Page 124 of The Wild Beneath

It’s a month more of legal wrangling with the public guardian and trustee before Aiden is able to negotiate her release. He works his shifts, he wrangles, he sits with Mara. He tries to get her to drink water from a polystyrene cup, through a bendy plastic straw. None of his colleagues understands why he’s so attached to her. They gossip about her in the hallways.

“Are you thinking straight, man?” Chris says outside the ward. He puts a heavy hand on Aiden’s shoulder, gets close like he doesn’t want to embarrass him.

“I’m fine.”

“She’s psychotic,” he says quietly. Aiden flinches. “And she doesn’t even know who she is.”

But when he sits next to her: Mara makes him feel...arrived, like he’s come back into his own flesh.

He finally succeeds in having her released in November. She’s elated, if a bit shocked, to leave the hospital. She walks out with a list of follow-up appointments in her hand: a cardiologist, a psychiatrist. She crumples the piece of paper and throws it in the nearest trash can. Aiden hesitates, then leaves it there.

“Can we go to the beach?” she asks.

They walk to the end of the pier. They’re alone. He wants to let her find her feet. Maybe she’ll start to explain, maybe there’ll be some answers for him.

“Will you stay with me?” he asks. It seems the only thing worth asking.

She looks at the horizon and says: “I can’t leave yet.”

“Then stay.”

Mara turns and leans into him, nestles her whole body against him. She looks up at his face. How perfect she feels,like a piece of himself returned after being lost. He can’t help it. He leans down and presses his lips against hers.

She kisses him back and twines her fingers through his hair.

Her slow heart beats against his chest.

The two of them together. Aiden has never felt more right about anything.

Chapter 50

Now

It is nighttime and Annie is still sailing.

She sleeps in twenty-minute chunks, scouting the horizon in between, keeping watch, checking her instincts. The dark surface of the water is electrified byGalene’s running lights, the moon, the twinkle of starlight.

It is still north.

She does not feel tired.

Morning reveals good winds. She boils water and eats a mug of oatmeal in the cockpit while writing her coordinates inGalene’s ledger. Midway through her entry, a very subtle drag weighs at the bottom of the boat.

She checks the bearing and the gauges. The wind is constant, the sails are full, only an occasional flutter, butGaleneisn’t moving the way it should.

Something must be caught on the keel or the rudder. She looks over the transom at the lacy foam, the flowing wake. Then she sees it: netting and several entangled crab pots. They drag behind like innocent stowaways.

She’ll have to cut them loose.

Annie climbs back into the cockpit and fishes out a life jacket from the lazarette. After fastening the straps, she takes a knifefrom the drawer under the helm. She will step down the ladder, reach across, slip the knife under the orange netting, and cut. It will take less than a minute.

It seems reasonable.

Considering all the times she’s negotiated a boat deck and the calm seas she’s had all morning, she does not expect the sudden wave that rocksGaleneas she steps onto the ladder. The crest of water knocks her off balance.

Annie loses her grip.

She falls as if in slow motion, plunging into the cold with a face full of salt water. She surfaces with a gasp, wiping sea from her eyes, filling her lungs with air.