“You look great,” I tell him adamantly, crouching down.
“Don’t be facetious. I look like a Benzite.”
“I don’t know what that is,” I admit.
“It’s from Star Trek,” Lacey says.
I shake my head. I guess when Richard gets stressed, he goes to his happy place.
“Can you see without your glasses?” I ask him.
“Blind as a caecilian.”
“Is that a Star Trek reference again?”
“It’s a type of amphibian that lives underground,” Lacey informs me.
“Can you give him your glasses?” I ask her. “You can see without yours.”
She pauses, brows coming together. “No I can’t.”
“You weren’t wearing them the other day and I saw you read the back of my book just fine.”
The book in question was a historical romance novel about a reformed rake I burned through in a day. I picked up a bunch of paperbacks in the airport gift shops, and managed to pack some last night since I wasn’t sure my Kindle was going to hold out. Kindle, paperback—it’s good to have your reading materials covered on all bases.
Before Lacey can protest again, I reach out and snatch her glasses off her face, putting them on.
I can see perfectly, which means there’s no prescription in these glasses.
Just as I suspected.
“You don’t need glasses!” I yell gleefully. “I knew it!”
“That’s preposterous. Of course she does,” Richard says adamantly.
Lacey snatches them back, slipping them on. “I do. Maybe you need glasses.”
Right. “I don’t and you know it. You had perfect vision growing up, you were always bragging about it. Then you graduated high school and suddenly you said you were nearly blind. I always figured you wore them just so you’d seem smarter.”
Lacey is turning red. She shakes her head and looks away.
Richard holds out his hand. “Give them to me.”
She shakes her head harder.
“Lacey Loo,” he says. “Give me your glasses.”
Reluctantly, she takes them off and hands them over.
Richard then takes off his broken pair and slips hers on.
Frowns. “Lacey…”
“Okay, okay, fine!” she suddenly cries out, getting to her feet. “So, I don’t need glasses.” She puts “need” in quotation marks. “I have to wear them. People won’t take me seriously if I don’t.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her, getting to my feet. “I totally get it.”
“It’s not okay,” Richard says grimly. “How could you lie to me?”
Uh oh.
Time for me to skedaddle.
I grab my Speedy duffel and then head to the beach, ready to start unpacking it and drying stuff out.
To my complete surprise, Tai is in the water, swimming across the lagoon toward the boat.
“Tai!” I yell at him. “What are you doing?”
It’s not like it’s a casual swim out to the boat, the lagoon has to be at least three hundred feet across to the reef.
If he can hear me, he doesn’t show it. He just keeps going, his bronzed back and arms a contrast against the clear turquoise waters as he makes his powerful strokes toward Atarangi.
Now that the water is flat and the weather is calm, it does look like a beautiful place to swim, but I remember enough about marine biology to know that atolls aren’t immune to sharks. Great whites are rare here in the South Pacific, and we’re most likely to find hammerheads, nurse, and reef sharks, generally harmless, but that doesn’t mean tiger sharks aren’t lurking about, especially after a storm where the water beyond the coral reef might be murkier.
“Leave him be,” Lacey says from behind me.
I jump, whirling around. She’s not wearing her glasses anymore.
“I thought you were fighting,” I tell her.
“I’m done.” She shrugs. “He’ll get over it.”
I look back to Tai. “I saw him sitting on the beach earlier, just staring at the boat. Now he’s swimming to it. What’s he doing?”
“Probably going to see if he can salvage anything.”
“I worry about him,” I admit. “I know how much that boat meant to him.”
She eyes me carefully for a moment.
“What?” I ask.
“I don’t think you do,” she says knowingly.
I fold my arms across my chest, hating this game she plays where she knows something and doesn’t come right out and tell me. I’m awful at this game. I tell everyone everything, whether they want to hear it or not.
“Lacey, what’s going on?”
She wriggles her lips, deliberating. Finally she says, “It’s not my place to tell you this so please just forget I told you. But, Tai had a sister.”
I blink. Had a sister?
“He doesn’t talk about her. No one in the family does. Her room in their house is still preserved, hasn’t been touched since the day she died.”
“Oh my god,” I say softly, my heart aching for him. “I had no idea.”
“I know you didn’t. Like I said, he doesn’t talk about her. Ever.” Quietly she adds, “I wish he would.”
“What happened?”
Lacey exhales sadly, her eyes going to Tai as he swims further and further away. “She was sixteen. They were at Piha beach, it’s near Auckland. Beautiful place, but dangerous swimming conditions. His sister was a surfer, almost pro. Really, really good. She was out there for a competition and a wave completely knocked her out. Tai was there watching, he was a part-time lifeguard so he had the skills. He ran out into the water to save her, as did a few other people when it became apparent that she was drowning, but…”