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“Pool’s open!” the captain said, and Austen did a scissor jump into the water.
Ethan went in behind her.
Declan and Stein had also kitted up, and Stein checked the Jamesons’ gear before he sent them on their way.
H eather opted to stay in the boat, but Dr. Scott, in a shortie suit, his fins on, waddled to the stern and rolled in, back first.
Declan bobbed in the water, giving an okay signal to the captain. Then he grabbed his fins, now wearing his BDC, pulled down his goggles, put in his regulator, and headed to the back.
“The wreck is about sixty feet down, just beyond the ledge. You’ll have to swim to it because I can’t anchor on the reef,” said the captain—Ignatius, if Doyle remembered right. “Good luck.” He grinned, his mirrored sunglasses sporting a shot of Doyle and his unshaven mug.
Doyle scissored in, slipped on his fins, and then shot an okay to Austen, their official guide for the tour.
She sent them down, and the noise of the world evaporated.
He loved diving. Austen had first taught him three years ago, when she’d yanked him away from the family’s inn during their shoulder month—March. He’d spent three glorious weeks in the Keys, on her boat, getting certified, then diving every day to see the wrecks along the treasure coast. She’d shown him the few gold pieces she’d found littered among the reefs, and he’d gotten a tan, grown a beard, and generally found pieces of himself, like gold, in the crystalline waters.
Now, the old feeling of flying swept over him as he sank, the world turning a kaleidoscope of colors as he descended into the colony of coral that stretched along the shore. They’d anchored to a mooring ball positioned at the edge of the coral bed, the gnarled polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Austen hovered over the coral, pointing to a giant orange barrel sponge, then another, this one red.
Green and red parrotfish nibbled at the algae that adorned the staghorn and elkhorn coral that protruded like tiny trees from the rugged surface, and small, bright-orange clownfish skittered around flowing anemones.Just keep swimming...
The memory of the animated show rose inside—one of Juliet’s favorites.
And see, now she would lodge in his head for the rest of the day.
Austen pointed to an overhang, and he followed her direction and spotted a coiled green eel, asleep in the crevice. A giant lobster stared out at him, its antennae like spears in the water.
A turtle edged out of a crack in the coral and headed away from the cluster of divers.
Doyle took a second to count the crew—yes, everyone was with them—and he gave an okay signal to the Jamesons, who seemed comfortable in the water.
Austen and Ethan had swum farther down the coral, now disappearing behind the shelf, toward where the ocean floor dropped fast into darkness.
The wreck.
Austen and he had already planned the dive—and now he stayed with the Jamesons and Greg Scott on the reef while she headed to the wreck, another thirty feet down.
Declan followed her, as did Stein, but Doyle stayed shallow, pointing out a large grouper and even a reef shark nesting in a nearby lava tube interspersed with the coral. The tubes collected the darkness, and he followed Dr. Scott as the man swam through tunnels, making sure he didn’t get caught on the jagged black edges. The Jamesons followed him, and a stingray lifted from the shadows, floating away on angel wings.
Juliet would have loved this.
“Just because the plan changed doesn’t mean God doesn’t have a new one.”
Austen’s words thrummed in the silence. He sometimes felt like maybe he didn’t want to know what the new plan was.
He’d like his old one back.
Still, yes,five years.The sharpness didn’t take him down quite so often anymore; the grief was not as suffocating when it swept over him. Yes, he missed her, but the ache had become something deep inside that he had gotten used to living with.
A tapping caught his attention.
He looked around to find the source and spotted Hunter Jameson indicating to him with the tapper affixed to his tank. He pointed to his wife, who’d started for the surface.
Doyle signaled to Dr. Scott, and they headed over, then rose to the surface.
The wind had turned the waves choppy. He spat out his regulator. “You okay?”
Elise nodded. “My mask fogged up and I couldn’t clear it. And I’m nearly out of air.”