Chapter 16
JACK
‘I was hoping you’d show up,’ she said, and my ego inflated like a helium balloon, drifting towards the stars overhead.
I dropped my towel onto the rocks and stretched. It had been a long day. ‘You were?’
‘Yes.’ She swam across the pool, and rested her hands on a rock, her chin on her hands. ‘I’ve been desperate to know how Casey is. Have you heard anything?’
The ego balloon sustained a puncture, deflating and sinking back down towards earth.
‘We had an update about an hour ago. She’s OK. Will have surgery tomorrow on her ankle, and it might need pinning, which will mean she’ll need some rehab from a physio. But she’s going to be OK. All thanks to you.’
‘Hardly. You’re the one who did all the heroic stuff.’
‘But I wouldn’t have been able to do that if you hadn’t called it in.’
‘I wish I could have done more.’
‘Would you really have gone down the cliff with me, if I’d let you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Huh.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘And FYI, the only reason I didn’t keep pushing you to let me go was so you didn’t look bad in front of the other guys. You’re welcome.’
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘That’s so kind of you to protect my reputation like that.’
‘I know, right? I’m such a considerate person.’
I climbed carefully down the rocks and eased myself into the water, exhaling as my body relaxed. It really was like a magic tonic for weary bodies. I dipped my head under then came back up, shaking my head, flicking water everywhere.
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked, paddling over next to her. ‘Besides virtuous, even though that’s wildly misplaced.’
‘Rude. But I’m OK. Just relived, really, that it all worked out.’
‘Me too. That was quite a fall she had. Could easily have killed her. I told her she needs to buy a lottery ticket with luck like that.’
‘What made you join the search and rescue volunteers?’
I leaned my back against the rocks that were still warm from the sun and shrugged. ‘I like helping people.’
‘I like helping people too. Just the other week I yelled at an impatient taxi driver for honking his horn at a mom with a pram, made him wait until she was safely across the road. But there’s a difference between being helpful, and helping people by scaling cliff faces or being winched out of a helicopter. ’
‘I don’t get winched out of helicopters. That’s a whole different level of skill and training.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘What can I say? I wanted to give something back to the community that has been so welcoming to me. Gerry and another guy were talking about it at the bar one night, how they needed more volunteers, so I signed up.’
‘Just like that.’
‘Just like that,’ I confirmed. ‘Worship me if you must, but I’m no hero. I’m just an ordinary man, doing extraordinary things.’
She burst out laughing. Her teeth were bright in the silver light of the moon. ‘Oh my God, could you be any more full of yourself?’
I grinned at her. ‘I was clearly joking.’
‘If you say so.’
I laughed. Watched her kick off the side and float on her back, her face pale in the moonlight. Somewhere out on the water, a loon called mournfully, the sound haunting across the water.
‘You never answered my question, by the way,’ I said.
‘What question?’
‘About why you were at the cemetery.’
She was silent for so long I thought I’d upset her. So quiet that all I could hear was the soothing sigh of the waves and the quiet hum of crickets from up in the pine trees.
‘I was doing what everyone does at a cemetery,’ she said eventually.
‘Visiting a grave.’
‘Yes, Captain Obvious.’
I waited to see if she would be more forthcoming, but she stayed quiet.
‘Family?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m getting the strangest feeling that you don’t want to talk about it.’
‘You should trust that feeling.’
‘Fine.’ I pushed off the rocks and swam across to the other side of the pool, the side closest to the ocean. ‘Keep your secrets.’
‘It’s not a secret,’ she said. ‘I’d just rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.’
Something in her tone was fragile, warning me that I’d almost gone too far.
‘I don’t mind. Sorry for being pushy.’
She sighed. ‘You weren’t. Not really. It’s just… being back here again. It’s hard.’
‘It’s really that bad?’
‘It’s not bad, just hard. A lot of memories. Some good, some not so good.’
‘Tell me a good one.’
She didn’t have to think for too long. ‘This pool,’ she said.
‘This beach. We had it all to ourselves, growing up. I’d spend whole days down here.
Swimming, climbing all over the rocks, looking for bits of sea glass or cool shells, exploring the little pockets of water left behind by the tide for sea creatures.
We found an octopus once. It was just a small, common one.
But we thought it was so cool. It kept trying to change color and camouflage itself, blend into the rocks.
I stayed there all day, watching it, until the tide came back in and filled the pool again and then it was gone. ’
‘The joys of a childhood by the sea,’ I said. ‘L.A. beaches are very different to this one. More sand, for a start.’
‘More toned, tanned and taut bodies too, I imagine.’
I snorted. ‘You got that right. Back home, a lot of people spend a hell of a lot of time and money obsessing about their bodies. You don’t seem to get that here.’
‘Iona Connolly ran women’s fitness classes in the community hall when I was a teen,’ she said.
‘My mother signed up and used to drag me along. They’d jump up and down for an hour and then afterwards all go to the café to drink coffee and eat muffins and I’d sit there and think, what was the point?
Now that I’m older, I understand. It was more of a social thing, for most of them.
Making connections. It’s easy to feel isolated here, especially in the winter. ’
‘The winter we just had was brutal,’ I agreed, shuddering at the memory. ‘Obviously I knew that winters here on the East Coast would be a lot colder than I was used to, but I was still woefully ill-prepared.’
‘I used to love winters as a child. We’d sit on the porch with blankets wrapped around us and our fingers wrapped around mugs of delicious hot chocolate, and we’d watch storms rage out at sea. Count the lightning strikes and thunderclaps to figure out how far away the storms were.’
‘That sounds like a nice memory,’ I said softly.
She shrugged. ‘Like I said, it wasn’t all bad.’
‘Maybe, one day, you’ll have the chance to make more happy memories here,’ I said. ‘Drown out some of the bad.’
‘Maybe.’
I remembered how her arms had felt around my waist, her chest pressed against my back as she leaned into me. I didn’t think I’d imagined the look of regret on her own face when we got back to town and the ride was over. I suspected that it mirrored my own.