“Easier said than done.”
“Yeah.”
She sneers. “What would you know about it, surfer dude?”
“You don't have a monopoly on regrets, Tammy.”
Boone can feel the ocean swell, literally under his feet. The waves push against the pilings, wash through, and then pull on their way out. The big swell is coming, and when it goes out again, it will take with it the life he knew. He can feel it, and it scares the hell out of him. He wants to hold on, but he knows there's no holding on against the sea.
When a tsunami comes in, it hits with incredibly destructive force, crushing lives and homes. But it's almost worse when it recedes, dragging lives out into the endless sea that is the irredeemable past.
77
Petra gets out of the shower, then wanders into Boone's bedroom, telling herself she's going to catch a quick nap, but really to snoop.
No, not snoop, she thinks.
Simply to find out a little more about the man.
Like the rest of the place, the bedroom is neat and clean. Nothing remarkable about it, save for the fishing pole sticking out of the window, except…
Books.
Used paperbacks on a bedside table and in a small bookcase in the corner. Some stacked by the bed. And not just the sports books or crime novels that she might have expected if she thought that he actually read, but genuine literature-Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Gorky. Over in the corner is a stack of-Can it be? she thinks-Trollope. Our oceangoing nature boy is a crypto-Phineas Finn?
She thinks of all the little jibes she's given him all day about being an uneducated philistine, then thinks about the books that are stacked on her bedside table-trashy romance novels and bodice rippers that she doesn't have to read anyway. And he's been having me on all day, his private little joke.
Bastard.
She keeps snooping.
There's a small desk in the corner, with a computer and terminal on it. Guiltily, she slides the desk drawer open and sees photographs of a little girl.
A darling, almost a stereotype of your classic California girl-blond hair, big blue eyes, a spray of freckles across her cheeks. She's looking directly into the camera without a trace of self-consciousness. A happy little girl.
Petra picks up the photo and sees the little nameplate at the edge of the frame.
RAIN.
The girl's name.
Bastard, Petra thinks. He never told me he had a daughter. He never even mentioned that he'd been married. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe the girl is a love child and Boone never married her mother. Still, he might have mentioned it. Be fair, she tells herself. He had no obligation to tell you.
She digs deeper.
More pictures of the girl. Carefully preserved in plastic sleeves. Photos of her playing, at a birthday party, opening presents in front of a Christmas tree. Oddly, not a single photo of Rain with Boone. Not a single daddy- daughter shot that one would expect.
And the pictures seem to stop when the girl is around the age of five or six.
So Boone Daniels has a six-year-old daughter, Petra thinks. Whom he clearly adores but doesn't talk about.
Disregarding the better angels of her nature, Petra digs under the photos and finds a file folder. She opens it, to see some pencil sketches, “artist's renderings” some would call them, of a girl as she would look as she got older.
Her name is Rain.
“Rain at seven,” “Rain at eight,” “Rain at nine”…
Is Boone not allowed to see his daughter anymore? Petra wonders. They're so sad, these sketches-all he has of his little girl.
There are other files in the drawer, all labeled “Rasmussen.” Must be another case he's working on, Petra thinks, although Boone hardly seems to be the type to bring work home.
You are full of surprises, Mr. Daniels, she thinks. Feeling ashamed, she quickly puts everything back in order and goes into the living room.
“I've been told I belong in the bedroom,” Tammy says. She gets up from the couch, goes into the bedroom, and shuts the door behind her.
“She wants to talk with Teddy,” Petra says, sitting down on the couch.
“She mentioned that,” Boone replies.
The sweatshirt-a black Sundowner-is huge on her, and she's had to roll the legs of the sweatpants way up. But Boone thinks she looks prettier than hell.
“You look good,” he says.
“You're a liar,” she says. “But thank you.”
“No,” he says. “You should go with that look.”
“Hardly lawyerly.”
“Maybe that's it.”
The doorbell rings.
78
Boone takes the. 38, moves to the side of the door, nudges the curtain aside, and looks out.
Sunny stands at the door.
Her blond hair, shiny in the moist night air, peeks out from under the hood of a dark blue sweatshirt. Arms folded inside the waist pouch, she hops up and down with chill and anxiety.
Boone opens the door, yanks her inside, and shuts it behind her.
“Boone, Tide told me-”
She sees Petra sitting on the couch.
In Boone's sweats.
Which she used to wear herself, in happier times, after long mornings in the water and afternoon lovemaking.
“Excuse me,” Sunny says, her voice colder than the water. “I didn't realize-”
“It's not-”
“What it looks like?” She glares at Boone for a second, then slaps him hard across the face. “I thought you were dead, Boone! You let me think you were dead.”
“I'm sorry.”
She shakes her head. “I'll tell Cheerful and Hang. They were worried about you.”
“You have to get out of here, Sunny,” Boone says.
“No kidding.”
“I meant-”
“I know what you meant.”
It's not safe, Boone thinks, is what I meant.
But she's already walking away. He looks out the window and sees her taking long strides down the pier, into
