Updrift (27 page)

“Okay, I’m gonna get back to Kate,” he told them, and drained his coffee cup. “Thanks for going over these with me again, Mom, and thanks for the sandwich, Dad.” He made his goodbyes while ducking out of the room.

*

“Hmm,” Carmen commented after he’d left. “No hugs. I can’t remember the last time he left without hugging us.” She pouted.

“He’s just going down to the guest house, honey.”

Carmen inclined her head. “I suppose he’s thinking about the division he saw on their charts.” Then she brightened. “But there’ll be a new baby to make a chart for soon.”

“Or babies.” Michael grinned at her.

Carmen chuckled. “Kate wouldn’t like that. But I would.”

* * * *

Kate sat with Gabe on the couch in the living room of the guest house, where she’d just finished describing her childhood. “What I really like about both of our parents is they put us first. And by
us
I mean the family itself, not child worship. Even though everyone worked—and my mother raised me alone—the job was secondary, more of a means to an end.”

“I’m with you. My mom could certainly have had a bigger-deal job but she wanted to be around. She was no martyr, either, making some big sacrifice. She chose her work and the time it gave her with Dad and me.”

“I love that you always had a mom and dad around.”

Her smile faded as she considered how to start the next part of this conversation. “I have a question for you about what you want to do when the baby comes, and it’s got more to it than just
how should we schedule primary care responsibilities
.”

“Let’s hear it.” Gabe caressed the back of the hand he held with his thumb.

She squirmed. “I feel ridiculous even bringing this up, like I shouldn’t have to. But I do.” Gabe’s regard was open, his manner patient, and she felt encouraged to continue. “It has to do with gender roles.” She watched his face closely for a reaction. “I mean, I feel like I should take primary responsibility for our children’s care—whether or not I want to seems irrelevant—and that strikes me as a pretty unenlightened idea, and possibly not fair to you. Would you ever want to stay home with the kids? I also want to know how you feel about hiring the job out to someone else.”

Gabe nodded slowly. “I have the same dirty little secret you do, except unlike you, I’m pretty judgmental about people who don’t agree with me.” His smile was wry. “No, I don’t want to stay home with the kids. I will of course, but I want to go to medical school and become a doctor. I feel even more excited about this choice now we’re together and about to start a family, though I suppose I could see these events as mutually exclusive.

“But I don’t see us that way,” he asserted. “What I’m about to say is not a mandate, okay? I’m not insisting anything.”

“Go ahead.”

“I want one of us to be mostly home while the kids are little—we can handle it in shifts or together or however you want—and later, for me to work close by—I’d love it if I could walk to work. And then…I don’t know, we’d have each other and our children and our jobs, but our lives can be about us. What we do, what we want to do, will revolve around our life together. That aside, if you want to pursue a journalism career, I’ll do whatever it takes to help you, including hiring out or shouldering child care.”

Kate closed her eyes and sighed, pleased to have this issue finally aired. “I think what I most want is flexibility, to work at something professionally on my own terms somehow, and do it around being home with our kids. I’ve got this blog I could play with, maybe make something of…but you know, I’m so hung up on what I
should
want, I can’t say what I
do
want. I kind of feel like it would be morally wrong to abandon my job. I mean, all I’ve done for the past several years is work like mad to get this exact position, which is dang hard to get. I feel like I’m betraying…something. Like I shouldn’t even consider leaving it.”

“You know we’ll be okay financially, right?” Gabe offered. “I mean, we won’t be wealthy, and until I’m through medical school it’ll be lean, but we’ll have a house and a small monthly allowance from the community.”

Kate’s smile twisted. “In a way, I’d have an easier time if I knew I had to work, because then the decision would be made for me. My mother assures me it’s better to choose, and she thinks I won’t care much about my career after I hold our son or daughter in my arms.” She paused to let this wonderful, terrifying thought settle between them. “I don’t want you to think whatever we do is my decision, though. This is your family too.” She smiled at him. “And I know we won’t just think about our own personal fulfillment—a ludicrous modern habit in my opinion. A child, a family, should take priority.”

