The Shell Collector (24 page)

“So the reason I got into shelling—it has a dark history behind it. I’m almost ashamed of it. Which is difficult, because it’s become the thing I most love doing in the world. But it all started when I was nine. Like I said, for a few years there, I didn’t care about shells. I liked them when I was real young, because my parents and my sister did, but then I became consumed with this self-loathing, which is a crazy thing for a little kid to feel, and that’s all I thought about.

“Then one day, we were on a hike on the bluffs up from my childhood beach, and we came across this writhing ball of hermit crabs. Like two dozen of them. They were crawling all over each other. You could hear them crinkle as their little legs tapped on each other’s shells.”

“They were swapping,” Ness says.

“That’s right. I sat with my mom and watched crabs crawl out of one shell and into another. Some shells were empty. It was all this furious activity, hermit crabs leaving one home and jumping into another.”

“And you wished you could, too.”

I bob my head, my vision swimming with tears. My voice cracks as I try to get it out. “I told my mom— told her ‘I wish that was me,’ and she said—” Ness gives me a corner of the towel, and I dab my cheeks with it. “She said, ‘Why would you want to leave our house?’ and I said, ‘I want to leave
me
.’ And I don’t think she ever got it. But I was mesmerized with this idea. I never saw shells as anything other than rocks that came in pretty shapes. Didn’t realize what they were. But after that day, I wanted to find all of them. I thought there might be one out there shaped like me that I could just crawl into.”

I’m bawling by the time I finish. Ness grabs me and pulls me against him, letting me sob into the crook of his neck. He kisses my cheek, smooths my hair, and holds me. I cry so hard that I shudder, letting out this thing that I’ve contained all on my own for far too long, this dark secret to my passion, this ignoble reason for what I do and who I am.

“I think you’re perfect,” Ness says. “You are perfect just like you are. With every chip and ding. With the polish rubbed off. There’s nothing wrong with you in the world.”

I control my sobbing so I can hear him. And then I’m not crying anymore. I’m kissing him. And this time the kissing grows into something frantic, a rawness from having exposed myself, from becoming more than merely naked. Throwing the towel off, hot now, I straddle Ness and sit up in the breeze. I let him see me in the cast of starlight. His hands are on my hips. They trace up my waist, cup my breasts.

“I want you,” I tell him. “Right now. I’ve never wanted anything so badly in my life.”

I feel his hands stop. Something flashes across his face. “I can’t be an escape for you,” he says. “Not some temporary home.”

“I don’t want temporary,” I tell him.

With this, his hands move again. He rolls me over and lowers me to the blanket. As he kisses my neck, and then down my body, I keep my eyes open. A field of stars glitters above us, the sea lapping nearby, streaks of light as foreign bodies strike the Earth’s atmosphere, exploding and burning upon entry. Ness’s mouth is against me, and now I can’t tell if all the stars I’m seeing are real. My vision bursts with them. I have to close my eyes; our hands interlock; I arch my back and moan with pleasure.

When I can’t take it anymore, I pull him up so I can kiss him. So our chests are together. So he can enter me. And for the first time, I forget who this man is outside of any context beyond the last few days together. I let go of his past. My past. There is nothing behind us, nothing before us, just a promise of now. The world is not flooding. All the tides are slack. Waiting. Pausing. Nature catching her breath. While the two of us lose ourselves in each other.

The next morning, I wake up before Ness. I watch him sleep for a long while. I notice that the crease in his forehead is gone. Like the worry that seems to plague him during the day is giving him respite in his sleep.

When I can’t hold it anymore, I get up to pee. I grab my phone on the way to the bathroom to check the time, and marvel that I have signal. It’s just wi-fi, though. I wonder how this works with Ness’s “no laptop” rule, but I use it to check my email and my messages while I’m on the toilet. I have a depressing metric ton of both. I scan for important names, see my sister asking me how things are going, that she assumes the silence is a good thing, reminds me to let Ness know she’s single. I stifle a laugh at this. What in the world am I going to tell her?

There are tons of messages from Henry. I have a workaholic breakthrough by opening none of them. Just one day of not caring what the emergency is. A way of honoring Ness’s laptop rule. Leaving the bathroom, I worry my flushing might’ve woken Ness, but he’s still sound asleep. I decide to venture out for coffee. As I’m passing the bed, I see inside Ness’s bag, which is open. It’s the bright orange plastic case that catches my eye.

