Page 40

Thirty

Huck

Something is very wrong.

Gus and I are hanging out at a depth of thirty feet, searching around the grappling hook to see if we pick up any other signals.

I’ve been hoping that Stella would get here so I could share this with her.

Finding the relic was an incredible experience, but I wanted her next to me when I found it.

And maybe a stupid part of me hoped in that moment that she would see that I’d done something worthwhile to help her to her goal and it would make up for my past mistakes a little.

I would give anything for her to like me even a tiny bit again.

But it’s been a while since our last contact and she and Ted have not appeared.

There’s been patchy conversation over the radio that I struggle to decipher.

Talk of depths and deco stops—terms I vaguely remember from the training manual she made me study, but it’s a shorthand and I’m not even sure I’m translating it right. I’m not allowed past sixty feet.

I switch to the channel that lets me and Gus talk to each other. I remember Stella telling me that Ted had bad safety habits when it came to diving. Is that what this is?

“What’s going on?” I ask.

Gus doesn’t answer right away, and while I’m waiting, my stomach swirls with growing unease. I don’t like this anymore.

“Their next site was near some deep water,” Gus says. “I think Ted’s gone too far. He could be narc’d since they’re just diving on air. It’s not smart.”

“Shit.” I worry for Ted. Even though Gus is using terms I don’t fully grasp, I recall something about nitrogen narcosis from my studying and that different gases need to be added to the mix for deeper dives.

Even without this knowledge, I’ve been aware that something has been bubbling under the surface with Ted this last week or so.

He’s been distant since South Carolina. I’ve tried to broach the issue with him, but he hasn’t wanted to talk. And now he’s putting himself at risk.

“She’s going after him.”

This hits me hard, right in the chest. I nearly choke on the air. Teddy’s recklessness has always been a one-man-band situation where he thinks he’s invincible, except for the golf-cart-versus-pond incident. I know personally just how quickly his grand schemes can go awry.

It was one thing when he was jeopardizing me. Now he’s putting Stella at risk.

“You should head back to the boat,” Gus tells me.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to meet them and make sure they make it up top.”

···

I don’t want to but I do as Gus says, and slowly ascend following the mooring line, stopping for a few minutes at fifteen feet before making my way to the surface.

I want to crawl out of my skin, I’m so worried, and I can’t help.

I can’t fucking do anything . I climb onto the boat and start stowing my gear.

Then I walk over to Zoe to see if there’s some action I can take.

Her entire face screams stress. I think of her confession earlier; this is the last thing she needs right now.

“Those three are on a list. I swear to god.” She rakes her hands through her hair. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s okay, I totally get it. This is freaking stressful and scary. But they’re experienced, right? They know how to handle the situation. It’ll be okay.”

Zoe bites her lip and nods. “Gus was a technical diver in the Navy before he went back to school for archaeology. He’s solid and smart.

Out here, he always dives with two tanks, including a trimix if he needs it to go beyond recreational limits, and he’s not hotheaded, so he’ll make sure those two fools make it back. ”

There was anger in her voice at the end, which was understandable.

Stella had drilled it into me about how not being careful when you are diving could endanger everyone who’s with you.

Teddy’s fixation on finding something down there today wasn’t just bad for him.

I swallow hard. Let her be okay. They all have to be okay.

“Is this something that’s happened before?” I ask.

“I don’t know. No. I mean, Teddy’s cavalier as shit and Stella maybe takes the hunting a bit too far, but they’re not stupid. It’s just that this time, it feels like they both have something to prove and that makes me really fucking nervous.”

“What do you mean?” I pick at the skin at the edge of my thumb.

“She told you about the Heart, right? It’s all she’s got left of her family.

I think she feels like she needs to find it so she doesn’t lose them completely…

I don’t know. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to have both your parents leave you like that.

She’s never said that maybe if she found something huge they’d come back, but I sometimes wonder if that’s what drives her to chase so hard.

She lives and breathes this treasure hunting stuff even though it’s basically what broke her family.

And you know, Gus and I love her and Teddy, and we like to dive and it’s kind of fun, but we don’t have the same obsession.

I could just as easily have gone on a Disney cruise.

In fact, maybe I’d rather be on a cruise.

Just Frozen live shows and warm pretzels all day.

Or maybe I’m just saying that because I’m not out there in the water and I’m on a saltine diet. ”

I think back to Zoe who, according to Stella, is as adept at redirecting sharks as she is at courtroom questioning.

It must be so brutal for her to be stuck up here with me when everyone she cares about is down there.

All I can do is nod. I don’t know how long it’s been since they’ve checked in. “Should we radio down to them?”

