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“Madame?”

I wiped the spittle from my mouth with the edge of the towel wrapped around my waist and turned to see a navy-shirted crew member hovering at the edge of the pool deck, her hands clasped before her.

“Are you okay?” she entreated.

I nodded, my eyes fixed on the Search and Rescue boat, where the divers were loading Tyson’s body into the stern. It was the same every time I went into shock. Shaking morphed into nausea and then back again. You’d think my body would have learned to handle it by now, but no.

Behind me, Allison stared across the water, her arms wound around herself, too absorbed in the scene unfolding at sea to have noticed me vomiting over the railing.

“May I bring you some water?” the girl inquired.

“You don’t have to—I can come,” I said, starting toward her with wobbling legs.

There was nothing left to see now, anyway.

The other divers had fished Tyson’s body from the sea, hauling him into the boat and removing the oxygen tank from his back so they could lay him on the deck.

My tongue felt like cotton as I tried to formulate words. “Is he…Tyson, is he—dead?”

I knew the answer to the question, but I had to ask.

The poor girl’s eyes welled with tears. “I am sorry, madame. There was nothing they could do.”

I nodded, following her out of the shade of the side deck onto the main deck, where the pool sparkled in the dazzling sun.

Over the sound of the chill trance music that still pumped from the speakers at low volume, I could hear Samira keening below on the sugar scoop.

Samira, who it struck me had now lost two husbands at the tender age of twenty-five.

“Someone should probably cut the music,” I muttered.

“Yes, I will take care of that,” she said, grabbing a bottle of water from an ice bucket and handing it to me.

The dissonant wail of sirens announced the arrival of the police boat. I watched as it pulled up alongside the Search and Rescue boat, blocking our view of Tyson’s corpse. Moon One and Moon Two bobbed nearby, a morbid flotilla on a bright Caribbean day.

I sat on a lounger and took a deep breath, focusing on the horizon. The shock combined with the physical exhaustion from the dive and the dregs of my hangover had made me woozy and weak. I could probably stand to eat as well. With all the trauma, I’d forgotten how hungry I was.

The edges of my vision darkened as I stood, and I gripped the back of the lounger, closing my eyes until my head rush subsided.

“This can’t get out.” I opened my eyes to see Cody striding toward me, Jennifer on his heels. “The media can’t find out Tyson’s dead until we’ve decided how we’re going to handle it.”

Dazed, I blinked up at him. “Of course.”

“We’ll need to make an announcement,” Cody said to Allison as she joined us.

“I’m having the attorney draft an addendum to the NDAs the crew signed when they were hired.

We’ll need to make sure all the divers and the emergency personnel sign them as well.

The three De-Sal centers in development could all pull the plug if it gets out. ”

“I’ll come up with a statement,” Allison said.

“We can stop the bleed by having a plan in place before we announce,” Cody said. His face crumpled and he choked back a sob before taking a deep breath and resetting his face. “We need to come up with that plan,” he finished.

“I’ll call my publicist,” Allison said. “She’s a friend, and she’ll know what to do. Take a minute to breathe. You’re in shock. We all are.”

Cody reached out to a passing crew member, clearly not hearing Allison. “Excuse me, can you show me how to print?”

“The printer is in the office on the primary level,” the guy said. “This way.”

“I need you to round up the crew,” I heard Cody say as he followed the guy toward the stairwell, Allison trailing behind with a hand on his back, still trying to calm him. “We need to make an announcement.”

I was so queasy, and the sun was so bright. It would take them a minute to print the NDAs, and no one was paying any attention to me. I headed down the stairs to my room.

—

In my cabin, I ate a banana from the snack table to steady my stomach, then brushed my teeth, showered, and changed into a cream shift dress, letting my hair air-dry into messy waves.

I deliberated whether I would appear insensitive, wearing white, but it was what I had. This was an unexpected circumstance.

A man was dead, and I was wondering what to wear. It seemed wrong.

But what was right in this situation?

It was shocking. I was in shock. Allison was right, we were all in shock. I kept thinking of that word, “shock.” Was it an onomatopoeia? It felt like one.

I thought of my boys, wishing intensely that I could wrap my arms around them right now. I picked up my phone to see a text from Rosa wanting to know where Benji’s shin guards were. I answered, then tapped out a message asking her to tell the boys how much I missed them.

As I sat on the bed waiting for the message to go through, I imagined the hugs I would give Alex and Benji when I got home. Though it wouldn’t be tomorrow, I was relatively sure now.

Tyson would have no more tomorrows.

The realization hit me like a truck, the finality of it.

He would never have a chance to grow old, to see his children grow up, to become a better man.

Because as much of an asshole as he was, there had still been some scrap of hope inside me that he might change someday.

That as surely as the darkness had claimed him, the light might recover him in the end.

Even though I hardly recognized the man he’d become, I’d loved him when he was a boy.

And though he’d hurt me, I still wanted to believe he had goodness in him, somewhere deep in the recesses of his soul.

The seed of it still remained in the generosity he sometimes displayed. But now that seed would never sprout.

A red exclamation mark appeared next to my text and I hit Send again, but the Wi-Fi signal indicator was dark. I’d try again later, I thought, taking one more deep, centering breath before I grabbed my hat and sunglasses and closed my cabin door behind me.