He ignores the question and instead tells her add on a pack of smokes.
While gasoline glugs from the pump nozzle into the camper, he scrolls his phone, but it’s purely reflexive, like his eyes are registering that words and photos are rolling by but his brain isn’t downloading any of it. Until a picture catches his attention.
Katie.
Did she unblock him? He taps her name, and sure enough, her profile loads. There she is, with her haughty smile. Like she invented the world, and he’s just lucky enough to live in it.
She’s posted a million new pictures this summer. Cameron whizzes through her feed. In half of the photos, some asshat has his arm slung around her, always wearing some idiotic wraparound sunglasses so that Cameron can’t even see the guy’s stupid face.
Has he moved into her apartment yet? He probably remembered to put his name on the lease. Works in some boring office. Drives a brand-new SUV and has never once needed the four-wheel drive. Uses an electric toothbrush. They probably get together with his parents for dinner on the weekends.
Screw every last one of these people with their normal, happy lives. Cameron will never get there, no matter how hard he tries. Not even here in Washington.
He opens his map app. Types in a new route. Sowell Bay to Modesto.
Fifteen hours.
An Early Arrival
The doors are propped open when Tova arrives on Wednesday evening. It’s a bit earlier than usual, but Terry had sounded so wound up when he called. She’d left her supper plate unwashed and poured a hasty bowl of kibble for Cat before hurrying down to the aquarium.
Is this about the open door? Her stomach lurches, remembering what happened when Cameron left the back door open and Marcellus tried to escape. But a moment later, Terry comes sauntering out with a broad smile and a wave.
“What’s happening here?” she asks, approaching.
“Big night. And I don’t mean only because it’s your second-to-last day.”
Tova tilts her head.
“We’re getting a delivery,” Terry continues. He’s downright giddy. “Never thought it would happen before you left. And I called you because I thought you’d want to be here to meet it.” He laughs. “It. Listen to me! Her. I thought you’d want to meet her.”
Who on earth is “her”?
Before Tova can ask, a truck rumbles into the parking lot. With a series of loud beeps, it backs up toward the doors. A gruff-looking man loads a wooden crate from a refrigerated enclosure onto a forklift. At first, the delivery person seems keen to deposit the large box right there, but Terry talks him into helping him transport it inside. Clutching her pocketbook, Tova follows the two men as they guide the huge crate through the open doors and around the curved hallway, which seems to be quite a project.
She trails them into the pump room, where they deposit the crate. It sloshes audibly as they edge it onto the floor. In a flash, the delivery driver has vanished with the forklift.
“Keep an eye on that for a minute, will you, Tova?” Terry says. “I need to go sign the paperwork.” He trots away after the deliveryman.
Tova takes a closer look at the crate. On one side, in big, red, stenciled letters, it reads: THIS SIDE UP. On the other it says: LIVE OCTOPUS.
“Keep an eye on it. What’s that supposed to mean?” Tova asks Marcellus as she peers through the narrow glass panel on the back of his tank. The LIVE OCTOPUS crate sits silent in the center of the room, so still that Tova wonders whether there’s anything alive inside at all. What is she meant to be keeping an eye on?
Marcellus waves an arm, a noncommittal gesture. He doesn’t know, either.
“I suppose we’ll see, won’t we?” Tova muses. “In any event, it looks like you’re about to have a new neighbor.”
A couple tanks down from Marcellus, there’s one that’s been emptied. Pacific nettle sea stars were there before. Where have they gone? The empty tank looks too clean, its water too clear. Tova pokes her head out of the pump room; Terry’s nowhere in sight. Quickly, she drags out the step stool and lifts the octopus tank’s lid. Marcellus pokes the tip of an arm through the surface of the water, and Tova lowers her hand. He curls his arm around her wrist in a gesture that’s well beyond familiar now, and there’s something almost instinctive about it, like the way a newborn baby will clutch at its mother’s finger.
But Marcellus isn’t a baby. As octopuses go, he’s an old man. And now his replacement has arrived. Footsteps echo from the hallway, and Tova yanks her hand from the water, climbs down, and tucks the stool under the tank. She’s drying her arm on the hem of her shirt when Terry strides back in, holding a hammer.
“What do you think? Shall we open her up?”
“Your new octopus,” Tova says, confirming.
“Yes! A bit ahead of schedule, actually. But she’s a rescue, rehabbed by a group up in Alaska after she got trapped in a crab pot and tore herself up trying to get out. I couldn’t say no.” Terry cracks open one edge of the crate with the tail end of the hammer.
Tova folds her arms. “Ahead of schedule?”
Terry sighs. “Marcellus is . . . well, Tova, I’m sure you’ve noticed, but he’s very old for a giant Pacific octopus.” He heaves up the crate’s lid, grunting. “Feisty old man, though, isn’t he? Determined to outrun his life span. But Dr. Santiago and I aren’t sure how much longer he has left. He was in such bad shape this morning, he might only have weeks or days left.”
“I see,” Tova says. She glances over at Marcellus’s tank, but he must be tucked away in his den, because he’s nowhere to be seen now.
“It’s amazing how long he’s lived.” Terry shoots Tova a curious look. “Did you know Marcellus was a rescue, too?”
Tova lifts a brow, surprised. “I did not know that.”
“He was in rough shape when we brought him in. Missing half an arm, his body all chewed up. Didn’t think he’d make it through the year. And here we are, four years later . . .” Terry smiles and shakes his head. “He’s been a good boy. Except when he’s roaming around the building at night.”
Tova’s pulse quickens. After all this time . . . now she’ll be scolded for enabling. For throwing out that horrible clamp.
At the look on her face, Terry says, “It’s okay, Tova. At the end of the day, I’m not sure any sort of security measure would’ve worked.” He shakes his head again. “The new one will have better manners. I hope.”
Inside the wooden crate is a steel barrel, its top fine mesh. Something sloshes and slaps inside.
“Well, let’s take a look, shall we? I wish we could call her something, but I promised naming rights to Addie, and she stayed up half the night last night brainstorming and making lists.” At the mention of his daughter, Terry grins. Tova knows Addie was four when she named Marcellus, so now she’s eight, and still reveling in the joy of naming an octopus, which is rather sweet.
“She’ll come up with something wonderful, I have no doubt,” Tova says.
The barrel’s lid pops off easily, and Tova can’t help but chuckle. Marcellus would’ve never endured a journey down the coast in such a flimsy enclosure. He’d have slipped out somewhere off the coast of British Columbia.
“There she is,” Terry says softly.
Tova peers in. The octopus is huddled in the bottom of the barrel, which makes sense because there’s nowhere to hide in there. Tova is surprised at the creature’s salmon-pink color, so different from Marcellus and his rusty orange.
“Are you going to move her to the tank now?”
“Not tonight. I need to wait for Dr. Santiago. She’s coming first thing tomorrow morning.”
Tova watches the new octopus trail a tentative tentacle out from the clump she’s balled herself up in, then yank it back after a second.
“You think she’ll enjoy her new home?”
“I honestly don’t know, Tova.”
Her eyebrows raise, taken aback by his candor. She’d only been making conversation, after all.