Chapter 15
It was a story that Lindsey had never managed to tell anyone. It was the story she’d been avoiding for years. She took a breath. The fear of airplane turbulence continued to grip her, making her heart pound in her ears.
As their time in Costa Rica grew more textured, as they met more people and built their wealth and scuba diving empire, Lindsey and Christopher felt as though they were living in a kind of paradise.
Often, they sat on their porch, watching the sunset and talking about how much better they had it than anyone else.
Lindsey talked about her stuffy mother, Stella Vanberg, her enormous houses, and all her money, saying, “I can’t imagine why she thinks she has to live like that.
” Of course, Lindsey was only half aware of her mother’s philanthropic efforts.
She wanted to remember Stella Vanberg how she wanted to remember her—which was an incorrect rendering.
But memories didn’t matter in Costa Rica. What mattered was the sun on your face and the water undulating against your body and the sand between your toes. What mattered was fresh seafood, light beers, and plenty of laughter. Lindsey genuinely thought the good times would go on forever.
Throughout their first few years of marriage, their friends and neighbors hinted, asking the happy couple when they would have a child.
But Lindsey and Christopher had no aspirations to have children.
They barely ever spoke of it. Lindsey knew that having a baby would upend everything about their lives.
Maybe that upending would be nice, but maybe it wouldn’t be.
It was so hard to say, at least from this side of that decision.
As it happened, Lindsey and Christopher didn’t have to make that decision. Nature made it for them.
The surprise came in the summer of 2013.
It was tremendously hot and sticky, and Lindsey was nauseous for weeks to the point where she couldn’t go scuba diving, as it did something to her rhythm, to her stomach.
Christopher kept urging her to go to the doctor, but Lindsey was stubborn.
She was sure it was just a bug that she couldn’t kick.
When the heavy fatigue set in, when Lindsey struggled for more than two weeks to get out of bed, a friend mentioned, “Do you think you could be pregnant?” Lindsey gaped at her, prepared to say something like that’s impossible.
But was it? She and Christopher had always been careful, sort of. But accidents happened.
Lindsey and her friend hurried to the store to buy three pregnancy tests.
Back at home, grateful that Christopher was still on a scuba diving expedition for the rest of the day, Lindsey took all three and watched the pink crosses and the second lines appear.
The tests spoke, and they said, yes, yes, yes.
Lindsey collapsed on the sofa, her heart pounding. She was pregnant.
In preparing to tell Christopher the news, Lindsey weighed up what she thought he would say and how she thought he would react.
Would he get angry? Would he blame her? She worked herself into such a tizzy that when the truth finally spilled out of her, she couldn’t believe his face. It echoed only joy.
“A baby!” Christopher threw his arms around her and lifted her. “This is incredible. This is the very best news.”
“But I thought you didn’t want a baby!” Lindsey said through tears, her smile enormous.
“I thought you didn’t want a baby,” Christopher explained. “I was playing along.”
Over the next few months, Christopher and Lindsey spent their free time preparing for their baby’s arrival.
Lindsey had no interest in leaving their little wooden house by the ocean, so they built an addition, creating a nursery and a second bathroom.
They also updated the interior, adding new cabinets, new floorboards, and fresh coats of paint.
Suddenly, it felt as though they were living in a brand-new house.
What was essential, though, was that the view from the front porch was the same.
This is where our baby will grow up, Lindsey told herself, sitting out there with her hands around her stomach. This is home.
Lindsey and Christopher welcomed baby Maya at the beginning of 2014.
It was a quick delivery. Lindsey wanted to go home that very day, but the doctors insisted upon keeping her and the baby overnight.
Christopher fell asleep in the plastic chair beside them, his mouth open, his hair mussed.
Lindsey’s heart swelled to double its size. She loved them both.
Lindsey and Christopher fell into an era of bliss.
Maya was a happy and very healthy baby girl, an “easy baby,” some said, who rarely cried and who learned how to sleep through the night almost immediately.
Lindsey and Christopher couldn’t believe it.
Their lives hardly changed. They still worked.
They still saw friends. They fit baby Maya into every area of their lives.
