The Shell Collector

23

I have underwater dreams that night. Dreams of reefs and caves and swirling sharks. But they are peaceful dreams. I am not drowning. I am flying, and the ocean is the sky. Beyond the ocean, the old sky is some inhospitable realm, some outer space. Only the flying fish and the dolphin dare leap so high. For the rest of us below the sea, that shimmering plane is our ceiling. We catch wavering glimpses of people peering down at us from the other side. We pay them no mind.

When I wake, I realize I’ve slept later than I did the day before. Partly out of exhaustion, I think. Partly because I don’t want to leave these dreams. And partly because of the hypnotic beat of the rain on the metal roof above.

The sun is already up, but the sky is a dark and heavy gray. This is the antithesis of what I saw the morning before. Yesterday began with perfection and ended with dinner on the dune deck, a moonlit night, another incredible bottle of wine from Ness’s cellar. Is this storm an omen of what today might bring?

Rain patters the roof and hisses against the windows in gusty sheets. A trickle of a breeze descends from the widow’s watch, and I remember that I cracked a window up there the night before. Throwing the sheets off, I rush up in my underwear and crank the window shut. The floor is wet. I move some of the books around, see a copy of Treasure Island, and set that aside to look at later. Grabbing a towel from downstairs to mop up the rain, I imagine that this is when Ness will appear, with me dashing around a glass house in a pair of full-bottomed cotton panties and no bra. I dry the floor and hurry back down to get a robe on. Glancing up the boardwalk toward the house, I see no movement, no sign of Ness. The rain is torrential. Maybe we’re waiting it out.

I asked over dinner the night before what the plan was for today, if it involved more diving. “In a way,” Ness had cryptically answered. He refused to tell me details of our plans and reminded me of my promise not to skip ahead. All he would say, again, was that we were following a natural progression in his discovery of the lace murex shells. I told him I needed to know if that journey ended with us breaking the law, that I didn’t want to be any part of that. Ness had grown quiet. Dour. He said I could leave any time I wanted, that he would make no such promises.

After dinner, I considered calling Agent Cooper to check in, to let him know that Ness seemed sure of himself, that he seemed to be leading me somewhere, and that he had twice now somewhat admitted that what he was doing was illegal. Instead, I wrote some notes in my laptop up in the widow’s watch, jotting down memories for my piece before they faded with time. But the writing session turned into journaling. It turned into an admission of my wavering certainty.

The shells were obvious fakes, but the motive doesn’t make any sense. Ness has more money than God, more status than most politicians, and more notoriety than any film star—and he seems to care little for any of it. What he has in spades is a passion for the sea—a passion I’m very familiar with. Perhaps the shells are a way of sharing that passion? Educational tools? But that’s even more ridiculous. It’s too much trouble, and it doesn’t explain the shock I saw on his face when I pulled out that box, or the hurt he felt at his friend having taken the shells from him.

The ornate and intricate way he’s going about giving me the answer—this retracing of some journey that led him to the shells—is a hint. He’s putting off the inevitable. Delaying. And yet his enthusiasm seems genuine. So Ness either has some master plan, or the man has no grip on reality. I came here wanting to believe the latter, but last night I confided to my journal that the former was at least some dim possibility.

No matter what, I can already feel sadness at having to leave this place, this beach, this small home on the dunes. I was hesitant and wary of coming here, but now the estate has its claws in me.

I start coffee and take a quick shower, the sea-glass bricks muted this time by the dark clouds outside. The handful of ingredients in the fridge force me to cook eggs-in-a-hole, a staple of my youth. With a tall glass, I punch out a perfect circle in two slices of bread, butter up both sides, then throw them in a pan and crack an egg in each hole. The removed discs of bread get toasted with a lot of butter. There’s no jam in the fridge, but I find honey in a cabinet. Fending for myself makes this place feel a little mine. I dream of spending a month here to work on that novel I keep saying I’ll finish. I wonder if every journalist who has ever stayed the night has thought the exact same thing.

Still no sign of Ness. I eat at the small table by the window, propping open Treasure Island by tucking one side of the book under the edge of my plate and laying a knife across the other. The rain is violent. I can easily imagine the sea storm described in the book. The house becomes a rocking ship, and it’s hard to say if the sounds of the crashing waves are out beyond my door or in my imagination. I glance down at the beach, and that’s when I see the note.

It’s inside a plastic bag, which has been wedged between the doors. I never locked up the night before—the note must’ve been wedged there while I slept. I retrieve it, pat the bag dry on my robe, and sit on the edge of the bed to read. I glance at the signature first to make sure it’s from Ness. It is.

Phone numbers for Monique and Vincent are jotted below his name. I feel a roller coaster of emotions. First comes the disappointment that whatever he had planned for the day has been called off. But then I taste the excitement of open potential, of a day with absolutely nothing to do. I haven’t had one in ages. I could sit on the bench upstairs and read a novel all day. I could write. I could say damn the rain and put on my wetsuit and go for a snorkel to add to my collection of shells. The boundless opportunities have me seeing this as a blessing in disguise. A vacation within a vacation. I could easily not leave this little house perched on the dunes until the sun goes down. I can subsist on toast and eggs.

But a glance up at the main house crushes any such fantasy of me taking a day off. There’s a reason I haven’t taken one in ages. My mind won’t stop spinning, assembling my next story, and while the healthy thing to do would be to stay in and rest, to not set foot in that house, it would be unprofessional of me not to go up there. A dereliction of my duty as a reporter and a missed chance to make up to Agent Cooper for losing the shells. Ness has formally invited me to make myself at home, to rummage through his movie collection—and who knows what else.

I check the time. Not even seven yet. The note says he’ll be back after lunch. I could go snoop for two hours without any chance of seeing him. And even if I do, he has invited me in. This is as big a mistake with journalists as it is with vampires.

Hanging my robe up to dry, I pull on shorts and a t-shirt, stuff I don’t mind getting wet. I’ll find a towel up at the house. The side door is more out of the wind, and I’m just steeling myself for the dash across the boardwalk when I consider the chances Monique will show up to tidy the main house and catch me poking around. I turn and grab Ness’s note. My hall pass.

