I dialed John, intending to ask for an update on how the monitoring had gone in my absence. What I really wanted to know was if he’d seen any decline in the numbers since the finnings, but he didn’t pick up. While my computer booted, I spread out my research, then reached into my bag for the photos Nicholas had given me. Riffling through them, I wondered if he had found the hidden Anaïs Nin quote before he’d left. It was painted on the inside of the wardrobe. “He was in that state of fire that she loved. She wanted to be burnt.”
The thought of it caused a small stab of pain, the sensation of loss, or it could have been the jab of loneliness, or even longing. It surprised me, and then it was gone. I pinned the photos of me and Sylvia to a bulletin board and sat on the edge of my desk. Gazing at them, I remembered the uncomplicated happiness of being exactly where I wanted to be. Underwater.
I worked uninterrupted for the next hour or so, taking some pleasure in the quiet absorption of tracking data and recording the behavioral patterns I’d collected on Sylvia and her lemon cohorts. I was so lost in my notes that I didn’t hear Russell when he tapped on my open door.
“So, the shark whisperer has returned,” he said, grinning from the doorway.
“Come in,” I said, getting up to give him a hug. “Your lecture all done?”
“All done. So. Welcome back.”
He was holding the backlog of my mail. As he laid it on my desk, his eyes swept over the photos. “Impressive. Is that you swimming beside the lemon?
“Yours truly.”
We talked for a while about the research I’d done in Bimini, whether there was anything publishable in it, before he shifted the conversation to the shark finning. “You’ve heard what happened on Bonnethead Key?”
“God, Russell, I’m having a hard time believing this happened on our doorstep.”
“I don’t know much more than what I’ve seen on the news, but then, there hasn’t been much of it,” he said. “The fins were found on the guy’s property. He’s probably just some low-level guy hired to store them, which means the finners are still out there.”
I thought of my conversation with Marco. His friend Troy believed the ringleaders were still out there, too.
We commiserated for a while, expressing disbelief and outrage, grasping for plausible theories of who was behind it and where the investigation might be.
“I called the Sheriff’s Marine Bureau and requested a briefing,” Russell said. “They suggested we set up a hotline for illegal marine activity. I’ve already got someone on it.” He moved toward the door. “Whenever you’re ready to present on the lemons let me know and I’ll get you on the lecture schedule.”
When he was gone, I thumbed through the mail, finding a fat envelope from the Indian Ocean Center for Research in Mozambique. It contained an information booklet, forms, and a letter advising me about travel documents and vaccination requirements. Flipping to the page in the booklet on lodging, I came upon pictures of grass-thatched chalets with front stairs leading right onto the beach.
I had no idea whether Nicholas would go now. Once he was face-to-face with Libby, anything could happen. I knew the power that an old bond could hold over two people, and part of me feared he would never return. Part of me feared he would. I wouldn’t allow myself to dwell on it.
As I stuffed everything back into the envelope, the phone rang. John, I imagined.
“Maeve, it’s me.”
“Daniel?” I asked, the awkward moments in the grocery store coming back to me.
“Is this a good time?”
“Fine. It’s fine.”
“Look, Hazel is going on about the Shark Club. She’s dying for you to see this DVD of hers. So I’m thinking . . . the sous-chef is in charge of the restaurant on Sundays. My one night off, so why don’t you come for dinner and we’ll watch it.”
I hesitated long enough for him to add, “I’ve seen it a few hundred times. You’ll like it.”
“I guess I am partly responsible for this club,” I said. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. Seriously, it’s given Hazel a new interest. It seems to be helping her. Plus, I get to be in the club with you—that’s another perk.”
I fell silent again. For so long he’d been a figment, the subject of pained nightly remembering, and now we were making dinner plans like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“How about seven?” he said.
“All right. For Hazel.”
I turned off the lamp.
In less than three months I would be underwater again, swimming with giants.
Thirteen
Daniel’s childhood home was barely visible from the road, even though it was perched on stilts. The tip-top of the roof hovered just above a jungle of tropical foliage, royal and imperial palms and serpentine live oaks. Pulling into the driveway, I was greeted by Aunt Van’s smiling dolphin mailbox. It’d been there since forever. Practically the size of a real dolphin, the concrete sculpture stood upright on its tail with the mailbox tucked under its flipper. In October, Van dressed the dolphin in a witch’s hat and little black cape. November, a Pilgrim’s hat. Christmas, a Santa hat and strands of multicolored lights. In March, the dolphin became a leprechaun with a green bowler, and in July, an American patriot in a star-spangled Uncle Sam top hat. Only in Florida, as we were fond of saying about ourselves. I imagined Hazel was going to love it.
I opened my car door into a hedge of plumbago and grabbed the box of cupcakes I’d bought on the way over. One dozen, and twelve different kinds. I’d gone overboard, but I wanted at least one of them to be something Hazel liked. As I climbed the front steps, I remembered Daniel used to keep his bike under the stairs. Parked beneath it now was a Hot Wheels with daisy stickers on the seat.
