“Because the story would be all about the Dive! family making a real-life diving find. It wouldn’t be about her and her work. So if she had it taken from the boat, she could claim she found it anywhere. It would be about her again. This whole trip was unofficial. The only proof we have is the video footage, which she asked you to gather. Don’t you see?”
“You’ve had a long night,” Aidan said. “Maybe you should ask for more pasta.”
“Aidan, I’m serious,” she said. “Where is she now? Why isn’t she in the hallway right now, with her crying daughter and her distraught boyfriend?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe with Martin at the hospital?”
“Does that sound likely to you?” she asked. With every word, she felt her internal temperature rising, her brain working fast. “Wouldn’t Elsa have stayed? She’s the only one who speaks Italian. I know you can’t believe it because she’s your boss. I’m sure of this, Aidan. I have to tell this guy. I at least have to tell him what I think.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.
The door opened again, and Clio got another glimpse of Elsa with the sailor. They were deep in a conversation in Italian, and he was wiping tears from her face. The officer ushered in Clio’s father, who hurried in and sat down next to her, putting his arm protectively around her. He clasped Aidan on the shoulder.
“Where’s Julia?” Clio asked innocently. “Why isn’t she here? Is she with Martin?”
“No,” her father said. “She’s gone.”
Clio shot Aidan a wide-eyed “told you” look. In reply, Aidan’s eyebrows rose and locked in position, and he fixed her with a silencing stare as she started to open her mouth.
“I deliver news,” the officer said, going back to his seat. “And I must ask some more questions to all of you. Do you know a Jeffrey Fox?”
“No,” her father said. “Never heard of him.”
“Not the owner of Foxy Lady?” Clio said.
Her father’s face lit up in recognition. He started pointing at Clio in agreement, pointing his finger toward her.
“Sure,” he said. “Fox. I bought the boat from an Angela Fox. Clio’s right. It was called the Foxy Lady.”
“Things become clearer,” the officer said, opening a file. “We have written here that Jeffrey Fox is a banker from London who works in Rome. Our records show that he had a boat called the Foxy Lady docked here in Civitavecchia.”
“What about him?” her father asked. “I bought the boat. It’s all legal.”
“Yes,” the officer said. “This I know. We get the name Jeffrey Fox from three men we find just now.”
“So, you found the boat?” Clio asked quickly.
“No,” he said, still smiling. “It is sank. Do I say this correctly? It hit a rock after a fire broke out on board. They were not watching where they were going. We pull these men from the water. It is a busy night for us. Jeffrey Fox wanted his boat back. He told people at the dock to watch to see if it ever returned, and when it did, they called him. He hired these three men to take the boat back.”
Clio felt herself slumping. Just a second ago, Julia’s guilt had been the clearest thing in the world. That reality had been swept away. She couldn’t even bring herself to look at Aidan.
“Already, police in Rome are finding Jeffrey Fox,” the officer went on. “And surely, a boat like this, it is insured. All ends happily.”
Clio’s father sank a little in his chair.
“Well,” he said. “I didn’t expect to have it that long, and I could only get a policy for a year. And it was really expensive.”
“This boat is not insured?” the officer asked, looking aghast. “I see. I must go and make arrangements for these men. I will leave you here for a few moments.”
“Where is Julia?” Clio asked her dad.
“She called her contacts in Rome,” he said. “There are people there who understand the importance of the stone. They asked her to come there at once and help them gather up everything necessary for the transport. She got on a train. It’s a quick ride. She’ll be so crushed….”
He trailed off, shaking his head.
“I can’t really care,” he said. “About the boat. About the stone. I have you two. But it’s hard to know that we had it. We actually had it.”
“Dad—” Clio said.
“It would have changed so much,” he went on. “We could have opened a window on a whole part of the ancient world that we know nothing about.”
“Dad—”
“It’s okay, Clio,” he said. “Like I said, it doesn’t matter.”
“Ben,” Aidan said. “We—”
“You two!” her dad said loudly. “Let’s just forget about it and think about getting you guys—”
“We got it!” Clio finally yelled.
“Got what?” he asked.
“It. The stone. We got it off the boat.”
It took him a minute to catch up with what she’d said.
“It’s not gone?” he managed to ask. “How?”
“It was an interesting swim,” Aidan said.
“You two…got away. And you took the stone? You had to have put yourself at risk to do that. I don’t know whether I should hug you or yell at you.”
“It couldn’t really get any more risky,” Clio said, accepting another massive hug. She smiled as Aidan was similarly crushed.
* * *
Kos, Greece, March 1905
What probably first drew Marguerite’s attention was the fact that a naked man was standing on the very lip of a small boat. He held a small net in one hand.
“There’s a naked man,” she mentioned to Jonathan. “With a net.”
For the last eight years, Jonathan and Marguerite had worked side by side in Pompeii. There was always much to be done. It was a massive city—a site on a scale unlike anything in the world. And every day they found more.
She had become physically stronger over the last few years, used to bright sun and long days. She wiped two thousand years’ worth of ash and dirt from mosaics and frescoes. She found jewelry, money, and, occasionally, human remains. She learned the technique of putting plaster into gaps in the ash, preserving the form of the bodies entombed within.
