1
November 17
The masonry walls of the Canham Natatorium reverberated with the rhythmic sound of swimmers pounding the shimmering surface of the fifty-meter pool into a froth. All the lanes were occupied by members of the defending champion Michigan women’s swim team. At the far end of the pool, Kelsey Newton carefully studied the strokes of the young women who swam the eighthundred-meter freestyle relay.
The sophomore who normally swam the third leg of the four-part event was lagging slightly behind the others, hampered no doubt by a badly bruised thigh that she had injured while traying. Traying was the collegiate version of sledding, in which trays borrowed from dormitory cafeterias were used instead of toboggans. The injured swimmer had lost control of her tray and tumbled harshly near the bottom of the hill. Kelsey barely suppressed a smile as she thought about her own pathetic attempts to steer those unwieldy slabs of fiberglass down the bumpy hills of the Nichols Arboretum.
These morning workouts were for conditioning and building endurance; the girls essentially swam on autopilot. Kelsey made a few notes on her clipboard and returned to the poolside office. She remembered these early-morning sessions from her four years as an undergraduate at Michigan and from the thousands of miles she had swum before and since. A wall in the basement of her parents’ home bore the trophies, medals, and ribbons from her days as a competitive swimmer. As a senior, she had been the captain of this team and had led it to a collegiate conference championship and earned for herself honours as an all-American athlete.
All the years of swimming had molded Kelsey Newton, sculpting every muscle of her five-nine body into curvaceous perfection. Her shoulders were broad, which only served to accentuate the curves of her chest, waist, and hips. A waterfall of straight blond hair, which she normally wore in a French braid, fell just below the level of her shoulder blades, and her eyes glittered with a shade of blue that she described scientifically as ‘lapis lazuli.’
The door of the men’s locker room opened and out came a man dressed in a dark gray swimsuit. A pair of swim goggles dangled loosely around his neck and a towel was draped like a rope across his shoulders. He looked over the cavernous space, as if it was the first time he’d been here, and then began walking toward the office where Kelsey Newton sat.
Like Newton, the man’s physique was the product of years spent in the water. His fair, freckled skin was tightly stretched over a lean base of chiseled muscles that were well defined, but not to the point of a bodybuilder’s exaggeration. There was a harshness to his form that suggested that the waters he was drawn from were far more turbulent than those of a fifty-meter pool. The scars that marked various points of impact on his body clearly indicated that this man was a product of the forge of violence.
He was six feet tall and his clean-shaven face was accented by a thick crop of flaming red hair that he wore short. The final evidence of his Irish heritage were the green eyes that sparkled with recognition when he reached the office.
‘Morning, Kelsey,’ he said, leaning against the door frame.
‘I see you found the place. How are you feeling, Nolan?’
‘A little rough around the edges, but not too bad. How about you?’
‘I’m fine, thanks to your grandmother. After the first toast, she and I switched from whiskey to ginger ale. There is no way I can keep up with a bunch of Irish mourners.’
‘’Tis true, lass, and there are quite a few casualties at the Kilkenny home this morning.’ Nolan then glanced down, suddenly struck by the real truth in his reply. ‘I still can’t believe my mother is gone. Every time I turn a corner, or walk into a room in that house, I expect to see her. It’s so strange not to find her there.’
‘I know, Nolan,’ Kelsey said as she clasped his hand. ‘I know.’
Kelsey had spent most of the previous day with Nolan and his family, grieving with them and paying her last respects to Nolan’s mother, Meghan Kilkenny, who was laid to rest. Kelsey’s parents had been close friends with Nolan’s since college, and the bond between the families was, in many ways, stronger than blood. Kelsey and Nolan had been close friends during childhood. Both were highly intelligent and, to the chagrin of their mothers, equally uninterested in romantic social encounters throughout their adolescence. Together, they went to proms and other gatherings that seemed to require a couple, but theirs was a friendship more of the mind than the heart, and both seemed reluctant to risk what they had for the elusive promise of the unknown.
Since graduating from high school, both had taken different paths. Kelsey had attended the University of Michigan, where she swam and majored in what she called ‘John Galt studies,’ physics and philosophy. Her keen mind and aggressive determination had brought her to the point where, at the age of thirty, she had earned a Ph. D., a position as associate professor of physics at the university, and a sizable grant for her research into the young field of optical electronics. Her position as assistant coach of the women’s swim team, which brought her to the pool in the wee hours of the morning, was something she did out of her love for the sport.
Nolan had stripped his life to the bare essentials and left the comfortable upper-middle-class world of his parents to enter the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. His success as a swimmer paralleled Kelsey’s, and a wall in his old bedroom was similarly adorned with the symbols of his athletic accomplishments. Nolan’s brilliance in the field of computer science had led the navy to defer his enlistment for two years while he pursued a graduate degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After that, Nolan’s life took what many considered to be an unexpected turn-the quiet scholarathlete joined the navy’s elite Special Warfare Command and became a SEAL. Assignment to the SEAL teams was considered the most demanding mental and physical challenge the navy offered-it was precisely the kind of challenge that Nolan Kilkenny found irresistible.
From Kelsey’s point of view, Nolan’s assignment caused him to go from distant to secretive, but their friendship endured and their short, infrequent reunions were something they both enjoyed.
‘Are you ready to swim some laps?’ Kelsey asked.
‘I can wait until practice is done.’
‘It’s not a problem, I can clear a lane for you.’
Kelsey walked over to the pool’s edge and waited in front of the far lane. As the first swimmer from the relay team approached, she blew the whistle that dangled from a yellow cord around her neck.
Startled, the girl’s head popped out of the water. ‘What’s up, coach?’
‘You guys are done for the day. Hit the showers.’ One by one, the swimmers stopped at the end of the pool.
‘Lisa,’ Kelsey called out as the bruised swimmer emerged from the water, ‘have the trainer take a look at your leg. Maybe he can loosen it up a little.’
‘Sure, Kelsey,’ the swimmer replied as she gingerly climbed the ladder. ‘Is this your new boyfriend?’
‘No,’ Kelsey replied, in a tone that said the matter was none of the girl’s business. The girl joined her teammates and a few giggles were heard as they entered the locker room.
‘What happened to your last boyfriend-what’s his name?’
‘Scott,’ Kelsey answered. ‘Scott and I broke up over a month ago.’
‘I thought you said he had real potential, that he might even be the one.’
‘There were glimmers of hope there. In the end, though, he was intimidated by me. For some reason, he felt that my accomplishments made him less of a man.’
‘Doesn’t sound like much of a man to start with.’
‘How about you? Any luck?’
‘Nope, my social life is just as barren as always. I’ve dated a lot of women, but there was no depth to them. I guess I’m looking for someone who is more than the sum of her fashion accessories.’
‘Well, quit moping and hit the water. I’ll join you in a few minutes.’
Nolan tossed his towel against the wall, where the floor was dry, adjusted his goggles, loosened up his arms, and dove in. The water was brisk, deliberately cool to keep the swimmers moving. His heart rate quickened as he pulled himself through the water, accelerating to match his muscles’ increased demand for oxygen.
He swam four miles every day, an effort more a mental exercise than a physical one. Then again, so much of Kilkenny’s life over the past six years had been that way. As a Navy SEAL, his life was designed to be that
