“What happened?” Caddie asked, finally finding the right button and releasing some air.

  “You were too shallow to stay down,” said Brian. “You need to let air out as you get shallower.”

  “How do I know I’m getting shallower?” asked Caddie.

  Brian reached over and held up another of Caddie’s hoses, this one attached to a large gauge. “Look at your dive computer,” he said. “How much air do you have left?”

  “I don’t know,” Caddie said. “Is that on there too?”

  “I guess I skipped a few things,” said Brian. “We turned around because I was getting low on air.” He looked at Caddie’s computer. “You have a ton left,” he said. “Not bad for your first dive. Did you have a good time?”

  “What were those things we saw?” asked Caddie.

  “The thing that looked like a flower is a kind of tube anemone,” Brian answered. “And that purple thing is a nudibranch.”

  “Nudibranch,” Caddie repeated. She recognized the word from one of her father’s boring dinner conversations. “That’s what they are?”

  “There are a lot of different kinds,” said Brian. “That one is Dendronotus iris. We call it the rainbow nudibranch because it comes in a couple of different colors. Little-known fact—it’s the only nudibranch that swims,” he added. “Although it’s not very good at it.”

  “It was eating that anemone, right?” said Caddie.

  “That’s it’s favorite food,” Brian explained. “It also lays its eggs around the anemone’s tube. I always imagine the anemone sit there looking at those eggs like the ones in Alien, just waiting for the babies to pop out and eat them.”

  “Yeah,” Caddie said vaguely as they swam on their backs toward the beach. She couldn’t get the nudibranch out of her head. It was so beautiful. And that’s what her father studied. His work had never seemed interesting to her, but now that she’d seen one for herself, she thought she understood, at least a little bit, why he was into nudibranchs.

  But he probably doesn’t even notice how pretty they are, she told herself. He’s just interested in what’s inside them.

  She wasn’t like him, though. Where her father saw cold, hard science, she saw something more. Beauty. Magic. Wonder. Things he could never understand.

  I’m not like him, she repeated to herself, and kicked for shore.

  CHAPTER 24

  “The lasagna is just about done,” Angela said, shutting the oven door. “How’s that salad coming?”

  “You know, when I invited you to dinner, I didn’t intend for you to make it,” Ben said as he chopped a carrot into thin rings.

  “It’s lasagna,” said Angela, washing her hands at the sink. “You throw some stuff into a pan and let it cook. It’s no biggie.”

  “Not for you,” said Ben. “I was just going to pick something up at Tilly Gort’s.”

  Angela made a face. “The all-natural place?” she said.

  “What?” said Ben, seeing her expression.

  “Nothing,” Angela said quickly. “It’s just that it’s so ... all-natural.”

  “I like their curried couscous,” Ben countered. “Besides, aren’t all of you hip young things supposed to be into health food?”

  “Hip young things?” Angela said. “And what are you, withered and old?”

  Ben set the knife down and swept the pile of carrots into the salad bowl. “You know what I mean,” he said.

  Angela, leaning back against the counter, pushed her hair behind an ear. “You’re pretty hip yourself, you know,” she said.

  The front door opened, and Ben was pleased to see Caddie come into the kitchen. When she saw Angela, she stopped and looked from her to her father. “Hi,” she said.

  “Caddie, this is Angela,” Ben said. “Angela is one of the grad students working with us.”

  “Oh,” Caddie said, as if some unspoken question had been answered. “Hi.”

  “Your father’s told me a lot about you,” said Angela.

  Caddie looked at her father but said nothing. Ben, too, was quiet, busying himself with a tomato. “Angela is having dinner with us,” he said.

  Caddie nodded. “I’m going to go take a shower,” she said, leaving quickly with a nod at Angela.

  “She doesn’t seem so hostile,” Angela remarked quietly, coming to stand beside Ben.

  “I think we caught her off guard,” said Ben. “She probably thought you were a date or something.” He laughed shortly.

