask situated. Ness has me leave my fins off for now. Walking carefully—all that weight on my back threatening to topple me over—I follow Ness down the ramp. I don’t understand how people enjoy a sport that involves so much heavy and bulky gear. I feel exhausted already, and I haven’t even started doing the actual diving.

I’m so nervous shuffling down the ramp—the water creeping up my ankles and then my knees—that I don’t notice Ness is holding my hand or that I’m holding his. Or that he’s steadying me, another hand on my shoulder. All I feel is the coolness of the morning sea rising up, the initial shock before my wetsuit fills with water. It takes a moment until the water is trapped and warmed by my body, and then it’s no longer so bracingly cold. I also notice how the weight of all the gear disappears now that I’m in the water. It’s only awkward on dry land, like a fish staggering along on its poor fins.

“When you’re ready, just lower your head beneath the surface and take easy breaths,” Ness says. “It’s just like snorkeling.”

This is not like snorkeling, I want to say. But I can’t scream over my pounding pulse, can’t talk with the regulator in my mouth. Snorkeling is breathing through a plastic tube sticking up in the air. No physics involved. No warnings needed. A child can sort out how that works. This is me strapped to a contraption, a deflated vest on, tubes hanging everywhere, a bulky watch on my wrist blinking with all kinds of numbers. This is not snorkeling.

I descend until my feet leave the ramp and find the sand. The water is up to my chest. Ness is watching me. My visor has already fogged from the nervous heat of my cheeks. I take the mask off, dunk it into the water, consider spitting inside it to keep it from fogging, would normally do this, but not in front of Ness. I put the mask back on. It’s now or never.

“I’m right here,” Ness says softly. “You’ll be fine.”

I nod, gather my courage, and remind myself that people do this all the time. I’m already breathing through the contraption, aren’t I? I realize that I’m breathing a lot. Huffing and puffing. I hear the hiss of my exhalations. I remember what Ness said about being calm, about breathing easy, and I try. I really try.

“Here goes,” I mumble incomprehensibly.

I bend my knees, lower my body, and the water comes up to my neck, and then my chin, and then over my mouth, up my visor, the weights around my waist helping me sink under, until I’m seeing the sand and the rocks and the ramp through my mask. A silver fish flits past, chasing after some unseen breakfast. And I hear a hiss as I breathe in, see bubbles as I exhale, and I’m doing it. I’m breathing underwater. Tears blur my vision. I blink them away. There are clams or some kind of bivalve growing over the rocks that make up the breakwater. Small fish peck at the algae along the rocks, signs of life clinging where it can. An entire world of feeble life surviving here.

And I’m among them. Floating. Face-down. Under the water. Ness’s hands are on my stomach and on my shoulder, steadying me, and I’m breathing. I scoop the water ahead of me, swim forward, allowing myself to drift a little deeper, and even though I’m slowly sinking, it feels like I’m flying.

19

It takes me half an hour to get comfortable removing my mask underwater, putting it back on, and then “clearing it.” This last part requires breathing out through my nose while I pin the top of my mask to my forehead with both hands. The water around my eyes is gradually replaced with exhaled air from the tank. Opening my eyes without being able to reach inside my mask to wipe them feels strange and burns a little, but I survive the ordeal. Ness makes me do it two more times.

He also teaches me how to put the regulator back in my mouth underwater, press the purge button, and start breathing air instead of the Atlantic. It feels weird, the forced blast of air filling my mouth and puffing my cheeks, but I decide I can survive this as well. I feel like an astronaut undergoing emergency NASA training. I’m no longer terrified to get to the beach and do some diving. I’m almost excited. Ness helps me out of the water and up the ramp, when I hear him mention something about getting the boat ready.

“Where are we diving, exactly?” I ask. “Just off the beach, right?”

“No, we’re going a little ways offshore. There’s a great wreck I want you to see and some good shelling spots. Don’t worry, it’s not deep.”

“Sixty feet ten minutes,” I say, partly to myself. I gather my soaked hair into a bun and squeeze the water out. Ness is laughing at my worried mumbling, but he seems tickled by it rather than mocking.

“There’s Vincent,” he says.

