Chapter 14
Cooper Price came to Miami on the first Tuesday in October.
He called her from the airport. Jess had given him the number, and Jess had not told Scarlett she’d done it, and Scarlett stood in the SwimSafe office with the phone against her ear and her heart doing something complicated.
“I’m in town for two days,” Cooper said. “Business, sort of. Can I buy you lunch? You can say no.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Scarlett said. “Come to my apartment. I’ll make you something terrible.”
* * *
He looked wrong in the city.
That was her first thought when she opened the door.
He was wearing jeans and a real button-down shirt, and real shoes, not flip-flops, and he looked like a man who’d been dressed by someone else.
His sun-bleached hair had been cut. He had the pale band on his wrist where his dive watch usually sat.
He was holding a paper grocery bag against his chest.
Then he smiled at her, and he looked exactly right.
“Your hair’s growing out,” he said.
“Your hair’s been cut.”
“Mae made me. She said I couldn’t go to Miami looking like a shipwreck.” He held out the bag. “She sent this. Don’t open it in front of me. I’ve been guarding it on two planes and I don’t want to see what happens.”
Inside the bag was a whole key lime pie, somewhat squashed, in a plastic container wrapped in three layers of foil. On top of the foil, taped down, was an envelope in a child’s big careful handwriting. MISS S.
Scarlett opened it standing in the doorway.
It was a drawing. A beach, a lot of very blue water, and an orange circle far out in it. In the water was a small stick figure with long black lines for braids. Next to the orange circle, in crayon, it said: I SWIM TO THE BOY EVERY DAY NOW. STARFISH FIRST. LOVE DESTINY.
Scarlett laughed. And then she had to sit down on the arm of her eighty-dollar couch, and put her hand over her mouth, and Cooper stood in the kitchen doorway and looked politely at the ceiling while she cried.
* * *
They ate grilled cheese sandwiches on the balcony, sitting sideways, because there was only one chair.
He told her about the island. The search company had never come back.
The reporters had left. Monique at the clinic sent her love.
Mae’s granddaughter was swimming every day, and the other kids, and then some kids from the settlement on the harbor side had started walking over to the far beach in the mornings because they’d heard there was a place where you could learn.
There was nobody to teach them. They just stood in the shallows and tried to copy Destiny.
“That’s the business,” Cooper said.
“What is?”
He put down his sandwich. He looked out at the scrubby park and the ficus tree.
“There’s a grant,” he said. “From a tourism fund in Nassau. For water safety on the out islands. Kids drown there, Scarlett. Every year. Kids who live on islands and never learned. The fund wants somebody to build a real program. Beaches. Boats between the islands. Trained local teachers. I talked to them. I told them about you.” He turned to look at her.
“They want SwimSafe. They want you to build it. Out of Gull Cay. I’ve got boats.
I’ve got the shop. Mae’s already offered her kitchen.
They’d pay for a year, to start. Longer if it works. ”
Scarlett didn’t say anything.
She couldn’t. She was seeing it. The far beach in the morning. The orange buoy. Twenty kids in the shallows. Boats going out between the cays with teachers on them. Something built from the sand up, with her name nowhere on it but her hands everywhere in it.
It was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever offered her.
* * *
“There’s one more thing,” Cooper said. “And then I’ll never bring it up again.”
She looked at him.
He didn’t look away. That was one of the things she liked most about him. He never looked away.
“I’d like you there,” he said. “Not just for the kids. For me.” He said it plainly, the way he said everything, with no drama in it at all.
“I think you already know that. I think you knew it on the balcony that night with the pie. I didn’t say anything then because you were somebody’s wife and somebody was trying to kill you, and that seemed like enough for one person to deal with.
” He shrugged. “But you’re not in that house anymore.
And I’m not going to fly all the way to Miami and pretend I don’t feel it.
So there. I said it. That’s the only time I’ll say it. ”
Scarlett sat on the floor of her balcony with half a grilled cheese sandwich in her hand and felt it go all the way through her.
She didn’t pretend it didn’t. She had spent too many years pretending things didn’t land.
She wanted it. Not just the program. She wanted the island, and the far beach, and the little room with the ticking fan, and a man who never looked away and never made her wait.
She wanted a life where nobody knew her name and nobody had ever called her fragile.
She could see it. It was real. It was sitting right there on her balcony in a badly ironed shirt.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Cooper said.
“Not today. The fund needs an answer by the end of the month. I’m going to go look at some boats in Fort Lauderdale.
