Chapter Text
The candles on Rita Santos's dining table had burned down to half their length by the time she and Dr. Michael Ross finished dessert. The evening had slipped by the way evenings do when conversation is easy — unexpectedly, gratefully. Outside the kitchen window, the ocean was a sheet of hammered silver under the full moon, and Rita found herself glancing at it more than she should have.
"You're distracted," Michael said, not unkindly. He was a broad-shouldered man in his late forties, with reading glasses pushed up into greying hair and a warmth in his eyes that she had noticed the very first time he'd appeared at the school gates to collect a student for a marine science excursion.
"Am I?" She turned back to him and smiled. It was easy to smile at Michael. That was the problem, in a way. "I'm sorry. The sea at night. Old habit."
"Nothing to apologize for. I get it." He turned to look too. "It's extraordinary from here. No wonder you chose this place."
Rita had chosen this place for reasons she would never be able to fully explain to any land-person — the proximity to the water, the private access to the beach, the way the moon's reflection fell across her kitchen floor on certain nights like a road she could follow. She had chosen it long before she chose to stay on land, back when staying on land was still a decision she made consciously each morning, one bare foot at a time.
"It suits me," she said simply.
Michael had been visiting the Gold Coast Marine Research Institute for six months on an interdisciplinary fellowship. He had wandered into a school event, then into her acquaintance, then into the habit of meeting her for coffee, then dinner. He hadn't pushed for anything. That, too, was part of what made her let him in.
"I should go," he said, though he made no move to rise. "Early start tomorrow. We've got a data dive on the east reef survey."
"How is that going?"
"Interesting. We're picking up some anomalous thermal signatures around the Mako area that we can't fully account for. Probably geological, but —" He shrugged. "It keeps Fletcher awake at night."
Rita's hand stilled on the stem of her wine glass. She kept her expression perfectly composed. Two decades of living a double life had made her very good at that. "Fletcher?"
"My colleague. Dr. Brandon Fletcher. He joined the team last month from Canberra. Very sharp. A little obsessive, maybe, but the best data analyst I've worked with." He stood, finally, and carried his plate to the kitchen bench before she could stop him. He had that habit. She was starting to appreciate it. "He has a theory about biological interference. I think he means whales, but he won't be pinned down."
"Mysterious," Rita said, following him to the door.
On the porch, with the sound of the water louder now, he turned to her. The moonlight caught the grey at his temples and she thought, not for the first time, that this was a person who lived honestly. It was an underrated quality.
"I had a very good evening, Rita."
"So did I."
He leaned in and kissed her, very gently, once. She let herself have it. When he walked down the path to his car, she stood on the porch until the tail lights disappeared, and then she stood a little longer, listening to the sea.
Biological interference, she thought.
She went inside and bolted the door.