The Fires Beneath the Sea ebook (25 page)

They stopped at the edge of the cliff and looked out at the ocean together, smiling and holding hands.

“I know she promised once, on the cliffs, that she would never leave you,” she said softly as her dad came back into focus.

That was what they’d been saying, though she’d seen it rather than heard their words. It was almost shocking to see him again the way he looked now—old and complicated. And far more resigned than he’d looked then. Kids’ faces, she realized, had so much less
in
them than adult ones. Sure they were beautiful, but they were kind of blank, too.

It was the first time she’d seen something in the course of normal life, she realized. The first time a vision had come to her where it felt like her own.

“This was beyond her control,” she went on. “She can’t be in touch with you because it’s too dangerous for her here. There are people looking for her. People she doesn’t want to bring near … near us. She said it was her old life catching up with her, people she knew from way back. And she said to give you a message. Maybe so you know it was really her I talked to?”

Her dad raised his hands, spread open as though asking for something. He was the motion of his hands, she thought. Their gestures spoke for him when he couldn’t.

“She said, if you remember where you met? That those were her people, I think was what she said. And she’s been caught up in this—situation with them, this crisis.… She said something like: Tell him I have an obligation older than anything he knows. Something like that. It’s at the root of everything that’s going on, she said….”

As she told him the rest of the message, he listened without moving. His eyes were focused sharply on her, as though he was concentrating on remembering every word.

“And one more thing,” she finished. “It’s in another language. Dutch or—or Scandinavian or something? I just know how it’s pronounced.
Die Tiere sind night, was sie scheinen
.”

He picked up a pen and wrote something down.

“So, but, the thing is,” she finished lamely. “She’s alive. She’s OK. And she said to say, most of all … she, you know. She loves you. And all that.”

Her dad stopped writing. And then, without meeting her eyes, he turned around slowly, turned and stared out his big bay window toward the ocean.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Cara.

She waited. Her dad, his back still turned, gazing through the window with the light of late morning streaming past him, seemed grief-stricken. Dust motes swirled in the sunbeams, reminding her of the red tide … air and water, the world somehow the same in all its mediums … she stared at them. Maybe he didn’t believe any of it. After all, it wasn’t really what had happened….

But then he turned back around to face her. He was smiling slightly, but he also had something else in his face, something hard.

He wasn’t letting their mother off the hook, she thought. Not right now, anyway.

“Thank you for telling me, sweetheart,” he said. “I’d rather she’d spoken to me herself, of course. But thank you.”

He ran a hand through his hair.

“She—I know she
wanted
to,” said Cara.

“It’s not your responsibility,” he said. “You’ve done well. You’ve done just what you should, coming to me. So please, don’t worry.”

“There’s something else,” said Cara, nervous. “It’s—it’s something not good. Rufus is gone. He—he’s not in the house. We don’t know where he is.”

(Technically, that wasn’t a lie. Because who knew where the orca was now?)

“Well. All right, honey. We’ll take a walk around the neighborhood and look for him.”

He didn’t know it was serious yet, but that was OK. They could look for Rufus. They could go through the motions, for their dad.

They wouldn’t find him, of course.

Rufus had been twelve—a grandfather, in Labrador years. Maybe her father would come to believe he’d slunk off into a private place to die, as old dogs sometimes did.

“And we’ll get that pizza tonight, all right? We’ll rent an old movie. We’ll talk about starting back to school. Sound good?”

She nodded.

The walk to “look” for Rufus was worse than she’d expected. All four of them started out together along their street, away from the water, calling and whistling. That part was bad. Cara felt like a liar, felt bad they had to do the charade for their dad’s benefit. It seemed wrong, and somehow disrespectful of Roof. She still felt so guilty; Max and Jax had both said it wasn’t their fault, and her mother had said so, too, but it didn’t really matter what anyone said. There had to have been a way of saving him. And she hadn’t seen it. And now he was gone, and he didn’t deserve to be.

For a while she thought about begging off—saying she felt sick suddenly and could the others keep looking without her?—but then she caught Max’s eye and realized he felt as miserable as she did.