Zoe gets on the radio and hails them. There’s a stretch of silence. Gus checks in; he can’t find them. My lungs are burning. I squeeze my hands into fists.

And then finally, finally, Stella’s voice, distant but real, comes through the radio. I strain to hear her, my next breath depending on each word. “We’re heading up. Ted and I need a deco stop.”

She’s alright—I can breathe again.

“I see you,” Gus says. “How’s your air?”

“I’m good. Ted might need to borrow your phase two. He’s low.”

···

The time for the rest of their ascent and the decompression stop feels like an eternity. Zoe and I pace the deck together. I bite my nails down to the quick.

“Should we talk more to make this go faster?” I ask.

“Yeah, that would be good. I could use the distraction. Let’s talk about something totally different, something other than history and shipwrecks. Tell me about your life in New York. What’s your favorite bagel place?”

“Sure, good plan. I love Court Street Bagels in Brooklyn. I could eat this sandwich called the Prospect Park every single day. It’s got mesquite turkey, sun-dried tomato, and honey mustard. I get a slice of Gouda on it.”

“I miss cold cuts so much.”

“Sorry. They have great breakfast sandwiches too. Eggs are safe, right?”

“Yeah, they are. Continue. I might be turning a corner with this morning sickness thing, because those sandwiches sound surprisingly appealing.”

“It’s so good. The breakfast bagel is fried in butter so it’s got a crunch. The guy who manages it, Gigi, treats everybody like family. I don’t even have to order when I go in. It sounds ridiculous, but that place is one of the reasons that I stayed.”

Zoe’s brow wrinkles. “What do you mean, stayed? Were you thinking of leaving? Teddy said that you were so New York apple juice ran through your veins.”

I scoff. That was something Ted used to tease me with whenever we’d go out in high school and I didn’t drink. “I went through a rough patch a few years back. Didn’t really want to be there anymore.”

“With the book?”

“Before that. It’s probably the reason why the book went off the rails.”

She gives me one of those okay, tell me more looks that she is so good at.

“I don’t really like to talk about it.”

“It’s interesting. You’d be amazed how often clients don’t want to talk about it, especially when something’s gone really wrong. But most of the time they feel better once they do. Even if it was their fault. What’s your story?”

“Nope. We were supposed to be talking about lighter stuff, distracting things, like bagels. I don’t need to scar you with my secret trauma.”

I say this lightly, but I really don’t want to talk about what happened…

because it was traumatic. That last fight that I had with my dad before he died, the vicious disappointment he’d shared in front of everyone in the signing line at the convention, the way I’d finally stood up for myself and told him how I hated him for making me hate myself.

I didn’t know that he’d pass two hours later, on the red line subway.

That Clark would be gone too. I’d tank my book after that and prove everything awful my father thought about me was right.

That within a month, my fiancée would realize I wasn’t fun or successful anymore and not even bother with a Dear Huck letter when she left.

The idea of coming close to it at all, let alone sharing it with someone, feels risky.

Thankfully, Gus, Ted, and Stella appear on the surface of the water a few yards away and I don’t have to say anything.

Gus gives us the all-clear signal, and then they swim toward the boat.

I help Ted out first, and Gus hops up and ushers him over to a bench to lie down.

I lower an arm to take Stella’s fins from her.

Everyone is quiet.

Gus wraps Zoe in his arms and holds her. “We’re fine,” he tells her, smoothing the hair she’d worried up into a mess. “It’s all good, babe. All good.”

I glance at Stella. She’s watching them too, biting her lip. She still hasn’t taken off her tank. She’s just standing there, dazed and dripping.

“Can I help you with this?” I ask, gesturing at her tank.

She shakes her head, like she’s emerging from a dream. “Oh, I got it.” She pulls off the tank and her BC and sets them on the deck. The boat pitches on a wave, and I reach out to steady her as she stumbles, struggling to stay upright.

“I must’ve left my sea legs in the ocean,” she says, and tries to smile.

The boat rocks again. “I got you,” I tell her.

“You don’t have to. I’m okay.”

I swallow with effort. “I wasn’t sure you were going to be…okay…for a bit there.”

She squints up at me and then turns her attention to Teddy. Gus is handing him a mask connected to a small tank of oxygen. “We’re alright,” Stella tells me. “The pure oxygen will help.” She still hasn’t looked back at me.

“Feels like a close call.”

“Yeah, well, that’s Teddy. King of the close calls.” She finally turns around, and I try to erase the worry from my face. “Tell me about the find you guys had. I can’t wait to see it for myself.”