The Ocean Dark

50

Tired but grateful to be home, Alena Boudreau unlocked the door to the brickfront row house on M Street. It had been her residence since 1975, when her father had passed away and she had taken the money from the sale of her parents’ house in New Hampshire, given up her apartment, and decided to make a permanent home for herself and her daughter in Washington, DC. A decade or so later, Marie had graduated college and had a child of her own, and the two women had raised the boy, David, together.

Marie lived in California now, where she worked for a green energy company, and she kept in touch only sporadically. When she did bother to call or e-mail, Marie always made sure to express her disapproval of David’s choice to work with his grandmother. Even as a teenager, she had never been able to accept that her education, her clothes, even her meals, had been paid for by money her mother earned in the employ of the U.S. government, and the idea that her son now used his brilliance toiling for the same paymasters got under Marie’s skin. Sometimes Alena thought his mother’s irritation was what kept David working for the DOD.

From the time Marie had been ten or eleven years old, Alena had understood that she and her daughter were wired differently, and she had spent years trying to find a common ground between them so that they could enjoy each other’s company instead of grating on each other’s nerves. Alena still hadn’t found that common ground, and it hurt her heart, but so much time had gone by that she tried her best not to think about it now.

She had David. Or she had him as much as anyone did. They were very much alike, she and her grandson, but that also meant that they were two people of very solitary nature still living under the same roof. He would go, eventually; Alena was resigned to that. David could not live in the shelter of his family forever. When the day came, it would be bittersweet. But for now, Alena liked having her grandson around almost as much as she appreciated having someone of his intellect with whom she could share ideas and theories.

She stepped into the house, set down her travel bag, and dropped her keys on the little table at the bottom of the stairs. As she closed the door, she frowned — there were lights on, which meant David was home, but not the slightest scent of cooking lingered in the house.

Alena smiled indulgently and shook her head. She and David both lost themselves in work far too frequently, and much too completely. But Alena rarely became so distracted that her growling stomach couldn’t budge her, while David often had to be reminded to eat.

She climbed the stairs, passing by her own quarters on the second floor. They had arranged the house this way when David had been an infant, he and his mother taking the third floor and Alena the second, each with their own bedrooms, bathrooms, sitting rooms, and offices. The first floor consisted of a kitchen, a dining room, and an old-fashioned parlor, where grandmother and grandson often played cards with the news on in the background. When they were wrestling with an intriguing puzzle, trying to make sense of what their research had discovered, the rhythm of poker often eased their minds, let their subconscious thoughts consider the puzzle at hand.

Their real offices were elsewhere, of course, but much of the contemplation that went into their investigations happened when they weren’t surrounded by other people, bright lights, and ringing phones.

Outside the windows, the wan light of early evening had begun to retreat. Night would fall soon, but David would not have noticed. She reached the third floor and turned right, knowing exactly where to find him. The door to his office stood open, a pile of books stacked against it to keep the breeze from the open windows from blowing it shut. David’s office seemed to get the least sunlight of any room in the house, and she thought he liked it that way. The shade on the single window always hung halfway down. He kept a green glass banker’s lamp on his desk and two brass floor lamps with hand-painted rose crystal globes around the bulbs. They looked almost like gas lamps.

David wasn’t at his cluttered desk. The computer screen, dormant and unattended, showed fish swimming back and forth. Rather, he stood over a long oak table on the other side of the room, examining maps spread out beneath a hanging stained-glass lamp that would have looked more at home in a pool hall. The only thing it shared in common with the others was its antique status; David had little room in his life for material things, but had somehow acquired a love for antique glass lamps.

Though he dressed impeccably in crisp jeans and a tailored shirt, her grandson kept himself stylishly ungroomed, his hair artfully ruffled and his chin stubble trimmed so short it seemed almost the ghost of a beard. That he cared about such things always surprised her, particularly when he wouldn’t take the time to eat.

The wall beyond the table looked like something from a police detective’s squad room, covered with newspaper clippings whose headlines announced missing boats and vanished travelers. She recognized pages and photographs from the files of two cases from her own past, one off the coast of Africa and the other a remote island in the South Pacific. David had been along with her for the latter, at the age of seventeen, and had never quite recovered from the things he had seen. Alena understood the reaction; she had felt much the same after that African case. The details remained fresh in her mind even though the events had occurred in September 1967.

The original discovery, in the sixties, had been unsettling enough. Far more so when a second similar site had been found on an uncharted South Pacific island just eight years ago. The coincidence had been too much for David, and now he spent every spare moment scouring news reports and maritime journals for evidence of additional sites, even as they both prayed he would never find one.

“I’m sure you haven’t eaten. Why don’t we get some dinner?” Alena said. “Il Bacio. My treat.”

As if waking from a trance, David blinked and turned to look at her. Then he smiled in that disarming way he had perfected as a child. Turned away from the lamp, his blue eyes seemed almost luminescent in the gathering gloom.

“Alena, how did you get here?”

“Teleported,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “What do you think? Airplane. They fly, you know.”

“Don’t tell me the general rushed you home to look at hobbit weaponry.”

She laughed. “What are you talking about?”

He smiled in return, finally seeming to become aware of his surroundings, then pulled away from the items he had unrolled on the table. Alena saw now that they were not maps but maritime charts.

“Never mind,” David said, waving the comment away. He came over and kissed her cheek. “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Looks like you’ve been avoiding the office,” she observed.

He nodded, gaze drifting back to the charts. He often lost himself in them, and his brow grew troubled every time. David reached out and picked up a small rock, no larger than a baseball, that had been holding down one side of a chart. The paper curled up when he lifted the weight off it.

“What do you make of this?” he asked, placing it in her hand.

Alena got a little queasy feeling in her belly as she went to the table to examine the rock in the light, turned it over in her hands, ran her fingers over the smooth, glassy black surface.

“I think it’s exactly what you think it is. Where did it come from?”

“A Dominican fisherman dragged that and some larger pieces up in nets he wasn’t supposed to be using, somewhere in the Caribbean. I’ve only got a vague idea of where they were found.”

“When was this?”

David looked sheepish. “1982.”

Alena sighed and nodded. “Decades ago.” She set the rock back down on the table and reached out to touch his cheek. “Your eyes are red and I can practically hear your stomach shrinking. You need rest and food, and I would really like a nice veal saltimbocca and a glass of red at Il Bacio. Come, have dinner with your grandmother. I’ll tell you about the Donika Cave.”

“I am a little hungry, but …” He hesitated and looked back at the charts on the table.

“1982, David. If there’s a third island there, it’s waited this long to be discovered. One more night won’t make a difference.”