And a couple of minutes later, Hayley’s car passed them and then slowed down and stopped, pulled over against the curb.

“Well hey there, Sykeses!” called her mom cheerily, rolling down the driver’s-side window. “Whatcha doing?”

They clustered around the car, Cara bending down to wave to Hayley in the passenger seat as her dad explained to Hayley’s mother that they were looking for Rufus. Cara walked around the car as Hayley rolled down her own window.

“So—what happened? Did it work?” asked Hayley, low.

“It worked,” whispered Cara. “We
saw her
.”

“OMG,” breathed Hayley. “No way!”

“Shh!”

“And so—?”

“I’ll tell you about on the cell later, OK?”

“Why don’t you all come over for dinner?” asked her mom. “I have this new recipe I’d love to try out on you! Do you like prawns, William?”

Looking at Hayley’s mom smiling up at her dad from behind the steering wheel—with her frosted hair and shiny lipstick and tanned cleavage showing—it occurred to Cara for the first time: she
liked
him.

Hayley’s mom had a
crush
on her dad. Seriously.

Ew. She tried to wipe the thought away.

Hopefully she was wrong.

“Sure,” her dad was saying when she paid attention again. “Sure, that sounds great.”

He wouldn’t like her, anyway. She wasn’t his type at all. For one thing, she wore press-on nails.

“Maybe we should split up,” suggested Jax, after Hayley’s car pulled away again. “Go looking separately. Cover more ground.”

“OK,” said their dad. “Max can come with me; Cara and Jax, why don’t you circle around over there.” And he pointed.

After that the fake search was more bearable, since she and Jax didn’t have to pretend. They just walked along in a glum but companionable silence, remembering their dog.

“
Die Tiere sind nicht, was sie scheinen
,” said Jax softly.

It was later, in Cara’s room. Their dad had given up on looking for Rufus, for now; he was puzzled, but he said they should put a bowl of food out on the porch and maybe Rufus would come back. Max had gone out to help Zee get the scuba gear back from where Jax and Cara had left it, hidden in the scrubby vegetation atop the bluffs. He had to do it right away, before her father found out the gear was missing and she got in serious trouble.

The afternoon was warm, and someone in the neighborhood was having a barbecue again, Cara guessed: the smell of woodsy smoke drifted in her open window. She could hear the tinkly music of an ice-cream truck down the street.

“What?”

“Thing is, I could see it. I could read the letters in her mind, though I can’t read all of Mom. She’s a hard one to read. There are things in there that are hidden to me….”

“Jax,” broke in Cara. “Did you really want—did you want to go with her?”

“Maybe,” said Jax. “Didn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” said Cara. “I want her to come back here, is what
I
want.”

Jax nodded slowly.

“You wouldn’t have left me, though, would you?” she asked.

“I won’t leave you,” said Jax solemnly.

Their eyes met. Cara smiled, and then Jax did, too.

“Anyway,” he picked up again. “I did see the sentence. I read it. So I didn’t need to just go by the sounds; I knew how it was written.”

“And?” she asked.

“It turns out to be German,” he said.

“So what does it mean?”

“I translated it online,” he said, and handed her a scrap of paper. “It took all of five seconds. If Mom wanted to keep the message secret from us, she should have remembered we have access to basic software technology. Of course, she’s right in that
we
already know the substance of the message—in one sense, at least. Where maybe Dad doesn’t. But whatever. I wrote it down for you.”

She looked down at the big, block letters of his kid’s handwriting.

THE ANIMALS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM.

Lydia Millet is the author of many novels for adult readers, including
My Happy Life
, which won the PEN-USA Award for Fiction in 2003, and
Oh Pure and Radiant Heart
, about the scientists who designed the first atomic bomb, which was shortlisted for the UK’s Arthur C. Clarke Prize. Her story collection
Love in Infant Monkeys
was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. She has taught at Columbia University and the University of Arizona and now works as a writer and editor at an endangered-species protection group. This is her first novel for young readers.

She is working on the second book in the Dissenters series,
The Shimmers in the Night.