I quickly leaned forward and untied the rope, trying to look as if I knew what I was doing. When the difficult knot finally came undone, I noticed Zack once again making like a submarine, sending up flurries of bubbles. I bit my lip.
He surfaced choking. I pretended not to notice.
“You know,” he said, “if there is only one rope, it works better to free the loop attached to the dock. That way, if you dock somewhere else, you will still have a rope in the boat.”
I glanced at the rope, which dangled forlornly from the dock. “Fortunately, as it turns out, I will be coming back here.”
He grinned. “Fortunately.”
I pushed off from the piling, letting the boat float itself away from the dock and cabin cruiser, then picked up the oars and started rowing. It wasn’t as easy as I had thought.
Sometimes I lowered the oars too deeply and could barely drag them out of the water; other times I skipped them along the surface, dousing myself. My right arm was stronger than my left, which meant I rowed in circles. Since I had already proven I didn’t know what I was doing, there was no point in worrying about how I looked to Zack. I kept rowing. I rowed till my shoulders and arms ached, determined to master the skill.
Zack left me alone, watching me from time to time but saying nothing as he swam around and floated on his back.
Perhaps he read my body language and knew I wouldn’t welcome his help.
Finally, with the skin on my hands rubbed raw, I had to stop. I floated about, watching how the sun melted in a pool behind the bridge, leaving the western sky a fiery pink, enjoying the sounds — the voices and laughter that carried across from the other side of the creek. The floor of the boat was gritty. I brushed off a spot and lowered myself onto it, resting my back against one of the two seat slats, cushioning my spine with the life vest. I could have floated out there all night, watching the sky fade to lilac.
“Hello!” Zack had popped up like a smiling porpoise and was hanging on to the bow of the boat, his arms and shoulders resting along the boat’s edge. “Permission to board, Captain?”
Without waiting for an answer, he heaved himself over the side of the boat — wet, muscular shoulders and arms, powerful legs. I stared at him, pulling myself up onto the boat seat. Stop looking at him, I told myself. But it was hard not to, since he took up most of the space in front of me.
“Switch places,” he said. “Take it slowly, Anna, okay?”
“Sure.” For a moment we had a slow dance in the middle of the boat, he steadying me with his wet hands and laughing when I bolted for the other seat. “You’re determined to sink this thing!”
He sat down in the rower’s seat and picked up the oars. “I thought you might like a tour of our neck of the creek. A quick one, before it gets dark,” he said, glancing at the sky.
His eyes were the color of the sky at twilight. There was a soft light in them, like the last bit at the end of the day. As he rowed across the creek, I forced myself to look at the shoreline rather than him.
“That’s a little park,” he said, pausing a moment to point, “used mostly by people from Chase College. The campus is back in that direction. The pavilion belongs to them, but everybody uses it to picnic. Those docks are for their crew and sailing teams.”
Beyond the college waterfront we passed a large house with terraced gardens, then crossed over the creek to glide by another estate. Estates, crew teams, a guy rowing me around — I felt as if I had slipped between the pages of a British novel.
“That’s the Fairfaxes’ place.”
“I can see the roof above the trees. That’s a lot of roof!”
“The house is large,” he said, as if he didn’t live in a manse.
“There’s no dock,” I observed.
“They like their privacy. You can’t see it well in this light, but they let the lower part of their grounds on each side go wild and marshy, so you can’t walk — you can’t even wade the shoreline all the way through. They own several houses and are here only in the fall and spring. They put out a floating dock then. It’s Marcy’s family,” he said. “Her adoptive family.”
“Her adoptive family?” He had hit a nerve. “Meaning not her real family?”
“Sorry?”
“Meaning just her adoptive family, which is something less than being her birth family?”
He frowned. “I didn’t mean that at all.”
“Then why even mention it?” I asked. Let it go, Anna, I told myself, but I couldn’t.
“Because Marcy mentions it — a lot.” He had stopped rowing and was studying my face, as if trying to understand.
“You’re adopted,” he guessed.
“Obviously.”
“Your family must miss you,” he said.
If he thought I was going to give him the details of my family life, he was wrong. We floated in silence.
“You said they were on vacation. Where?”
“Massachusetts.”
“So, do you have any brothers and sisters?” Halfway through the question, he hesitated, as if he thought I might jump down his throat again.
“Two sisters and a brother.” The boat rocked gently, the water lapping against its side. “How about you?”
He shook his head. “Just Dad. And Marcy.”
“I like Marcy,” I said.
He looked surprised. “You do? You’ve met her?”
“I’m working for her.”
“You’re what?!”
“She hired me today.”
He grimaced. “Well, good luck.”
“I’m surprised your friend didn’t tell you that I stopped by her shop.” The tone of my voice gave away my feelings about his friend.
“What friend?” he asked, caution seeping into his voice.
“The guy at Tea Leaves. The guy who followed me down to the park, then up High Street. Either he’s a lousy stalker or he was trying to intimidate me.”
Without comment, Zack picked up the oars and started to row.
“Why?” I asked. “Why did he do that?”
Zack’s face was a mask, his eyes avoiding mine, which was a mistake: As long as I wasn’t looking in his eyes, I had a fighting chance against the spell they cast.
“What is your friend’s connection to the fire?” I persisted.
“What is his connection to my uncle’s death? What’s yours?”
He rowed in silence. We rounded a bend in the creek, and his home slid into view.
“Tell me what you know,” I demanded.
“It’s complicated, Anna.”
“There’s nothing like facts to make things simpler.”
But he wouldn’t answer me. Letting one oar drop, he steered with the other as we drifted toward the Flemings’ dock. His long fingers caught the rope that I had so carefully untied. While he secured the boat, I unfastened my life jacket.
“You have three choices,” Zack said. “You can climb without my help and scrape your knees. I can give you a push from behind. Or I can climb out first and give you a hand from above. Which would you like?”
“A hand from above.”
He scrambled out of the boat, then extended his hand, pulling me up easily.
“Anna.” He stood so close, I could smell the creek on him.