” He stood up and dusted crumbs off his jeans.
“And Scarlett. Whatever you pick. The apartment’s still there.
The boat’s still there. That doesn’t change. ”
* * *
The pressure came from everywhere that week.
On Wednesday, Ryan’s mother called her.
Scarlett didn’t recognize the number. She answered, and there was a sniff, and a thin, trembling voice said, “Scarlett? It’s Kathy.”
In nine years, Kathy Walsh had called Scarlett perhaps five times. Always about Thanksgiving.
“I’m calling to ask you something,” Kathy said. “As a mother. Ryan won’t talk to me about Luke. He’s cut him off. Completely. Luke is—Luke isn’t eating. He’s not sleeping. He sits in his apartment all day.” A small sob. “Ryan listens to you. He always has. If you asked him to forgive his brother—”
“Kathy,” Scarlett said. “Luke told the FBI I was crazy.”
“He was scared. He was protecting his family.”
“I’m his family,” Scarlett said. “I was his family for nine years.”
Kathy was quiet.
“I’m not going to ask Ryan to do anything about Luke,” Scarlett said, as gently as she could. “That’s between them. And I think you should ask yourself why the person you’re calling for help is the one Luke hurt.”
She hung up. Her hands were shaking.
* * *
On Thursday, a magazine called SwimSafe’s office.
A big one. Glossy. The kind that sat in every nail salon and airport in the country. They wanted a cover. The Walshes: Survival, Scandal, and a Second Chance. A photo shoot at the house on the bay. The two of them together on the dock. Exclusive.
“They’re offering a donation to SwimSafe,” the SwimSafe office manager said, holding her hand over the phone. “A big one.”
“Tell them no,” Scarlett said.
“It’s a lot of—”
“Tell them there’s no second chance to photograph,” Scarlett said. “Tell them I’ll call them if there’s ever anything to put on a cover. Tell them not to hold their breath.”
* * *
On Friday, Agent Kerr came to the apartment.
She stood in the tiny kitchen and looked around at the mismatched plates and the plant from Jess and the drawing from Destiny taped to the refrigerator.
“I like it,” Kerr said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Kerr leaned against the counter.
“Her lawyers want a plea deal. Fast. They’ve seen what we have.
The office log in your name. The captain’s first statement.
The phone. Her texts with your brother-in-law.
” Kerr’s mouth twisted. “They want to plead her down and make it go away before a jury ever hears the word stern.”
“And?”
“And the U.S. Attorney wants to know what you think. It’s not your decision. But it matters. Victims get a voice in these things.” Kerr looked at her over her reading glasses. “They’d like to know by next week.”
Scarlett looked at the drawing on the refrigerator. The orange circle. The stick girl with braids.
“No,” she said.
“No deal?”
“No, I’m not telling you by next week.” Scarlett took a breath.
“Everybody wants something from me by next week. Ryan’s mother.
A magazine. A man with a grant. The U.S.
Attorney.” She pressed her hand flat on the counter.
“I nearly died. I spent two weeks being dead and three months being crazy. I’m not doing anything else on anybody’s schedule but mine.
I’ll tell you what I think when I know what I think. ”
Kerr looked at her for a long moment.
Then she smiled. It was the first real smile Scarlett had ever seen on her face. It made her look ten years younger.
“Good,” Kerr said. “Take your time. She’s not going anywhere.”
* * *
Jess came over that night with a bottle of cheap wine and her scrubs still on.
She sat on the eighty-dollar couch with her feet on Scarlett’s lap and listened to all of it. The grant. The island. The magazine. Kathy Walsh. Cooper on the balcony saying for me.
“Okay,” Jess said when she was done. “Two things. First, the dive guy is extremely hot and extremely uncomplicated, and I want that on the record.”
Scarlett laughed.
“Second.” Jess took a long drink of wine. She looked at the ceiling. She looked very unhappy about what she was going to say. “Ryan called me last week.”
“Why?”
“To ask if there was anything you needed. For the apartment. He said he wasn’t going to buy you anything, he just wanted to know if there was something I could pick up so you didn’t have to do it all alone.
” Jess made a face like the wine was sour.
“I told him you needed a kettle. You’ve been making tea in a frying pan for two months, you lunatic. ”
Scarlett looked at the kitchen.
On the stove, there was a kettle. A plain white one. It had appeared last Tuesday. She had assumed Jess brought it.