Cupcakes in hand, Hazel’s handmade Shark Club badge pinned at my shoulder, I rang the doorbell. I cleared my throat. I brushed at the front of my dress. I’d changed clothes three times before settling on a white sundress and sandals, not too casual, not too dressy. On the porch, I was eye level with the bird-of-paradise plant-turned-tree that reached up to the first floor window and bloomed in the shape of Japanese cranes.
I heard footsteps inside and my stomach tipped a little. It crossed my mind to wonder what I was doing. The last time I’d been here was for my engagement party.
When Van opened the door, Hazel skated up behind her in socks.
Van hugged me and said, “It’s been far too long.”
Hazel stood by, waiting, stretching her arms behind her back.
“And how are you?” I asked, handing her the box of cupcakes.
“Good,” she said, her voice lilting upward like a slide whistle. “Dad’s in here.”
She bounded off toward the kitchen. “Hey, Hazel,” I called. When she turned, I pointed to the shark badge on my dress. Still clutching the box, she managed to point to hers, then took off.
I didn’t miss the polite but perplexed little frown that passed over Van’s face. As if she were trying to calculate what could’ve changed in the inner workings of the universe that would allow me to be socializing with Daniel and the daughter he’d created with another woman while engaged to me.
“She’s irresistible,” I offered.
Van put her hand on my back, patted once, then led me toward the kitchen. “Hazel has been working on this club meeting all day,” she said. “And Daniel—he’s been in the kitchen for the last two hours.”
He was bent over the stove, sampling whatever was in the wooden spoon he held to his lips. The room vibrated with smells I couldn’t identify. Paprika? Saffron?
“Maeve’s here! Maeve’s here!” Hazel shouted.
He looked up and gave me a grin. “Then I guess the Shark Club is in session.” He picked up the meat pounder from the cutting board and rapped it playfully on the counter like a gavel. Giving the pot another sti
r, he said, “Hazel, wanna taste?”
She scrunched up her nose. “Gross.”
“Well, what are you going to eat then?” I asked.
Pulling a step stool to a cabinet over the counter, she retrieved a microwavable bowl of macaroni and cheese. She rattled it like a maraca. Daniel shook his head, mumbling under his breath about powdered cheese.
“It kills him that she won’t eat his cooking,” Van said.
“How about you?” he said, holding the spoon out to me with one hand and cupping his other underneath it.
I walked over to the stove and let him lift the spoon to my lips. I watched his mouth part simultaneously with mine.
She wanted to be burnt.
Tomato, paprika, and olives sizzled on my tongue. “I love the green olives,” I said.
“I remember. Spanish chicken marinara. Lots of olives.” He set down the spoon and leaned in slightly. “I’m glad you came.”
“Me, too.”
I retreated across the kitchen without making eye contact with Van.
“Hazel, you wanna get your mac and cheese going?” Daniel said.
She peeled the lid off the bowl.
“Have fun with your club,” Van said, sliding her purse onto her arm.
“You’re not leaving,” I said. The words sounded slightly desperate.
“I have game night at Tweetsy’s. Mexican Train.”
She took both my hands. “Tell Perri to come see me. You come back, too.”
I nodded even though I couldn’t imagine letting myself return.
She turned to Hazel and clapped her hands once. “Come here. Give me a kiss.” Hazel giggled as her grandmother pelted her face with kisses.
Van was nearly out the back door when she stepped back to the wine rack. “What the hell,” she said, grabbing a bottle of red. “It makes game night all the more entertaining.”
Daniel shot her a look over the word hell. Sorry, she mouthed, and slipped out the door while Hazel stood unfazed in front of the microwave, and I tried to adjust to Daniel in the role of father. He seemed naturally suited to it.
The microwave beeped and Hazel popped open the door. Daniel took two plates down from the cabinet.
“Can I do anything?” I asked.
“No, let us. You sit.”
I took a chair at the end of the table and watched Daniel arrange Spanish chicken onto the plates along with chorizo, yellow rice, and black beans, while Hazel glided around him in her socks. I hated myself for how much I wished to be part of it.
Hazel set the mac and cheese on the table beside a tube of strawberry yogurt and a banana and came to sit next to me. Daniel, sliding a plate in front of me, sat across the table.
“Smells delicious,” I said.
“The other night he cooked a fish and it smelled up the whole house,” Hazel announced.
“Pompano. And I don’t think Maeve eats seafood, either.” He looked at me. “Or is that still the case?”
“You don’t like fish?” Hazel asked.
“It would be like eating my friends.” I stabbed an olive.
“Wait,” Hazel said. “We have to say the blessing.”
I put down my fork.
“Go ahead,” Daniel told her.
She folded her hands into an earnest little ball under her chin and closed her eyes.
“God is great. God is good. Let us thank him for our food. And bless Mommy and let her find my bottle.”
Daniel watched her, too, then shifted his eyes to me.
“Amen,” he said.
After we’d polished off the meal, I told Hazel to grab the cupcakes. “Dad made dessert,” she confessed.
I gave him a look of surprise. “But you never used to make dessert.”
“I do pie now.”
“You made a pie?”
“Key lime.”
