herself. Recover was more like it. Facing the press always drained her. She was a private person, maybe too private, and the work at the Center required lots of interface with the public. The limelight was useful for showcasing the mission and raising funds, but standing in it wasn’t one of her strengths. It exhausted her, and afterwards she always needed downtime. Gage thrived on the limelight; he never took it too seriously. She’d rather be peering into a microscope, performing a surgery or left to the quiet solitude of her research.
She knelt to examine a sea star clinging to a ball of kelp that had washed in with the tide. The star would die on the beach, blanched by the hot afternoon sun. She scooped it up, rolled up her trouser legs and waded into the surf.
The water that surged around her calves wasn’t nearly as cold as it usually was at this time of year. Not as cold as it should be. Not cold enough. Normally this stretch of California coast boasted one of the finest cold-water upwellings on the planet. Cold water meant nutrients and lots of them. Cold water meant deep-water fish and plankton and life.
But nothing was normal this year. Already they’d had more than a dozen animals admitted from the woefully inadequate satellite center up the coast in Albion Bay. Add to that the unusually high number of sick harbor seals coming in from the North Bay and the animals still coming in from Monterey—the Center would be swamped. Was already. All they needed was radioactive seals. That’d top off the season just great.
She pulled the long tail of the kelp along the beach and looked out over the surging waves, scanning her memory for contractors she knew who might help build emergency pens and plumb them in for free. For the first time in her life, she dreaded the work ahead.
She buried her nose in the kelp before tossing it and the sea star back into the waves. The receding tide would carry them both out to the offshore rocks. The sea star would find its own new home.
Home .
She scanned the cove.
This was home.
The sea was home.
Which roof spanned the space over her head at night really didn’t matter.
She and Cory had grown up on the Cornish coast of England with the sea as their backyard. It was there that Cory had cut his teeth surfing, had honed his skill and become a champion.
She’d followed a different fascination.
Their father had been a fisheries biologist, one of England’s most admired scientists. The kind of scientist that mattered. His passion was bivalves, not much money there, but he was convinced they were sentinels of the health of the planet, convinced that studying the life cycle of the shelled creatures would lead to better ocean practices.
He’d introduced her to the world of the sea, a world that had captured her imagination and fed her spirit. She’d spent her childhood pattering about beaches with him, listening to his stories, soaking up every detail he’d shared about the secrets of ocean life. Sometimes she’d get to go out on the research boats. Those were stellar days. He would patiently answer her questions, sometimes stopping and saying, with a twinkle she’d loved, “Now that, Jackie, that’s a mystery.”
Those mysteries had absorbed her, drawn her on and lured her into the life of a scientist. She could still see his smile, even though he’d been gone over a decade. No, not just gone. He’d drowned when his small research boat capsized in a freak storm, died doing what he loved. At quiet times like these, Jackie missed him as if he'd just died.
A sneaker wave almost caught her off guard. The water might not be as cold as it should be, but it was still bracing. With a leap, she skittered back up the beach. As she did, the beacon from the lighthouse caught her eye.
And immediately she was reminded of the night rescue of the whale.
And of Alex Tavonesi.
Like a soft glove slipping across her skin, the memory of Alex’s touch rippled through her.
It’d
She knelt to examine a sea star clinging to a ball of kelp that had washed in with the tide. The star would die on the beach, blanched by the hot afternoon sun. She scooped it up, rolled up her trouser legs and waded into the surf.
The water that surged around her calves wasn’t nearly as cold as it usually was at this time of year. Not as cold as it should be. Not cold enough. Normally this stretch of California coast boasted one of the finest cold-water upwellings on the planet. Cold water meant nutrients and lots of them. Cold water meant deep-water fish and plankton and life.
But nothing was normal this year. Already they’d had more than a dozen animals admitted from the woefully inadequate satellite center up the coast in Albion Bay. Add to that the unusually high number of sick harbor seals coming in from the North Bay and the animals still coming in from Monterey—the Center would be swamped. Was already. All they needed was radioactive seals. That’d top off the season just great.
She pulled the long tail of the kelp along the beach and looked out over the surging waves, scanning her memory for contractors she knew who might help build emergency pens and plumb them in for free. For the first time in her life, she dreaded the work ahead.
She buried her nose in the kelp before tossing it and the sea star back into the waves. The receding tide would carry them both out to the offshore rocks. The sea star would find its own new home.
Home .
She scanned the cove.
This was home.
The sea was home.
Which roof spanned the space over her head at night really didn’t matter.
She and Cory had grown up on the Cornish coast of England with the sea as their backyard. It was there that Cory had cut his teeth surfing, had honed his skill and become a champion.
She’d followed a different fascination.
Their father had been a fisheries biologist, one of England’s most admired scientists. The kind of scientist that mattered. His passion was bivalves, not much money there, but he was convinced they were sentinels of the health of the planet, convinced that studying the life cycle of the shelled creatures would lead to better ocean practices.
He’d introduced her to the world of the sea, a world that had captured her imagination and fed her spirit. She’d spent her childhood pattering about beaches with him, listening to his stories, soaking up every detail he’d shared about the secrets of ocean life. Sometimes she’d get to go out on the research boats. Those were stellar days. He would patiently answer her questions, sometimes stopping and saying, with a twinkle she’d loved, “Now that, Jackie, that’s a mystery.”
Those mysteries had absorbed her, drawn her on and lured her into the life of a scientist. She could still see his smile, even though he’d been gone over a decade. No, not just gone. He’d drowned when his small research boat capsized in a freak storm, died doing what he loved. At quiet times like these, Jackie missed him as if he'd just died.
A sneaker wave almost caught her off guard. The water might not be as cold as it should be, but it was still bracing. With a leap, she skittered back up the beach. As she did, the beacon from the lighthouse caught her eye.
And immediately she was reminded of the night rescue of the whale.
And of Alex Tavonesi.
Like a soft glove slipping across her skin, the memory of Alex’s touch rippled through her.
It’d
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