It was good, hard work. And nothing made her happier than working with Jonathan. Still, she couldn’t help but feel that she was letting her father down. In eight years of labor, she hadn’t uncovered anything as important as the stone that bore her name. Something gnawed inside her. There was something more she needed to do.
She didn’t know what it was until she saw the naked man on the side of his boat.
The man took a flat, bell-shaped stone and dove headfirst off the side. There was a rope connected to the stone. She watched it slither into the water as he sank.
“A sponge diver,” Jonathan said, flushing a bit. “You would think someone might have mentioned that there were naked men leaping about.”
The nakedness did not bother Marguerite in the slightest. She understood its function at once. It was to make the descent quick. That was what the stone was for too. How else did you get what you wanted from the bottom of the sea? You had to drag yourself there.
In that moment, everything fell into place for Marguerite. Everything that she had ever wondered about was under the sea. Maybe even the Marguerite stone itself.
She started the very moment they arrived home in Italy. Marguerite was an exceptionally strong swimmer for a woman, but the traditional swim outfit was holding her back. So the first thing to go was the baggy, heavily skirted swimsuit she was supposed to wear. She had her dressmaker design a special one-piece suit that bared her legs, which meant she had to practice carefully, where she couldn’t be seen.
The other thing that she needed came from a stonemason in town. She had him make what she had seen in Greece—a skandalopetra, the bell-shaped stone with the hole for rope.
The first time she landed on the seafloor, Marguerite knew she w
as in love. She had no mask to protect her eyes, no fins to help her swim. Her lungs burned painfully. But she was ecstatic—a woman standing on the bottom of the ocean, where there was an entire world waiting to be explored.
It was so stunning that she almost forgot to keep her count until the panic of airlessness racked her body. She gave the rope a firm pull, grabbed the diving stone hard, and felt herself rising. She was rising slowly, but she was rising. She exhaled slowly.
Marguerite was feeling like she could go no longer when the sunlight appeared through the surface of the water, She kicked for it, and then she broke the surface, gasping and giddy. A massive cheer erupted from the boat.
There was no going back.
* * *
The Worst Summer of My Life
Three days later, four members of the group sat in the airport in Rome. Checking in had been easy. None of them had any suitcases, which raised an eyebrow or two. They had only whatever they had picked up to wear in the last few days.
Clio caught sight of herself in a reflective surface. She’d had to make do with the slim offerings in the local tourist shops, so her outfit was a pair of sweatpants with the word Italy written down the leg in big red, green, and white letters and a T-shirt that said, Ciao!
At least people won’t ask me where I’ve been, she thought.
Aidan had made out slightly better in the pants department, with a long pair of surf shorts. His shirt was worse, though. It had a picture of Michelangelo’s David on it holding a tiny Italian flag. Elsa’s clothes hadn’t been soaked in seawater and messed up in an escape attempt, so she had washed them.
Martin was given a clean bill of health but a warning to be more careful and to avoid strenuous activity. He was resting at the hotel. Julia had remained on in Rome once she heard everyone was safe, and was battling through the many layers of red tape to have the stone released back into their custody.
With nowhere to stay, and so many ends to tie up, it only made sense for Aidan and Elsa to go. Clio’s mom had yet to be told the full story, but she knew that something had happened. So Clio was going as well. The group was split up as quickly as it had been thrown together.
Elsa’s flight to Stockholm was the first to leave. After hugging everyone good-bye, she hooked her arm through Clio’s.
“Walk with me to security?” she asked.
“Sure,” Clio said.
They walked in silence for a moment, dodging the luggage carts and people running for planes.
“We should talk,” Elsa said. “I want things between us to be settled.”
“Me too,” Clio said.
“I was upset,” Elsa said. “It wasn’t what you did. I could see what was happening between the two of you. You’re good together. It’s just that you didn’t tell me the truth. If you had just told me, I wouldn’t have gone after him like that.”
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but I didn’t know I liked him then,” Clio said. “I swear.”
“I know,” Elsa said. “I’m still sorry I wrecked your drawing crayons.”
“You bought them, too,” Clio said.
“True, but it’s no excuse.”
“So,” Clio said, “you don’t want to stay here? Go to Rome?”
“No,” Elsa answered. “My mom is tied up now in work. I might as well go and see my dad and his family. I like Stockholm.”
“You won’t try to contact Alex, will you?”
“Ah,” Elsa said. “Now, there is good news on that front. I don’t think I’ve shown you this.”
She held up her phone and showed Clio a picture in a text message. It was of the sailor from the dock making a kissing face. There was some Italian written under it.
“No way,” Clio said.
“He’s coast guard,” she said with a little giggle. “He gets time off, just like a normal job. He’s going to come up to Sweden to see me in two weeks. He already bought a ticket. Alex is going to die when he hears that my new boyfriend is an Italian sailor. I can’t wait to walk him around the football pitch someday while Alex is playing. It’ll kill him!”
