Page 96 of The Wild Beneath

“I’ll run you a bath,” he says.

Annie slips into the tub.

The running water helps relax her, and it’s even better when she submerges her head. All the other noise disappears. But she can’t convince herself if Walker’s sound is there or not. She shivers despite the hot water.

Sheneedsto know if he’s still alive—­if hearing his sound, for the first time since the accident on the tug, might mean this. But, equally, she wishes she could not think about him at all; that the cement box had remained sealed, instead of cracked back open and dumped out into her life.

She and Evan are finally settled.

She stares at the nubs of the stuccoed ceiling and stays under until the water is cold and it’s nearly morning and she’s run all the impossible permutations of Walker showing back up. The sky turns lavender then pink through the square window over the toilet.

Evan knocks on the door to ask if she needs a rescue party.

She struggles out of the bath, dries herself, pulls on her bathrobe, and listens for sounds that make sense.

What she hears is Evan on the other side of the bathroom door. She opens it. His hair is shorter now than when they lived in Hale’s. He has new creases around his eyes, even if he smilesless than she remembers. His shoulders slope forward in a way they didn’t use to.

“Good morning.” She leans into him, ear on his chest,thump-thump-thump. She closes her eyes and feels the relief of him.

“You didn’t come to bed.”

She had not, but she doesn’t have a reasonable-sounding explanation for it. Instead: “I couldn’t stop thinking about work.”

He rests his chin on the top of her head. “You can get a couple hours’ sleep before you go back in.”

“It’s only a half shift to cover this afternoon. I’ll be fine.”

“What time do you finish?”

“Five.”

“Let’s go for a quick dinner, after? Decompress?” he asks. “Then early to bed.” He interlaces his fingers with hers, tethering her for a moment.

Chapter 36

After Evan leaves for work, Annie tries to sleep.

She rolls around and tucks and retucks and flips the pillow to the cool side. Forcing her eyes closed, she does one of those body scans that’s supposed to help one fall asleep. Her skin is buzzing. She swears her cells themselves are vibrating.

To get up, get dressed, and get coffee is her only choice. Today is the last Tuesday of the month, when the Vancouver Symphony plays at 10:00 a.m. for elementary schools. She and Evan have season tickets and know the ushers, who let Annie sneak in at the back, behind the fourth graders. The kids are making paper airplanes out of their brown bag lunches.

It’s another universe inside the Orpheum Theatre: ornate plaster carvings and gold leaf accents, a shimmery chandelier. It must have five hundred light bulbs. Annie attempts to count them while she waits for the music to start. The Greek musician Orpheus, painted across the vaulted oval ceiling, wandered the earth playing his mournful songs, music so poignant that, legend has it, it attracted wild animals and even caused trees to weep.

Annie rakes her fingers over the burgundy seats and makes patterns in the velvet under her thighs. The orchestra warms up. The children begin to quiet, drawn in by a rumbling tuba, by the flutes calibrating to one another. The lights dim. Annie’s feet relax against the soles of her shoes. Her eyelids close, andall of a sudden she remembers her nose and that she has one; that she has a breathing apparatus in her chest. Her own current scent is industrial fabric softener from her scrubs mixed with the fact she rode her bike here and forgot to put on deodorant. A girl with strawberry-blond hair and wearing a puffy-sleeved blouse is sitting in front of her. While the percussion section tests the cymbals, she turns around and offers Annie a red Twizzler.

“It’sThe Little Mermaidtoday, for kids,” she says. “Why are you here?”

The truth: She wants to forget the rescue, not strain toward Walker’s fleeting sound and how much she misses him, not question her existence here in Vancouver.

“Because I like the instruments,” Annie says.

“It’s not exactlyThe Little Mermaid... they’re playing a few songs from it. Later on.” She points to the AirPods. “Why are you wearing those?”

“I have trouble with my hearing.”

“You can’t hear?”

“I hear too much.”