Fly by Night (16 page)

“Two weeks ago I recognized you. And I saw Bryce and Jen later that week during the job interviews.” It unnerved her that the intern had presumed first-name informality with Bryce and Jen.

“You mean Drs. Youngs and Hartley,” she added.

She noticed as Meagan glanced at the seven other interns as they nodded in unison, seemingly under her power.

She was terrible at remembering people and even worse at navigating the spats and cliques that often formed between dive interns on the months-long summer projects. But there'd been something about this young woman that she recalled had ended badly. It made her wonder why Meagan wasn't hiding in a broom closet rather than offering herself up in such a glad-handing way.

Amelia's answer to what she'd called the “stupid bullshit” of personal pettiness was to put them all to work. “Suit up, dive portside,” she'd instruct. “And don't come back unless someone's hurt, low on air, or you find the first sea horse—whichever comes first,” much like during her Teen Summers by the Sea.

Jen was better at catching squabbles and dissolving coalitions before they'd form. “We're all working together,” she'd say. “It's like boot camp. Lose your identity as an individual and become one with the dive team. The person you least like may be the one who saves your life. We're only as strong as our weakest link, and that may be you!”

On the other hand, Bryce was more heavy-handed. He'd turn; hold up his thumb and index finger like a handgun. “You—shut the fuck up.” If he was feeling charitable, “Knock it off.” But his ultimate threat was “Do it again and your ass'll be on the next Malaysian fishing vessel that crosses our path.” Bryce could be a legendary bastard and everyone knew it. His size alone held authority, combined with a booming voice and reputation as a world-class diver, which elicited crushes from many of their female summer interns. The combination quashed all pettiness. One look from Bryce and it was over.

“I'm interning here both semesters!” Meagan covered her mouth with her hands and did a little excited skip.

Amelia stopped herself from making a face that she knew would be taken the wrong or, actually, the right way.

“Good to see you again, Meagan.” She extended her hand to shake and could have gagged at the phoniness in her own voice but didn't want to get off to a bad start. Her eyes darted about for Bryce or Jen to save her, make some funny crack to put them all at ease given the irony of the moment. But she'd seen them moving along faster on the orientation and they'd already entered the off-exhibit area behind the double metal doors.

“God, she was chief marine biologist on that project,” Meagan gushed to her gaggle of interns. “She gave the most
amazing
talks on the restoration of sea horses.” With that they began scrutinizing Amelia and looking her over, searching for what was so special.

The adulation made Amelia uneasy, it sounded more mocking than sincere, reminding her of one particular wise-ass girl in her Teen Summers by the Sea program.

At almost a foot shorter, Amelia's hair was pulled straight back into a ponytail, wearing the same regulation Sea Life aqua-colored polo shirt as the interns. She had a son older than all of them, had wrestled an adult black-tipped shark into submission, and if needs be could out-swim every one of them.

“Looking forward to working with
all
of you.” Amelia swallowed hard and stepped to shake hands with all seven to underscore that she was their boss, not Meagan. Most looked sincere and ready to work, others already beaten, and one or two along for the ride.

“Well,” Amelia said. “Gotta move along on the orientation.” She pointed toward the double metal doors and felt them watching as she moved on.

She quickly spotted Bryce and Jen leaning on the black laboratory benches as they listened to a man in “dressy casual” giving a talk.

Amelia joined them and leaned over to Jen, whispering.

“Do you remember a Meagan Hanson?” she asked, her thumb like a hitchhiker's motioning to the door.

“Holy mother of God,” Jen turned and covered her face with a hand, muffling a whisper. “The one that had a mouth on her like an exit wound.”

“That'd be her.”

“She's the one who tried to cozy up in Bryce's lap and told everyone they were sleeping together. Christ—he'll go apeshit.” Jen's blue eyes widened with amusement.

Their whispering prompted a cold stare from Bryce as the fund-raising director (who'd funded their summer dives to the Pacific and Indian Oceans) was giving detailed background information on the organization's funding structure and the new habitat campaigns they were getting ready to announce.

