He blinked. Alarm sparked across his features. His eyes darted toward the sales office. I followed his gaze. Lennin stood in the window watching us. A gust of hot wind creaked the sales office sign, and a memory prompted by Lennin’s hair speared through me. In my mind I saw the man I’d mistaken for Martin kissing a woman with chestnut-colored hair before they climbed into an orange car in the underground parking garage. That memory oozed into another of an identical car parked outside my apartment on the rainy night Dana had last visited. I’d never managed to ask Dana who she’d spoken to inside that car. Dana had refused to take any of my calls after that night had ended our friendship. I missed her suddenly. Like a big hole in my heart. The world tilted around me and my knees buckled.
Martin caught me as I sagged.
“Are you okay?” he asked, supporting me by the arm.
“I . . . Just exhausted. Dehydrated. I . . . feel weird. Need to sit down.”
“I’m so, so sorry, Ellie. I’m throwing far too much at you at once. Let me take you out on the boat. It’ll be cooler on the water.” He helped me away from the sales office, away from the watchful eyes of Lennin. “You must be hungry, too.”
“Just exhausted and a bit ill.”
“We’ll take the boat up the inlet, anchor, have a picnic, and then see the viewing platform before we drive back to Jarrawarra Bay.”
“Martin, I . . . I’m really not feeling so good. I need to get some rest. I—”
“You can nap on the boat. I’ll anchor us somewhere in the shade.”
He walked me down to a jetty.
“What about my suitcases in the back of the truck?”
“I’ve got a cover over the box. Lennin will keep an eye on the ute.”
I swallowed. My tongue felt thick, foreign in my mouth. I felt like I was slurring my words. “Where did you find Lennin?”
“She’s great, isn’t she?”
I wanted to say more about my father being used in the collateral, but I couldn’t think straight enough to argue more coherently, and my fuzziness was my own fault. I shouldn’t have taken the lorazepam and then the cider on top of that. I was suffering now because of it, and craving another hit to make this feeling go away.
He helped me along the dock. I stumbled again. Alarm pinged through me. Something was really wrong. This felt like more than jet lag and sedative withdrawal. He hooked his arm around my waist and led me up to a boat moored against the dock.
“There she is. Beautiful, isn’t she?”
The watercraft was white and blue. It nudged against the pilings and tugged gently against the ropes.
“It’s a Quintrex cuddy cabin,” he said. “Good all-rounder. Very small but usable cabin. Has plenty of room at the rear with a fold-down lounge seat. Windscreen is higher than a runabout. Good for deep-sea fishing as well as spending a night somewhere. Almost seven meters in length. Nice stability with the blade hull, too.”
I saw the name emblazoned on the side. Abracadabra.
Another memory swam into my fuzzy consciousness—the magic show on the night before our wedding. I recalled my husband’s feverish animation as we’d watched the magician and he’d spoken about trickery and cunning.
“We crave the deception. We want to see our world as a tiny bit more fantastical and awesome than it is. That’s why we go to the theater, or movies, read books. The magician is much the same as a storyteller—a trickster who uses misdirection . . .”
“Vegas,” I said quietly. “You named her after the club?”
“In memory of the night you proposed.”
I glanced up at him. He grinned broadly, dimples showing. But through my groggy lens his face looked garish, like a clown’s, his complexion shiny in the heat, hair too yellow-blond atop his bronzed face.
“Our respective second chances.” His grin deepened. I hadn’t noticed before how his eyeteeth were slightly longer than the rest. It gave him a malevolence in this shimmering haze. A bird of prey circled up high. It keened. A flock of lorikeets startled into the sky, colors harsh and bright. I swiped at the perspiration leaking down into my eyes.
“That’s . . . sweet,” I said. I felt totally drunk, to be honest. Worry slithered deeper. Was I getting ill?
He helped me into the boat, seemingly unfazed by my state. Maybe it wasn’t noticeable to anyone but me? He fetched the cooler box and handed me a life jacket. I fumbled to do it up. He leaned over and buckled it for me. He untied the boat, pulled in the ropes, and started the engine chugging. He backed out of the mooring, and the motion forced me to sit down with a thump on the rear lounge seat. A pelican watched our progress.
We headed up the inlet, a dark wake swelling out behind us. Martin handed me a pale-blue ball cap to shield my face from the sun. I put it on and closed my eyes behind my shades, feeling the hum of the engine and the rock of the swell, drifting in and out of consciousness.
“There’s cold water in that esky at your feet.” His voice startled me awake. I opened the cooler, found a bottle of water among ice blocks, swallowed half the contents, and wiped my mouth. Martin was talking loudly over the noise of the engine, but his words droned on unintelligibly as the fogginess in my head suddenly worsened.
“Tidal,” he said.
“What?”
“The inlet. It’s tidal. The current flows up to the basin when the tide pushes in, then reverses and flows out to the sea when it pulls out.”
“Oh.”
