Chapter 4
MUIR
I arrive at the dock at seven fifty-five. Five minutes early because I’ve been awake since four rehearsing what I’ll say when I see her.
The lake is quiet this early, mist still clinging to the far shore. I stand on the dock.
Then I hear footsteps.
Cora San Pedro walks out of the equipment shed with a clipboard in one hand and a travel mug in the other, and I forget how to breathe.
Four years. I knew she’d be different. I thought I’d prepared for it.
I was wrong.
She’s more beautiful than I remember. More settled. The morning light catches her dark skin and throws it into relief—the sharp angles of her heart-shaped face, the curve of her shoulders, the fluid grace of how she moves.
Her eyes are huge and dark, with that green undercurrent that only shows when she’s near water, and they’re looking right through me.
She’s maybe five-three in the faded green San Pedro Eco-Tours shirt with the sleeves cut off, her black hair escaping from its braid in the humidity.
Her swimsuit—practical, fitted—is designed to move with her, to accommodate the shifts between forms.
Lean and certain and completely herself in a way that makes my chest ache.
There’s something in the way she carries herself, a fluidity that marks her as more than human, a creature equally at home in two worlds.
The water knows her. You can see it in how she moves through space, like she’s always swimming even on dry land.
This is her dock. Her water. She built this.
She looks at me.
I look at her.
Her expression stays neutral. Contained. The way you look when you’ve decided in advance what mask you will show to the world.
“Muir,” she says. Not a greeting. Just acknowledgment.
“Cora.”
“Rex told me he offered you the position.” She glances at her clipboard. “Freshwater dive certification, marine salvage experience, first aid current.”
“All current. I can send documentation.”
“I’ll need it before you go in the water.
” She makes a note. “We run eco-survey dives for Dr. Davis at Natural Resources and Fisheries. Precision matters. And tourist dives, certified recreational, which means you’re managing group experience and safety simultaneously.
” She looks up. “Which have you done more of?”
“Both. More survey work the last two years. Some guiding before that, a season off the Hebrides.” I pause. “I know how to read a tourist panic response.”
Something flickers across her face. Not quite a smile. “Good. We start with an assessment dive today. I need to see how you move in the water before I put you with guests.”
“Reasonable.”
“The assessment cove is on the north end. I’ll be in the water too. I do the initial assessment on every new hire.” She says it cleanly, no room for interpretation. “Depth check, visibility navigation, standard emergency protocol. Thirty minutes.”
“Understood.”
She turns back toward the shed. Then she stops.
“Look,” I say, and it comes out rougher than I intended. “I know you’re with Rex. I know that. I’m not here to—I’m just here to work. To do the job well. I’m not going to make this difficult for you.”
She doesn’t turn around. For a moment there’s nothing but the sound of the lake lapping against the dock.
Then she turns. Her expression is closed, controlled, the professional mask locked firmly in place. “We don’t need to have any conversation about the past, Muir. Not about Rex, not about anything. We work. That’s all.”
It’s not a question. It’s not open to negotiation.
“Understood,” I say.
She nods once, sharp and final. “Equipment shed is open. Rex will be here at nine for the first tour. Assessment dive is now, while the water’s clear.” She disappears inside.
I stand on the dock in the absence she leaves behind.
Then we don’t need to have any other conversation about the past.
Right. I’m here to be better. Not to excavate anything. Not to make it difficult for a woman who has built a good life with a man who actually stays. I’m here to do the job and do it well.
I go get my equipment.
The cove is a sheltered inlet on the northwest end, the bottom dropping in three ledges before leveling into sand at about nine meters. Clear and green-gold, the light coming through in shifting columns. Schools of small perch scatter when we enter.
I do the standard checks. Cora watches from a meter away, treading water with the ease of someone for whom the lake is simply home. She’s assessing me efficiently and also not quite meeting my eyes underwater, which reads less like avoidance and more like being careful.
Being careful is reasonable. I’m being careful too.
The first ledge drops cleanly. I follow it down, run the navigation check, signal clear.
Cora follows three meters behind and to my left. The right distance for an observer. I’m completely aware of exactly where she is. I’ve been completely aware since I walked onto this dock.
We reach the second ledge.
That’s when it happens.
I stop.
She stops too.
Not the professional version with the clipboard and the contained expression.