I freeze, glance back at the bed, see that he isn’t moving, then crouch down beside his bag. I pull the case out. It’s identical to the murex case Agent Cooper gave me. In fact, I fully expect to see a lace murex inside as I work the latch. Instead, some water sloshes out, and I have to tilt the case in a hurry to get it level and keep from making more of a mess. I lift the lid slowly. Inside is something that looks like a cross between an auger and a cerith. Not quite as smooth as the former or as bumpy as the latter. When it moves, I realize where it came from. And why the water inside feels so warm. And why these cases have rubber seals.

I close the lid, secure the latch, and put the case back in Ness’s bag. My mind is racing, but it’s going around in circles. These clues seem important, but they aren’t spelling out the big picture. When I stand, I turn to find Ness stretching in the bed. He looks over at me.

“Morning, gorgeous.”

I feel terrifyingly naked. I don’t know how much is my usual shyness and how much is my swimming thoughts.

“C’mere,” Ness says.

I crawl into bed and kiss his neck. “My breath is awful,” I say.

“Is that your polite way of saying that it’s my breath that’s bad?”

“No, but I assume it isn’t hunky dory either. I’m going to make coffee. You want some?”

“Yeah, because that’ll fix our problems.”

I laugh and push him back against the pillow when he tries to sit up. “Stay here,” I say. “I’ll get it. And can I borrow a robe?”

“I like that look,” he tells me.

“It’s chilly,” I say.

Ness waves toward the closet. I find a robe hanging on the back of the door.

“Oh, and do you have a landline?”

“Why?” he asks.

“I need to call my sister. She was expecting me to check in today. I didn’t know we’d be in the Bahamas.”

“Sure. Make sure you use the country code.”

“Okay. Back with your coffee in a bit.”

I grab my cell phone on my way out. While I’m sorting out the coffee and filter and putting water in the coffee maker, I pull up Agent Cooper’s phone number in my directory. I also find an alarm radio on the kitchen counter and figure out how to pair it up with my phone. I choose a beach playlist. Ness yells his approval, and I crank up the volume. I find the house phone, remove it from its cradle, and take it outside while the coffee is percolating.

There’s static atop the dial tone as I head out onto the patio. Too far, and the phone won’t work. I balance between distance for privacy but not so much that I lose reception. Agent Cooper picks up on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Cooper. It’s Maya Walsh. Listen, I don’t have a lot of time. Just wanted to fill you in on something.”

“You can call me—”

“Stan. Whatever. Just listen. That case you found? It’s a research sample case. Insulated. It’s watertight to keep water
in
, not out. Ness is taking live mollusks from the deep sea. That’s where he’s getting his shells.”

“Hydrothermals? Maya, nothing like the lace murex lives down there.”

“I know. The laces aren’t the thing, don’t you see? Ness reacted to seeing the
case
, not the shells. The shells are blinding us. You. Us. Whatever. The point is, I think he’s after those shells maybe to breed them. Or something. He wants them alive. This isn’t about forging shells at all.”

“Breeding shells isn’t illegal,” Cooper says. “We give out permits for that.”

“To anyone? He said something about senators, doesn’t trust them. I don’t have it all figured out yet, but I know for a fact he’s doing something illegal. He admitted that. And he’s keeping these samples hidden from me. I think he’s growing shells, and maybe it’s the scale of his operation that’s an issue. I mean, he’s got entire islands where he could be breeding these things. Maybe selling the shells as if found. Or using what he breeds to move into cast fakes, like you suggested. I don’t know.”

“Maya, I want you to come in and debrief with me. I want you out of there.”

“I can’t. Not now.”

“You’re in too deep. I’m telling you. If you were my agent, I’d be ordering you to get out of there.”

“Good thing I’m not, then. Anyway, I’ve gotta go.”

“Wait. I wanted to talk to you about the article.”

“Can’t. I’ll call you later.”