I feel invincible. The journalist in me can’t believe my good fortune. Carte blanche in the inner sanctum of the subject of my exposé, and the prime suspect in an FBI investigation into shell forgery. I can hear Henry and Cooper both urging me along, rooting for me, grins on their faces.

I wait for the next gust of wind to pass. Sheets of rain roll in like an ocean swell. A hiss moves down the side of the house, and I slip through the door and run, bare feet slapping through puddles, wind and rain pushing at my back, feeling a temptation to squeal from the cold and from how quickly I’m absolutely drenched.

Mindful of slipping, I keep a hand on the rail. Up one flight of steps, across another boardwalk, and then the three steep flights to the covered deck—past the landing with the lounge chairs and fire pit, past the al fresco dining table—until I’m in the would-be shelter of the house’s generous overhang. But the sideways reach of the heavy wind whips the rain across my back even here.

I don’t have time to contemplate, to knock, to peek inside. I test the door, find it unlocked, and hurry through. Fighting the shoving of a fierce gust, I manage to get the door closed behind me.

Dripping wet and shivering, I call for Ness and then Monique. No answer. My shirt is soaked, and I see that the dark bra was a poor choice. My legs are covered in goose bumps. The AC and my wet clothes threaten to turn me into a giant ice cube as a puddle begins to form at my feet.

I hurry to the guest bath and find just a sink and a toilet. There’s a small and useless hand towel threaded through a ring—the decorative kind you can never tell if you should actually use. The kind that barely absorbs water anyway.

I look elsewhere. The house is a maze. I’ve only seen parts of it: the overhang room, the main hall, the foyer, the kitchen. A breezeway leads off to another wing. The windows are all closed, turning the breezeway into a sheltered glass hall. I follow it, leaving wet footprints behind me, hoping to find guest quarters with proper bathrooms and proper towels. This is already going badly. But it’ll be a long time before Ness returns. I hope.

At the end of the hall, I pass through a reading room. Bay windows jut out toward the sea. There are shells everywhere: on the walls, in glass cabinets, decorating every surface. Shelling books are scattered on a table. There’s an open sketchbook with a detailed drawing of some torus. I can look later. My teeth are chattering. I need to find a thermostat and turn off the AC.

Past the reading room, I enter a bedroom twice the size of my entire apartment. It has its own sitting area with a fireplace, a breakfast nook, a desk in a far corner, matching Tahitian-style furniture, and flowing white drapes that frame a view of the beach. I can see why the house is arranged as a scattering of joined rooms along the dunes. Every room has a sweeping view of the sea.

Through a door on the far side of the room, I pass through a walk-in closet and, finally, a bathroom. Towels. Hallelujah. I grab one and pat myself dry, squeezing my hair in the folds, and realize my clothes are not going to dry for a while. There’s a robe hanging on the back of the door. I close the door, strip naked, and don the robe. Wringing out my shorts in the sink, I remember the note and fish it out. The piece of paper is soaked through, the blue ink turned to blotches. It’s barely readable. But Ness is the only person who could get angry about my being here, and he knows he wrote it. I lay the note out to dry, wring out my shirt and underwear, and drape everything over the shower door.

Rather than snoop around in Ness’s robe, I decide to borrow clothes from the closet. Wrapping my hair up in a fresh towel, I step back into the wardrobe. I find a shirt and a pair of shorts. Both will be too big, but they’ll keep me decent. I’m pulling on the shorts when a small voice tells me I’m making a mistake, that I need to slow down, that the rain and my wet clothes are a blessing.

No one can blame me for coming up to the main house. I’m a guest. Our plans got rained out, and my clothes were soaked through. Of course I would want to find a change of dry clothes. Who wouldn’t?

I put the shorts and shirt back and pretend I never saw them. If I’m caught rummaging around, I can say I’m looking for something dry to put on. I can’t use that excuse if I’m already wearing something. It’s perfect. Agent Cooper would be proud.

Back in the bedroom, I go through the nightstand first. Two books with dog-eared pages, one on Tahitian wayfinding, the other on rogue waves. Both are from university presses. Expensive and dull. There’s a pen and a notepad, but nothing written on the first page, and the indentations are too faint to make out what was written before. A tangle of wires and two electrical chargers, nothing interesting.

I try the desk on the other side of the bed, passing by a display case full of rare shells. The problem with looking for excellent fakes in this house is that there are museum-quality pieces everywhere. Even if I had my loupe, the last specimens overcame close scrutiny by both me and the FBI. What I need are notes, passwords to his email accounts, letters from accomplices, something like that.

The small desk mostly turns up pictures of Ness’s daughter. They’re everywhere—in frames arranged across the desk and loose in the drawers. They start with her as a toddler and progress to a gap-toothed smile and then to a gangly young woman on the verge of puberty.

The rain outside is a steady roar. The metal roof rattles from the downpour, and overflowing gutters create a veil of water so thick that it’s impossible to see the beach, hard to even see the end of the deck. It’s also impossible to hear anyone in the house.

“Uh, hello?” a voice calls. “Ness?”

My heart drops. I close the desk drawers in a panic and hurry toward the bathroom. I’m halfway there when someone steps through the bedroom door. A woman. I’m so startled, it takes a moment before I recognize her. Victoria Wilde. Though she goes by Carter now, I think.

“Who are you?” she asks.

I freeze in place. Ness’s ex-wife hasn’t changed at all from the last tabloid pictures I saw of her, years ago. She has on a black dress, heels, a white pearl necklace. She appears to be dressed up for some event, maybe a funeral. I start to answer her, to explain what I’m doing there, when she raises a hand.

“Never mind. I don’t want to know. Where is Ness?”

“I—I don’t know,” I stammer.

“Woke up to an empty bed, huh?” She crosses the room toward the desk I just left. “Let me tell you, that’s the good Ness. Try living with him for eight years. It’s when you’re falling asleep in an empty bed that you’ve got trouble.”

“I’m not sleeping with him,” I say. I feel young all of a sudden. Guilty. Full of excuses. It all comes from having been caught, but the bad thing I was doing wasn’t the bad thing I’m suspected of doing. The desire for truth won’t let me just shut up. “I’m a reporter,” I say.