*   *   *

Meagan was yesterday's news. At the time Amelia and Jen had dragged Bryce into the galley after sending all the dive interns off to explore the reefs surrounding a World War II shipwreck not far from where they were anchored.

Jen had cornered him by the sink.

“Okay, did you fuck her or not?”

“No,” Bryce said. He looked to Amelia for help but she gave him none.

They'd stared at him long enough to make him angry.

“God damn it. Nothing worse than being accused of sleeping with someone you didn't.” He'd fumed and stormed off down to the specimen laboratory.

Jen raised her eyebrow and looked at Amelia.

“He's telling the truth.”

Jen nodded.

Later that afternoon Jen had taken the young woman apart, “South Boston style.” Not only did she get Meagan to confess to making up the story, but to clear the air Jen required that the young woman stand up at dinner and apologize to the entire crew and to Bryce for fabricating such a lie. And if she'd refused, Jen had arranged for her to be sent packing on a Zodiac toward the harbor.

*   *   *

After the donor's presentation, Bryce walked up smiling until he saw their faces.

“What?”

“You tell him.” Amelia stood with her arms folded.

“No, you.”

“Tell me what?” He began to chuckle, anticipating something funny.

“Meagan Hanson,” Amelia said.

The smile left his face and he walked away.

Jen turned to her. “Does she seem sufficiently humbled?”

Amelia crossed her arms and looked hard at her. A sinking feeling nagged at her. “You'll have to see for yourself.”

*   *   *

The three of them had driven westward from Rhode Island like some historic New England wagon train. None of them had ever “crossed the plains” as Bryce had put it, always waxing poetic on the new and mundane. The night before leaving Amelia couldn't sleep. It was 2 a.m., they were leaving at six. She'd called Bryce.

He'd answered on the second ring.

“What's up?”

She could hear him turning over in bed.

“Kinda freaked.”

“Not surprising.”

A long silence enveloped them.

“It's going to be okay, Am.

“A bit like dressing up mutton to taste like lamb.”

“It'll be fine. We'll make it fine.”

“You always say this.” She rubbed her forehead and then ran her fingers through her scalp.

“'Cause it always is,” Bryce insisted. “We'll all be together. Remember what you said?”

“No.” She chuckled and then blew her nose, not remembering a word. “I'm sure it was pure bullshit.”

“You said it was a time-out, a safe place where we can work to get new grants,” he said. “Keep faith in our work, Am, in our science. Jen and I are. Something will come of it. Besides, it'll be fun. Hell, where else can you ride a fucking roller coaster on your lunch break?”

“Or a Ferris wheel.”

“There you go, that's my girl.”

She breathed. They made each other laugh at everything; even the terribly bad things became funny around Jen and Bryce.

“Thanks, Bry.”

“Feeling better?”

“No.”

“Well, go to sleep anyway.” He yawned. “Jen's gonna be knocking in a few hours. Gotta pick up the U-Haul.”

*   *   *

Early, before they left, Bryce had stood with her in the living room of the Revolution House before meeting up with Jen. Two carloads to Goodwill in the intervening weeks had thinned out the house for the renters. For the first time she'd heard the echo of footsteps.

“How you doing?” he asked.

She'd turned to him. “Shitty.” Walking toward the front door, she opened it. The door made the same yawning sound it always had.

“Anything I can do?” Bryce had asked in a voice that sounded more like he was trying to determine why the live feed on a dive camera of an ROV wasn't working than offering comfort.

She looked at him and then smiled and nodded.

“You're already doing it, Bry.”

The Revolution House was safe for now. Odd that she'd had to walk away to keep it. Give it away to get it.
Blah, blah, blah,
she thought—all that New Age Buddhist shit people spouted.

“Bye for now,” she'd said to the horsehair-and-plaster walls.