I turn and see a man in tan coveralls standing in front of the boathouse. Olive skin, thick mustache, dark hair. He has a real cigarette between his lips, not one of those vapes. He rubs his hands with a white rag. The pointy white bow of a center console is visible inside the open doors of the boathouse, which Vincent must’ve been working on while I was learning how to not drown.

“Boat’s ready, boss,” he calls out, seeing us looking his way.

The entire spectacle of Vincent—with the cigarette and mustache and coveralls—is just too cliché. As is this calling Ness “boss.” The most annoying part of my job as a journalist is when I have to leave out details to make a story more believable. Life has a way of being both more surreal and more predictable than readers can tolerate.

Ness, of course, is oblivious to this. He just waves his thanks.

Beyond the boathouse, a slender woman in a white mid-thigh dress descends the steps from the boardwalk. She has a basket in one hand, a small cooler in the other. “Vincent will get that,” Ness tells me, as I bend to collect our dive gear. “I want you to meet Monique.”

We walk to the boathouse in our dripping wetsuits. I suddenly feel aware of the tight-fitting neoprene. It’s the two people who aren’t wearing dive suits who make me self-conscious. I shake Vincent’s hand as we meet on the boardwalk, and then he heads over to retrieve our duffel bags, tanks, BCs, and the rest of our gear.

“Hey Monique, this is the reporter from the Times I told you about.”

I shake Monique’s hand, noting that Ness has mentioned me before and that I’m “the reporter.”

“Pleased to meet you,” she says. A hint of a French accent. Another detail I would choose to leave out, but I’ve already decided to edit Monique out of the story altogether. I tell myself it’s for the sake of believability.

“Your favorite sandwiches,” she says to Ness. “Fruit. A salad. I put a selection of drinks in the cooler, wasn’t sure what your friend would want.” She smiles at me.

I try to smile back. The annoyance I feel is hard to place—might just be the infernal cattiness I sometimes sink into around women when we first meet, which usually dissipates once we get to know each other. I worry for a moment that my attempt at a smile looks more like a sneer. I’m trying, I swear.

“Sounds delicious,” Ness says, studying the supplies. “You know how famished I get after a dive.”

“Of course,” Monique says. And to me: “Nice to meet you. Good shelling.”

I’d forgotten we were going after shells. The diving and the boat and the introductions have me scattered. I try to remember that this is going to be a perfect day. Not a day for dying. Or being murdered.

Vincent arrives with the gear, and I jump in the boat to take the tanks from him. The smell of the gas engine, the vinyl seats, the rot on the low-tide pilings, the gurgle of the idling outboards, all remind me of days out on the water with my dad. He kept our boat on the grass beside the driveway, and the salt water from the bilge kept a patch of the yard brown and lifeless.

Surprisingly, Ness’s boat isn’t much nicer than the one we grew up with. There’s a small cuddy cabin up front. A bait well in the floor. Dad kept our bait well full of closed cell foam for nestling the shells in. When the shelling was bad, we’d cast nets for bait and come home with fish instead. We weren’t allowed to come home empty-handed. It sometimes meant staying out after dark, which was when he taught me to recognize the lights of the boats on the water. Green over white for trawling. Red over white for fishing. All those twinkling, colorful constellations meant something to my father. The amount of time a buoy flashed—long, short, short—and he knew right where he was.

I miss him powerfully in that moment, standing aboard Ness’s boat, packing away the gear, all these things I did when I was eight that I do now at thirty-two. So much like Dad’s boat that I almost expect to turn and see him there, standing behind the wheel, telling me to cast off the lines, but it’s Ness saying it. He’s as old as my father was when he used to take me out. So young in retrospect, but Dad seemed impossibly ancient to me at the time. I thought I’d never be as old as he was, and yet here I am. And here he isn’t.

“You’re all clear,” I tell Ness, taking the last of the dock lines from Vincent. The mechanic pulls the dangling cigarette from his lips, smiles, and waves bon voyage. Pilings and the walls of the boathouse slide by, and then the low sun hits us again, and we are in the bay, pulling away. Monique and Vincent watch us with shielded eyes before they turn to tidy up.

“Sunscreen,” Ness reminds me. He hands me a bottle, and I start applying it to my face and neck. The wind picks up, and I lean with Ness against the wide bench seat behind the console. I watch him navigate the breakers, and I enjoy the thrum of the deck and the rise and fall of the bow as the sea reaches around the rocks and we race out to meet her head-on.