“Of course you are, darling.” Victoria rummages through the same desk that I was just rummaging through, and while neither of us belongs there, she makes it look okay. I hear another voice somewhere in the house. Victoria is writing a note, presumably for Ness.

“No really,” I say. “I’m with the Times. I’m doing a piece on Mr. Wilde—”

Victoria turns and looks me up and down for the first time. I touch the towel on my head, then close the robe tighter across my chest and see that Ness’s initials are embroidered there. This looks bad.

“Research, I suppose.” She waves a pen up and down at me, then points it at the bed and raises an eyebrow. Part of me wants to blurt out that yeah, we’re having epic sex, and he wants me to move in with him. But it’s a vindictive part of me that I’m immediately ashamed of. I just want to hurt her because her presence is making me feel like a bad person.

“Holly’s riding lessons are rained out.” Victoria jabs the pen at the window. “Obviously,” she adds. “And I can’t watch her. I’m already going to be late for my luncheon. Make sure Ness gets this note. And don’t worry, she can take care of herself until he gets back.”

“His daughter?” I ask.

“My daughter,” Victoria says. She slams the pen down on top of the note, leans on the desk for a moment, then laughs at something and shakes her head. She turns toward the door. I want to say something, to ask her to stay for a coffee, to talk to her, get to know something about her, when she turns, takes in the room one more time and my presence in it, and says, “Don’t rearrange the furniture.”

“What?” I’m still clutching the robe tightly around me.

She waves her hand at the room, at the whole house. “Just leave it like this. You’ll want to make it your own, but he won’t give a shit about you in a week and he’ll just have his staff put it all back where it was. All the little dents in the carpet will vacuum out in a few days. So save yourself the time.”

“I—”

“And another thing: Don’t let his smile fool you. It’s a shell. Ness is not a happy man. He never will be. You’ll drive yourself crazy thinking you can change that.”

“Look—” I say.

“Oh, you’ll think I’m a bitch for a month or so. You’ll hate me because I got the closest to him. But in another month or two, you’ll remember this conversation, realize I was right, realize I was being nice to you, trying to save you, and you’ll thank me. You might even write me a nice note.” She smiles. “I have quite a few of those.”

And then she turns and walks away before I can tell her that she’s wrong. Before I can thank her right then. Before I can tell her that she’s confirming everything I already think about the man, giving me the power to resist my baser urges while reminding me why I’m here. That if I knew where to send it, I’d write her that note right now. And I am newly resolved to reach out to her for an interview before I publish my final piece. I now have my in: I can tell her she was right, that I want to thank her in person, and that I want to know more about Ness’s unhappiness, where it comes from, and why he keeps it so cleverly hidden.

I’m running all this through my head when someone says, “I’m hungry.”

I refocus and see the gangly girl from Ness’s pictures standing in the doorway. Holly. His daughter.

“You’re the new one, huh?” she asks. And before I can answer: “What can you make me for breakfast?”

24

“I’m Maya,” I say. I reach out my hand, and Holly studies it a moment before accepting.

“Riding practice got canceled,” she says.

“So I heard.”

“Mom says I’m not old enough to stay at our house by myself, but she leaves me alone here all the time. I think if I get hurt, she wants it to be on his property.”

“Or maybe if you break something, she wants it to be his,” I suggest. I smile and hope she knows it’s a joke.

Holly smiles back. And then I feel a pang of sadness at how this seems normal to her, talking to a strange woman in her father’s bedroom, a woman who is wearing her father’s robe, and asking that woman to fix her something to eat. Thankfully, she turns and leads me toward the kitchen, and I’m able to use the robe’s lapel to dab at my eye.

“Let’s cook something outrageous,” Holly calls out above the noisy rain. “How about a peanut butter omelet? With a cranberry chocolate milkshake. We’ll get flour everywhere.”

“I don’t think any of those things take flour,” I say. I re-knot Ness’s robe around me as I follow her to the kitchen. No use changing into his clothes now, no use explaining. Everyone has already made up their minds.

“The flour won’t go in anything we make,” Holly explains. “It’s just because. And if we ask Monique nicely, she won’t clean up after us. Dad’ll have to do it.”

Holly cracks the fridge and pulls out eggs and a carton of chocolate milk. Even with the note suggesting I make myself at home, it feels strange to rummage around Ness’s kitchen. Especially in his robe and with his daughter.

“You don’t think your dad will mind me raiding his fridge, do you?” I ask.

Holly turns and looks at me with stern seriousness. “Dad says when he’s dead and gone, all of this will be mine.” She waves her arms at his house and the estate beyond. This proclamation seems to come out of nowhere. I’m trying to make sense of it when she continues: “So how do we know he isn’t already dead?”

Two heartbeats pass before she smiles at me. She turns and brings out a handful of items that no sane person would combine: pickles, blueberries, cheese, a stick of butter.

“Are you pregnant?” I ask, catching on to her sense of humor.

“Twins,” Holly says, not missing a beat. “So triple portions for me.”

“Have you ever had an egg-in-a-hole?” I ask.

She scrunches up her face. “That sounds disgusting. Make me one.”

“Okay. Why don’t you put on some music. I couldn’t figure out how the radio works earlier.”

I don’t even know that there is a radio. But Holly shouts “Righto!” and trots to a wall panel. Like magic, there’s music in the room, the lilting up and down of reggae. That distracted her for all of five seconds. I arrange her ingredients by the stove and study them the way a chemist might. I can make this work, I tell myself.

“Do you want to sit at the counter and keep me company while I cook?” I ask.

“Yes I do,” Holly says. She pulls out one of the stools and arranges herself in it, props her elbows on the counter and rests her chin in her hands. “I hate the rain,” she says. “There’s nothing fun to do in the rain.”

“Naps are good in the rain,” I offer. I open a few cabinets, looking for a pan.

“To the right,” Holly says. “And naps are boring. Unless you get a good dream, and that’s like winning the lottery. Too much luck involved.”

“What about reading?” I ask.

“Booooring,” she says, but I suspect that’s going to be her reply no matter what I say. So I try a different tactic.