  “What’s so funny about that?” Angela said, hitting him lightly on the arm.

  “Me having a date,” said Ben. “Especially with someone like you.”

  “You don’t think very highly of yourself, do you?” Angela remarked, going once more to the oven and opening the door.

  Ben started to answer but stopped. He didn’t know how to answer the question. Even if he did, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. He was used to Angela being his assistant. Although their relationship had become more casual of late, he still saw her as something of a daughter, not a psychiatrist. He cleared his throat. “I hope you don’t mind, but I invited another friend to dinner,” he said.

  Angela pulled the lasagna out of the oven and set it on the stove-top. “And here I thought I had you all to myself,” she said.

  “His name is Hudson,” Ben said. “He’s a grad student. Like you.”

  “Biology?” Angela asked, tearing off some tinfoil and covering the lasagna pan.

  “English,” said Ben.

  “My last boyfriend was an English major,” Angela said. “He was completely obsessed with Eudora Welty. It was way too much for me. I mean, how do you compete with a dead woman?”

  “I guess you can’t,” Ben answered, feeling a little lost. He was rescued by a knock on the door. “Come in!” he called.

  Hudson, carrying a bottle of wine, came into the kitchen. “I hope I’m not too early,” he said.

  “You have perfect timing,” said Angela. “I just took the lasagna out.” She held out her hand. “Angela Rossiter,” she said.

  “Hudson Jones. It’s good to meet you.”

  “Tell me, how do you feel about Eudora Welty?” Angela asked him.

  Hudson hesitated a moment. “I guess my favorite of her stories is ‘The Wide Net,’ ” he said. “The novels I’m not so fond of.”

  Angela turned to Ben. “See?” she said. “They all have a thing for Eudora Welty.”

  “Did I miss something?” Hudson said, looking confused.

  Ben took the bottle from him and fished a wine opener from one of the drawers. “Angela had a bad experience with an English major,” he explained.

  “Oh,” said Hudson. “Well, if it helps any, she looked way too much like my grandmother for me to have a thing for her.”

  Angela laughed. “I like this one,” she said to Ben, who was pouring the wine into glasses.

  “Is it just the three of us?” asked Hudson, accepting a glass from Ben.

  “Four,” Ben told him. “Caddie will be down in a minute.”

  Hudson sipped his wine. “Dinner smells great,” he remarked.

  “You have Angela to thank for that,” said Ben. He was pleased that Hudson and Angela seemed to be getting on. I had a feeling they would, he congratulated himself.

  “Here’s our fourth now,” Angela said, and Hudson turned to look at Caddie. Freshly showered, she was wearing a white T-shirt underneath a yellow long-sleeved shirt. Her hair, freed from its ponytail, fell loosely around her face. Seeing Hudson, she smiled brightly.

  “You must be Caddie,” said Hudson. “Your father—”

  “Has told you so much about me,” Caddie interrupted. “I’m hearing that a lot.”

  Ben, listening while he put the salad into four bowls, heard the sarcasm in her voice. But it was mixed with a playfulness he’d never heard in her tone before. It took him a moment to realize what it was. She’s flirting with him, he thought with surprise.

  He turned and looked at his daughter. She was leaning against the doorway, nodding at something Hudson was saying. Then she laughed, a glittery run of girlish enthusiasm. Ben, confused, searched for Angela and found her cutting the lasagna into squares. If she noticed Caddie’s flirtation with Hudson, she didn’t show it in her expression.

  “All right,” Angela announced. “Dinner’s on. Everyone into the dining room.”

  The four of them went into the other room. Ben took his usual seat, while Angela took the one opposite. Caddie and Hudson occupied the other chairs, facing one another across the table. Angela picked up Caddie’s plate and spooned a piece of lasagna onto it. Caddie nodded as it was set before her, but her eyes were on Hudson.

  “Hudson is interested in John Steinbeck,” Ben announced to no one in particular. Watching Caddie’s behavior, he was filled with a sudden unease, as if his plan were about to be undone and he needed to shore it up before it was too late.