“Ah, my wonderful little wife, this is exactly why you are going to make a spectacular mother.” He squeezed her hand. “I feel the same way but I get pretty irritated by what I see in human families where there’s no center, no stable base to fall back on. In the end, I want you to be happy, and I want us to be happy. And I know we’ll figure it all out, Kate.”

Gabe’s familiar optimism had its usual effect, diffusing her concern. She calmed with the knowledge they both wanted the same thing and began to think instead on their plans for that evening. “Okay. I’m done having deep conversations for now, and I want to do something mindless, like make popcorn and watch a bad romantic comedy.”

Gabe stood and stretched. “Sounds good, although we’re going to argue over genres. I think it should be a bad action movie.” Kate waved her hand to indicate apathy. “Whatever, as long it’s stupid.” Gabe pulled her off the couch and led them toward the kitchen. “I probably should have known this before I hauled you to Shaddox, because it could’ve been, you know, a deal breaker, but do you know how to make popcorn?”

Kate crossed her arms and pretended offense. “Can
I
make popcorn? Are you joking?”

*

Gabe laughed and was reaching for her when he saw a motion at the kitchen window. He pulled away and focused his attention outside. He couldn’t tell what it was but he heard someone scuttle off, he assumed in an effort to avoid detection. “Someone’s watching us,” he hissed, and before Kate could respond, he launched himself out the door. “Call my dad!” he yelled over his shoulder as he left.

He leapt over the railing to land like a cat by the scaffolding supporting the deck and stairs, scanning the approaches with his eyes and reaching with his mind to ascertain the presence of another. He intuited nothing but saw a shadow between the wall sections protecting the walkway to the water. So fast he almost flew, he traversed the hill under the stairwell to reach the side of the path, where he hugged one of the sections of wall hiding it. At the same time, he felt his father skim down the slope from the house. Good. Kate had gotten to him. They mentally identified each other and oriented themselves for maximum surveillance of the stairs and passageway, with him creeping low and silent along the partitions, his dad moving to the unprotected side of the path for a clear view to the water. He knew they both reached with all of their senses for the trespasser…and they felt nothing. In the next instant, they heard footfalls racing toward the ocean.

They sprang in unison, sprinting toward the water. In seconds, they heard a splash off the end of the dock and immediately dove after it. They identified a trail but lost it four hundred yards out.

It had to have been one of us
, Gabe remarked.

Someone who didn’t want to be seen
, Michael agreed, gazing toward the open water.

A cloaker
, they both thought. At the same moment, Gabe also thought of Peter Loughlin.

Michael closed his eyes, and Gabe knew he prayed his Peter hypothesis was inaccurate.
It was someone strong and fast enough to out-swim both of us
, Gabe reminded him.
And neither of us could detect who it was
.

Which is unbelievable
.

They broke the surface of the water. “What was he doing when you saw him?” Michael asked.

“Watching us. I don’t know how long he was there. Kate and I were pretty involved in our conversation.”

“He couldn’t have been there long, Gabe. I mean, you just left the house, what, fifteen minutes ago?”

He stared at his father in confusion. “I haven’t left the guest cottage tonight. What are you talking about?”

His dad appeared very concerned now. “Gabe, you reviewed your charts again, yours and Kate’s. I made you a sandwich. You were with us for over an hour.”

Neither had an answer but both acknowledged something very strange had just occurred. “I’m taking Kate back to her apartment tomorrow. We have to get away from here.”

Michael reluctantly agreed.
We’ll figure out what we can on this end and call you
, he told his son silently.

* * * *

Peter easily escaped Michael and Gabriel Blake, perhaps due to the adrenaline rush he felt upon being noticed. Fear and exhilaration occupied his psyche in equal measure as he reviewed the events of the past hour. He’d been stupid at the end. If he hadn’t stopped to spy on her, he would have gone undetected.

He had succeeded though, and done so with Gabe’s own mother and father. They might suspect something now, however; at least, they would guess another siren was watching them.

He would have to act tonight.