“You got me, then. I now hate the rain as well.” Grabbing a spatula, I turn and offer my hand to her a second time. “We shall form the I-Hate-Rain Society,” I announce. “Lovers of rain need not apply.”

“Righto!” Holly says. With a grand gesture—elbow crooked up in the air—she takes my hand and gives it an exaggerated pump.

“We would spit on our palms to seal this pact,” I say, “but that’s too much like getting rained on.”

Holly laughs. I get the pan hot and show her how to cut the holes out of the bread slices. She does the second piece herself. I feel like my mother all of a sudden. I see myself in this squirmy, fidgety, ornery, bright, funny little girl.

Butter goes in the pan. I wait for it to melt, then add the bread. The eggs are cracked into the holes we cut out of the middle. After I flip them, the cheese goes on top. When I plate the concoction, I add two slices of pickle. It actually looks like a fine addition to the family recipe. Holly pours herself a chocolate milk and takes a bite. She murmurs her approval, and I cook the middles on one side of the pan and mash blueberries on the other side, add a little more butter, and put this on the toasted rounds. It’s a real improvement, I think.

“Almost as good as peanut butter omelets,” Holly mutters around another bite.

I wonder if that’s a real thing. And then I imagine another reporter standing right where I am, holding this spatula. A string of women, in fact, none of whom know how to cook. An endless parade of people sharing moments like this with Ness’s daughter, whipping up whatever they can, and her sitting there smiling, wiping her mouth with her sleeve, full of omnivorous delight and thinking this is the most normal thing in the world.

“These are great,” she says, taking a bite of one of the blueberry centers. I start rinsing the pan and the utensils. More of my story writes itself in my head. And even the happy bits have a way of making themselves sad.

“After breakfast, maybe you can show me where the laundry room is,” I suggest. “My clothes got soaked in the rain, which is why I had to borrow your dad’s robe. Be nice to get them dry.”

“M’kay,” she says, then slurps on her milk.

“And then maybe we can watch a movie? That’s a good thing to do in the—” I stop myself, remembering the society we just formed. “Or we can do whatever.”

“Is the cable on?” Holly asks.

“I don’t think so,” I say, remembering Ness’s note.

“We can call the company and have them turn it on. I added myself to his account. I have his passcode. They call me Mrs. Wilde when I call. I lower my voice like this.”

“I’m surprised they don’t call you Mister Wilde, talking like that.”

“Okay, not quite that low. But we’ll go from zero to five hundred channels just like that.” She snaps her fingers.

“You can watch TV if you want,” I say, trying to make it sound like she has my permission but that it’s the least cool thing one could possibly do. “I’m going to figure out how to get down to the other house and retrieve my book. Ever hear of Treasure Island?”

“My dad owns islands,” Holly says. “I think one of them is called Treasure Cay.”

“This is different,” I say. “It’s a book about untold riches and action and survival. I read it when I was about your age. That’s what I’m going to do with my day. Because I hate the rain.”

Holly squints her eyes and studies me. Her head tilts to one side, and I feel like she’s about to blow my cover and accuse me of manipulating her. I remember being that age and being whip-smart. As adults, we tend to forget how clever we were when we were younger, and so we underestimate youth just like we hated being underestimated when we were that age.

“You’re gonna get soaked if you go out there,” Holly eventually says. “I got wet just getting out of the car, and I had an umbrella.”

“I will armor myself against the rain,” I tell her. “Not a drop will touch me. That’s a rule in the I-Hate-Rain Society. You wanna come?”

Holly shrugs and looks away. I can tell I just lost her. “Nah, I don’t like that place. I’m gonna watch TV.”

I remember what Ness said about the first night he made her sleep down there alone, and that she has rarely been back. I shouldn’t push her; there’s no point in making her do something she doesn’t want to do. But I’m weak, and I like her, and I want her not just to like me back, but for the two of us to do something she’s never done with any of the other women who stay over. Because I’m not having sex with her father, and I need her to know I’m not the same as them.

“Well, I guess I won’t be able to read my book then,” I say, making myself sound sad. “I’m pretty sure it would take the entire Society to get down there in this heavy rain. Maybe I’ll just go take a nap instead. If I get lucky, I’ll have a good dream.”

I leave the dishes and head toward the breezeway that leads off toward Ness’s room. I have no idea what I’ll do in there if she lets me go. Sit in a chair and look at an empty fireplace or gaze out at the rain.

But she doesn’t let me go. The ultimate threat for Holly is that she’ll be left alone, that I won’t beg her to play with me, which is what I suspect she’s used to.

“Wait,” she says. And I turn back to her.

“We can beat the rain,” she tells me in a conspiratorial whisper. “But it won’t be easy. And we’ll have to work together.”

25

“I’m starting to think the saran wrap isn’t a good idea,” I say.

“Turn around one more time.” Holly has me spinning in the kitchen as she holds a spool of plastic wrap sideways. I still have the robe on, and the clear cocoon forming around me is causing me to sweat inside it.

“I can’t move my arms,” I say. “And how exactly am I going to breathe if you wrap my head up?”

“Good point. Reverse.” Holly makes a spinny gesture with her finger. I twirl the other way, and she gathers all the plastic in a ball. I don’t dare tell her that I’m not really interested in getting to a book I read years ago, or that I would be fine running out there in that crazy storm and just getting drenched again—because now it’s a mission for us to get from A to B without getting a single drop of water on us.

“I’ve got an idea,” Holly says. “Better than this one.” She gives me a serious look when I raise an eyebrow at her. “My ideas just get better with time. I think you should know this about me.”

I laugh and follow her down the north breezeway. We pass the utility room, where my clothes and the two towels are drying, and go past the guest bedrooms and Holly’s room, which she showed me after we got the clothes going. At the far end of the house, we go up a flight of stairs and through a door into the garage.

Holly hits the lights. “Yes!” she says. She dances through the empty space where Ness’s red gas-guzzler had been the other day and scoops up the bundled car cover from the ground. “It’s rain-proof. Because normal people don’t use these in their garages.”

