“Are they?” he asked, his tone rueful, his smile melancholy. “It’s silly maybe. I was just thinking about my mother again. I had thought maybe she had been wrong. Maybe she over-worried since you were so kind. Then you said she was right—or that she could be—and I don’t know. I don’t know. Just…why couldn’t she have been right about him too?”
It was a question that really had no answer—not one that she knew of anyway. She knew women here loved men who hurt them too. She didn’t understand it. She wasn’t even sure they did.
“I never finished my story,” he said after another long pause. “Of why I don’t go to the deep. And I never answered why I have this scar.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want—”
But he put out a hand and cut her off. “You said you want to know everything, right?” She nodded. “This is my everything.”
“Okay.I’m listening.”
He laughed. “No need to be so serious. I’ve never seen you look so intent.”
“You said it’s your everything.”
He laughed again. “It just means you’ll know everything there is about me after this. I don’t think I have much more to share.”
“I bet you’d be surprised what more I’ll uncover,” she said, poking him.
He grabbed her finger. “I look forward to it.”
CHAPTER 44
“So what is the ending of the story? Why don’t you go into deeper water?”
“The murderer and his group left, but I couldn’t leave her. We don’t have burial customs like you do—or if we do, I don’t know them—so I didn’t know what to do with her. But I couldn’t leave her. And when the scavengers came”—he took a heavy breath—“well, I chased them off. Or I tried.” He swallowed hard. “At some point, I messed up. A barracuda got close enough. It drew blood and then….”
Tears seemed to threaten and he looked like he was pushing them back with a smile—or trying to. “She was always so afraid of sharks—her brother got eaten when they were very young—so when they came near, I couldn’t let her. I…I….”
He tried to continue but couldn’t. His hand stayed on the scar like the wound still hurt even then. “In the end, it hurt so much and I was scared and I…I left her. I let them…I…”
Tears caught in his throat with a choking sound, and he still looked like he was trying to fight them off. Why, she didn’t know, but she figured there was no safer place than in her arms. She hugged him.
He hugged her tight, perhaps tighter than he ever had before. And then, like a dam breaking or a storm front hitting, he cried.
CHAPTER 45
She knew from experience that a cry was not necessarily healing. In fact, for something like this, something long repressed, she imagined he felt worse for it.
“I’m glad you shared,” she murmured when he was done. “I know there was nothing else you could have done.”
“Maybe.” He did not seem to be agreeing.
“And I know your mom would’ve wanted you to swim away.” That got her someverysurprised eyes in response.
“Daria, I—”
“No, before you said she wanted you to stay back when she confronted your father, didn’t you? I don’t know why she did that, but she clearly wanted to protect you, and I know she never meant to leave you alone.”
She wasn’t sure the words made it better, but he leaned against her, head on her shoulder all the same.
“And if that scar is a point of shame,” she guessed, and by the way he flinched she guessed it was true, “then I think you should reconsider. You were willing to fight a shark to preserve her memory. I’ve seen…feeding frenzies.” It was hard to say that word knowing it was his mother as the food. “There’s no way you could have stopped that. The fact that you even tried…” She put her hand on his. “That’s not something to be ashamed of.”
He was totally silent for a long time until finally he said, “I’dliketo believe you.”
“Believe me,” she murmured, the words so passionate it was almost a beg. “Believe me because it’s true. And I’ll tell you a hundred times if you want me to.”
“A thousand?”
