The Fires Beneath the Sea (A Novel)

Chapter 5

5.

“See, the bioluminescence associated with some red tides, or algal blooms,” said Jax to Cara the next morning, while they were out walking Rufus, “is caused by phytoplankton.”

They’d waved their dad off to catch the boat for Boston; Max had gone with him on the twenty-minute drive to the ferry dock and would bring the car back. Then they’d headed out on their morning dogwalk, toward the general store that was beside the small post office. The store carried donuts sometimes, which were baked fresh at the beginning of the day. Jax had a thing for their bear claws.

“…basically, a whole bunch of microorganisms thrown together,” said Jax, in lecture mode. “And the phytoplankton that make up these kind of blooms are often dinoflagellates. One species in particular has been noted for its bioluminescence: Lingulodinium polyedrum.”

Dino-whatever-it-was rang a bell—she’d heard the word recently. Maybe at her mother’s office—Roger talking about her mother’s research. Which meant this obscure—algae?—had cropped up twice in just a couple of days. That seemed like a strange coincidence.

“So once we know where to look,” said Jax, “that’s what we’ll be looking for. A kind of light on the waves.”

“You think that’s really it? The fires beneath the sea?”

“I do,” said Jax. “You saw it, Cara. You really did.”

She felt a small surge of satisfaction.

“You know,” she said slowly, as they waited to cross Route 6, “I didn’t tell you what I heard dad and Roger talking about, when I went into Mom’s office.”

“What?” said Jax quickly.

She saw his look and winced. That was why she hadn’t told him—he was ten, and he missed their mother, and maybe, just maybe, their mother was missing because she’d been…what had their dad said?

Taken.

But she should have told him before. She had to tell him things, even if he was young—even if, sometimes, he looked into her brain when he wasn’t supposed to.

“There was a break-in at her office,” she said haltingly. She found she was still pretty reluctant to talk about it. “And Roger, you know, her boss?—he was telling dad that they stole her work off her computer.”

“Stole it?” asked Jax.

“The data, he said? Or dataset, something like that.”

The light had changed, but Jax was just standing still holding onto Rufus’s leash, looking up at her.

“They took her data?” he asked.

Cara nodded. She felt guilty: she really should have told him, and Max too.

There was just something about all of them, at the moment, that had made her not want to say it out loud…life in their house seemed so delicately balanced, lately, as though—even before the pouring man—things were barely holding together, a kind of imitation of their old life. They kept to the same routine, her dad doing his research, Max working his job at the restaurant and hanging out at the courts or the skate park, Jax trekking off to daycamp or doing his databases…but through it all they were just going through the motions.

And waiting.

They were on hold until real life began again.

Her mother was real life, she thought.