I almost point out that the cover keeps the dust off as well, but I agree with her: it’s a bit much for a car kept in a garage. My car sits in the New York sun and the New York snow and the New York floods and mostly gets driven only to move it from street to street so the sweepers can get through.

“Grab the edge,” Holly says. “Meet me in the middle.”

We lift the car cover over us and paw at the ceiling as we work our way into the middle. Neither of us can see a thing. I think about the lazy summer days when my sister and I would make forts out of furniture, sheets, and sofa cushions. Holly is giggling. I can feel her breathing on my arm. We jostle and spin and laugh in the darkness together.

“We’ll stay dry,” I say, my words swallowed by the fabric and the deep shadows. “But we’ll never see how to get there.”

“We’ll feel along the rails. But through the tarp.”

“Won’t we get lost?” I ask.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I can get around that boardwalk with my eyes closed.”

I remember Ness’s story. But his daughter sounds so much braver than he made her out to be. I wonder how many years ago that was. Five? Six? Probably feels like ages to her.

“What about our feet?” I ask. “Won’t they get wet?”

“I’ve got just the thing.”

Holly extricates herself from the folds, leaving me in there alone. I work myself free as well. She has disappeared back into the house, returns with a pair of pink galoshes, then rummages around one of the other garage bays and brings out a pair of rubber hip waders that fishermen use.

“No rain shall touch us,” she says.

“Let’s just hope it hasn’t stopped raining by the time we put this to the test.”

We haul the gear to the living room, which gives us the shortest run down to the guest house, and I become quite possibly the first person in history to don rubber hip waders over a terrycloth bathrobe. My reflection in the living room door is of someone you would commit to an institution. Holly, meanwhile, looks downright adorable with her pink galoshes pulled over her blue jeans.

“No fair that you get to look normal,” I tell her.

“You look like you sleep with fishes,” Holly says.

“Let’s hope not. You ready?”

She nods, and the two of us crawl under the car cover. Rain hisses across the glass door and windows, and it thunders against the roof. “I’ve got the doorknob,” Holly says. “Hard to turn it through the fabric. It keeps slipping.”

“I’ll close it behind us when we get out,” I tell her. “But we have to make sure the cover doesn’t get caught.”

What I don’t tell her is that this is going to be an unmitigated disaster. No way we come out of this anything other than soaked and tangled in knots, but probably laughing hysterically. A gust of wind passes, and Holly yells “Now!” I hear the door open, the first of the rain spitting against the cover, popping it like a thunderstorm hitting a camping tent, and then we are outside, shuffling our feet, the wind whipping the car cover all around us.

The cover clings to our ankles, presses against our bodies. I nearly topple from the force of a gust, and it takes some fumbling and both of us working together to get the door pulled shut against the storm.

Holly is already laughing. It isn’t quite pitch black under the cover now that we’re outside—just a dismal, deep shade of gray. “This way,” she says, full of confidence. We stay huddled together, hands fumbling through the fabric to stay in communion with the wooden rail, the cold of the wind and rain penetrating through our shroud, but so far, no moisture getting through to us. I take up a fold of fabric in front of me to keep from tripping, leaving our boots exposed to the driving rain and the wet deck.

“Steps!” Holly cries. “Twelve of them!”

Halfway down the flight of steps, buffeted by the storm, this begins to feel like a very bad idea. Our legs could get tangled; we could have a nasty fall; and suddenly I see myself driving Ness’s daughter to the hospital with a broken arm, her crying hysterically in the passenger seat, me in the emergency room in hip waders and a robe trying to explain to Ness what in the hell I was thinking.

We reach the bottom of the flight of stairs, but there are two more to go. And long lengths of boardwalk between.

“Maybe we should ditch the cover and just make a run for it,” I suggest, my voice muffled.

“Not a drop shall touch us!” Holly cries. She has one arm around my waist, and I have an arm draped over her shoulder. We shuffle as one, like we’re running a three-legged race where our feet don’t go in the same sack, our entire bodies do.

The fabric no longer whips around as angrily as before, thank goodness. The rain is soaking it and weighing it down. It trails behind us like a leaden wedding dress. We lean into the wind and stagger down the second flight of stairs, Holly seeming to know where she is going, then we tackle the last flight.

“Almost there,” she tells me. And I feel like a climber who can see the crown of some inhospitable peak just a few steps away. One great push. So close—

We bang into the glass like birds. My forehead cracks against a window, and it sounds like Holly strikes her knee. The rain is no longer pelting us. We are pressed against the side of the guest house. I can’t believe we made it this far. And suddenly, this is an adventure the way simple challenges with made-up rules are life-or-death scenarios for kids with their active imaginations. Suddenly, this is important. And fun.

Holly whoops when she finds the doorknob. It’s a struggle to get it turned, but then the door flies inward, and we tumble along after it. The car cover finally claims us, tangling our feet, and I brace for impact, one arm around Holly and twisting her so she lands on top of me.

There’s an oomph and a grunt from both of us. The wind is knocked out of me, and we have to fight to dig our way out from the wet fabric. Rain courses down the folds in rivulets, getting all over the floor and soaking us as we scramble for the open door.

We slam it shut. Holly is panting and giggling. I fight with Ness’s robe to stay decent. The guest house is now a base camp, a temporary shelter against the storm, a small island at sea.

“I think we’re stuck here,” I tell Holly.

She pushes her hair off her face. We both got doused crawling out from under the car cover. She wipes her face and looks at her wet palms. “So close,” she says.

“I don’t think it qualifies as rain if it’s indoors,” I tell her. “Just tossing that out there.”

“I second the motion,” Holly says. And then: “Victory!” She dances around the room in her galoshes, leaving wet bootprints everywhere, while I gather the drenched cover and dump it in the bathtub.

After I change into dry clothes, and after Holly has explored the guest house—her house—I show her the book that was the subject of all our troubles.

“Read me a page,” she says.