“That sandbar makes a nice break,” I say, raising my voice over the blat of the outboards and the hiss of the hull against the waves. I gesture toward the beach as we round the seawall; the backs of curling breakers can be seen as they topple and race toward the shore.

“You surf?” he asks.

I nod. “I took it up about ten years ago. It changed the way I shell.”

“Totally,” Ness says. “I’ve always said surfers make the best shellers. No one watches the sea and gets to know her rhythms like surfers do. When you study the breaks, you get to know what the world is like beneath all that water—”

“You can see where the pockets are,” I say, finishing his thought. “You can picture what the reef looks like. Where the crags are and how the shells tumble in and get caught up. If it were me, I’d snorkel right out behind that point—” I gesture toward the natural jetty to the south.

“It’s a good spot,” Ness says. “If we weren’t skipping snorkeling, I would’ve taken you there.” He leans back, steering with just two fingers on the wheel, the lightest of touches. “This is the progression of my journey, really. As shells get harder and harder to find, we have to chase them back to the source. We can’t rely on them to wash up the beach. This is the path that led me to your shells—”

“The murex?” I ask. “Is that where we’re going today?”

“No,” Ness says. “Today is about showing you a phase of my journey. Trust me. You want to write your piece in installments, allow me to do the same.”

I feel like he’s punishing me, drawing it out like this. Getting back at me for my series of planned articles about his family.

“Diving is different than snorkeling, anyway. It’s too deep to read the swell. So we rely on instruments.” He indicates the depth meter and fish finder. The latter reveals the depths in a jagged line that must mean more to him than it does to me. “Knowing where to dive is the hard part,” he says. “In a lot of places, the sand moves under there. It’s different every day. And each year, we have to go deeper and deeper to get the good shells before someone else does. We have to fight over what few shells remain.”

“Soon we’ll be finding the loves of our lives in grade school,” I say.

Ness turns and studies me, his brow wrinkled in confusion, and I realize that I spoke out loud.

“Do what?” he asks.

“It’s… I have this thing about shelling and relationships,” I say. I imagine Michael up at the bow, looking back at me and rolling his eyes. But the analogy is too good to leave be. “What you just said, about getting to the shells early, it made me think of another way that shelling is like love. Shelling along the beach, grabbing the remnants, that’s like dating people our age, you know? People in their thirties and forties. They’re all roughed up. Late catches.”

Ness laughs. Really laughs. He slaps the steering wheel. “So snorkeling would be like dating in college,” he says.

“Or maybe at work,” I offer. “Diving would be like dating in college. If you don’t find someone early, all the good ones are gone. Just like with shells.”

Ness nods. I make a mental note of this metaphor. Michael would absolutely loathe it. I’ll have to email it to him.

“Shelling is like relationships,” Ness says. He turns away from me and scans the beach, makes an adjustment with the wheel. “I can see that.” He nods to himself. “Yeah, I can totally see that.”

20

I watch the shore recede until it becomes a thin, dark line. Only the lighthouse remains distinct, a finger of black jutting up from an outcrop not far from Ness’s estate. There is a gentle undulation to the sea, a rhythmic swell. The outboards roar. We pass patches of drifting seagrass. In the distance, a handful of birds trace lazy circles against the sky, signs of sporadic life in this watery wilderness.

Finally, Ness throttles back and the bow dips. The boat slows. We are in a patch of sea that looks like any other on the surface, but I see Ness studying the GPS, which shows our boat as a small triangle on top of a classic symbol for a shipwreck: a curved hull with what might be a sail-less mast but looks more like a cemetery cross.

“I thought you said it was just offshore,” I say. Ness reverses the throttle briefly to kill our speed, then looks back toward land.

“Seven miles,” he says. “Practically on the beach.”

He goes forward to toss out the anchor. I slide over into his spot and study the GPS. The large screen shows the depth of the water in feet. Right by our position, the numbers range from 70 to 120. There’s a steep ridge here. The water is much deeper toward land before rising back up again. If all the oceans were stripped away, these would be rolling hills overlooking a majestic valley. Instead, it’s a world invisible, the contours seen only in a scattering of numbers and covered over by fathoms of blue dirt.

