A - Immortal Sea

“Get in the car, Zack. Now.”

Out of instinct, out of habit, Zack obeyed. He hopped around to the passenger side and opened the door.

“I know you,” the stranger said slowly.

“No, you don‟t.” His mother‟s tone was fierce. Firm. But Zack heard the underlying high note, almost like she was scared.

Like that time he hitchhiked to the beach without telling her.

“I have seen you before.”

That voice, that well-remembered voice, stroked Liz like a hand and clutched her heart.

“I have seen you before .”

Only for a couple of hours in the dark sixteen years ago. He couldn‟t possibly recognize her.

The passenger door slammed as Zack got in the car.

She had recognized him right away, Liz thought. Morgan. The white-blond hair, the brutally handsome face, the strange

yellow eyes were the same. He looked exactly the same. While she . . .

She took a deep breath. Well, she‟d changed, hadn‟t she? She was no longer a dewy, perky, naïve college student.

She was thirty-seven years old, for God‟s sake. A mother. A doctor. She had borne two children and buried her husband,

and her face and body carried the lines and scars of laughter and of sleepless nights, of grief and resolve.

Liz gripped the steering wheel with sweaty palms. No, he hadn‟t recognized her.

“ Who is this? ” he had asked.

Anger caught her unprepared like a cramp, sharp and unexpected. She was what life had made her. She was the woman she

had made herself, and she would protect that life, that woman, any way she could.

“Fasten your seatbelt,” she ordered Zack.

At the click of the buckle, she threw the car in gear and punched the gas. She did not look in the rearview mirror as she

drove away.

“Who was that?” Emily asked from the backseat.

Zack’s father.

No, he wasn‟t. Bernardo Rodriguez was the only father her son had ever known or needed.

Zack’s sperm donor?

She couldn‟t say that either.

“His name‟s Morgan,” Zack said.

Emily leaned forward between the front seats. “Do you know him?”

“Sit back,” Liz instructed, nerves snapping in her voice. She concentrated on turning the corner, struggling to keep the

wheels and her tone even. “Not really.”

“He said you did,” Zack said.

Back in North Carolina, she‟d been desperate for her son to communicate. She‟d tried card games and car trips, nonverbal

communication strategies and active listening techniques without success. She‟d prayed this move would shake him from his

self-imposed silence. But why did he have to start talking now?

“We‟ve met,” Liz admitted. “I meet lots of people. Doctors, patients, drug salesmen . . .” She was rambling. She shut up.

“Was he a patient?” Zack asked.

Oh, God.

She and Ben had agreed never to lie to Zack. He knew Ben wasn‟t his biological father. Liz‟s parents had cut off all

emotional and financial support when she told them she was pregnant and wanted to keep her child. Ben had married her while

they were both still in med school and adopted Zack a few months later. She would not impinge on her grieving son‟s bond

with his dead father because of a chance encounter on the street with a virtual stranger.

If this was a chance encounter. Her heart raced as if she‟d injected epinephrine. What if Morgan had sought Zack out?

She drew a deep breath. She was overreacting. Morgan never even knew of Zack‟s existence.

“It was a long time ago,” she answered vaguely. “What did he say to you?”

Zack slouched in his seat, staring out the window at the dark pines bordering the road. “Nothing.”

“He must have said something,” she persisted.

“He asked where we lived.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Mom.” A staccato burst of impatience.

She waited.

Zack scowled. “No, I didn‟t, okay? Christ, I‟m not a baby.”

He was, though. He was her baby boy, no matter how tall he grew or what kind of language, dress, or attitude he affected.

“I just wanted to be sure he didn‟t say anything to . . . to upset you,” Liz said carefully.

“Well, he didn‟t.” Zack shot her a quick, penetrating glance from beneath his fringe of black hair. “What‟s some guy you

used to know doing here anyway?”

“I have no idea,” Liz said coolly. “Maybe he‟s on vacation.”

The other possibilities tightened her throat.

Zack slumped, staring out the window. “Yeah, because everybody wants to come to freakin‟ Maine.”

She drove past the clinic and turned into their driveway, marked by an aggressively new lamp post and a clump of orange

daylilies. The house was a renovated Victorian cottage with traditional New England charm and new, double-paned windows,

dumped on the market when the previous owners tired of the Maine winters or the second mortgage. No sea views, but the

property was convenient to Liz‟s work, and Emily could walk to school.

Liz pulled into the garage with relief. “We‟re home,” she announced.

Safe.

As if there had been no interruption to their lives or their morning and everything could return to normal.

She turned to her children with a smile, determined to restore the security they had lost along with their father. “Who wants

pancakes?”

Emily bounced. “I do.”

Zack‟s face closed. “No, thanks.”

“Don‟t you want lunch? Breakfast?”

“I‟m not hungry.”

She watched her son shuffle to the house, his head ducked between his shoulders, and her heart sank.

Everything back to normal.

Morgan stood with his back to the wall of Antonia‟s Ristorante, as aloof from the action around him as the cat drowsing in

the restaurant window. Eating, chattering humans, all ages, both sexes, every size, filled the vinyl booths. Spires of pink,

white, and purple flowers decorated the tables. Sunlight streamed through the red awning outside, suffusing the air with a rosy

glow. The sound of laughter and conversation mingled with the aromas of red sauce and freshly baked bread. Noise, smells,

and colors blurred together in his head, almost drowning out the persistent song of the sea and the lingering pulse of sexual

arousal quickened by the woman in the car.

Her eyes were wide, deep brown, with shadows swaying in their depths. For a moment, falling into those eyes, he had

wanted to breathe her, bite her, fuck her. Memory stirred, elusive as the night or the scent of bruised grass as she cried and

clawed and came under him, again and again .

“I know you . ”

Her gaze had iced over before she turned away. “No, you don’t . ”

He pressed his shoulders into the wall, absorbing the solid support of the plaster at his back. He did not trust his memories.

His normally sharp mind was blurred with exhaustion, his head filled with the shifting world beneath the waves.

But he trusted his instincts. His gut recognized his kind. That boy . . .

His suspicions stirred and circled, mouthing over possibilities, drawn like sharks to the scent of blood.

“Cake?”

A skinny, dark-eyed boy thrust a plate under his nose.

Morgan almost recoiled. He eyed the pink and white confection cautiously. Perhaps he should eat. Food would anchor his