Chapter 10 - Clear Water
Three months later, the water in the Cape May Harbor channel was seventy-one degrees—the crystal-clear, late-summer green of the southern Jersey coast before the autumn storms begin.
The *Sarah Vance Aquatic Rehabilitation and Marine Learning Center* sat on the site of the old biological station intake pier.
It had taken sixty days of round-the-clock construction, funded entirely by an unconditional grant from the Sterling Maritime Foundation. The old cast-iron intake tunnels had been permanently sealed with four feet of structural concrete, replaced by a modern, safe, glass-walled hydrotherapy lagoon where children with spinal injuries and cerebral palsy could float in warm saltwater under the guidance of certified therapists.
Maggie stood on the wooden dock, wearing a simple pair of denim shorts, bare feet, and a faded gray T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
In her hands, she held the pearl and silver headpiece her mother had made fifteen years ago.
The broken wire had been repaired. Tessa had spent three evenings with jeweler’s pliers, resetting the freshwater pearls and the single blue seed bead that had rolled across Maggie’s palm on that terrible afternoon at the resort.
The screen door of the center’s main office clicked open.
Elise walked down the dock.
She was wearing canvas deck shoes, her hair tied back in a practical ponytail, carrying two clipboards of volunteer schedules for the September swimming clinic. She looked healthy; the hollow, frightened shadows beneath her eyes were gone, replaced by a clean, sun-tanned brightness that made her look ten years younger than the trembling bride who had dropped her ring into the mud.
Arthur was doing well. He was at his home in Avalon, resting his heart on the back porch with a pair of binoculars, watching the pilot boats come in through the inlet.
Ryan was in a federal holding facility in Newark, awaiting sentencing for wire fraud, grand larceny, and three counts of reckless endangerment. He had tried to call Maggie seven times from the prison payphone during the first month.
She had never accepted the charges.
“The first bus from the regional children's hospital just pulled into the gravel lot,” Elise said, leaning against the dock railing beside Maggie. Her voice was light, steady, full of purpose. “Twelve kids today. Four of them are in adaptive chairs. Are the shallow-tank hoists ready?”
“Tessa checked the hydraulic lines twenty minutes ago,” Maggie said, smiling. “Everything is five-by-five.”
Elise looked down at the pearl headpiece in Maggie’s hands.
“Are you wearing it today?” Elise asked softly.
Maggie looked at the silver wire catching the morning sun. Then she looked out over the flat, glittering surface of the harbor, where a pod of harbor porpoises was rolling through the smooth swells by the red channel buoy.
“No,” Maggie said. She laid the headpiece gently into the cedar box Elise held open for her. “I think Mom would say we’ve done enough performing for one lifetime.”
Elise laughed—a clear, sweet sound that had no fear in it at all. “So what do we do instead?”
Maggie walked to the end of the dock, bent her knees, and looked down into five feet of clean, sun-drenched water where the sandy bottom was rippled like corduroy.
May you like
“We get in,” Maggie said.
And without a costume, without an audience, and without a single lie left to anchor her to the bottom, Maggie Vance dove clean into the cold, clear water, and rose laughing toward the light.