And so we arrange ourselves on the big bed in the middle of the downstairs loft, a pile of cushions behind us, and I start to read the adventures of Long John Silver, a sea cook turned treasure hunter, and of pirates and sea chests and treasure maps. And I don’t stop reading aloud, even as Holly drifts off to sleep. I just lower my voice and keep reading, and the storm outside does not abate, but Holly mumbles something, snuggles closer, and I have to set the book aside for a moment. It strikes me that my daughter would be nine right now if I’d carried her to term, if my body hadn’t betrayed us both. She would be nine, and I would read to her like this.

I cover my mouth as the tears come hard and fast. The noise of the rain masks my sobs. Holly throws an arm across me and rests her head against my shoulder, and I fear she’ll wake up and ask me what’s the matter, and I’ll have to make something up. Something a bright girl like her will know is a lie.

But she mumbles these words instead, a soft admission: “I don’t really hate the rain,” she tells me.

And then she falls back asleep, there in my arms, and I wish for her to have happy dreams.

26

I drift in and out. Dreams mix with the wild scene outside—pirate ships plying the coast; men in slickers with treasure maps digging greedily at the wet sand; thunder transmuting into cannon-fire as my imagination melds the real and the unreal.

At one point, a man appears at the window in a yellow raincoat and yellow rain cap. He looks nothing like a pirate. He looks like Ness. It is much later that I realize it was him, that he came back home to find the note from his ex, the house empty, and checked on us here before deciding to leave us sleeping.

Even though I’m wide awake now, I let Holly doze with her head on my arm. I’m struck again by how quickly she took to me, and I hope it’s a healthy thing. It could be that she’s perfectly well adjusted, that she’s bright and courageous and comfortable in her own skin. Or it could be that she is desperately seeking something that’s missing from her life. I’m no expert in child psychology, so I have no way of knowing which is more likely.

And maybe I’m looking too far for the culprit. Maybe the one desperate to connect is me. I push this question aside, not caring to examine it. When Holly stirs, I wiggle my arm free and get up to use the bathroom. She’s outside the door when I get out, rubbing her eyes and yawning. We trade places without a word between us.

“I think your father is home,” I say when she emerges. “And we napped through lunch. Should we go up to the house?”

She nods, looks out at the rain, then back to me. “Maybe we should just run for it,” she says.

“Let’s do it.”

We squeal and laugh all the way to the house, getting soaked. We arrive at the living room to find folded towels set out for us and one on the floor just inside the door. Ness appears while we’re drying our hair. “I’m going to my room to change,” Holly announces. “Let me know when lunch is ready.” She drops her towel in a heap and marches toward the north breezeway.

“How about a hello?” Ness asks his daughter. “Maybe a hug?”

Holly makes an exaggerated turn, like a jetliner banking through the clouds, and steers toward her dad. She gives him a perfunctory hug, rolling her eyes at me, and then pads off for her room.

“I am so sorry,” Ness says. “Something came up, and I had no idea Holly would be—”

“It’s okay,” I tell him.

“—hate you had to babysit—”

“It was fine. We had a good time. The rain probably messed up whatever you were going to show me anyway.”

“Well, not really. It’s supposed to storm all day tomorrow as well, but it won’t affect us. In fact, we have a series of flights to take tonight.”

He glances at his watch. I’ve noticed that he does this constantly. It’s a trait I’ve seen in a lot in the people I’ve interviewed over the years. For some, it’s because they live by appointments: you’re lucky to get fifteen minutes of their time. For others, it’s ambition: they’re in a race to get all they want accomplished. Ness is a playboy without a schedule, so he fits neither of these easy molds. Perhaps he’s a third type: the schoolboy wondering when class will get out and he’ll have his freedom again. Maybe he only does this around people like me, obligations he’d rather not have.

“Where are we going?” I ask. Funny, I expected to travel someplace exotic when I first got here, and now I don’t want to leave.

“It’s a surprise,” Ness says. “Besides, if I told you the name of the place or where it was, you still wouldn’t have a clue about our final destination.”

“Will we be diving?”

Ness cocks his head. “In a way. Now stop asking questions—”

“I’m a reporter,” I remind him. “You stop picking up shells.”

“I just might,” he says. And before I can press him on this, he’s telling me what to pack. “One change of clothes, toothbrush, toiletries, no makeup, no perfume, no mask or fins, no wetsuit, no bathing suit.”

“That’s a list of what not to pack,” I say.

“Comfortable clothes. Shorts. T-shirt. Nothing too warm.”

I’m confused. Nothing warm, but no bathing suit?

Again, he glances at his watch. “We’ll leave in half an hour.”

“What about Holly?” I ask.

“Monique will watch her until her mother picks her up. Speaking of which, I got an earful from Vicky about who was in my bed this morning when she got here.” He lifts an eyebrow in a Care to explain that? sorta way.

“I wasn’t in your bed,” I say. “I was… I got drenched running up here after I found your note. I went in search of a towel, found your bathroom first—”

“And my robe.”

“And your robe, yes. My clothes are in the dryer. I was looking at pictures of Holly on your desk when your ex came in.”

“What did you think of her?”

“I’m sorry, what?” I try to transition from being defensive to having a chat about his ex-wife. “She was… nice, I guess. Of course, she seemed to think we were sleeping with each other. Hard to blame her, considering. Pretty embarrassing for me.”

“Wow,” Ness says. “That must be awful, having people think something about you that isn’t true. I can’t imagine.”

I start to ask him to elaborate, when I see him staring past my shoulder. I turn to find Holly standing at the end of the breezeway.

“You guys aren’t in love with each other,” she says.

“I’m a reporter,” I tell Holly. “I told you, I’m here to do a story on your father.”

Her lip quivers. I can see the joy from earlier in the day drain from her face. Without a word, she turns and runs down the hall, and I hear Ness curse under his breath. I start to follow Holly to her room, but Ness tells me I’m better off leaving her alone.

“She was bound to find out,” he says. “Don’t make it worse for her.”

I have no idea what this means. And I don’t see Holly again as I gather my things down at the guest house—using an oversized rain jacket and umbrella this time. I bring my solitary bag up to the house, and Ness leads me to the front door.

