Cara brought her attention back with a sigh. She was charging Toy the barest minimum that Cara could afford to let it go for, and the maximum that Toy could pay.
“She’s paying what she can,” she replied, deliberately vague. “For the last four years she’s put herself through school and raised a little girl, all while working nights to make ends meet. Now she’s got herself not just any job, but
the
job. Though it doesn’t pay a lot, it’s the long view she has to take now. She’s really turned her life around and I’m proud of her. Palmer, you know it was Mama’s final wish that I help her.”
“And you have. No one can say you haven’t. But it’s been five years, Cara. Five years! I’m thinking about you, not her. I’ll wager you could get three, four, maybe five times the amount of rent from tourists than you are from that gal.”
“Maybe…”
He leaned forward. “How long are you going to let this go on?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “We haven’t set a timetable.” Brett had brought up this very topic the other night after paying for Cara’s expensive fertility treatments.
“It’s costing you money to keep her in that house, plain and simple,” Palmer said. “Think about it. That’s all I’m saying.”
She pursed her lips. “I have, actually,” she replied. “I know we could be getting more in rent, a lot more. And I wouldn’t be honest if I said the money wouldn’t be welcome. But the truth is, neither Brett nor I have the heart to ask Toy to find another place. After all, she’s only just started getting her life going. She’s family.”
“Family?”
he said, his voice rising. “She’s no kin to me.”
“She is to me. Maybe not by blood, but in heart.”
“You have Linnea. And Cooper. They love you. They need you.”
“And I need them. But they also have you and Julia. Linnea is becoming a young woman right before our eyes. But Toy has no one. And Little Lovie…” She closed her mouth tight, emotion welling in her eyes. How could she explain to her brother the depth of her feeling for that child?
“Do you think it’s a good idea to be so involved with another woman’s child?”
“I may never have a child of my own.”
Palmer let out a sigh. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she replied, though clearly it wasn’t.
“You ever think about adopting? Lots of folks do.”
“Of course, I’ve thought about it. But I’ve been focused on having my own child.”
“You aren’t getting any younger, you know.”
“Thanks a lot. I’ll try to keep that in mind. But remember, brother, you’ll always be older than me.”
His grin spread like a shrimp net over the water, wide and full. “And you just remember, sister mine, that with age comes wisdom.”
A few days later, when Toy walked out of the elevator onto the third floor of the Aquarium, she heard a loud splash and a man’s muffled curse.
“Ethan?” she called out, hurrying over. But she didn’t see him. Another splash and she stopped short in surprise. Ethan was hip deep in Big Girl’s tank, his long arms outstretched, and he looked to be chasing the turtle. His head shot up when he spotted her.
“Thank God you’re here!” he called out. “Grab a bucket. A clean one. Then hurry and bring it over here.”
Toy felt a flutter of panic as she set down the turtle’s prepared food and raced to grab a bucket. “What’s going on?” she called over her shoulder as she rinsed a utility bucket at the sink. She was in such a hurry that water splashed all over her. “Is Big Girl all right?”
Ethan lifted his arms and in his cupped hands she saw three perfectly round turtle eggs. Ethan released a proud father’s grin.
“You’ve got to be kidding! She’s laying eggs?”
“Either that or ping pong balls.”
Big Girl started swimming slowly in the small fiberglass tank and Ethan continued following behind her, bent at the waist and with his hands outstretched. Toy couldn’t stop the chuckle that escaped her lips.
“You look like a catcher waiting on the next pitch,” she said.
“Hey, you come in here and try catching them.”
“No, I wouldn’t deprive you. It’s clear you’re having too much fun. Besides, you’re doing a great job. Here,” she said, stretching over the rim of the tank to hold the bucket out for him. “You can put them in here.”
Ethan waded closer and gingerly laid the three eggs into the white bucket.
“Oh-oh,” Toy warned. “Batter up! Here comes another.”
He dashed back as Big Girl released one, then two more glistening white eggs. They floated down into
Ethan’s waiting hands. When he placed them in the bucket, Toy stared at the six eggs nestled in a circle at the bottom.
“This is nothing at all like helping a loggerhead on the beach.”
