The air between us has changed. Something has cracked open that neither of us was ready for.
“Jesus Christ,” he says quietly. “Cora. You thought I just left. You thought I walked away without a word.”
“You did walk away without a word.”
“No.” His voice is rough now. Raw. “No, I didn't. I explained. I tried. I thought...” He stops. Starts again. His hands have gone white-knuckled on the workbench edge. “I thought you got the note and decided you didn't want anything to do with me. I thought that's why you never answered. Why you never called back.”
My hands have gone cold.
The cold is spreading. Up my arms. Into my chest. My legs feel strange. Unsteady.
Four years. Four years of carrying the weight of his silence, of his abandonment, of the clean cut he made when he walked out of my life. Four years of building walls around that wound.
And there was a note.
There was an explanation.
I never saw it.
The shed tilts. The light shifts. My breath has gone shallow.
“The water channels,” I say, and my voice sounds strange. Distant. Like it's coming from somewhere outside my body. “You left it in the water channels.”
“Yes.” His voice is quiet. Careful. Like he's watching me fracture in real time. “I thought they were safe. I thought only you would understand how to look for it there.”
But the channels are old. They flood in spring. They shift with the seasons. Something that precious, something fragile, would never survive.
The weight of it lands in my chest. Heavy. Crushing. Four years of hurt that didn't need to happen. Four years of silence that was never silence at all.
My hands are shaking.
I'm moving before I've decided to move. Toward the door. Away from him. Away from this conversation that has just rewritten four years of my life. My legs feel like water. My heart is doing something I can't control.
“Cora,” he says.
I don't stop.
I'm out of the shed, past the Snack Hut, my feet carrying me somewhere, anywhere that isn't here with this information I don't know how to hold. The morning air hits my face and I'm still cold. Still shaking. Still falling through space with nothing to catch me.
I go straightto the water.
I strip off my shirt and shorts, leave them in a pile on my personal dock, and dive.
The lake takes me in cold and clean. I shift before I'm three feet under, my legs fusing into my tail, scales rippling pink to purple down my body. The water opens around me like a door I've been trying to find.
I swim hard for the north channel.
The channels are old. They run under the docks and between the properties, carved by water and time and the particular magic of a lake that has always known more than it should. Some of them flood in spring. Some shift with the seasons. If Muir left something in the water four years ago, it could be anywhere. It could be gone.
But I have to know.
I surface near the reeds where the north channel meets the marina inlet. Phineas is there within two minutes, his green-scaled head breaking the surface beside me.
“Cora,” he says.
“I need your help.” My voice comes out rough. “Four years ago, someone left messages in the water channels. For me. I need to know if anything survived.”
Phineas tilts his head. His yellow eyes are calm. “What kind of messages?”