There’s a helicopter outside. The pilot tells Ness that we should go before the next squall hits. And maybe it’s the rain, maybe it’s not getting to shell that day, maybe it’s the lingering soreness from seeing Holly so upset at us, but the week has taken a turn. The joy is no longer on Ness’s face. And I remember what Victoria said about that smile being his shell, that he is not a happy man, and perhaps this is my first glimpse of the true Ness Wilde. Either way, the week threatens to become one of those bright, half-buried horse conchs that you reach for only to discover that the rest of the shell is missing, that there was nothing priceless about that find after all.

27

I’m glad I amended Ness’s packing list and brought a book. My phone doesn’t work for much of the helicopter ride, and then we land at a small airport and transfer to a private jet. Once we break above the rain clouds, I can tell by the setting sun to our right that we are flying south. Ness is pensive and quiet. I attribute this to conflicts with his ex or his daughter, but it also occurs to me that he left in a hurry that morning to tend to an emergency. Perhaps it’s something else entirely.

Rebelling against my reporter DNA, I decide to let it go and to lose myself in the book I brought along. Treasure Island was losing me, felt more like a romp a young boy might like, so I picked out Moby Dick instead, which I vaguely remember not-reading in college and instead using online notes to squeak out a B or a C on some paper. Little did I know all those years of bullshitting my way through coursework would nicely prepare me for a career in journalism. As it turns out, it pays pretty well to make up entire stories on slivers of fact.

I read for a few hours, and then the copilot comes back to serve us a meal. After the trays are taken away, I rejoin Ishmael on his whaling adventures, but I’m only half present in the book. My mind flits. The article I’ve written about Ness bends and sways like a tree in a shifting breeze. Somehow, two years of work now feels… unimportant. Trivial. I remind myself that vacation does this to priorities, and the past few days have been like a vacation. When I get back to New York—among the symphony of sirens and car alarms and shrieking subway rails—I will remember what’s important. That’s when the story will coalesce and take shape. It’ll be easier to update my piece about Ness when he’s not sitting across from me, staring at his laptop, scrolling but not typing, reading something with a frown. It’ll be easier when I’m not thinking about Holly, and the way she looked at me, both in joy that morning, and in anger the last time I’m likely to ever see her.

Maybe it’s meeting Holly that’s made the article difficult to ponder. It’s easier to demonize a man than it is a father, especially one who begs for hugs and leaves lights burning even when she isn’t home to use them. Getting to know Ness as a person has been a mistake, rather than a boon for my piece. The issues I want to write about are larger than one man, larger than any of us; they concern the entire globe; they concern our environment, our politics, our collective choices. Tearing him down felt good before. Now it feels hollow. I imagine this is how Ahab might’ve felt if the book in my lap had turned out differently.

I drift off in my seat thinking of white whales, of ghosts who haunt us, of the destructive forces in our lives. I think how we are often that force, chasing what we should leave alone, what we should simply let go. But letting go is harder than destroying ourselves and those around us in a mad chase to feel… right with the world. Losing our child was this thing for Michael and me. We tried too hard to replace her. And when we couldn’t, there was nothing left to salvage. It was that white whale or nothing. There was no in-between where we might survive. Where we might not drown.

Turbulence wakes me. I find a blanket tucked around my shoulders, my book set aside. Ness glances up from his laptop. The cabin lights are dim, his face cast in a pale glow from the screen.

“Another couple of hours,” he says softly.

“Where are we going?” I murmur.

“Middle of nowhere,” Ness says. “The last place anyone thinks to look.”

I try to fall back asleep, thinking on this and other puzzles. Half the time when I crack my eyes, Ness is staring at his screen. The other half of the time, he’s staring at me. The darkness, the shuddering of the plane, the cabin to ourselves, my sleepy brain, a morning spent with his daughter, his pensive mood, all swim around me. An old memory returns—a collection of disjointed memories—all the impossibly long nights spent awake at summer camp, confiding to strangers in whispers for hour upon hour, never wanting to sleep, and falling for other girls my age with reckless speed, promising each other we’d be best friends forever.

“We had a daughter,” I say, out of nowhere. I leave my eyes closed. The darkness is a safe place.

Ness says nothing.

“She came premature, and they couldn’t save her.”

I dab at my eyes with the blanket, and Ness’s seat squeaks as he adjusts himself. I feel his hand on my foot. A friendly gesture. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“It’s just that… I would love to have a daughter who hates me,” I say. And I find the courage to open my eyes. Tears stream down my neck. I wipe them away as quickly as they come. I’m trying to make him feel better, but I’m making us both feel worse.

“It’s just a phase kids go through,” Ness says. “Everyone assures me she’ll grow out of it.”

“You could wait for her to grow up, or you could meet her halfway,” I say.

“I try.” Ness closes his laptop, leaving us to the dim emergency lights. “I only get her every other weekend, and her mom often schedules camps and sports to fill those up. I’ve watched her grow up from the bleachers.”

“Does she take to strangers easily? Because she…”

I don’t know how to say what it felt like for her to bond with me so quickly, that it was part flattering and part sad.

“I saw the two of you napping in the guest house,” Ness says. “Does she do that sort of thing a lot? Maybe not that exactly, but she does like it when I’m seeing someone. And she’s always crushed when they don’t stick around.”

“They,” I say.

“People I’ve dated since my wife left me.”

“They don’t stick around, or you don’t have them back?”

Ness shrugs. “It’s complicated. What’s funny is that I think Holly just wants me to be happy. I think it’s selfless on her part, that she wants some fairy tale for me, not for her.”

“Why does she think you’re not happy?” I ask.

“You’re asking a lot of questions. Is this for your story?”

I consider this for a beat. He’s asking me if this is on the record or off the record. Do I want to know but not be able to report what I find? Or would I rather wait and find out by other means and be able to write what I discover? It’s the riddle of the non-disclosure agreement all over again.

“This is for me,” I finally say. Which feels dangerous. Like I just crossed a line that shouldn’t be crossed—sliding from reporter to acquaintance. Maybe even friend. But I don’t see an oil magnate across from me right then; I don’t see the subject of any story. Just a man, a father, someone I’ve spent too much time around the past few days not to empathize with.