“You said earlier that I shouldn’t dive deeper than sixty feet,” I point out. Maybe it’s the shipwreck symbol or my bout of paranoia earlier, but I have a bad feeling about this plot of sea. Like something awful will happen here.

Ness throws out the anchor and watches as coil after coil of rope zips over the rail. When the line begins to slide away lazily, he cinches it off on a cleat. I remember helping my father do that. It was my job on the boat. Here, I’m an anxious spectator.

“It’s a little over eighty to the bottom,” he says. “You don’t have to go that far. The wreck sits up off the sea floor, so it’s less than sixty down to the conning tower. Besides, there’s not much good shelling this shallow unless you get pretty remote. It’s all been picked over. But you can see the wreck, and if you’re comfortable hanging out for a few minutes at depth, I can show you where I used to make my finds.”

“I thought you’d be with me the whole time.”

“I will. If you don’t feel comfortable, we can come right back up. Just give me this sign.” Ness points straight up. “Do it with both hands, if possible. If you don’t feel like you’re getting air for any reason, do this.” He makes a choking gesture.

“Comforting,” I say.

“And if everything is okay, give the okay sign. If you give me a thumbs-up, I won’t know if you’re doing great or you want to go up to the boat.”

“Sixty feet, ten minutes,” I tell him.

“It’s a guideline,” Ness says. “Don’t worry if you go a little below that or stay down fifteen minutes. It gives you a lot of leeway. We won’t be long, and we’ll come up nice and slow, maybe even make a couple safety stops just to make my dearly departed dive master happy.”

“Whatever’s the safest, that’s what I want to do.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll be perfectly safe. Trust me.”

I try to. He and I drag our duffels to the stern of the boat and begin setting out the gear. There’s a small door on one side of the outboards and a narrow dive platform. I figure out how to work the door, and I kick the stainless steel ladder hinged to the platform into the water. Somehow, effecting my doom lessens the worry. Nerves are like carsickness: I get less nauseated if it’s my hands on the wheel.

Ness starts prepping his tank, and I do the same with mine, repeating the steps I learned just an hour or so ago. I appreciate that he lets me do it myself, but I make sure he’s keeping an eye on me. I assume he’ll tell me if I do anything wrong. When I crack the valve on the tank, there’s a brief sputter of air, and then the rubber gasket catches tight.

“Let’s get your weight belt on,” Ness says, “and then your tank. You can sit on the platform to do your fins and mask.”

I look at the platform. It’s only wide enough for one person at a time.

“I’m not going in first,” I say. This is a statement of fact. Not a complaint. Or question. Or suggestion. To my editor, I would say that this has been properly vetted. It is a true thing. I am not getting in this water, nearly out of sight of land, all alone.

“You’ll be fine. Ladies first, right? I’ll be in right after y—”

“No, not ‘ladies first,’ Ness Wilde. Not ladies first. I am not getting in this ocean before you do. Do you hear me? I’m dead serious.”

Ness studies me for a moment, and I can’t tell how this is going to go down, if we’ll have to take the boat back to the dock, if I’ll have to sit here while he dives alone, if I’ll end up snorkeling, which would be damn fine with me. But then he smiles, and it feels like the most genuine smile I’ve seen from him. The happiest I’ve seen him. Me telling him he’s dead wrong about this me-getting-in-the-water-first business that he’s suggesting.

“Okay. We’ll get you situated on the dive platform, and I’ll go over the side. We’ll make it work. I’ll be in the water waiting for you.”

I barely hear what he’s saying. It takes a moment to process. But my pulse eventually stops pounding in my ears, and the sun doesn’t beat down quite so hard. I realize I’m sweating inside my wetsuit, which is soaking up the summer morning heat. I finally nod and agree to his plan. He helps me cinch the heavy weight belt around my waist, then lifts my BC, and I get my arms through, do the buckles myself. Ness has me sit on the edge of the swim platform, my legs dangling in the water, and I put my fins on one at a time. I dip my mask in the water, and not wanting to take chances with it fogging, I say screw it and spit on the inside of the lens and rub it around, just like my mom taught me. I dunk the mask again to rinse it and put it on my forehead, then turn to see how Ness is going to get in around me.

