Chapter 14
Isabel was silent during their drive back to the bungalow.
She fed the octopus on their return, then wordlessly introduced her halimeda sprouts into the tank.
When Wes broke the quiet with an ill-advised offer to buy dinner, plus a joke about the last time he’d gotten to “see food” that wasn’t seafood here in Monterey, so did she want Chinese takeout? —she declined.
“I have a headache.”
She vanished into the bedroom before he could offer crackers or a glass of water.
He stared at the door for a long time, hearing nothing except the aquarium burbling.
No faucet running in the bathroom. She must’ve swallowed her medication dry.
Redirecting his impulse to bother her with apologies for his bad joke—and with questions—he eventually dragged himself away to the tank for a distraction.
But the octopus was quiet, too. Her white-speckled arms fiddled idly with her shrimp, a binder clip, and a lacy frill on her new macroalgae.
He slipped a hand under the mesh lid and she ignored him, even shrinking deeper into her coral, her suckers anchored on rock.
“Damn,” he said, but softly.
*
Thursday morning was almost as noiseless as Wednesday night.
Isabel emerged from the bedroom right before eight o’clock in her flannel, jeans, and baseball cap, just as he was preparing to finally knock on her door, to ask for five minutes in the bathroom and if she was ready to leave for MORI—or if she needed to stay home.
She caught him with his knuckles raised at the threshold.
“Sorr—uh. Feeling better?”
Her chin jerked.
She never lied, did she? She simply didn’t answer. She led the way to Baby.
Later that day he posed questions about her MORI shift, like what animals she’d transported into the facility’s calming tanks for timeouts due to schooling stress—and whether Dr. Solomon had been rude—and if she’d managed to spy-hop her way past any Do Not Enter signs.
She responded: rockfish, yes, and, “The computer lab has a Keep Out notice posted now. I meant to enter this morning after I’d de-loused a tank of flounder.
But the other volunteers were stopping for coffee, and they asked me to join them in the break room.
There’s a direct line of sight between that room and the computer banks.
I couldn’t refuse without risking their curiosity about where I was going instead. ”
So: she’d respond to direct, factual inquiries.
But if he didn’t ask?
The silence was heavy.
Why?
When he’d come back to Old Fisherman’s Wharf yesterday after spending ten minutes at the tie-dye shack, she’d swung around fast from a shrimp vendor to see him returning to her; an anxious haze in her eyes had blazed into sunlight and she’d crashed into his arms like a tidal wave, seizing his shirt, burying her nose against his neck, her mouth and shoulders trembling—but with no one watching—and he’d thought. . .
It doesn’t matter.
Whatever he’d thought, he’d been wrong.
After he ran out of inquiries about fish food and grouchy researchers and inconvenient break times, however, Wes didn’t ask her what this fresh problem was.
He didn’t ask what he’d done to set her back.
What if Isabel told him something he couldn’t fix?
He couldn’t stand that. Instead, he posed questions from her napkin list. Questions related to that list, anyhow.
He didn’t need to inquire whether she drank coffee or tea, or what brand of toothpaste she used.
He knew these things now—even if he’d had to be quick in catching his glimpse of her dental hygiene products before she stowed them in a toiletries bag, all evidence of paste, floss, and brushes removed from the bathroom.
“If you could snap your fingers and be an expert on any subject, what would you choose?” he tried while she fed the two-spot that night. “An expert on any subject that’s not octopuses.”
“I’m not an expert.”
“Could’ve fooled me. Plus the nerds at MORI. The Seattle Aquarium people, too, right?”
Her left shoulder lifted and dropped. Only after failing to interest the juvenile in cracking open a mussel did she answer, “I’d choose immigration law. I know some. But not everything.”
It wasn’t a conversation, and she didn’t smile, even at his next joke.
“How many times do you need to tickle an octopus like our Octavia. . . no, I still like Thalassa better—to make it laugh? Ten-tacles!” he grinned.
Or tried to.
“Mmm.” Isabel paused while replacing the tank’s dive weights. She studied her hands and their dozen sucker kisses. Then she scanned a few rubber bands abandoned on the submerged gravel. “Is. . . is she less engaged today? Less interested in her food?”
He hadn’t made her laugh. He’d worried her.
She retreated into the bedroom. Alone on the couch, he cursed. He didn’t knock at the door.
*
On Friday afternoon, he hazarded a new subject.
