when he was wired, but today he was thankful for it. Arlen was snoring at the helm, dead to the world, and it took the strength of three men to pull in the net, even with the motorized spool. Stephen was so hyped up he had the energy of two, and James had more muscle than meat on his bones, so they were able to bring the net up to the surface together.
“Feels like a thresher,” Stephen said, indicating the extra weight.
“Merry Christmas,” James replied with a grin, wiping sweat from his forehead. A large shark would be a good catch, more than enough to call it a day.
But it wasn’t a thresher. Two bluefin were tangled in the net, still squirming, not enough to warrant an early dock.
The weighty portion of the catch was a different species altogether.
A woman.
The surf was up at Windansea Beach. Waves like glass had been breaking in picture-perfect sets since dawn.
Ben had promised to make Carly blueberry pancakes for breakfast, so he dragged himself out of the water midmorning for a break. After hosing down his gear, and himself, he dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and made his way to the kitchen, whistling, his mind on six- to ten-foot swells and a killer offshore flow.
“You have to take me shopping,” Carly announced. She was flipping pancakes, having given up on waiting for him to do it.
He grabbed a plate and helped himself. “On Christmas Eve? I’d rather not.”
“Please, Dad? I don’t have anything for James. Did you see the sweater he had on last night? He’s awfully poor.”
“So what?”
She changed tactics. “Did you buy a gift for Summer?”
“No,” he admitted, gazing out the window with longing. “I don’t need to,” he decided.
“Dad, you can’t invite her to our Christmas party and not give her anything. It’s totally rude.”
“What do you care? On Thursday you told her to take a hike.”
Carly turned off the burner. “I like her now.” She fixed herself a plate and sat across from him. “You want her to be your girlfriend, right?”
He took a huge bite. “Wrong,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.
“Oh,” she said, arranging a napkin over her lap self-importantly. “I see. You’re just using her for sex.”
He didn’t bother to deny it. Maybe Carly could learn a few things from him about the male brain. “I’m an adult. I can do whatever I want.”
“That doesn’t make it right, Dad. What if James was using me for sex?”
“Is he?” Ben asked, putting his fork down angrily.
“No. Don’t you get it? Summer is somebody’s daughter, too.”
Yes, but she wasn’t
“James is the same age you were when you got Mom pregnant.”
He closed his eyes against the pain, having never seen the knife before she slid it between his ribs. “Carly, the last thing I want is for you to go through that same heartache.”
“You’re lucky she took you back,” she said after a moment.
He couldn’t deny that. The unlucky one, in all of it, had been Olivia. If she hadn’t forgiven him for all those years of drunken abandonment and flagrant infidelity, maybe she’d be alive today.
Pushing aside the guilt, before it suffocated him, he studied his daughter’s beautiful face. She looked exactly like Olivia had when she was seventeen. “Are you thinking about having sex?”
Carly blushed. “No.”
“Come on.”
“I’m not! Not right now anyway. I’m not ready.”
She started to get up, to clear away the plates, but he detained her, holding her wrist. “What if he wants to, and you don’t? What will you say?”
“I’ll say no, Dad. He won’t pressure me. He’s not like that.”
“All boys are like that, Carly.” Some grown men were, too. Ones old enough to know better, and dumb enough to do it anyway. “They say they’re in pain. They say all the girls do it, and you’re a tease if you won’t. They say they’ll find another girlfriend who will. What if James says those things? Are you ready for it?”
She met his eyes. “Yeah. If he says anything like that, we’re over.”
“Okay.” He thought of another thing boys did when they wanted something a girl wouldn’t give. “What if you say stop, and he doesn’t?”
“I’ll kick him in the balls, Dad. But don’t worry. James stops when I tell him to.”
He felt like he’d been sucker-punched. “He does?”
“Yeah. We were kissing, the day before yesterday, and he tried to, um-” Carly broke off, wondering how to phrase it.
“What?” he growled.
“Dad, if you’re going to get all mad, I’m not going to tell you this stuff.”
Ben much preferred being in the dark. “Tell me,” he said anyway, clenching his hand into a fist beneath the table.
“He touched my, um”-she made a sweeping gesture over her chest-“you know. I made a noise, and he thought he hurt me, so he stopped. It wasn’t that kind of a noise, I said, but-”
Ben held up a hand, having heard more than enough. “I get the idea. Don’t you think you guys are moving a little fast? How long has he been your boyfriend?”
“Not very long. But I’m not a little girl anymore. I can decide when I’m ready.”
Ben and his daughter were close, but he was far from comfortable with this topic of conversation. His parents had never said a word to him about sex, and at St. Mary’s, the private school where he’d suffered through adolescence, sexual education was limited to receiving penance for confessing to impure thoughts.
Maybe that was why he’d been so intent on educating himself with every willing female he could find when he was Carly’s age.
He didn’t want to encourage her to take the same path he had, yet he couldn’t bear to treat sex like a sin. “When you’re ready, will you use protection?” he asked finally, wondering if he sounded too permissive.
“Of course. I’m not as stupid as you and Mom were.” She took the plates to the sink. “Do you want to know? I mean, if I decide to do it?”
He didn’t want to know anything more, ever again, but if she needed to talk to someone, he had to be there for her. It was his job. “Yes. You can tell me anything.” As she rinsed the plates and put them in the dishwasher, he said, “Carly?”
“Yeah, Dad?”
“You know I love you, right?”
Her hands, busy wiping down the granite countertop, stilled. “Yeah.”
She never said it back to him anymore, like she used to. That was normal for a teenager, he supposed, but it still hurt. “Okay. I just wanted to make sure that you weren’t thinking I was ignoring you, or feeling like I didn’t care. That I’d rather go surfing than spend time with you.”
“Well, that last one is true.”
“No. It isn’t.”
“Don’t get all mushy, Dad. Just take me shopping.”
“Cut her loose.”
Stephen couldn’t tear his gaze from the girl’s ravaged face. Her hair hung like lank seaweed, curling around her throat. Scavenger marks riddled her naked body, and her skin was tinged greenish black.
“Did you hear? Take out your blade and cut her loose. She’s tangled up.”
James staggered to the side of the boat and lost his breakfast over the edge. A motley mess that had once been Fruit Loops floated on the surface. Tiny surfperch made jerking, stabbing motions at it while he groaned with nausea.
“Do it,” Arlen said, motioning at Stephen with his knife.
