Hugh Howey - The Shell Collector

“Not exactly. She says she wants a photo of me with today’s paper to be sure I’m okay. I told her we don’t get the Times where we are. Thank goodness.”

“That’s what I love about this place,” Ness says. He cradles his coffee with both hands, takes a deep breath through his nose, and arches his shoulders back as he stretches. Letting it all out, he smiles at me. “No stress. No work. And the sea in every direction.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s perfect here. But I’m guessing we have to get back.”

I try not to make it sound like a question, like I’m eager to leave. I wish I could be more like Ness. Or maybe I’m too much like Ness. But this vacation has become work all of a sudden. I remember why I’m out here, what I’m hoping to uncover. And the lack of computer and cell coverage has me feeling isolated. Cut off. Something’s going on, and I won’t get any closer to it by staying here. And I hate myself for feeling this way.

The following day, I wake up in Ness’s bed back in Maine. The memory of Tara Cay is a memory as perfect as it is small. Like a beaded periwinkle, or any shell that requires a magnifying glass to fully appreciate. It was paradise crammed into a fistful of hours, the sort of moment you can lose if you’re not careful.

The view from Ness’s bed is almost as glorious. The storm has passed. Dawn is just breaking, the disk of the sun rising above the Atlantic and throwing the sky into pinks and reds. I watch the colors bloom and fade; sunrises like this are over in a blink. The sky changes from second to second. It reminds me of my week with Ness, which came and went too fast, every breath full of something new and strange and wonderful.

I reach for my phone on the bedside table. The flight home was a blur. I only remember passing out in bed, falling asleep curled up against Ness, eager for the answers he promised I would get today. I want this journey behind us so I can see where the next one will go.

My phone tells me it’s Saturday, which is almost impossible to believe. There are dozens of missed calls and even more texts, but all that will have to wait until I have coffee in my veins. Is it really Saturday? I think back: Monday, we shelled on the beach, Tuesday diving—God, that feels like a lifetime ago—and on Wednesday morning it rained, but that afternoon we flew halfway around the world, spent Thursday at one of the deepest parts of the Atlantic Ocean, Friday on Tara Cay, and now it’s Saturday.

Hours earlier, I woke up to Ness getting quietly dressed. Sweatpants and sneakers. I asked him where he was going, and he said for a run. When I asked where, he said, “To the end of the driveway and back. To get the mail.”

I’ve not yet gotten out of bed when I hear him coming down the breezeway. The sunrise has nearly lost its hues, is now just a single yellow orb. Ness has a triangle of sweat from his neck to his navel. It occurs to me that he may have run the entire length of that long shell-covered driveway to the outer guard gate. My thirty minutes on the treadmill after work and occasional Pilates feels inadequate.

“What’s for breakfast?” I ask, stretching.

He strides into the bedroom, hair matted with sweat, a blank look on his face. He throws a newspaper onto the bed. “Betrayal,” he says. “More than I can stomach.”

He storms into the bathroom while I gather my senses. A different man returned from the one who left the house. What does he mean by “betrayal”? I gather the paper, which flew apart from being thrown onto the bed. I check the Arts & Culture section, an old habit, and see nothing. And then I find the front page. And my heart sinks. I scan the familiar article, making sure it doesn’t have anything about the FBI in there.

“I didn’t know about this,” I yell at him. “I swear.”

I grab my phone. Ness’s grandfather stares accusingly at me. His image takes up half the front page of the Times , practically everything above the fold. The headline says: “Part 2: The Grandfather.” I check the byline, and there’s my name. It’s the piece, word for word, nothing changed. The very piece I told Henry he couldn’t run. I find him on my speed dial. Henry picks up after the second ring.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asks.

“What is this?” I shout at him. “You promised me.”

“I’ve been trying to call you for two days.”

I think of the flights, being in the sub, the island, all the emails from him.

“You promised me,” I say. “I’m working on the story of a lifetime, Henry, and you’ve just fucked it up.”

“It wasn’t me,” he insists.

“You run the paper!”

“I don’t own it. Jesus, Maya, have you been following this? Your piece has gone nuts. The board’s been all over me wondering why the second story hadn’t run yet. I’ve been trying to buy you time—”

“Why not run the one on his father, then? How did they even get this one? How did they know about it?”

I hear Henry take a deep breath. I get out of bed and walk through the closet, try the door to the bathroom. It’s locked. I can hear the shower running. I go back to the bedroom as Henry explains.

“We sent the files off to the printer last week, remember? The story was running when you went home that night, which was when I got a call from Wilde’s agent and then you-know-who. So the story was in our system. Someone in the office must’ve tipped someone on the board to let them know it was here, that we already had it. I swear to you, Maya, I did everything I could. This was going to run yesterday. I stalled as long as possible. They were going to fire me and run it themselves if I refused.”

I cradle the phone with my shoulder while he’s talking and pull my shorts on. I don’t want Ness to see me naked. Whatever I thought I was doing with him, whatever the last two days were, it’s obviously over. I’ll be another picture on the wall. I wonder, idly, if maybe some of those women hurt him instead of the other way around, if I didn’t have that completely backwards as well.

“Maya, you’re not going to like this—”

“Jesus, Henry, what?”

“They’re making me run his father’s piece tomorrow, and the piece on Ness for the Monday edition.”

My thoughts go immediately to Holly. Those stories will always be out there. Forever. And I can tell from Henry’s voice that there’s no stopping them. It’s a done deal.

“What if I quit?” I ask. “Can they legally run them if I’m no longer at the Times ?”

“Yes,” Henry says. It’s the first time he hasn’t doubted that I’d do it. “I’m guessing this puts a dent in whatever you’re working on up there?”

“Yeah, that’s toast.” I put him on speaker and pull my shirt on. I look at the rumpled bed. Was I even the one who slept in it? Was that me in a goddamn submarine? On a private jet? On an island? Nothing makes sense. A voice from New York has dragged me back into the real, and out of wherever I’ve been. I pick up the phone and take it off speaker just as the shower door slams shut in the bathroom. “Listen, Henry, I’ve got to go. I’ve gotta see if I can make this right.”

“One last thing,” Henry tells me. Ness steps out of the bathroom and gets dressed in the closet, doesn’t glance at me. I’m torn on whether I should run to him, throw myself on my knees, explain what happened, tell him it wasn’t my fault—or if I should let him cool off.

“Whatever this did to your current story,” Henry says, “you should know that this series is a big deal right now. I’ve got a dozen requests from major media who want to interview you, and book publishers want the rights to this. We have a few Hollywood studios talking to our legal department right now. You’ve got the book rights, but we might move ahead with the film stuff, while the iron is hot.”