“Can I have a cupcake?” Hazel asked.
He nodded. “You can have a cupcake.”
She plucked one from the box and skipped off.
I got up to help with the dishes.
“Leave them,” Daniel said. “Let’s have dessert.”
“I never thought I’d see the day you were baking pies.”
“I think my mother never thought she’d see the day you were back in this house,” he said, retrieving the key lime from the refrigerator.
“It sort of surprises me, too.”
“A good surprise, I hope.”
“I see you went nonmeringue,” I said.
There was such a thing as the Florida key lime pie controversy, its main point of contention being whether to top with meringue or not. Floridians took a hard line one way or the other. The Hotel of the Muses had always been on the side of meringue. “I’ve taken a stand,” he said. “I’m a purist. No fluffy stuff.”
“You’ll be starting a revolution at the hotel,” I joked.
Sitting side by side at the counter, we ate in silence. Afterward, he stood and leaned against the counter and stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets.
“I guess your friend left?”
“Nicholas. Yeah, he left.”
“You two were in Bimini together.”
“We were.”
He reached across the counter for the shark badge Hazel had made for him and pinned it to his shirt. “We should start the video,” he said.
In the living room, Hazel cued the Swimming with Sea Monsters DVD, then tapped the space next to her on the sofa. “Sit by me,” she said.
Plopping beside her, I noticed the Ziploc bag with her shark tooth inside lying prominently on the coffee table.
Daniel took the club chair, and Hazel scooted forward, a note pad on her lap.
“I have something to read,” she said. “A . . .” She looked at Daniel for assistance.
“Ple—” he began.
“Pledge,” she said. “Grandma helped me write it.” She stood and solemnly held up her right hand, then turned it sideways. “With this fin, I do swear.”
She gawked at me and Daniel just sitting there. Clearly, we were supposed to follow her lead. We got to our feet, made our hands into shark fins, and repeated after her:
“With this fin, I do swear. To love sharks even when they bite. When they lose their teeth, I will find them. When I catch one, I will let it go. This is the Shark Club vow.”
Turning to me, Hazel stuck out her hand. “Fin shake,” she said, and we all slapped “fins.”
I reached for the bag with the tooth in it. “Maybe we should pass this around.”
She liked that idea, and I took a few seconds to study the tooth through the plastic, then passed it to Hazel, who scrutinized it thoroughly before handing it to Daniel, who gave me a grateful look.
For the next hour we watched Nigel Marven go back in time to swim with prehistoric sea creatures. Hazel glanced at me from time to time to be sure I was paying attention. When Nigel got into a shark cage and the megalodon appeared, she exclaimed, “This is it!”
The mammoth shark swam toward Nigel, jaws open, butting the cage.
“Was it like that when you were bitten?” Hazel asked.
Daniel, who’d been sitting with one leg crossed over the other one, uncrossed it and straightened in his chair.
“No, I never saw it coming,” I told her.
“It bumped me first,” Daniel said.
“You were there?”
I looked at Daniel, surprised he’d decided to divulge this window into our past.
“Yep, I was in the water right beside her when it happened.”
Hazel glanced at me for confirmation. “It’s true. He pulled me to shore. I would’ve been in big trouble if your dad hadn’t been there.”
The way she looked at Daniel—I got the feeling she hadn’t seen him in this ligh
t before. She seemed astonished that her dad had ventured outside of the kitchen for once in his life and into a real shark encounter.
“Nu-uh,” she said, momentarily unbelieving, and Daniel made a cross-your-heart sign over his badge.
Shortly after Van arrived back home, she announced it was Hazel’s bedtime.
“I don’t want to go to bed if Maeve’s still here,” she said.
“But I’m going home and go to bed, too,” I told her, rallying myself off the sofa. “I was just about to leave.”
I raised my hand and gave her the shark fin shake.
She walked slowly to the stairs, Van prodding her from behind. On the second step she turned back to see if I was really leaving, which prompted Daniel to walk with me to the front door. As we stepped outside, I waved to her.
“Goodnight, Bug,” Daniel called, and closed the door behind us.
We stood on the front porch taking in the balmy dark. The sky was a van Gogh Starry Night poster. The leaves on the bird-of-paradise were as big as elephant ears, swishing against the window screens, and the tree frogs were in full chorus, sounding off like a thousand tiny alarm clocks.
“Come on, let’s go sit on the dock,” he said.
I didn’t want the evening to end either.
Our shoes crunched along the crushed shell walkway behind the house. It would have been impossible to count the hours Daniel and I had spent on the dock behind his house after dusk. Some nights we’d lain on the wooden planks and talked, listening for a dolphin splash. Some nights we’d swum in the inky water to escape the heat.
The areca palm fronds had nearly overtaken the path. Daniel went first, pushing them aside as we passed. In the dark, his white shirt took on a glowing bluish tint. His hand was barely visible as it reached back for mine. I took it. I hadn’t touched him in so long. It was impossible to think of anything but his palm and fingers against my skin. They felt warm and heavy, and I had the odd sensation of floating inside my body.
The Shark Club Page 11
