Chapter 9: Mother

"No," I said.

My mother's hands tightened on her purse.

"I hung up because I wanted to live, Mom."

"Live? From a phone call?"

"Come inside. I'll show you."

My apartment was two rooms and a kitchen. It had a drafting table, a coffee maker, and a window that looked at a brick wall.

I put the lamp on.

She stood in the middle of the floor in her church coat and looked at where her son lived.

"You smell like a bar," she said.

"A man threw a beer at me."

"What man?"

"A man who watched Kit's interview."

She shut her eyes briefly.

Then she opened her purse, took out a clean handkerchief, and wiped the beer from my hairline.

She hadn't done that in twenty years.

I didn't move.

"Sit," she said. "Show me."

She sat on the one good chair, and I laid it all out on the drafting table.

I had four things.

The first was Joan's photo of the roof screen, which she'd texted me that afternoon.

It showed a green dot on a blue map.

"What's this?" my mother said.

"The Halcyon's surface beacon. It only talks when it's out of the water."

"So?"

"So the dot has been in the same place since noon on the day of the dive. On the surface. Forty miles from where the call said it was."

"That doesn't make sense."

"It makes sense if the sub never went down."

She looked at the dot for a long time.

"Your father said the sub flooded and Kit escaped in a pod."

"If the sub had flooded, it would have sunk. This one is floating."

"Maybe the pod... maybe it floated up with..."

"Mom."

She stopped.

I put down the second thing.

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