* * * *

Gabe slid into bed beside Kate, hoping to not disturb her, although she was awake. She spooned into him.

“Who was it?”

“We don’t know. Dad and I chased whoever it was into the water and then lost the trail. We couldn’t read him, and we couldn’t catch him, so it was definitely one of us.” He carefully concealed his thoughts concerning Peter Loughlin.

He felt her concerns, which revolved around the impossibility of anyone eluding both her husband and her father-in-law, not just on land but in the water, and she was worried. “What would motivate someone to come here in secret? Why…” she began. Her questions hung heavily between them.

“Neither of us could think of a reason. I told Dad we’d leave for the city tomorrow. Maybe it’s unnecessary, but I feel like we have to get away from here, go inland.”

Her alarm pricked his insides like a cactus. “You feel like running?”

“Yes, but again, it’s just a precaution. I don’t want you to be worried.”

He wrapped his arms tightly around her. Fat chance of her not worrying, he knew, because he was worried and doing a poor job of hiding it. But he reasoned nothing could be too awful if they were together, and he started to relax, which helped Kate do the same. They drifted off.

His slumber was unusually heavy that night, an eerie, atonal hum serving as the backdrop to his dreams. In one of them, he felt Kate roll away from him and rise to leave the room. His body was as leaden as his thoughts, however, and though he wished to follow her—rebelled, in fact, against this particular separation—he slept on, unable to conquer his torpor.

Near dawn, he sat up groggily in the bed, slow to orient himself. What an odd sleep. He noticed Kate was not beside him, and he reached with his intuition to feel where she was in the house.

She wasn’t there.

Almost completely sublimated by the wind, he heard her calling his name. She was out on the water. The sound electrified him, and he flew to the deck, searching the waves for her. He saw her nearly three hundred yards off shore, much too far out for safety, her cheerfulness at odds with her perilous distance from him. He started to run.

“I’m out swim…furthest I’ve ever gone…be so proud…come…” She dove down, her head disappearing just as Gabe hit the water. He raced like a bullet, frantic with a sense of impending, unstoppable tragedy. His heartbeat thundered in his ears as he pushed himself faster and faster.

But he was not fast enough. From too far away, he saw her start to swim toward him, an ecstatic smile on her face. Oddly, perhaps because of the overwhelming fear he felt, he could not sense her, only see her. As he swam desperately to reach her, he saw the shadow of an immense bull shark hover behind her, and he knew he was too late. In one, rapid strike, the shark clamped its teeth around her torso, killing her instantly. With a vicious shake of its head and a tremendous gulp, Kate was gone.

He drifted to a stop, stunned. His wife, their baby, gone. This wasn’t possible. He stared at the space where she’d been only moments before, unable to process what had just happened.

For some undefined amount of time, he floated, feeling a disembodied sense of calm. His initial horror faded first to numbness, then to nothingness. Soon, he could not think of one thing, feel one thing, and with no impulse to compel him, he remained where he was, motionless, suspended. Eventually he closed his eyes, withdrawing into himself more profoundly than he ever had in his life. With this insulation, he stayed where he was, and, by the thinnest of margins, continued to exist.

* * * *

Carmen felt uneasy when she woke and roused Michael beside her. “We need to find Gabe.” They dressed wordlessly and made their way to the guest house. No one answered their knock. They let themselves in to find the place empty.

Carmen frowned.
They were leaving today, but their things are still here
.

They didn’t leave
, Michael asserted.
Gabe would have said goodbye
.

I can’t feel where he is. Something’s wrong
, Carmen thought. She felt her husband reach with his own intuition but he couldn’t locate Gabe, either. They drifted onto the deck and began to scan the waves.

Carmen moved first, more on a whim than certainty.
Let’s check the water
. Michael followed as she descended toward the dock. They dispensed with their clothing along the way and dove into the sea feeling an urgency they did not understand.

Carmen found him and knew something was terribly wrong but she couldn’t intuit what. She and Michael swam to their son’s side, Carmen placing a hand on his arm.
What is it?
Where’s Kate?