“I...won’t be at work on Tuesday. You’ll need to attend the staff meeting for me at ten.” She ate another piece of chicken. Thinking about it for a moment, she finally admitted, “I have to check in to the Miami Heart Institute, they’re running a bunch of tests on me.”
Kerry was at a loss for words. She hadn’t expected this at all.
“Well…they’re just tests. Maybe they won’t find anything, you know?”
“I know what they’re going to find,” Dar replied quietly. “They’re going to find that I have a…malfunctioning valve.” She kept her eyes on her hands, which rested together. “My father had it.” She picked up her fork and took another bite, outwardly very composed.
Kerry took her cue from that. “They can do something about that, right? I know I heard about some stuff they’ve been doing lately; it’s incredible.”
Dar pressed her lips together and nodded an acknowledgment.
“Probably.”
Kerry looked at her. “How can you be so calm? I’d be a nervous wreck.”
A slight shrug. “Nothing I can do about it. I’m going to drive down there early on Tuesday, probably have to stay overnight.”
Good grief! Kerry felt like the world had just upended itself into her lap.
She hardly knew Dar, and yet she was suddenly as concerned for her as she would have been for her own family. Maybe even more so. “Dar?”
“Mmm?”
“I don’t want to go to that staff meeting,” Kerry said. “I’d rather take the day off and go down there with you.”
Dar stared at her in honest surprise. “Why?”
“No one should have to go through that alone,” the blonde replied. “Was that what you found out this morning? You looked like you’d gotten bad news. I thought I screwed something up again.”
With a sputter, the lights went out. They were left staring at each other in the low, golden light of the candle, which painted them in tones of ochre and black. Dar finally dropped her gaze to her plate. “All right,” she agreed softly.
“It’s a long day of mostly waiting. I’d appreciate someone intelligent to talk to.”
Kerry felt a sense of relief. “Sounds like a plan,” she began, then her eyes widened as a gust of wind shook the condo. “Whoa! Dar, are we safe in here?”
“Huh? Oh, sure. I went through Andrew in this place.” Dar waved her fork, her mood improving markedly. “This is just a little tropical storm.”
128 Melissa Good Something slammed against the shutters, and Kerry jumped. “Yow!”
Dar chuckled softly. “Here, come over on this side of me, okay?” They switched places, putting Dar closer to the window. “Better?”
Another bang, and Kerry jumped again, this time right up against her taller companion. “Sorry,” she muttered, drawing away. “I hate storms. We were snowed in for two weeks, once, and I…” She hesitated. “I just don’t like them,” she finished awkwardly.
Dar leaned over and nudged the smaller woman with an elbow. “Don’t worry about it.”
Kerry eyed her and timidly nudged her back. “Easy for you to say.”
They smiled at each other and returned to their plates. Dar was right, Kerry realized. The condo certainly did seem to be getting pretty warm, pretty quickly now that the air conditioning was off. At least she was starting to feel really warm. Maybe it was the chicken.
After they finished, Dar suggested they go into the study, where she’d left the shutters off the north-facing window, a small one, and could open it to get some air in the place. She put a large, faintly cinnamon-scented candle on the desk and sat behind it, while Kerry settled on the small couch against the wall. Dar opened the window and a cool, humid breeze blew in, ruffling her dark hair and stirring the papers on the desk.
It was very quiet, only the wind’s howling and the rattle of the shutters coming through over the ceaseless pounding of the surf outside.
“I guess it was a lot worse during Andrew, huh?” Kerry asked quietly, tucking her legs up under her and leaning on the arm of the couch.
Dar nodded. “Oh yeah. They evacuated the island, but a few of us stayed, along with a few security people. They’d always told us how sturdy these places were, so we stupidly believed them. Surprisingly, it was true. We had very little damage—mostly surf damage to the seawalls, and some boats that got slammed up against the dock because their owners were either too stupid or too lazy to secure them.”
“Mmm.” Kerry put her chin down on her arm. “Do you have a boat here?”
“Yeah. It was my aunt’s; it kind of came with this place.” Dar leaned back in her chair and put her bare feet up on the desk. “Every once in a long while I take it out, just cruise around the artificial reefs a little, do some shallow diving, that kind of thing.”
Kerry nodded slowly. “I like boating. We used to take sailboats, the really big ones, out on Lake Michigan in the summer. I learned to run one of the racing kind. That was a lot of fun.” She considered. “You don’t do much swimming, though, it’s kinda cold up there.” She looked up. “Do you enjoy the diving and stuff?”
“I do. Very much so, in fact.” Dar fiddled with a pencil that had been on the desktop. “It’s not smart to go out by yourself, though, and I…” She hesitated. “I don’t have much time nowadays.”
Kerry soaked it all in, the spoken words and the unspoken ones. “I’ve always wanted to see what that was like. I used to watch the Jacques Cousteau specials all the time and wonder.”
A quick smile chased itself on and off Dar’s face. “We can probably Tropical Storm 129
arrange that,” she commented offhandedly. “It’s beautiful out there, on a nice, sunny day. When it’s calm, the sun filters down through the water, and you can see all kinds of fish, in every color.” She leaned down and pulled open a desk drawer, tugging out a folder and leafing through its contents, then handing it over to Kerry. “Here, see for yourself.”
Kerry got up and perched on the desk, tilting the folder towards the candle to get the light. She poured slowly through the pictures, examining them in fascination. Most were of fantastically shaped coral formations, with clouds of fish over them. Kerry wished it was daylight, so she could see the colors better, but one picture was a huge, flat, striped fish that seemed to be staring right into the camera lens. “Oh, wow!” She looked up at the quietly watching Dar. “Did you take these?”
“Mmm-hmm. Most of them at John Pennekamp Park down in the Keys, but this one…and these two were off Bermuda.” Dar put a fingertip on the striped fish. “He didn’t like me taking his picture. Right after I snapped this, he got right in my face and whacked me with his tail.”
Leaning closer to the light, Kerry peered at the fish. “Mmm. I bet that hurt.”
A hand lifted and gently pushed the blonde hair back. “Careful, don’t want you catching on fire. You can’t imagine the paperwork I’d have to fill out.” “Yikes, you’re right.” Kerry put the endangered locks back behind her ear and smiled. She turned to the next picture, this one of Dar, in a sleek black one-piece swimsuit, a scuba tank propping up one elbow and a huge lobster in her other hand. “Good grief, how much did that thing weigh?”
Dar peered over her arm. “Me or the lobster?” She chuckled. “Ten pounds. It was huge. The damn thing dragged me half across the reef before he tired out and I could bag him.”
“Mmm.” Kerry studied the picture, a faint, curious smile twitching her lips. “Did you have him for dinner?”
“Nah,” Dar cheerfully told her. “That big…well, after four pounds or so, the taste starts to go down. No, I took the picture, then let him go.”