He waded over to catch another egg then brought it to the bucket. “One more. Four hundred eighty-five to go.”
“It’s so sad that she’s stuck in a tank and can’t lay her eggs in the sand. I don’t know what to do with them.”
“Turtles are your bailiwick, not mine.”
She carefully lifted the bucket to examine the eggs. What he said was true but she was completely stumped.
They waited and watched Big Girl awhile longer before Ethan shrugged and headed to the tank’s rim. “That’s it for me. I think that’s it for Big Girl, too. At least for now. If not, it’s your turn to jump in the tank.”
“Seems only fair,” she replied, gingerly placing the bucket on the floor so not to disturb the eggs.
Ethan grabbed hold of the rim of the tank and Toy couldn’t miss the tightening of well defined muscles as he easily hoisted himself up and out. Water poured from his clothes and clung like a second skin.
Always until now, he’d been this person she worked with and respected—the way she would view a teacher or a doctor. But there was no denying he had a beautiful body, lean, taut and deeply tanned. When he stripped off the dripping T-shirt, she felt her face flame and spun on her heel at the first glimpse of hard chest muscles covered by dark hair. “I didn’t want to see that,” she muttered to herself as she hurried to the supply cabinet. She returned with two towels in her hand.
“You’re soaked,” she said brusquely, eyes averted while handing him one.
“If I had a dollar for every time I jumped in a tank, I’d be a wealthy man.” He nonchalantly took the towel from her. “Thanks.”
“Sure.”
She went to the bucket to cover the turtle eggs gently with another towel, turning her back to him. “So few eggs…” she murmured. “I’m thinking I’d like to get these to the beach as soon as possible so I can bury them.”
“Wishful thinking, I’m afraid,” he replied, his voice ragged as he bent to dry his legs. “We don’t know if those eggs are even fertilized.” He straightened and fixed her with a level gaze. “They’re probably not, you know.”
“They probably
are.
Eggs won’t calcify if they have not been fertilized. So, why shouldn’t these be?”
“Well, she’s been floating for a long time. I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”
“Even so. Putting the eggs in sand is the best solution I can offer. At least it’s doing something.”
“You’re right,” he said, surprising her with agreement. He tossed the towel to the floor. “Can’t hurt to try. Seven eggs. That’s got to be a record small clutch.”
She nodded and wished he’d put a shirt on. “I wonder if she does have more eggs inside of her?”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
“I could bring a box of beach sand back to bury the eggs in.”
“I guess that mean we’re on egg patrol. Come on, then,” he said, his shorts dripping across the cement floor. “
Tempus fugit
. You see if you can get some food into Big Girl and I’ll change her water. If we work together, we’ll be done in no time. Then we’ll head out to the beach and bury your eggs.”
“
We?
You’re coming with me?”
His crooked grin stretched out across his face, changing his serious demeanor to one of boyish charm. “I want to get some pictures of this for the record. If Big Girl does have more eggs—and with my luck she will—I reckon this will be the first of many trips.”
Hours later, Toy patted the sand then rested her palm on the dune. Beneath her hand, twenty inches down, seven turtle eggs nestled together incubating. She’d brought the eggs to Miss Lovie’s dune. It seemed serendipitous to let the spirit of old Miss Lovie care for them.
The sand was toasty warm on her palm and above, the sun beat down relentlessly. Beside her, Ethan bent low to take pictures of each step of the process. He moved around the dune, his fingers snapping pictures so fast she heard the faint click click click, as rapid as a typewriter. They’d attracted a small cadre of tourists on the beach, all thrilled that they got the chance to see the turtle eggs. They’d come from all across the nation and had a million questions, which Flo was only too happy to answer for them. She was the consummate turtle lady.
Toy had but one question, and it was for Ethan. “Why do you take so many pictures?”
He was bent on one knee, aiming his camera at the cluster of tourists standing near Flo. After another click, he rose and came closer to her. “I don’t know what I’m looking for,” he replied. Then he lifted his camera to take a close-up of her. “But I’ll know when I see it.” His finger clicked again.
She stepped back, self-conscious at her photograph being taken. “But you only need one or two for the file.”