He already has his BC on. Balancing on one leg at a time, Ness kicks on each of his fins standing up, the boat rocking gently beneath us. He grabs his mask, tests his air, and then sits on the side of the boat, his back to the water.

“See you in heaven,” he says. And then he rocks back, tipping dangerously, his tank and the back of his head flying toward the water, and I can’t see around the edge of the boat, but there’s a mighty splash, and I’m wondering what in the world he meant and if I can figure out how to crank the boat and get back to the dock by myself, when Ness bobs up by my feet, pulls his regulator out of his mouth, and flashes that famous smile.

“That seemed violent,” I say.

He holds the platform beside my thigh to steady himself. “Don’t try to go in slow,” he says. “You’ll hit your tank on the platform, or you’ll hit your head on the outboard. You want to fall forward. Tuck a little bit and hold your mask to your face with both hands so it doesn’t fall off. Look to the side if that makes you feel better.”

This feels dumb. Like the worst way to get in the water ever. I start to ask if I can’t just turn around and descend the ladder, but I’ve spent enough of my life in fins to understand how poorly that would work. I trust him. Maybe not with anything else, not with the fate of the world, or with the truth, but I trust him in this moment not to get me killed. I fully appreciate the insanity of this paradox, but I accept it anyway. And letting go of the boat, and a decade of fear, and all the thoughts and worries that plague me, and my concern for my mortal coil, and any connection I have with the world above the sea or with the cosmos that sustains me, I tip forward and crash into the Atlantic Ocean, and she wraps me in her soft embrace.

21

All I see are bubbles—both from the turbulence of my entry and my panicked exhalations. The regulator is half out of my mouth. I wrestle it back in. And then the buoyancy of my suit and my frantic kicking and remembering what Ness taught me by the dock about bubbles going up—and I break the surface, sputtering and cursing and spitting out my regulator to take in huge gulps of air.

“Not bad,” Ness says. His hands are under my arms. I almost feel lifted out of the water by his steady kicking beneath the surface. But from the waist up, he is still and calm. I cling to his neck for a moment, then force myself to tread water with my arms. As a defense mechanism, I remind myself that he’s done this with a hundred reporters over the years. This is new and dangerous for me but not for him.

“How the hell are we supposed to get back in the boat?” I ask. The white fiberglass hull bobbing in the sea beside us looks like the snowy face of Everest. I am already imagining us dying here, that we forgot some crucial step. Like a crane, or a handful of stout deckhands.

“We shed the tanks in the water,” Ness says, still holding me with one hand. “Don’t worry. I promise, everything’s gonna be okay. Now, do you want to swim around a bit? Breathe through your regulator?”

I spit and sputter as one of the small swells rocks the boat and spray kicks up in my face. My mask is fogging. Repeating in my head are the words: I told you so I told you so I told you so. Bad idea, Maya. Dumb idea.

“Swim toward the bow with me,” Ness says. “I want to check the anchor.” He fishes my regulator out of the water, hits the button to expunge some air, and presses it into my hand. I bite down on the mouthpiece and take hissing lungfuls of air. As another swell lifts me up—and my head begins to sink down below the surface—I emit a half-swallowed scream. I’ve snorkeled a thousand times in my life without ever feeling panicked. It’s the heavy weights around my waist. The wetsuit, which I hate wearing anyway. The tank and the tangle of hoses. All are conspiring to drown me—

“Right here,” Ness says. “Look at me.”

He holds my head, a palm on either side of my face, steadying me but also forcing me to look at him, mask to mask.

“You can breathe,” he tells me. “Up here, down there, on the moon, anywhere. Just breathe.”

I try. My hands are around his wrists. He is not a person, not the subject of a story, not a mentor nor a guide. He is a small island. I cling to him.

“Ready?” he asks.

I nod as much as his hands will allow. I blink back tears of worry.

“Here we go.”

Ness stops supporting me, and I don’t fight the sinking. A part of me is resigned to my fate. I know in this instant that I will die here, and some truncated and indiscernible version of my life flashes before my eyes, just like they say it does. I see my parents, and then my sister. I see a beach that is somehow the sum of all the beaches I’ve ever visited. A memory of driving with the windows down, music blaring, hair whipping in my face. I see a newspaper with my byline. And then the water covers the regulator in my mouth, covers my mask, closes over my head, and a miracle happens. The impossible. The turbulence and noise and rocking boat and beating sun are replaced with a near-silence. A near-weightlessness. A floating of mind and body. I breathe in and out, just like by the dock, and air fills my lungs. Bubbles flow. I make another odd sound, a muffled squeal of delight, a noise like I’ve heard dolphins make, because I’m doing it. I’m diving. Floating in the great and wild open sea.