  “Steinbeck,” said Angela. “We had to read Of Mice and Men in high school. I hated it.”

  Ben felt his stomach sink. But as he passed Ben a plate of lasagna, Hudson said, “It’s not one of my favorites either. I think they assign it because it’s so short.”

  Ben poked at the lasagna, waiting for everyone to be served. He glanced nervously from Angela to Hudson.

  “We had to read The Pearl,” said Caddie, startling her father into looking at her. She was spooning green beans from a bowl onto her plate.

  “What did you think of it?” Hudson asked her.

  “I thought it was interesting,” said Caddie. “You know, the whole thing about getting what you think you want but it not being enough. Isn’t that what happens to all of these rock stars and movie stars? But in the novel it happens to people who don’t have anything. It’s like he was trying to show that people are all the same.”

  “I think Steinbeck was saying that sometimes you don’t know what you already have until someone takes it away from you,” said Hudson. “They have each other, and their baby. Then, because of the pearl, they almost lose it all.”

  “All I know is that I got a C-minus on the paper I wrote,” Angela commented. “I haven’t read anything else by Steinbeck since then.”

  “Hudson is also interested in Ed Ricketts,” Ben said quickly.

  Angela’s face brightened. “Now he was an interesting man,” she said.

  She began to talk about Ricketts with Hudson. Ben, pleased that he had turned the conversation around, sat and ate quietly, watching the two of them converse. It was a few minutes before he realized that Caddie hadn’t said a word in some time. He looked at her and discovered her picking at her food. From time to time she cast dark looks at Angela.

  Ben groaned internally. In averting one disaster, he had created another. Caddie was clearly jealous of the attention Hudson was paying to Angela. Can’t she see that he wouldn’t be interested in her? Ben wondered. He marveled at the inability, or reluctance, of young women to see that someone wasn’t at all right for them. He supposed men did it too, but not nearly so often or so spectacularly.

  “How was your day?” he asked his daughter, hoping to coax her into conversation.

  “Fine,” Caddie said shortly.

  “What did you do?” Ben pushed.

  “Nothing much,” said Caddie. “Walked around town a little.”

  “That sounds fun,” Ben said brightly, receiving nothing in reply.

  “So, Caddie, what are you doing this summer?” Hudson asked, taking a break from discussing Ed Ricketts.

  Ben watched the transformation come over Caddie. The look of petulance disappeared, replaced by bright-eyed enthusiasm. “I haven’t really decided,” she said. “Do you have any ideas?”

  Hudson tipped his glass and looked thoughtful. “No,” he said finally. “I’m afraid my summers when I was your age usually involved working in my father’s hardware store and visiting my grandparents in Florida for two weeks. And not in the Disney World part of Florida either, I might add. The buggy, humid part where everyone eats dinner at three o’clock and goes to bed by seven.”

  “What do you like to do?” Angela asked Caddie.

  Ben waited for her answer. He was curious to find out what his daughter was interested in, as so far she’d shown a fondness only for avoiding him in as many ways as possible.

  Caddie shrugged. “The usual stuff, I guess,” she said. “Mostly I hang out with my friends.”

  “Let me guess,” Angela said. “At the mall?” She laughed gently.

  “No, not at the mall,” snapped Caddie.

  “I’m sorry,” Angela apologized. “I just meant that when I was your age, that’s what we did.”

  Caddie set her fork down. “I like to write songs,” she said. “The words, anyway. I can’t write music very well.”

  Ben, surprised, said, “What kind of songs?”

  “Just songs,” Caddie said. She seemed uncomfortable, and Ben decided against asking her if she would share one with them.

  “There you are,” Hudson said, putting his hands up.

  “What?” said Caddie.

  “You can be a roaming troubadour,” he said. “Charge people ten bucks to have you sing for them.”

  Ben waited for Caddie to get up and leave the table. Instead, she looked at Hudson and smiled. “That’s not a bad idea,” she said. “I could start with the people in line at the aquarium. It takes forever to get in there. I bet they’d love to have some entertainment.”