He lowered his camera. It wasn’t one of the compact
cameras that the tourists were clicking as Flo put the familiar orange tape and wooden stakes around the nest to mark it. His was a black, professional Nikon digital with a zoom lens that stuck far out of the front. The relatively clunky camera hung from around his neck on a black leather strap.
For a moment he stood quietly, and she wondered if she’d offended him somehow. Then he began to speak in the manner of explanation.
“I started taking pictures when I began traveling. I didn’t have any agenda, except to take pictures of where I’d been. Nothing more than any tourist might want to fill albums with when they’re old and wanting to reminisce. But it was weird.” He looked at her earnestly and his voice was laced with emotion. “The more pictures I took, the more I discovered how I could catch the essence of an image, or a moment, with a camera. I looked at the photographs I took with the same wonder that I’d looked at the stars or the ocean or some glistening fish at the end of my line when I was a child. I liked that sense of wonder.”
“And you began to go after it.”
“Yeah,” he replied, encouraged that she got his meaning. “There are times when I look through the eyes of a camera that I feel a connection to the natural world that’s closer, more intimate, than what I see with my own eyes.”
He paused and shook his head. Toy sensed he was feeling self-conscious at having offered this zoom-in glimpse at himself. “I never thought about it quite like that.”
Ethan snapped the lens cap to the camera. She watched his long fingers move adeptly on the camera and she could almost hear the debate going on in his head. “I might only need one or two photographs for the file,
that’s true,” he said in a level tone. “But I take more to see what else I can discover. Sometimes I see things in the photographs that I didn’t even know were there.”
“Really? Like what?”
“Well, take the pictures I take at the Aquarium. During an exam, maybe my camera will catch a glimpse of an infection in the throat when the turtle opens its mouth for a squid. Or a lesion on a fish that I missed. And those are just the pictures I take for work. Here, take a look,” he said, moving closer so that she could look at the small screen on his camera.
She was caught up in his enthusiasm as he flicked through several images in his camera of Big Girl—the scarring on her emaciated neck where bone had rubbed against shell, the way her rear floated upward in her tank, her huge jaw opened wide for a squid, the great turtle lying flaccid on her back as Dr. Tom did a procedure. There was a photo of the five round eggs in the red bucket, another of Toy on her hands and knees digging a hole in the sand with a half shell. When she saw the close-up of her hand curled neatly around the shell, her skin speckled with sand, she found it unexpectedly beautiful. Her attention was captured, however, by snapshots she had no idea he was taking.
There was Little Lovie, leaning over the nest with her hands on her knees, peering down into it, her face filled with wonder. One with a blond boy leaning against Lovie’s shoulder, two children united by their obvious love of turtles. In another, excitement shone like the sun from Flo’s blue eyes, her tanned arms and hands lifted in animation as she explained to the curious tourists the saga of the sea turtles. And finally, the close-up of her face, untouched by makeup, wisps of sandy blond hair
across her pinkened cheeks, and in the pale blue eyes a vulnerability she knew too well.
“They’re beautiful,” she said. “You could be a professional.”
“Oh no,” he said with a laugh. “Technically I’m not that good. It’s pretty straightforward with this camera.”
“Maybe to you. I look at the camera and all I can do is push the button.”
He lowered the camera. “Most new cameras are almost fool-proof. Anything I take for work, I just put the camera to my eye and click.”
“But these other photographs,” she said, persistent. “These ones where you’ve captured such expression. How do you learn to do that?”
Ethan looked out over the water, squinting. Toy thought he seemed as far off as the horizon. “It’s all in the seeing, I guess.”
“The seeing? What do you mean by that?”
He smiled, almost self-consciously. “You have to disappear behind the lens of the camera and see the world through different eyes. When I’m behind the camera I’m not looking at the big picture. For me, the story is in the details. I don’t always know what I’m looking for. Sometimes you see it and you just know.” He paused. “Does that make any sense?”
You see it and you just know
. Old Miss Lovie had said that many times. Only she’d been talking about life. Toy suspected what Ethan was talking about was pretty much the same thing, too.
You see it and you just know
. Toy had felt that, many times—when she saw the sun rise over the ocean, when she saw her daughter sleeping. And it was how she felt when she looked at Ethan’s photographs.