The version of Cora San Pedro that the water gets.
I know this version. I met it here four years ago before I knew what I was about to give up.
You can’t perform underwater. You can’t manage at depth.
The water takes what you bring and that’s all it accepts.
In the aquatic form, a selkie is more seal than man. The human softens and reshapes. I hadn’t shifted fully, but the water pulls it out of me by degrees. Loosens the held shoulders, the set jaw, the careful register, the four years of distance.
And Cora.
Her tail moves in that slow powerful sweep, pink to purple scales threaded with gold, reflecting the pageantry of tropical waters.
Her black hair flows like ink through the deep blue.
She becomes completely herself in a way the land version is still only approaching.
In the water there’s no drawbridge. The sirena doesn’t manage what it gives away.
She’s looking at me.
Open. Undefended. The way she looks at me is the way she looks at the water itself—direct, without calculation, without the careful distance she maintains on the dock. She sees me. That's all. That's everything.
I float.
She floats.
Between us the water holds its cold green light and I feel the impulse to reach toward her. I feel it clearly and don’t follow it. She’s with Rex. I’m here to be better, not to take things I haven’t earned. But the impulse is named, at least, in that clear underwater light.
She blinks. Slow and deliberate. The aquatic version of clearing the throat, resetting the register.
Then she signals.
Ascent. Two fingers pointing up. Assessment complete.
I mirror the signal. We rise.
She surfaces three meters from me, pushes her mask up. For a moment there’s nothing on her face at all. Not the guarded professional look, not the sharp humor she uses like a blade. Just open water and a woman blinking in the late morning light, wet and briefly unguarded.
Then it closes over. Not unkindly. Just closed.
“Assessment complete,” she says, her voice slightly rough from the dive. “You move well. Comfortable at depth, clean signals, good spatial awareness.”
“Thank you.”
“Equipment check first thing tomorrow and you’re on the roster.
” She tugs off one fin, then the other. Her hands are very steady.
“Rex has the tour schedule. We’ve got a six-person group at ten, certification required, standard guided package.
You’ll shadow for the first two, then I’ll assess your guiding. ”
“Understood.”
She’s already swimming for the dock ladder, her tail receding into legs as she moves. The transition is so natural it takes barely a moment. She’s back to human form and up the ladder before I’ve reached it, wringing water from her braid.
I climb out. Water runs off me slower. The lake keeps its selkie kin a little longer, reluctant to release what it knows.
Cora is looking at the inlet. Not at me. At the water, at the place where we were suspended a few minutes ago.
“That cove,” I say, because the silence has to go somewhere. “Has it always been like that? The light?”
She’s quiet for a moment. “Since I’ve been here. The lake does something to the light in the northwest inlets. I don’t know why. I’ve never needed a reason.”
She picks up her mask and fins and goes back to the equipment shed. She doesn’t look back.
I stand on the dock with lake water drying on my arms and try to remember what I said to myself this morning.
Do the job. Do it well. That’s the whole of it.
Except the whole of it is considerably harder than it looked from a distance.
I’m going to need more coffee.
Rex arrives at nine with three coffees in a cardboard carrier and a canvas bag that smells like Mateo’s breakfast pastries. He hands me a coffee without ceremony and drops into one of the dock chairs, looking between me and the shed with focused incuriousness.
“Morning,” he says.
“Morning.”
“Dock check go well?”
“Assessment dive was solid. Good visibility.”
“Always is in the north cove, this time of year.” He looks at the water. “Cora’s a thorough assessor.”
“I noticed.”
A pause. He drinks his coffee. I drink mine. From inside the shed comes the sound of Cora reorganizing something with more energy than strictly necessary.
“I didn’t know you were you yesterday,” Rex says. Conversational. Not quite pointed. “When I told her, when she figured out you were you, she said to keep you on.” He glances at me. “She didn’t have to. Just so you know that.”
I look at the lake. “I know.”
“Okay.” And that’s the whole of that conversation, tucked into three sentences and a silence. He goes to knock on the shed door and ask Cora if she wants a pastry. She says yes without opening the door. Rex hands it through the gap without ceremony.
I stand on Cora San Pedro’s dock with her coffee and her lake and the sound of her organizing equipment she doesn’t need to organize, and I don’t do anything with any of it except what I came here to do.
Which is to be better.
Even when better costs something every single morning.