Tova looks up, her face inscrutable. “I don’t know. But she was seeing him, it seems. She might have been with him that night. She might be able to tell me . . .” Her voice trails off, then she swallows before adding, “Do you know how I might contact her?”
He shakes his head. “I haven’t seen her since I was nine.”
“You haven’t heard from her? Not even a birthday card?”
The words twist like a knife in his gut. How many times has he thought the same thing to himself? Aunt Jeanne always insisted his mother loved him. That she left because that’s what was best for him. That maybe someday she’d conquer her demons and be ready for a relationship. But what demons are so powerful they prevent someone from buying a ninety-nine-cent birthday card and slapping a stamp on it? How often has he convinced himself she’s actually dead, because that hurts less than believing she could care about him so little?
“Nope. Not even a birthday card.” He rises and walks out of the alcove. His eyes are burning, heavy and wet, and he doesn’t need her to see that. A good, hard blink or two will send the tears packing.
If it were that simple, she wouldn’t have let him miss out on being a part of your life. Aunt Jeanne’s words crash through his skull. For all your mother’s flaws, she was no dummy. If his father was dead . . . had died in some accident when they were both eighteen . . . well, that would be a pretty solid reason to never have brought him into Cameron’s life. He squeezes his eyes shut. Could that be possible? It would mean that Tova is his . . . No, it can’t be. She’s so tiny, and so weird. No one else in his family is tiny or weird. And it would mean his mother was something less than terrible, not a victim, maybe even honorable like a martyr, rather than a perpetrator of his own suffering. That absolutely does not compute, so he pushes the idea out of his mind.
Tova comes to stand next to him in front of the big middle tank. They watch a school of cod drift by, propelled by the tank’s fake current. If they wait four minutes, Cameron knows, they’ll come by again. What a life, those endless laps.
“I’m sorry,” Tova says. She places a hand on his shoulder. Doesn’t rub or squeeze, just places it there, as if the contact might siphon off some of his pain. It’s the sort of touch that is so warm as to be almost maternal . . . No, he pushes the thought away. She’s just being nice, because Tova is extraordinarily nice, in spite of the stoic shell she puts on at first. He glances down at her, struck by how tough this tiny little lady is, how much grief her ninety-pound frame has endured. And now she’s absorbing some of his, too.
How much can one person take?
In the tank, a big gray cow shark approaches, its blunt nose sweeping slow arcs along the sand, like it’s looking for something. “I’m sorry about Erik, too. I’m sorry my mom might somehow be involved,” Cameron says.
“Hardly your fault, dear. But thank you.”
The shark’s beady eye catches notice of them, and it pauses for a second before moving on.
Tova’s mouth curves into a tight smile. “Ought to get to the floors, I suppose.”
ETHAN’S LIGHTS ARE out when Cameron gets home from work, ruining his plans to smooth things over. Turns out Ethan’s incomprehensible ramblings had some basis after all. And deep down, somehow, Cameron strongly suspects that it’s more than a rumor. His mom was involved in this town’s biggest tragedy.
He keeps waiting for this information to make him sad or angry, as it should, but try as he might, he can’t seem to make those emotions appear. What does it matter, anyway? Let the rumors come. Townie chatter about Daphne Cassmore can’t hurt Cameron. He gives fewer than zero shits about Daphne Cassmore.
He roots around in the camper’s mini fridge until he finds one of those plastic lunch trays with crackers, cheese, and deli meat. Ethan brought a bunch of them home from the store last week and insisted Cameron take a few. They’ve passed their expiration date, so the store can’t sell them, he explained, but this stuff is so processed it’s practically rot-proof. Cameron peels back the plastic, and a peppery smell wafts out from the little stack of salami in its square compartment. He assembles a little stack on a cracker and is about to take a bite when his phone dings.
It’s from Avery. You up?
Just got home from work. Then he types out a whole explanation of the mess with his mother and Tova and Erik. The whole screen is filled with word vomit when he changes his mind and backspaces the characters. It’s too much for a text message.