Soon after that, they discussed having a second baby but decided they didn’t want to jinx themselves.
Maybe they’d get a really difficult baby after Maya, and everything would be disrupted after that.
After about eight months of staying home with Maya, Lindsey returned to scuba diving full-time.
She quickly regained her strength and began taking her own tours out.
Sometimes, Christopher watched the baby while she was gone, and other times, they hired a babysitter named Hannah.
Hannah was seventeen and very responsible, a Costa Rican through and through.
She fell for Maya immediately and was instrumental in raising her.
When Maya was seven years old, Hannah sat Lindsey down and told her that she was going to college in Florida. “If I don’t leave Costa Rica now, I never will,” Hannah explained timidly. “But I’ll miss you all, and I can’t wait to come back.”
Lindsey was thrilled for Hannah, as she’d thought the girl was too frightened ever to leave.
She hugged her and thanked her for all she’d done for them.
And then, she asked Hannah if she had anyone she could recommend to babysit Maya.
“She’s easier, now,” Lindsey said, smiling. “She mostly keeps to herself!”
Hannah recommended a friend of a friend who, she knew, sometimes babysat.
The woman’s name was Mindy, and she was in her early twenties.
Sometimes she babysat. Sometimes she waitressed.
Sometimes she gardened. Mostly, though, Mindy was a beach girl, partying with her friends, swimming and celebrating life and all its chaos.
During the informal interview, Lindsey and Mindy laughed together.
They talked about beaches they liked, what they loved about scuba diving, and what they sometimes missed about their northern homes.
Mindy was from Rhode Island, which felt funny, as it wasn’t so far from Nantucket Island.
“But you’re an island girl,” Mindy said to Lindsey, laughing.
“You can’t escape this life! It’s in your blood. ”
Mindy seemed to like Maya, or at least like her enough. Lindsey wasn’t sure if she was entirely the type of person who loved children, but that was okay. Lindsey was hiring Mindy to keep Maya safe. That was all that mattered.
For the first few months, everything went well.
Mindy picked Maya up from school and took her home, where she watched her for anywhere from one to four hours, depending on Lindsey’s and Christopher’s schedules.
Lindsey took on many scuba diving instructor courses.
She led a team of divers to coral reefs, out to see sharks and dolphins, and sometimes whales.
Sometimes she and Christopher even stole a few hours for themselves, diving deeper than they had before, then rising slowly, grabbing a beer or a burger and watching as the sun rolled gently toward the horizon.
All told, Mindy was probably only at their house a total of twenty hours a week.
Sometimes more, sometimes less. But this went up in the summertime, when Maya was out of school, and tourism exploded across the island.
Lindsey needed to take on more hours at the scuba diving clinic, and Christopher was underwater—metaphorically as well as physically—most days.
They were expanding their business, eager to make more money.
It wasn’t greediness, they told themselves.
It was an opportunity, a chance to build a stronger foundation, not only for themselves but for Maya, too.
They hired more people, as well. Kendall, Ryan, Piper, and Steph all joined the ranks, taking teams of divers out, teaching them how to manage their equipment, and making everyone feel safe as they interacted with the wide blue around them.
Everything was going so well.
About a week before Maya was set to begin second grade, Lindsey and Christopher took a team of divers out to the Gulf of Papagayo, which meant an eight-hour day. Mindy came over at seven thirty and waved them goodbye. Maya was standing beside her, blinking sleep from her eyes.
At three that afternoon, Lindsey and Christopher returned to the surface after their dive.
Everyone who’d come with them was euphoric.
They had a mini-celebration on the boat, cracking beers and eating snacks and talking about the miraculous things they’d seen underwater.
Lindsey was euphoric. And then, just by chance, she looked at her phone.
She’d missed fifty-seven calls, all from Mindy.
“Christopher?” Her voice was strangled. “Christopher, check your phone.”
Christopher checked his. Immediately, all the color drained from his cheeks.
Because Lindsey was too frightened to call Mindy back, Christopher did it, guiding Lindsey into the little office on board their boat and closing the door behind them.
Lindsey watched Christopher’s face transform as he heard Mindy, frantic on the other line. It was hard to put the story together.