“Adrian shared his final travel schedule this morning. He’s arriving in San Francisco next Tuesday. September twelfth. He and Erin are renting a car and driving to Santa Cruz on Wednesday. They want to ride the Giant Dipper roller coaster.”
“Oh.” Isabel watched the coastline whip by in a blur of sand and fog-drenched pines.
“The boardwalk’s famous. Lots of old-timey charm.
Like I said—churros and funnel cakes. Even sunshine.
Tie-dye. It’d be a good place to take photos.
For the interviewer. But—” and now he was talking too much and too fast, his tongue running ahead of his brain while he flicked Baby’s turn signal and exited the highway, “they’re coming on a weekday.
Not ideal. It won’t be crowded, though, and there’ll be discounts for food and rides.
Santa Cruz is about an hour’s drive north from here.
Can you get off early from volunteering?
If not, I’ll ask Adrian to swap dates or—”
“I can.” Baby braked for the Del Monte Avenue stop sign, and Isabel stared ahead at the intersection.
“It’s not a real job. Anyone else could do the work.
But even if I couldn’t go to Santa Cruz, you shouldn’t change the date because of me.
This day on the boardwalk, it’s for you and your siblings, isn’t it? For your family?”
“Maybe Ethan, too.”
“Family,” she repeated with a little shrug. “And I’m. . .”
Not?
Screw that.
“I want them to meet you, Isabel.” He accelerated too hard onto Casa Verde Way. He forced a laugh to lighten the weight of her pause. “I also want you to meet them. Just in case you change your mind and decide to run, once you see what you’re in for.”
“I. . .”
“Which you can. Run, I mean. I wouldn’t blame you. But I’m not running.” Not next week anyhow. Not until a new contract drew him to Antarctica for penguins, or the Great Barrier Reef for coral. “Erin and Adrian are the family sprinters. I’m faster in the water. Happier. Maybe. . . like you are?”
Thank God, that question finally worked.
Sort of.
They pulled up to the curb and Isabel extracted her napkin list from the flannel pocket of her shirt. She cleared her throat. “Water, yes. What inspired you to become a marine photographer?”
Quick, clipped, all business.
A transactional inquiry.
Muffling his sigh, Wes followed her stiff steps and hunched shoulders through the driftwood gate.
While she prepared food for their octopus in the kitchen, he scanned the living room rug for mussel shells—none—then removed the aquarium’s lid, dropped a hand into the tank, and told her, “Visual’s easy for me.
Seeing patterns. Noticing things in my environment.
Colors, textures, behaviors, when prodigies like Erin—or even most other people—are looking for numbers and words.
Plus, I’ve always liked the water. I like feeling self-sufficient when I’m submerged. Like I can trust my body.”
Chop, chop, slice.
“I’ve got skills in the ocean that don’t depend on my brain decoding symbols.
It’s where I can be really good at something.
Useful. Where I’m not the odd one out, because—hell, it could get obvious on Wednesday, so I’ll give you a heads-up tonight.
” He stroked a finger over the octopus’s third arm; Thalassa was holding a half-eaten shrimp from breakfast, evidently disinterested in its protein.
“I used to take care of Erin and Adrian at school when we were kids. In the hallways, on the playground. I didn’t mind fighting if bullies tried to tease them about being nerds or having panic attacks.
But they don’t need me to win their battles anymore.
I’m not smart enough to get a degree in marine biology.
Definitely not smart enough for the kind of credentials they have.
They’re fighting fights I don’t even understand.
I—I can’t keep up with them. They’ve gone on to places where I can’t help.
That’s good. It’s fine. . . But the ocean?
Anywhere I go on David Attenborough’s blue planet, that’s still mine—”
Squish, from the kitchen.
Isabel appeared in the doorway to the living room. She wasn’t carrying Thalassa’s dinner shrimp. Instead, her fists were balled, her knuckles blanched. She was frowning. Frowning right at him—and her voice was loud.
“That’s not true.”
“What?”
“It’s not true that you’re not smart. You’ve just said that you notice colors, patterns, textures—behaviors.
You have an eidetic memory for what you see in the bay.
You can name thousands of species underwater by sight.
You have all the practical and observational experience that makes a good photographer.
A good biologist. The curiosity and compassion and patience that make a good person.
If Erin and Adrian don’t need your help now, that’s because you were there when they did need you.
When you were there to make them safe—safe enough to take risks.
To try, to fail safely, and try again. To succeed—and.
. . and anyhow,” suddenly breathless, “I don’t have a degree. ”