Page 18 of Sucker For You

“No,” she said, while a zipper hissed.

“Really?” He reemerged with denim slung low on his hips and his hair combed into a bun. Isabel trailed him back to the living room, where he hitched his chin at a camera with a wet nylon strap discarded near the duffels. Distracted by his stings,she hadn’t noticed it earlier. He ferried the device to the kitchen to dry its protective casing with a dish towel. “Like I said last night, I’m here on a photography assignment with MORI. So if you’re curious. . .?”

Photography?

Without warning, the memories drowned her again:

Metal chair, cold through a thin medical gown.

“—going to photograph these injuries, then speak with your parents—”

Flash.

“We’re not her parents. We’d started the paperwork to adopt her. Another girl in the house for our daughter, since we have so many boys. But—”

“What happened?”

“Everything was normal at dinner. She wasn’t eating or talking much. Our television’s old and it flickers, and she was avoiding looking at it. Avoiding most eye contact, too. So, normal. But afterward, once we’d finally settled the baby down for the night and the other kids were getting to sleep, we heard something fall in the girls’ bedroom. She’d rolled off her bed. The top bunk. She was on the floor, crying. When we tried to help her up, to see if she was hurt or just scared, she—”

Flash.

“—she went psy—”

Her inhale was too fast, dizzying. She grabbed at the kitchen door jamb. “Y-you’re—”

Wes propped his lens on the counter. “Cameras can be disturbing for some species, but others seem to enjoy interacting with me. A sea lion in the kelp approached this morning and stayed nearby for a solid minute. Then there was an octopus. A California two-spot, I think.”

Octopus bimaculoides.

“You saw an octopus in the bay?” As quickly as it had come, her panic faded, its energy redirected. She swallowed, breathed. “Oh. . . r-really?”

“Yeah. It was hiding in the fronds from the lion, so I couldn’t see if it had blue eyespots. The species is native to the area, though, and it was about the right size. Smart little thing, too.”

“Yes. But. . . octopuses are more than smart. Many animals are smart. Dolphins, elephants—”

“—pigs, chimpanzees, parrots, rats, and even some dogs. Not all,” he replied, rolling his eyes.

“Octopuses demonstrate future thinking,” she forged ahead under his slantwise smile. “They can pass adaptations of the marshmallow test. Which is fascinating—and also baits researchers into anthropomorphizing them. But they’re alien to us in a way that no mammals or birds are. They don’t even have rights under the Animal Welfare Act. There’s pending legislation that might provide them with laboratory protections, though: the Cephalopod Sentience and Welfare Act. Of course, I always tried to provide sufficient stimulation and to ensure they weren’t in discomfort from interactive experiments. But those aren’t legal requirements, and labs have variable standards of care—”

“Ha!So you’ve studied octopuses?”

She stopped short. “. . . yes.”

“I bet they were studying you right back. Every time I photograph a wolf eel or a humpback whale, I know I’m being evaluated. Even when I’m using a teleconverter to get subjects in view while keeping a safe distance. Even when I think I’m hidden. Probably especially then.” Grin widening, leaving his casing to dry, Wes grabbed a wallet from his duffel, tucked a setof keys into his pocket, and kicked on his sandals at the door. He gestured for Isabel to join him on the porch. She did, after checking on the oyster that she’d hurriedly deposited in the tank earlier, then collecting her own sandals and wringing out her wet sleeve. “Or I should say, that’s probably true for every speciesexceptclams. No eyes, no brains. But anyhow, I hope you’ll tell me more about your octopuses—”

She halted when he pointed to a dusty black Jeep parked down the street.

“—over breakfast.”

Oh.

No, there wasn’t time. Because she. . . she needed to find Ethan’s own keys and return the car to Palo Alto. She needed to make the right decisions about her situation with Chase, needed to—

But a single throb of warning pulsed through her temples.

. . . needed to eat.

Yes, she’d swallowed a few chocolate-covered strawberries while hunched over the bathroom sink last night. With the cameras flashing and octopus arms lying inert on trays of bruschetta, though, she’d had no appetite for anything from the caterers at the yacht club. Migraines had attacked her for far less than ignoring her body’s need to fuel and hydrate itself. If she triggered that pain on an empty stomach, her recovery would be slow. She’d never manage the drive to Palo Alto. She’d be useless, crying on a bathroom floor, alone with her thrashing agony, then bedridden for twenty-four hours.