  “You’ve been to the aquarium?” Ben asked her.

  Caddie looked at him, then down at her plate, where she focused her concentration on her lasagna. “I ran in the other day,” she said. “There was nothing else to do.”

  “You should have told me you were going,” said Ben. “You could have gotten in free with my member card.”

  “It was a last-minute thing,” said Caddie. “Anyway, they gave me the student rate.”

  “Well, what did you think of it?” Angela asked.

  “It has a lot of fish,” answered Caddie without enthusiasm.

  “It’s the best aquarium in the country,” said Angela. “You know your father helped them set up the kelp forest exhibit.”

  Caddie said nothing, so Ben stepped in. “It really is a pretty amazing place,” he said. “You know they were the first aquarium to keep a great white alive in captivity.”

  “Yeah, so they could get people to pay to look at it,” Caddie muttered.

  Ben looked across the table at Angela. She gave him a sympathetic nod. He was grateful for her presence at the table. Even if she raised Caddie’s ire, she made him feel less alone.

  “Do you dive, Caddie?” Hudson asked.

  Caddie shook her head. “No,” she said.

  “Me neither,” said Hudson. “I’ve always thought it would be fun, though.”

  “You should have Ben teach you,” Angela suggested. “He’s a great instructor.”

  “Really?” Hudson said, looking at Ben. “I’d love that. I mean, if it isn’t too much trouble. I don’t know how long it takes or anything.”

  “Not long,” Ben told him. “A couple of sessions in the pool to teach you the skills, then the certification dives in the ocean. We could do it in a couple of days.”

  “It would be fun,” said Angela. “Then we could all go diving together.”

  Hudson looked at Caddie. “What about you?” he said. “Are you up for it?”

  Caddie looked first at Angela, then at Ben. Ben could see her wrestling with something, coming to some kind of decision. For a moment he thought she was going to accept from Hudson the gift that she had refused from him. Then she shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m not really a water person.”

  CHAPTER 25

  By his fourth visit to the Steinbeck Center, Hudson felt he was close to an answer. He’d combed through the journals, and while nothing in them could be called proof of his assertions, he felt certain that he was right. He just needed one concrete piece of proof, one solid connection that would stand against the protests he knew would confront his claim once he revealed it publicly.

  The problem, of course, was that he wasn’t at all sure this evidence existed. Without it, he was left with unsupportable suppositions. While he believed himself correct, he was familiar enough with the world of academia to know that believing in yourself meant nothing if you didn’t have substantiating materials to back you up.

  He pushed the journal he was looking at away and rested his head in his hands, rubbing his eyes. He was so close, yet he might as well be standing on the wrong side of an uncrossable chasm. What he wanted—what he needed—was just out of reach, hidden behind pages and pages of seemingly unrelated entries about one man’s life.

  He brought the journal back in front of him and read.

  Went with Ed to the tide pools last night to collect octopus. Wonderful little creatures, smart like dogs. In the bucket they reach out to one another with their arms. Asking or telling, I can’t say. Maybe they just want to know that they aren’t alone.

  It was a beautiful observation, as so much of Steinbeck’s thoughts were. But beauty wasn’t proof, and insinuation wasn’t enough to back up such an explosive claim as the one Hudson was contemplating. He sighed, closing the journal and thinking that maybe it was time to leave for the day. He was frustrated, and frustration made research a misery, as it generally resulted in grasping at straws. He couldn’t afford to be careless. Not with this.

  He was pulling his papers together, deciding what he did and did not want copies of, when the door to the research room opened and Helen Guerneyser walked in. She had with her a gentleman easily in his eighties. He was dressed in the costume of the quintessential college professor—khaki pants and a white shirt beneath a blue-gray wool jacket. His hair, surprisingly intact, was thick and white.

  “Hudson, I have someone I’d like you to meet,” Helen said. “This is Edgar Macready.”