Treasures Lost, Treasures Found

dreaded having her stand beside him again. Now, however, he discovered the tension at the base of his neck had eased. “It doesn’t change much.” Together they watched the gulls swoop around the fishing boat, hoping for easy pickings. “Fishing’s been good this year.”
    “Have you been doing much?”
    “Off and on.”
    “Clamming?”
    He had to smile when he remembered how she’d looked, jeans rolled up to her knees, bare feet full of sand as he’d taught her how to dig. “Yeah.”
    She, too, remembered, but her only memories were of warm days, warm nights. “I’ve often wondered what it’s like on the island in winter.”
    “Quiet.”
    She took the single careless answer with a nod. “I’ve often wondered why you preferred that.”
    He turned to her, measuring. “Have you?”
    Perhaps that had been a mistake. Since it had already been made, Kate shrugged. “It would be foolish of me to say I hadn’t thought of the island or you at all during the last four years. You’ve always made me curious.”
    He laughed. It was so typical of her to put things that way. “Because all your tidy questions weren’t answered. You think too much like a teacher, Kate.”
    “Isn’t life a multiple choice?” she countered. “Maybe two or three answers would fit, but only one’s ultimately right.”
    “No, only one’s ultimately wrong.” He saw her eyes take on that thoughtful, considering expression. She was, he knew, weighing the pros and cons of his statement. Whether she agreed or not, she’d consider all the angles. “You haven’t changed either,” he murmured.
    “I thought the same of you. We’re both wrong. Neither of us have stayed the same. That’s as it should be.” Kate looked away from him, further east, then gave a quick cryof pleasure. “Oh, look!” Without thinking, she put her hand on his arm, slender fingers gripping taut muscle. “Dolphins.”
    She watched them, a dozen, perhaps more, leap and dive in their musical pattern. Pleasure was touched with envy. To move like that, she thought, from water to air and back to water again. It was a freedom that might drive a man mad with the glory of it. But what a madness…
    “Fantastic, isn’t it?” she murmured. “To be part of the air and the sea. I’d nearly forgotten.”
    “How much?” Ky studied her profile until he could have etched the shape of it on the wind. “How much have you nearly forgotten?”
    Kate turned her head, only then realizing just how close they stood. Unconsciously, she’d moved nearer to him when she’d seen the dolphins. Now she could see nothing but his face, inches from hers, feel nothing but the warm skin beneath her hand. His question, the depth of it, seemed to echo off the surface of the water to haunt her.
    She stepped back. The drop before her was very deep and torn with rip tides. “All that was necessary,” she said simply. “I’d like to look over my father’s charts. Did you bring them on board?”
    “Your briefcase is in the cabin.” His hands gripped the wheel tightly, as though he were fighting against a storm. Perhaps he was. “You should be able to find your way below.”
    Without answering, Kate walked around him to the short steep steps that led below decks.
    There were two narrow bunks with the spreads taut enough to bounce a coin if one was dropped. The galley just beyond would have all the essentials, she knew, in small, efficient scale. Everything would be in its place, as tidy as a monk’s cell.
    Kate could remember lying with Ky on one of the pristine bunks, flushed with passion while the boat swayed gently in the current and the music from his radio played jazz.
    She gripped the leather of her case as if the pain in her fingers would help fight off the memories. To fight everything off entirely was too much to expect, but the intensity eased. Carefully she unfolded one of her father’s charts and spread it on the bunk.
    Like everything her father had done, the chart was precise and without frills. Though it had certainly not been his field, Hardesty had drawn a chart any sailor would have trusted.
    It showed the coast of North Caroline, Pamlico Sound and the Outer Banks, from Manteo to Cape Lookout. As well as the lines of latitude and longitude, the chart also had the thin crisscrossing lines that marked depth.
    Seventy-six degrees north by thirty-five degrees east. From the markings, that was the area her father had decided the Liberty had gone down. That was