I look out into the vast expanse of gray sea, but I see nothing.
“Whales!” she shouts again, motioning me to look through the telescope.
I peer into the eyepiece, but all I see is calm blue waves, a rocky shoreline, a freighter way off in the distance.
“Do you see them?”
“No.”
“Keep looking.” Alice has plopped down in the chair and is flipping through the Lyall Watson book on whales.
I pan left, I pan right. Nothing. One more time, but I still can’t see anything. Then I do. Two spouts slowly moving up the coast. It is nothing, just water flying into the air, yet it gives me chills.
84
The next morning, early, I line up for pastries at Twofish bakery. The last time I was here, the doors opened at eight, and everything was gone by eight-fifteen. I arrive early and walk away with a morning bun, a blueberry scone, a chocolate chip muffin, coffee, and hot chocolate. I remember the pall of loneliness that descended upon me during my first trip here, when I ate my morning bun in the cavernous kitchen of the huge, empty house.
When I get back, Alice’s showered hair is damp, her face lovely without makeup. We sit eating our pastries, looking out over the ocean, saying nothing.
We lounge about all day, both of us reading books from the eclectic collection in the master bedroom. At three, I finally manage to pull Alice away from her Norwegian mystery so we can go for a walk up the coastline. We look like some other couple in the ill-fitting clothes we bought at the local grocery store. Alice’s hoodie bears the seal from Cal State Humboldt, along with the university’s unofficial weed logo; mine says KEEP BACK 200 FEET.
About five miles up the coastline path, we find a bench, and I turn on the phone with the new SIM card: no blinking P. We both leave messages for our offices—rushed excuses about how we’re going to be out of town for a while. I feel bad for the couples I’m supposed to be meeting and especially bad for my weekly teenager group. I know I’m letting everyone down, but there’s no way around it.
“Crash and burn,” Alice says, hanging up. It’s hard for her, I know. If and when we go back home, Ian and Evelyn and Huang will welcome me with open arms. Cutting out on a corporate law firm in the middle of a huge case is a different story.
In the evening, I fry the rest of the rock cod while Alice finishes her book. Later, on the deck, looking up at stars, I’m amazed at how quickly the two of us have adapted to this beautiful new location, the relaxed pace of coastal life. It occurs to me that we could live here, we could so easily settle into this rhythm.
Beside me, tilted back in her Adirondack chair, Alice seems truly relaxed for the first time in ages.
“We could afford a place here,” I say. “Easily, if we sell our house in the city.”
“You wouldn’t get bored?”
“No. Would you?”
She glances at me, surprised, it seems, by her own realization. “No. It would be good.”
That night, I sleep soundly, the waves crashing in the distance. I dream of Alice, the two of us in a cottage overlooking the ocean. There isn’t much to the dream; it’s more just a feeling of happiness and security. I wake and take in a deep breath—the cold sea air fills my lungs. It hits me then: a strong, certain belief that it is truly possible for us to create something new, something entirely different.
When Alice and I were getting married, my only concern was how I was going to integrate this wonderful marriage into the framework of our lives. Lying in bed, it occurs to me that the old lives are no longer necessary—for me at least—and I can live on the marriage alone, whatever it is, however it develops. What happened in the past seems irrelevant. For the first time, I know that Alice and I will grow together, our marriage will evolve in ways I may or may not understand. For the first time, I know that we will be all right.
I roll over in bed to kiss Alice, to tell her my dream, to describe this overwhelming sense of optimism that I have, only to realize that she’s gone.
She must be in the living room, at the telescope, looking for her whale friends.
“Alice?” I call.
Nothing.
As I swing my legs out of bed, my feet come to rest on something hard and cold. It’s my phone, lying upside down on the floor. Immediately, I am overcome with fear and dread, but then I remember the new SIM card. There’s no way they could have tracked us. I pick it up and realize that in the fall from the nightstand, the phone must have turned itself on. There are twenty-eight text messages waiting, nine voicemails. Then, in the upper right-hand corner, I see the blinking blue P.
85
I bolt out of bed, still in my underwear, and run down the hall. A million questions race through my brain. How long has the phone been on? How long has the little blue P been flashing, betraying our exact location? And how is it even possible? We’ll have to leave. I need to pack our things right now, load up the car, get as far away as possible. There’s only one road out of Sea Ranch, and the only way to go is north, toward Oregon, because if we go south we’ll surely cross paths with Declan as he makes his way up the coast.
Still, part of me believes that as soon as I turn the corner, I’ll see Alice in her chair, curled in a blanket, peering through the telescope. She’ll mock me for racing around the house like a madman in my underwear. She’ll call me over to her, and I’ll pull her up from the chair and tug her back to bed. We’ll make love.
Later, we’ll have another long walk along the coast. We’ll drink a whole bottle of wine. We’ll sit in the sauna, sweating out all the pain and fear.
But she isn’t at the telescope. There are the massive windows, the path down to the ocean, the waves, the dark clouds sweeping south down the coast; no Alice.
I hear a sound in the kitchen, and I take a shaky breath, relieved. She’s making coffee, trying to figure out the house’s newfangled machine.
But no, she’s not in the kitchen. There’s a coffee cup on the counter, nearly full, still steaming. Next to it, the Lyall Watson book is open to a page about blue whales. The page is ripped. A gash stretches from the top right corner to the bottom, almost severing the page from the book.
Surely it’s nothing. So many guests have been through this house, so many kids have pawed at that book.
What’s that smell? The oven is on, and I open it to find a tray of burning cinnamon rolls. My heart rate triples. My gut heaves. I grab a towel, pull out the pan, and slide it onto the counter.
What did I hear? A bumping sound.
I open the cutlery drawer and pull out a knife. It’s a chef’s knife, German steel.
I wander through the breakfast room, gripping the knife, but Alice isn’t there either.