Ness holds my hand, and for a moment, I think he’s going to guide me around like this, but he’s pointing at my wrist, showing me the face of my dive watch. The depth gauge reads ten feet. I glance up, and the surface of the sea is a shimmering wall of quicksilver overhead. White foam spits around the hull of the boat as it rocks in place. The outboards jut down with bright props like old-timey circulating fans. Ness points toward the bow of the boat. The mooring line is there, angling through the water, and I can see the anchor lying on the sand far below. He kicks toward the line and motions for me to follow. I do. I also fumble for the air fill controls on the BC and experiment with adding air and releasing it again, getting a feel for how it controls my depth. I keep a nervous eye on the readout, both to see how deep I am and also how much air I have left. Between my lessons earlier and getting off the boat just now, I’ve already used a third of my tank.

When we reach the anchor line, I grab hold of it, eager to have something solid to cling to, some way of knowing I’m not sinking nor bobbing toward the surface. Ness flashes the okay sign as a question, and I flash it back in response. He motions for me to stay there. Okay, I signal. He turns and kicks to descend down the line, and I notice the wreck for the first time, this great and unnatural manmade form resting on the seafloor. It looks like a container ship, lying almost on its side. A giant steel reef, portholes unblinking like the eyes of the drowned.

No… not a container ship, I see. The deck where the metal boxes would go is laced with thick pipes and large round hatches. It’s a tanker. I know this wreck. The name is on the tip of my tongue. And then I see that the name is also there on the side of the ship, faded but still legible: The Oasis.

This tanker went down before I was born, was en route to the Saint Lawrence Seaway when it broke up in heavy seas. It’s part of a long list of oil tanker disasters in US waters: Argo Merchant, Bouchard, Valdez, Mega Borg, Westchester, Eagle Otome, Oasis, Shinyu, Aponia. I can only remember the names if I recite them in order, sing-song, like we learned in grade school eco class. And here it is below me, an ignoble piece of history. But it looks so calm. The water is crystal clear, the destruction a memory. Fish swirl around the ship, an explosion of life, like bugs swarming a rotting corpse.

Ness checks the anchor and swims back up to me. Okay? he asks. Okay, I signal. He points at the wreck. Okay, I signal again. This is the extent of my underwater vocabulary. In truth, I’m far better than okay. I’m dizzy with excitement. I don’t know that I would have the words even if I were able to write them. We have entered an inhospitable and alien world, and I can survive here.

I kick after Ness, and we float down over a large school of what look like amberjack. The fish undulate as one—the most fish I’ve seen in a single school in the wild. Only in aquariums do fish like this exist. As we pierce the school, they seem to divide and meld around us. We continue down, my wrist telling me thirty, forty, fifty. We’re now level with the jutting tower of the Oasis. The deck is much farther below, but I won’t be going any deeper. I swim toward the tower, which is at a lean. Several of the windows are busted out. There are fish inside, and barnacles along the hull. There’s more reef here than I’ve seen practically anywhere since I was a child. More sea life than I’ve ever seen in one place. Ness signals for me not to go any deeper, and I see that I’ve drifted down to sixty-five feet. I put some air in my BC and check my tank supply. I also check the time. We’ve been in the water for twelve minutes. I could stay forever. I could live here.

Ness descends further. He slides down the sheer cliff of steel to the sand floor, where a scattering of rocks and kelp-like plants break up the desert sameness. I watch him search along the base of the wreck. Only a few minutes left to enjoy this. I kick toward the tower until I can reach out and touch the barnacle-rough rail. A monster fish swims past one of the windows, and I grunt a veil of bubbles. A reef shark. The black mark on the tip of its fin tells me what kind. They feed at night, I hear my father say, consoling me.

