A flicker on the far side of the slough pierced Lana’s thoughts. It was a small circle of light, weak and yellowed, bouncing wildly through the scrub. Lana raised her binoculars and started scanning the murky hillside in slow horizontal passes. Finally she caught it. A person with a flashlight, stumbling down a faint deer path toward the north bank. The man—was it a man?—was pushing something. He was wearing an oversize coat, a hat, and gloves, bundled up against the February chill.
A wheelbarrow. That’s what he was pushing. At two in the morning.
Lana frowned. She’d always been a city girl, but still. Surely there weren’t farming tasks to be done in the middle of the night.
The man was moving fast, down toward the brackish water. The wheelbarrow dipped and surged in and out of view as he charged through the high grass. Either his cargo was heavy or the ground was uneven. Or both.
He stopped at a low point in the marsh Lana couldn’t quite make out. He was down there for a couple minutes, spreading something out maybe, or arranging something in place. Lana found herself holding her breath, waiting for him to rise. Instead, there was a splash. The man shot back up, hat first, dark shoulders. Then he turned and stared straight across the slough at Lana.
Lana reared back, spooked. The man couldn’t possibly see her from all that way in the dark. And yet. She could have sworn she felt the heat in his eyes.
It was impossible. Lana realized the warmth was coming from her own body, from her intense focus and shortened breath. She felt a sudden, fierce longing to be this man—not a farmer, but someone out in the world doing something, something physical and definitive and certain, while others slept. That was the life she was meant to live. To be the doer, not the watcher.
But here she was, clutching her binoculars. She envied the man, standing there on the north bank, breathing white puffs of air into the night. He stared out over the water for a full minute. Then he turned away.
Lana yanked the blinds shut and fell back onto her pillow. She felt suddenly spent, swollen and cracked, as if she’d wasted a day lying out at the beach in full sun. When she peered through the glass again, the man was gone. The shuffling labor of the bobcat had ended. The only sound was the great horned owls, coming home to roost.
Chapter Four
“Tiny! Hey, TINY!”
Jacqueline Avital Santos Rubicon, aka Jack, aka Tiny, lifted her paddle out of the water and turned around. The eight-year-old in the front of kayak 12 was waving both hands in the air like he’d just found the lost city of Atlantis.
“You said to look out for jellyfish,” he shouted. “I found the biggest one ever.”
He leaned forward and pointed at a shimmering blob, the boat wobbling as his mother braced to keep it balanced.
“Great, buddy,” Jack said. “Can you see it pulsing?”
The boy stared down, then nodded solemnly.
“That’s awesome. Now remember, some birds and otters don’t love it when we yell. We’re in their home, right?”
He nodded again, eyes Boy Scout serious, mouth a wide smile.
She gave him a thumbs-up and glided past. She paused to watch an otter feed its baby, offering bits of crawdad to the tiny fluffball snuggled against its chest. Jack felt sure of herself, confident, in a way she rarely felt on land. On the water, a five-foot half-Jewish, half-Filipino teenager could be just as powerful as anyone else.
Jack had been working weekends as a kayak tour guide for almost two years, and by her calculations, she needed just nine more paychecks before she could afford a used sailboat. She’d started out saving up for a car, but the more time she spent paddling the sluggish water between the marina and the slough, the hungrier she was to go farther, wilder, into the open ocean. Not that she didn’t love Elkhorn Slough. She just wasn’t surprised by its secrets anymore.
Every Saturday, she barreled to the Kayak Shack on her bike at 8 a.m., arriving before most of the marina had woken up. This morning, she’d chained her ten-speed to the fence behind a fancy green road bike she didn’t recognize. It wasn’t locked, just sitting there waiting to be snapped up. Unbelievable. Some people trusted the universe to take care of them. And then there were people like Jack who took care of themselves.
The morning zoomed by in a flurry of life jackets, wet suits, and excited tourists. She guided a group of families into the slough at nine, and then a private tour, a pair of animal lovers who spent their hour watching a clutch of elderly otters gossip in a tight circle of sunshine. Jack pointed their camera lenses in the right direction, for which she was rewarded with a peaceful trip ending with a twenty-dollar bill she rolled from her hand to her pocket in a single motion.