The Night Mark

“No.”

“Good in bed?”

“Fair to middling,” Faye said, shrugging.

Ty laughed. “Then hell, yeah, it’s a thing to celebrate.”

“I will have an age-appropriate celebration. You’re too young for me.”

He looked at her, tight-lipped and disapproving. “I’m twenty-two.”

“I’m thirty.”

“Thirty? Oh, my God, Becky, where were you when JFK was shot?” he asked in a Valley girl voice.

She glared at him.

“You flirt weird. Did you learn this in one of those men’s magazines with a woman in a metallic bikini on the cover?”

“Possibly. Is it working?”

Faye sighed. “It’s working. But just dinner. I’m not sleeping with you. I’m supposed to be sad.”

“Are you sad?” he asked, stepping up to her and looking her right in the eyes. She couldn’t remember if Hagen had looked her in the eyes the entire last year of their marriage. She’d forgotten how scary it was to be seen.

“Yes,” she said.

“Because of the divorce.”

“No, not that.”

“Then why?”

Faye smiled. “Who knows?” A rhetorical question. She knew why she was sad, but Ty didn’t need to know.

“We’ll go to the ocean today,” he said. “It knows things. Maybe it can help you.”

Okay.

So.

Faye had a date with a twenty-two-year-old college student. That was unexpected. Probably a very bad idea, as well. Maybe a terrible idea. Then again, he did have a boat. And he was cute. And she was single again.

And... For a split second while flirting with Ty, Faye had been almost okay. The saltwater cure seemed to be working already. And for a woman who’d been in mourning for four straight years, Faye knew “almost okay” was as good as it was probably ever going to get.

But she would take it.

3 (#u5dfc0014-26a7-5683-8c38-2537ef8d0be1)

Ty had the boat, but Faye had the car. Unless she wanted to ride twenty miles on the back of Ty’s scooter, she would be driving herself on her own date. It was nice. She felt very modern. Old but modern.

Ten minutes into the drive to the dock on Saint Helena Island, Faye pulled over in a church parking lot and gave Ty the keys.

“You want me to drive?” he asked, cocking his pierced eyebrow at her.

“I can’t drive and location scout at the same time without getting us in a wreck. I assume you can drive?”

“I have my learner’s permit,” he said, taking the keys.

“You’re cute.”

“The goddamn cutest,” he said as he opened the door and got behind the wheel.

As Ty drove, Faye stared out the window and jotted the occasional note on her steno pad. She should take pics of the old Penn School. The trees surrounding it were some of the most photogenic she’d ever seen. She also noted a crumbling ruin of a church that would make for a beautiful shot, maybe even the cover of the calendar. Thankfully Ty didn’t pester her with small talk as he drove them to the boat. He pointed out interesting scenery here and there—that road took her down to the old fort, this road took her to a converted plantation house... Useful things. Helpful things. She made notes of them all.

They arrived at the dock, and Faye nodded her approval at the boat. It looked adequately seaworthy, some kind of speedy fishing boat converted into a research vessel. It had a blue-and-white hull with the words CCU Marine Science painted on the bow and the number four on the stern.

“You won’t get in trouble for taking me out on your school’s boat, will you?” she asked.

“It’s mine for the summer. As long as I give it back in one piece with a full tank of gas, and I get my work done, they don’t care what I do with it.”

“What are you working on this summer?” Faye asked as Ty took her hand to steady her on the wobbling boat ramp. Inside the boat she sat on the battered white vinyl seat, mindful of the box of instruments on the floor as Ty settled in behind the wheel.

“Beach pollution mostly,” he said, as he steered the boat away from the dock. “The effects of pollution on coastal wildlife, the fish especially. I’m taking water samples all summer up and down the coast.”

“Are these beaches polluted?” she asked. “They look clean to me.”

“Think about rain,” Ty said. “Think about a rainstorm in your town. Water comes down and washes everything clean, right? What sort of stuff gets washed away in a rainstorm?”

“Bird shit,” she said.

“Squirrel shit.”

“Bat shit,” she said, and they both laughed.

“Oil from your car on the street. All that gets washed into the gutter, which goes into the sewer. Where does that sewer go?”

“Please don’t tell me the ocean.”

“Goes right to the ocean. Decades ago they built these drainage pipes from the cities, and those pipes empty into the ocean near the beaches. That’s why you shouldn’t swim around here after a rainstorm. Like swimming in a sewer.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“It is what it is,” he said with a shrug. “People want to pretend all that shit magically disappears into the gutter and is never seen again. But it’s gotta go somewhere, right?” He started the engine and eased the boat toward open water, steering it neatly between two sailboats, one with the elegant name Silver Girl and the other with the less-than-elegant name The Wet Dream.

The boat bounced hard as it skimmed over the top of a large wake left by a fifty-foot yacht. But Ty seemed imperturbable at the helm. He drove with a focused calm, intent without intensity—a true expert. She liked experts. The world needed more people who were good at their jobs.

“So why marine biology?” Faye asked, shouting over the steady hum of the engine.