The black-tip reef shark disappears into the tower, and I decide to back off. Only a quarter of my tank left. A few more minutes down here, that’s all I have. I search below for Ness and see him rising up to join me, trailing a veil of bubbles. Together, we kick toward the surface, this thing I’ve avoided all my life taken away from me far too abruptly. I remember to exhale as we ascend. I exhale the entire way up, letting out this swelling breath that I’ve held for years and years.

22

“That was amazing,” I say as soon as we reach the surface. “Unbelievable. Like being a fish.”

Ness treads water beside me. He has me inflate my BC and then helps me unbuckle the clasps and shrug off all the dive gear. The tank and all the hoses float on the surface of the water. I see how it works now, and also why you don’t get in without putting the gear on first. Sorting it out in the swell would be a pain in the butt.

He holds my tank for me while I kick off my fins and sling them into the boat. Now it’s just like snorkeling, and I’m a pro. I haul myself up the swim ladder, hold the boat with one hand, and take my tank and BC from Ness. When he gets his off, I take that as well. I feel like an equal partner in the dive now. I’m ready to go again. I want to know when I can go again. And deeper next time. Stay down longer. I have a fever for this. It’s more immediately addictive even than surfing.

Ness throws his fins into the boat, has his mask up on his forehead, and climbs up to join me. “How was it?” he asks.

“Over too quick,” I say. “I want to do it again.”

“You should get certified.”

“I will.” And I plan to. I’ll even let Michael know. Maybe see if he’d want to go on a dive sometime. As friends. I’d like that.

Ness hits a switch on the console and pulls up one of the hatches to the livewells. Water is gushing inside, filling the area where the bait is kept. I watch as he lowers a canister into the pool of water and releases something. A shell. A fly-specked cerith. Tiny. I have to stoop to see it. And then I see the pink foot of the slug inside.

“It’s alive,” I say.

“Oh, yeah,” Ness says, watching the creature. “Ceriths have done well around here. There’s a professor at Stanford who spends a few weeks every summer on this wreck. She says the spill set these puppies up for success in the ocean we have today. They adapted to a toxic environment that’s becoming more and more the norm. In a weird and tragic way, the wreck and the spill were good things. She’s had a hard time getting her papers published, of course. Nobody wants to hear about the life around the ship.” Ness closes the hatch.

“This isn’t the sort of shelling I thought we’d be doing,” I say.

“I’ll show you another spot on the way in,” Ness promises. “We can switch tanks and I’ll just free dive. There’s a fissure a mile off the beach where the good shells get trapped. Still some museum pieces along there. Nobody else has found the spot yet. Of course, I’ll have to blindfold you if you want to go.”

“Absolutely,” I say. And I’m pretty sure he’s kidding about the blindfold.

“Are you hungry?” he asks.

It’s not yet eleven, but I’m starving. Boats and sun and swimming do that to me. “Famished,” I say. I watch as Ness unzips his wetsuit and peels it down to his waist, allowing the empty arms to dangle. It’s impossible not to admire his physique. Ness has a swimmer’s body: powerful arms, shoulders that taper to a narrow waist. Tan and lean like a surfer. The boat sways beneath us.

“Tahitian black pearl,” he tells me.

“I’m sorry?” I shake my head and meet his gaze.

Ness touches the small object around his neck, held there by a leather cord. It’s the necklace I caught a brief glimpse of the other day. “It’s a black pearl,” he says. “From Tahiti. You looked like you were unsure.”

“No, that’s what I thought it was,” I say, pretending that was indeed what I had been looking at. I step closer. The pearl is oblong and puckered on one end. Imperfect. A hole has been drilled through it, the cord knotted on either side.

“Probably not worth five dollars,” he says. “But I found it on a dive with my mom. It was one of our last days together.”

I don’t have to ask. I know the story. His mother died in a boating accident in the Pacific. It’s the first time I think about what we have in common, that he might have been just as scared to go on without her as I was to live a day without my mom. Ness turns away from me and pulls the cooler and the basket out from one of the storage benches.

“Let’s eat,” he says.

I grab my sunglasses, squeeze the water out of my hair, unzip my wetsuit, and cinch the sleeves around my waist. I make sure my bikini top is in place. The small boat bobs up and down on the gathering swell, and birds circle nearby, showing us where the wreck is. The Oasis. A ship mocked for its name back when it was full, but now living up to that moniker in the form of an empty shell.