I hang up. My palms are sweaty. A mix of thoughts rush through my head. The first is that the FBI just recorded me, and that Cooper is probably already listening to our conversation again to make sure he got everything. The next is a feeling like I’m betraying Ness, which stings deep, because I’m pretty sure I’m falling for him. The last thought is of my own wound, because it’s obvious that he hasn’t been telling me the whole truth, which sucks because of the aforementioned falling-for-him bit. But it’s also a salve for my guilt. Maybe we’re betraying each other. A little.

Back in the house, I find the coffee pot full. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young are singing about eighty feet of waterline, nicely making way. Ness is sitting up in bed on a throne of pillows as I deliver his coffee.

“Your sister convinced I haven’t murdered you and dumped your body at sea?” Ness asks.

“Not exactly. She says she wants a photo of me with today’s paper to be sure I’m okay. I told her we don’t get the
Times
where we are. Thank goodness.”

“That’s what I love about this place,” Ness says. He cradles his coffee with both hands, takes a deep breath through his nose, and arches his shoulders back as he stretches. Letting it all out, he smiles at me. “No stress. No work. And the sea in every direction.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s perfect here. But I’m guessing we have to get back.”

I try not to make it sound like a question, like I’m eager to leave. I wish I could be more like Ness. Or maybe I’m too much like Ness. But this vacation has become work all of a sudden. I remember why I’m out here, what I’m hoping to uncover. And the lack of computer and cell coverage has me feeling isolated. Cut off. Something’s going on, and I won’t get any closer to it by staying here. And I hate myself for feeling this way.

The following day, I wake up in Ness’s bed back in Maine. The memory of Tara Cay is a memory as perfect as it is small. Like a beaded periwinkle, or any shell that requires a magnifying glass to fully appreciate. It was paradise crammed into a fistful of hours, the sort of moment you can lose if you’re not careful.

The view from Ness’s bed is almost as glorious. The storm has passed. Dawn is just breaking, the disk of the sun rising above the Atlantic and throwing the sky into pinks and reds. I watch the colors bloom and fade; sunrises like this are over in a blink. The sky changes from second to second. It reminds me of my week with Ness, which came and went too fast, every breath full of something new and strange and wonderful.

I reach for my phone on the bedside table. The flight home was a blur. I only remember passing out in bed, falling asleep curled up against Ness, eager for the answers he promised I would get today. I want this journey behind us so I can see where the next one will go.

My phone tells me it’s Saturday, which is almost impossible to believe. There are dozens of missed calls and even more texts, but all that will have to wait until I have coffee in my veins. Is it really Saturday? I think back: Monday, we shelled on the beach, Tuesday diving—God, that feels like a lifetime ago—and on Wednesday morning it rained, but that afternoon we flew halfway around the world, spent Thursday at one of the deepest parts of the Atlantic Ocean, Friday on Tara Cay, and now it’s Saturday.

Hours earlier, I woke up to Ness getting quietly dressed. Sweatpants and sneakers. I asked him where he was going, and he said for a run. When I asked where, he said, “To the end of the driveway and back. To get the mail.”

I’ve not yet gotten out of bed when I hear him coming down the breezeway. The sunrise has nearly lost its hues, is now just a single yellow orb. Ness has a triangle of sweat from his neck to his navel. It occurs to me that he may have run the entire length of that long shell-covered driveway to the outer guard gate. My thirty minutes on the treadmill after work and occasional Pilates feels inadequate.

“What’s for breakfast?” I ask, stretching.

He strides into the bedroom, hair matted with sweat, a blank look on his face. He throws a newspaper onto the bed. “Betrayal,” he says. “More than I can stomach.”

He storms into the bathroom while I gather my senses. A different man returned from the one who left the house. What does he mean by “betrayal”? I gather the paper, which flew apart from being thrown onto the bed. I check the Arts & Culture section, an old habit, and see nothing. And then I find the front page. And my heart sinks. I scan the familiar article, making sure it doesn’t have anything about the FBI in there.

“I didn’t know about this,” I yell at him. “I swear.”

I grab my phone. Ness’s grandfather stares accusingly at me. His image takes up half the front page of the
Times
, practically everything above the fold. The headline says: “Part 2: The Grandfather.” I check the byline, and there’s my name. It’s the piece, word for word, nothing changed. The very piece I told Henry he couldn’t run. I find him on my speed dial. Henry picks up after the second ring.