As she stood beside the boy she loved, she knew she’d never shared anything more magical with anyone.
An hour later, after excitedly reliving the hatching in detail, Ronnie and Will said good night to the others from the aquarium as they headed toward their cars. Aside from the trench, all evidence of what had happened was gone. Even the shells were nowhere in sight; Todd had gathered them up because he wanted to study the thickness of the shells and test for the possible presence of chemicals.
As she walked beside him, Will slipped his arm around her. “I hope that was all you thought it would be.”
“It was even better,” she said. “But I keep thinking about the baby turtles.”
“They’ll be okay.”
“Not all of them.”
“No,” he admitted. “Not all of them. When they’re young, the odds are stacked against them.”
They walked a few steps in silence. “That makes me sad.”
“It’s the circle of life, right?”
“I don’t need philosophy from The Lion King right now,” she sniffed. “I need you to lie to me.”
“Oh,” he said easily. “In that case… They’re all going to make it. All fifty-six of them. They’ll grow larger and mate and make little baby turtles and eventually pass away from old age after living far longer than most turtles, of course.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Of course,” he said confidently. “They’re our babies. They’re special.”
She was still laughing when she saw her dad step out onto the back porch with Jonah.
“Okay, after all the ridiculous buildup,” Jonah started, “and watching the whole thing from start to finish, I just have one thing to say.”
“What’s that?” Will prompted.
Jonah grinned broadly. “That. Was. So. Cool.”
Ronnie laughed, remembering. At Will’s puzzled expression, she just shrugged. “Private joke,” she said, and in that instant, her dad coughed.
It was a loud, wet cough, sounding… sick… but just as had happened in the church, it didn’t stop with one cough. He coughed again and again, one racking sound followed by another.
She watched as her dad grabbed the rail to keep his balance; she could see Jonah’s brow furrowing with worry and fear, and even Will was frozen in place.
She watched her father try to stand straighter, arching his back, struggling to control the hacking. He brought both hands to his mouth and coughed one more time, and when at last he drew a ragged breath, it sounded almost as if he were breathing through water.
He gasped again, then lowered his hands. For what seemed like the longest few seconds of her life, Ronnie was frozen in place, suddenly more scared than she’d ever been. Her father’s face was covered in blood.
30
Steve
He received his death sentence in February, while sitting in a doctor’s office, only an hour after giving his last piano lesson.
He’d started teaching again when he’d first moved back to Wrightsville Beach, after failing as a concert pianist. Pastor Harris, without consulting him, had brought a promising student to the house a few days after Steve had moved in and asked that Steve do him “a favor.” It was just like Pastor Harris to realize that by returning home, Steve was broadcasting the fact that he was lost and alone and that the only way to help him was to bring a sense of purpose back into his life.
The student was Chan Lee. Both her parents taught music at UNC Wilmington, and at seventeen she was a wonderful technician, but she somehow lacked the ability to make the music her own. She was both serious and engaging, and Steve took to her immediately; she listened with interest and worked hard at incorporating his suggestions. He looked forward to her visits, and for Christmas, he gave her a book on the construction of classical pianos, something he thought she would enjoy. But despite the joy he felt in teaching again, he found himself increasingly tired. The lessons drained him when they should have given him energy. For the first time in his life, he began to take regular naps.
Over time, he began to take longer naps, up to two hours at a time, and when he woke, he often felt pain in his stomach. One evening while cooking chili for dinner, he suddenly felt a sharp, stabbing pain and doubled over, knocking the pan from the stove, strewing tomatoes and beans and beef across the kitchen floor. As he tried to catch his breath, he knew something was seriously wrong.
He made an appointment with a doctor, then went back to the hospital for scans and X-rays. Afterward, while Steve watched the vials fill with the blood necessary for the recommended tests, he thought of his father and the cancer that had eventually killed him. And he suddenly knew what the doctor would tell him.