Amelia had sat in the driveway a few moments longer after Bryce had left for the U-Haul place. Keys in the ignition, head hanging, afraid the uprooted feeling of shock might never leave along with the corresponding anguish of a heart that was divided not to mention scattered in several places. Hard to believe she wouldn't be home that night but another family would be. Setting their things around the fireplace mantel, her kitchen counters. She might never be home again and she thought of Alex. Maybe she should have taken him up on his offer to come help with the drive out to Minnesota. But he'd had plans to spend Thanksgiving with his new girlfriend's family in California. He'd been nervous and excited for months; she hadn't wanted him to cancel.

The reality of letting Alex go had snuck up on her the day she'd driven him to the dorm at Cornell his freshman year. Until Christmas break she'd slept under a down comforter on top of his twin bed with his familiar scent. She'd then straightened up the sheets and covers so as not to look as pathetic as she felt.

And from that time on she fought her instincts in order to safeguard his independence, suddenly knowing why dolphins, whales, and most marine mammals live in family pods for life. Leaving was unnatural, against the grain of not just their biology but all that was sacred to them. Death was the only separation and even that might set off a grieving process that lasted for decades if not a lifetime. Had those human instincts become nonexistent or had we stifled them? She'd squelched hers the day she'd helped Alex carry his things up to the dorm's second floor. “Leading their own lives” is what people said of their offspring. Can't get attached to a house, a town, or a set of friends. “Gotta go where the opportunity is, where the career lands them,” instead of staying near home in some dead-end job, some dead-end life, sacrificing to be near loved ones, yet what did that really mean? Some researchers in the lab had lost their children to Europe, Australia, Thailand; she'd lost hers to Vancouver—at least it was in the same hemisphere.

*   *   *

Heading out of Providence that day opened memories of other leavings and losses. Like being eighteen again, that phone call from the U.S. embassy, or leaving Stony Brook after the charming Chris Ryan. A few times she'd called his office but hung up as soon as he'd answered. In a gutsy move after finding out she was pregnant, she'd driven to his house using her late parents' car and parked down the street, watching as a car pulled into his driveway. Presumably his wife climbed out, carrying grocery bags toward the door. The front door swung open and a blond daughter much taller though not much younger than Amelia came running out to help unload groceries. Amelia watched with the type of shock that wises you up and makes some things as clear as a bell yet so many others not clear at all. She sometimes wondered what their lives would have been like had Alex known his father.

Amelia remembered thinking it was good that her parents had died. They hadn't lived to see what a mess she'd made of her life, what a disappointment she'd become.

As she'd sat driving to Minnesota, it now seemed like a harsh judgment to pronounce on herself at nineteen. And Lord knows, she'd spent the better part of her life atoning for if not trying to prove it wrong. Memories dogged her, bumpety bumping along as if someone had tied rusted cans to the chassis of her Jeep. The Place of No Comfort—clattering and clunking against the asphalt as reminders that sorrow had pulled up a chair again; demanding to be heard until, for some reason, crossing into Ohio. Maybe it
was
possible to run away from yourself if you crossed enough state lines.

The job at Sea Life would be different. No lab to run off to at 3 a.m. when she'd thought of something or needed to run away from something else. But now there'd be no open seas in which to dive and extinguish her soul's burn.

Like Jen had once said, science is easy, life is hard. To enter a stream of focus to the exclusion of all else was heaven's reward for scientists. Once the overdrive of concentration kicked in nothing could penetrate, not memories, nor the question of what it would be like to love without doubt. Work had helped tamp down the unraveling corners before they'd land her in the Place of No Comfort.

*   *   *

That first night they'd piled into a Red Roof Inn on the outskirts of Cleveland, all of them collapsing dead asleep within moments of settling in with bags of microwave popcorn from the vending machine.

But then Amelia bolted up awake as adrenaline blasted through her like someone had fired off a shotgun. She struggled to modulate her breathing to calm down.

“Hey.” Jen looked over from the other side of the bed. “You okay?”

“Think I'm gonna take a walk, maybe get some fresh air.”

“Want me to come?”