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PROLOGUE
Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
TWO YEARS AGO
Emily
The dive seemed like a good idea last night.
This morning a storm looms and the topaz blue of yesterday’s sunlight-infused sea has devolved into chaotic gray chop. The troughs and crests bounce our little wooden boat with a nauseating regularity, levitation followed by spine-jarring jolts.
The wreck we’re headed to is visible from the Punta Cana resorts, the primary colors of their umbrella squadrons staking their turf on wind-whipped sand beaches.
Diving a midcentury shipwreck might be worth braving poor conditions, but this Russian grain freighter that wrecked during a storm just twenty years ago certainly isn’t. The guidebooks say she hit a mine and, judging by the mangled steel of the lower hull, ran aground during a storm or was deliberately scuttled.
Captain Marcos gives us the most likely explanation. “Steering trouble,” he says with a broad smile.
“‘Steering trouble’ is code for sleeping during watch,” my husband, Trip, tells me as we hit the water bow-first in a jaw- snapping landing.
“The ship ran aground because the captain was sleeping when he should’ve been steering?” I ask, gripping the side of the boat.
“Or sleeping it off,” Marcos says with that same warm smile.
“Did they all die?” asks Ella, our dive companion introduced to us by the captain, without looking up from her phone.
“Our tug saved the whole crew, twenty-three souls,” Captain Marcos says.
Good. I don’t like the idea of pleasure diving in some- one’s watery grave. On cue, the improv troupe in my anxious brain conjures up an image of a decaying corpse trapped in the wreck, all its soft tissues unevenly eaten away by sea scavengers. An eel slithering through the skull’s orbits like an underwater extra from an Indiana Jones movie.
“Will there be much in the way of fish and turtles?” I shout over the engine and wind, desperate to get those thoughts out of my head before we dive.
“The ship is like a reef now, there will be lots of sea life,” Trip shouts back, but I catch the captain’s dubious expression. “Don’t you want to be able to tell people you dove a wreck?” he asks.
I can’t back out; he’s more excited about this than he’s been about anything in a long time. We were enchanted with each other, once. Was it only a year ago? He was my one and only major rebellion against my parents. Once they realized cajoling, rage, and bargaining wouldn’t change my mind, my parents acquiesced to the match and pulled off something pretty close to a Greenwich society wedding.
A year in, even civility is lost.
And here I am, clinging to the side of this beat-up, splintered old skiff, nauseated, heading to scuba dive, desperate to show my husband I still know how to have fun, take risks, and have adventures. I’m not a complete novice. I was harangued into a resort course years ago on a family vacation. The boat launches again and I brace myself with my numb, wet feet and clench my teeth.
The engine roar dulls to a putter, and I release the breath I’ve been holding. We’ve arrived.
We made love last night for the first time in ages. I have hope he may actually forgive me for my sixty-hour work weeks and the myriad other offenses he’s discovered while living with me. Our six-month love affair was brief but intense. His constant romantic overtures—flowers, candy, surprise trips, and frequent texts—were overwhelming, but in a good way. He admired my drive and ambition, but also my pragmatic but anxious nature. He was nothing like the indifferent, self-absorbed professional men Bumble had matched me with, and I fell hard.
But the honeymoon is long over. And a Standish does not divorce after a year, not even if her husband has become an icy, expensive stranger.
He booked this anniversary trip as a surprise, but it’s the worst possible timing. I have a brief due and have spent most of our time here working.
I reach for his hand as the boat drifts to a stop. He uses it to pull me close, kissing me with all the passion of our first kiss eighteen months ago.
As we zip each other’s wetsuits for the dive, my brain is as scrambled by the kiss and his renewed affection as my stomach is from the ride.
Ella has put down her phone and comes over to check my equipment. She should be pretty, but her smile never quite reaches her arctic-blue eyes.
The captain tosses out the “divers down” buoy. “Remember folks, don’t stray too far from your buddy. Don’t hold your breath. Check each other’s gear. Stay calm and relaxed down there and have fun.”
I remember enough. It’s not as complicated as you’d think: whatever happens, don’t panic.
Gear on, I tumble backward off the side of the boat into the ocean, my wetsuit slowly absorbing the chilly water. I submerge and my mask fills. I use my fins to kick up to the surface, which requires effort thanks to the weighted belt and the fact that, due to my caseload, my body hasn’t seen the inside of a gym for six months. I dump out my mask and try to reseal it. I put my face in the water. The mask fills again. I toss it back in the boat and ask Marcos for another.
My husband surfaces next to me. “What’s up?”
“Bad mask.”
The captain hunts through his bag and finds another and brings it over.
This one is marginally better.
We head down to the wreck.
I can barely see anything, it’s so murky—so I’m kicking lazily when finally the structure comes into view.
Ominous and gray, covered with algae and slimy gunk. There are no brilliantly colored fish, no turtles. No life at all.
I use my hands to scull backward and seek out my companions. Someone is kicking up sand from the bottom and a white cloud envelops me. My nausea hasn’t abated and now I’m dizzy and disoriented too.
I’m breathing too fast.
I move forward gingerly; I can’t see more than a foot in front of me. I’m afraid to run into the wreck.
Have I lost my dive buddy already? Something moves in my peripheral vision. I turn 180 degrees but there’s nothing visible in the gloom.
I’m breathing much, much too hard. Don’t panic.
There are sharks here but they’re generally harmless. Of the four attacks recorded since the ’60s, only two have been fatal. Still . . . one of those was a diver, and he was attacked unprovoked, at least according to the shark attack data site.
Why do I even know this? Why do I catastrophize? My therapist has told me dozens of times that researching the chances of airplane crashes, shark attacks, and whatnot doesn’t make me calmer. But anxiety isn’t rational. It doesn’t matter how slim the risks or how slight the provocation; my brain goes screaming into full alert. It’s what makes me a great attorney—and a paranoid spouse.
I attempt a few calming breaths and visualization techniques.
But somewhere nearby is that awful shipwreck. Just the thought of that lifeless, gray hunk of metal sitting on the bot- tom of the sea is enough to spin up my claustrophobic tendencies.
I can’t get my breath under control. I need my buddies. Swimming forward into the glinting cloud of sand, I will myself to relax, but it’s not working. My pulse throbs in my ears. A figure looms ahead of me. I kick harder to get to them. I inhale.
Nothing.
I’m out of air.
That’s not possible.
There is no way I’ve been down here long enough to run out of air.
I draw in on the regulator.
Nothing.
Don’t panic.
It’s my mantra as I kick for what I hope is the surface. Don’t hold your breath, you’ll damage your lungs.
I blow out my remaining air, my leaden legs pumping for the surface, but I can’t tell which way I’m going, and my kicking turns to thrashing. My vision goes white around the edges. A figure approaches from the murky water in front of me as my vision clouds.
I stretch out my arm toward them. Help me.