Elsa took the phone back.
“Not that I even care,” she added quickly, shutting it. “But there’s always a silver lining.”
“You can come visit me,” Clio said. “My house is kind of a serious violation of most safety codes, but it’s really big. It’s easy to get to Philadelphia. And you’d love my cat. You always have a place to stay.”
“Maybe I will,” Elsa said.
There was an announcement in Italian.
“That’s me,” she said. She wrapped Clio in one more hug, squeezing hard.
“Keep the boy,” she said. “He needs you.”
And with that, she was gone. She left much like she’d appeared—head held high, smiling no matter what happened to her. Still every inch the goddess, drawing looks from about half the people she passed.
When Clio got back, Aidan and her dad were hungry. They returned to the restaurant where the whole trip had started. Without Elsa, they were a bit helpless. Clio’s dad just pointed to a pizza and held up three fingers. The only topic was the stone. Clio could see that her dad wasn’t ready to talk about Julia yet.
“What time is it?” Aidan said, looking at the spot on his wrist where his watch used to be. “Right. Need a new watch.”
“Probably close to time,” Clio’s dad said. “We’ll pay and walk you over.”
It was time. In fact, it was past time.
“Last call,” Aidan said, looking up at the screen. “I guess I should…”
He pointed a thumb at the mass of people at the security checkpoint. Clio’s father nodded and extended his hand for a shake.
“Make sure to keep in touch,” he said. “You have my e-mail.”
“I will, Ben,” he said. “I need to hear how this all ends.”
Aidan turned to Clio. Her stomach bottomed out.
“Dad, could we…”
Her father blinked. No comprehension at all. She was going to have to spell it out for him.
“Dad,” she said. “Look at those gorgeous silk ties at that store over there. Don’t you need a tie?”
“A tie? I…”
There it was. The look Clio had known would come someday. He got it.
“I’m going to go look at ties,” he said, forcing his face into an overly serious expression. “Aidan, have a good flight.”
With one more shake, he went off and vanished deep into the tie store.
“He’ll probably buy one,” Clio said. “He can’t do anything halfway.”
She felt her eyes starting to fill, so she quickly looked down at the shiny gray tiles on the floor.
“Will you miss Cambridge?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “After England, New Haven weather actually sounds nice. And the food is good. I could really go for a cheeseburger at the Doodle. Did I ever tell you about the Doodle?”
“No,” she said.
“Good cheeseburgers. We should go.”
He looked at her, half smirking. The eyes were still analyzing. But there was a seriousness about them now.
“Want to make it a date, haircut?” she asked. “As soon as I scrape together the cash for the train ticket?”
“What’s with the ‘haircut,’ kiddo?” he asked. “I thought we were past that.”
“We’ll never be past that,” she said.
“What about Ollie?” he asked.
“Ollie’s a nice guy,” Clio admitted. “But he’s not my boyfriend.”
Aidan tried not to smile.
“Well,” he said, stretching himself long, exposing his stomach as he pulled up his arms in a supremely bored gesture. “I guess that’s okay, then. Maybe I’ll even come to Philly. I heard you guys have good cheesesteaks. I’ve always wanted to be in a relationship based on local sandwiches.”
Clio tried not to openly gape at the word relationship. She swallowed hard.
“So,” she said. “Does that mean I don’t h
ave a fake boyfriend anymore?”
“Have you drawn my picture?” he said. “That seems to be the sign.”
“Actually…”
She pulled out her sketchbook and opened it up to the new sketch that she had worked on in the last few days. This time, he had no reply at all. He just stared at it.
“I’ve never torn anything out of a sketchbook before,” she said. “But if you want it…”
“Yeah,” he said. “I want it.”
She squatted down and carefully ripped the page out, pulling it away from the spine. She passed it to him.
He took a step back, then rocked on his heel.
“It’s time,” he said. “I’d better…”
He moved so fast, Clio barely saw it coming. He bent down and took her face in his hands and kissed her long and hard. She had to grab onto his sleeve to keep from toppling over.
“See you, rich girl,” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Later, snob.”
And then there were two.
When her father emerged from the shop, a full fifteen minutes later, he didn’t have a tie with him. He was shutting his phone.
“Good news from Julia,” he said. “The stone is being released back to us. And she’s already been contacted about it. The story is getting out. All of a sudden, everyone’s interested. This thing is getting big already, Clio. The news wires have picked up the story. Everyone wants to know what we’re going to find. And it’s all possible because you are stupidly brave.”
“And you have idiotic ideas,” Clio added.
“Of course,” he said. “What do you think, kiddo? Are you ready to get back into the game? We always made a good story.”
“You never stop, do you?” she asked.
“No,” he admitted. “I guess I don’t. I guess I did it again. Why am I always putting you in danger?”
“You didn’t,” she said. “Jeffrey Fox did.”
He tried to smile, but she could see he was finding it hard.
“You know what?” she said after a moment. “I thought Julia sent those guys. I really did. I thought she wanted the stone for herself. I was about to tell the police that and everything. Aidan stopped me.”
Girl at Sea Page 25