“I’m not an easy person to live with,” Ness tells me. “I try. Man, I try. I don’t want to be like my father, but we are who we are.” He shrugs. “I can’t sit still. I have so much I want to do, and I don’t feel like I have time for it all. I have a hard time delegating, an even harder time trusting people. Here’s the thing: Vicky cheated on me. Another parent she met at a PTA meeting. And when she left, I gave her everything she asked for, custody, the houses she wanted, the money she demanded, because I figured the affair was my fault for not being there. My fault for being a bad father.”

“Why do you think you’re a bad father?”

“Because it runs in the family.” Ness turns toward the window, where the moon bounces off the top of the clouds and lets in the faintest of ethereal glows. He’s little more than a silhouette, but I see him wipe his cheek. “Even my grandfather, who was a good man through and through, wasn’t a great father to my dad. I didn’t tell you the full truth about that the other day. It’s not that he was abusive, just absent. I think the same propensity to feel overwhelmed with guilt allowed him to let someone else raise his kid. Or maybe, like me, he was scared he’d screw it all up.”

“What is it you’re chasing?” I ask. “What’re you looking for?”

“Redemption,” Ness says. And the answer comes so fast, that I know he has asked himself this very question countless times. “I want to leave behind a better world than the one I was given. And like I told you the other day, I was given a world in a lot of pieces.”

“Your grandfather bought up shoreline and protected it to redeem himself. How will forging shells help anyone?”

Even in the dark, I can see Ness stiffen. I hate myself for saying it. I’m more curious about him than the stupid shells in that moment, but the conversation hemmed us in like a lee shore in a storm.

“Why does this no longer feel off the record?” Ness asks.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I lean forward and place a hand on his knee. “I really am. That wasn’t me being a reporter… just me being confused.”

“No, that’s okay.” Ness straightens himself in his seat, puts his laptop aside. I lean back in my own seat. “Of course they aren’t real,” he says. “The problem with those shells is that they’re too perfect. Maybe that’s why Arlov had to have them around. I don’t know.”

Before I can press him on this, Ness reminds me that we’re talking off the record. And then he flashes a mischievous smile brighter than the moon. “But if you want to get back on the record, I’ve got something you can print. A scoop just for you. Something I’ve never told another reporter.”

“What?” I ask.

“The story of my name.”

I try to hide my disappointment. “I know it,” I say. I can’t remember where I heard it, somewhere in all the hundreds of interviews and articles I’ve read about him. “Your middle name is Robert. Your father thought it would be cute, since you were born around the time he tried to make the company more green. What I’d much rather hear about—”

“No, the Wilderness thing? I don’t know who put that together, but it’s a coincidence. My grandfather on my mother’s side was named Robert. The real story is less interesting. Well, to most people, I imagine. But when my mother told me how I got my name, it led me on a trip where I discovered the single greatest thing she ever taught me about my father.”

I wait. And damn him, he has me curious.

“I was named after a monster,” Ness says.

“You were not,” I say. “You mean the loch?”

“Yes, precisely. Loch Ness. And my mom swears it’s the truth. The two of them spent their honeymoon on the Isle of Man, and they visited Scotland and the loch, and she said my father was taken with the lore of the place. But even more with the tourism. Have you ever been?”

“No.”

“I went. I wanted to find out what my father saw when he came up with this name. It seemed mysterious to me. It haunted me. All I had were a few hints from my mom, where they went, some things he said. So I went there by myself hoping to find out where I came from. Where I really came from, you know? Not my name, really, but to get to know my dad. And it hit me on my third day there. A woman in a cafe recognized me. You know what she did?”

“Ask for your autograph? Show you a shell from her collection?”

“She spit on me,” Ness says.

We fly along in silence.

“Why?” I finally ask.

“Oh, it wasn’t the first time it’s happened. It’s all the things you have planned for your story, I’m sure. My father rolling back the green initiatives when they ended up not being as profitable. All the oil exploration the company has done under my watch. Videos of flooded homes, of major cities underwater, the expense of the levees around New York, Miami, Boston. All the breakwalls going up around the world. Pick a reason.

“What was important for me was the timing of this incident. There I was, trying to find myself on the shore of my namesake, obsessing over this question of what my father saw in his unborn son. You see, I spent those days around the loch pretending to be my father. I tried to see the town through his eyes, tried to imagine I had a new wife whom I knew to be pregnant, and a future child that I knew was going to be a boy. I thought of what the place had been like back then, what my father might’ve seen, the world I was going to be born into.

“My father was taken with the lore of that place, but also the tourism. This was the hint I got from my mom. He told her that the people there hate what their community has become, but that they need it. They hate the signs everywhere, the glass boats on the water, the subs that take gawkers out on fruitless dives, the statues and the stuffed purple sea monster toys, but they can’t let go of it. They can’t stop. You see?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t.”

“We’re the monsters,” Ness says. “The Wildes. My father was a monster. His father and his grandfather were monsters. And he knew I’d become one too—”

At this, whatever holds Ness together, whatever keeps his emotions at bay, cracks. And he bends forward and weeps in his hands. Five or six shuddering sobs before he gets himself together. I am too stunned by the breakdown to react, to lean forward and put a hand on his shoulder, to offer him a shoulder to cry on. It is the most unexpected thing I’ve seen from a man full of surprises.

Just as suddenly, he sits up, presses at his eyes with his fists, and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t apologize or seek anything from me, just continues his line of thought as if nothing had happened, as if I hadn’t seen this small fissure in his otherwise perfect shell.

“Everyone needs what we provide.” He swallows and composes himself further. “This plane? All the jets out there? The people who fly on them? They need us. They need the oil. It doesn’t matter if we get it with greener methods these days, doesn’t matter that we haven’t had a major spill in forty years, that we’re investing in alternate forms of energy. My great-grandfather did none of those things, because nobody cared back then. By the time his son was born, everyone had their fuzzy picture of who we were, the ugly legend. And the more they needed us, the more they hated us. It kept them from having to blame themselves.

“My dad saw that at Loch Ness. He saw people blaming a monster for all the things wrong with the world at large. He saw how we do this all the time. You want to know what the worst of it is?”

“What’s that?” I ask, my voice a whisper.

“The people who live around that loch, their monster doesn’t even exist. They had to create it.”