“Palmer didn’t show up, so I was going to leave Rob there by himself. I didleave Rob there. I snuck out in the middle of the night, was across the gash and a hundred paces on when I found her.” He turned and lowered his own ker, didn’t care about the grit getting into his mouth. “So when you tell me, or you tell Palmer, or you tell Rob that you’re gonna go out there and give ’em hell or get Dad back or that you’re gonna return with him, just know that I’ve been where you are, making that decision, and I know what it’s like to lie to myself and know that I’m never coming back.”
Vic turned away from him and lifted her goggles. Wiped at her eyes.
“I know you think you’ll try, but so did Dad. If you do this, you’re leaving us for good. And I’m gonna hate you for it.”
Vic turned back to him. She was smiling and crying at the same time. “But you can leave Rob in that tent? Fucking hypocrite,” she said.
And in that way that often happens between siblings, cruel words were followed by laughter. Tears dripped into smiles. A flaming sun dipped behind cool mountains, and a harmless-looking silver sphere rode serenely at the bow.
57 • Swinging the Gaze of God
They thought they were making it easy on her, that they were supporting her, but accompanying her to the gash just made it worse. As did the sight of her family erecting a tent together, just like olden times. All the water and food and supplies they’d hauled, every backbreaking ounce of their hope over her return, but Conner had been right. She could lie to each and every one of them and promise that she’d be back, but she knew. Her father had known. Everyone who crosses that gash knows.
She unpacked and checked her pack, made sure she had everything. Water and jerky. Two loaves of bread. Spare ker. Her band and visor. A portable shade for sleeping during the day. The large knife Graham had given her when she’d broken the news to him. Bandages and salve. The three notes the boys had written. The five pairs of underwear that made her think of Marco and had her suppressing the urge to laugh or cry. She would wear her dive suit under the patchwork tunic cinched around her waist. The heavy sphere she left in the bottom of the pack. It seemed to let off heat, even though she’d kept it out of the sun. She felt ready. Far to the east, the grumbles and roars called to her.
“You know I’m the one who should be going,” Palmer said, as he watched her repack her bag.
“Why?” she asked. “Because you’re the oldest son?” It was a jab meant in jest, but none of her brothers seemed interested in sparring with her.
“No,” he said. “Because I owe this asshole. Because of Hap. Because I started all of this.”
“More reason then for you to be hereand see it through.” Vic pulled two folded pieces of paper from her belly pouch and handed them to her brother.
“Fuck you,” Palmer said. He held up his hands and showed her his palms. “I’m not taking your rites. You’re coming back alive, damn you.”
Vic grabbed his wrist and jammed the papers into his hand. “These aren’t my last rites, asshole. It’s your map.”
Palmer looked at the papers in his hand. He inspected the map he had pulled out of Danvar, then shook the other piece of paper. “What’s this note, then?”
“That’s everything I know about diving deep. How to dive down to a thousand meters.”
“Bullshit,” Palmer said.
Vic grabbed him by the shoulders and waited for him to look up at her. “Even with the right suit and visors, those depths will kill you without batting an eye. There’s no breathing down there. And your suit will feel like it’s gonna rip you apart until you get below three hundred. But it can be done. I’ve marked some of my favorite sites on your map there. Also some others that I think look promising. I made a key on the back so you can understand my notes. My advice to you right now is to send divers dumb as me down there. Don’t take that chance yourself. You’ve got nothing to prove.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “You stay alive,” she said. “You were the one.”
Palmer lifted his goggles and wiped tears away from his eyes. He lowered them back down and studied the map and the notes. “How’re these not your last rites?” he asked. He looked up at her. “You’re not coming back, are you?”
Vic hugged her brother, and Palmer returned the embrace. “Take care of yourself,” she said.
“I will.” His voice was a whisper.
“And Rob and Conner.”
“I will,” he said.
She let him go and turned away before lifting her own goggles and wiping her own eyes. Rob ran toward her from the tent and crashed into her legs, throwing his arms around her. “Not yet,” he told Vic. “Don’t go yet.”
Vic knelt down and hugged her little brother. “I’ll be back soon,” she told him. Rob frowned. There was sand on his lips. Vic lifted his ker from around his neck and adjusted it snug across his nose. He was the hardest one to lie to because he was the smartest. “Take care of your new sister,” she said.
Rob nodded. Conner came to her side with her canteens. He lifted her heavy pack and held it for her the way a diver held another’s tank. She stood and slipped her arms through the backpack straps, cinched the belt down snug over her hips, then took the canteens one at a time.
“Damn thing’s heavy,” Conner said, referring to the pack but probably more directly referring to the bomb. He stood and rubbed his shoulder. Something unspoken passed between the two of them, the sort of communication that happens beneath the sand when throat whispers become another’s thoughts. The two of them had dived together, had salvaged lives together, and they had salvaged something between them by doing so.
Vic gave her brother a hug. He slapped her pack and whispered something lost to the wind. And then Vic turned toward the gash and saw her mother waiting out there, just like she’d found her mom the night their dad had disappeared. Vic left her siblings behind, waved one more time toward the tent where Violet was standing alone, then strode out to meet her mom, dreading this goodbye the most.
“I can’t talk you out of this,” her mother said.
Vic laughed, thinking on how hard so many people had tried. “When’s the last time you talked me out of anything?” she asked. She meant it to be fun, to keep that goodbye from being so serious that she couldn’t leave, but most of all to lift her mother’s hopes that she might return.
“I lost you once. I don’t want to lose my daughter again.”
Vic glanced back at the tent. “You’ve got a new daughter to watch over,” she said. “Think of it as an even trade—”
“Don’t you give me that bulls—” her mother started.
“I’m not giving shit,” Vic said. She felt the blood in her veins grow cold, the chance at humor lost. “I’m not giving, Mom. I’m taking. That’s what I’m doing. I’m taking my father back from them. I’m going to take their city and make them pay for the one we lost. Tit for tat, Mother. They owe us, and I’m gonna make them pay.”
“No. You’ll cross that gash and you’ll die for nothing.” Her mother was crying. It was the hardest thing Vic ever bore seeing, her mother vulnerable and weak and… human. Her mom didn’t even wipe away the tears, just let them gather sand from the wind.
“You did your best by us, Mom. You weren’t given packed sand to walk across. I know that. I wouldn’t have done half as good as you did.”
With that, Vic hitched up the heavy pack and turned away from the campsite. It was the highest compliment she could’ve paid. She could’ve told her mom that she loved her, but neither of them would’ve believed that. Love was earned and hard-fought and cherished. It was Marco’s face and his rough palm on her cheek. It wasn’t something a family got just for being a family. But her mom had done more with a shitty hand and honest play than a bluffer with an ace up his sleeve. Vic knew this was true as she crossed that hard break in the desert sand, that jagged divide between the then and the now—like a row between lovers or between family members, a wound that permanently mars a relationship, that moves it from courtship and passion to resigned cohabitation, that turns a daughter into an enemy, so that the best one can hope for is that she becomes a friend.