“Maybe. I got a call from the front desk this morning saying I had to move out today.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. No warning. I had kind of wondered about being able to stay here this long. When I first came, Sawyer had told me I could stay for a week or two max. And then they moved me to a nicer hut and said I could be there as long as I needed. Same time Bob approached me.”
“Interesting.”
“What Callahan did was shady and self-serving, even if not quite illegal.”
Minnow thought back to her meeting with Sam and the way he so needed to be the expert. The one in charge. She still wasn’t convinced, but who knew? And then another idea came to her. “If he was paying you, I wonder if he was paying anyone else?Thatwould be illegal.”
“I’ve thought about that.”
“Woody and Cliff brought it up too.”
Luke leaned back and stretched his arms out, wide as albatross wings, and Minnow felt for him. Coming here to the house had taken guts after how things had left off between them. There was so much new information to digest, her mind just wanted to shut down. Stare at the stars. Get in the water and swim away.
“It’s never simple, is it? Life, I mean,” she said in almost a whisper.
A small shake of his head. “Never. Never, ever.”
“I thought I was coming out here to look into a few shark incidents and now everything I knew to be true has been turned upside down.” She looked into his eyes and was hit with the feeling that he could see right through her. “There are things you don’t know about me too.”
Maybe now wasn’t the best time to tell him, it was such long story, but she had this pressing need to share what had happened today, and Luke happened to be sitting here in front of her having just bared his soul.
“Go on, I want to hear everything,” he said.
So she told him about Luna and about Wally, and how everything with Wally still haunted her. Luke was silent as she spoke and even wiped his eyes a few times. When she finished, he stood up and came around the table, reaching a hand out.
“Come,” he said, softly.
Minnow stood and he folded himself around her in a way that made her want to weep. Her cheek fell on his shoulder. Their closeness was electric, and static seemed to form wherever they touched. In all the years since her father died, she had never allowed herself to be so fully held, like this was exactly where she belonged—in time and space and heart. Like Luke was the door she needed to walk through to get to the other side. Or maybe he was the other side.
Out behind the house, a strange humming started up. Minnow cocked an ear, trying to understand what she was hearing.
Tiny wingbeats?
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
“Hear what?”
She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him out back. The clouds had all been swept away, and the sky was salted with stars. They moved toward the pond, carefully walking across the uneven ground. The sound grew louder. In the faint light from the lantern in her hand, they saw a cloud of shimmering red dragonflies—no, damselflies—hovering over the water, wings delicate as lace spun from spiderwebs. Hundreds of them, maybe more.
“What are they doing?” Luke asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen them swarm like this. I know that Hawai?i has several of its own species of damselflies, so maybe this is something they do?”
He looked at her and ran the side of his hand down her cheek. “Dear God, you’re sexy.”
“These guys are the sexy ones. Look how they shimmer.”
His hand paused on her jawline and she leaned in, wanting more but afraid to admit it.
“Most people I know will never know the difference between a dragonfly and a damselfly. But you, you can hear them, can’t you?” he said.
They were on the small wooden deck built over the corner of the pond and she sat down, dangling her legs in the water. The damselflies kept on buzzing, doing their damselfly thing, and Luke sat next to her, shoulder touching hers, thigh too. Coconut lotion lifted off him in waves.
“I do. I hear their wings the same way I hear the stars singing or the beating heart of a fish. Is that weird?” she asked.
His hand went to her thigh and rested there, big and warm. “Not weird. It’s your special gift. I think we’re all born with these kinds of abilities or intuitions, but most people shed them along the way when they’re still too young to remember.”
“It took me a while to realize that no one heard what I was hearing, and that not everyone loved sharks and sea creatures the same way I did.”
