Caddie. He couldn’t imagine what this must be like for her. Forced by his collapse to go from victim to savior, she had somehow found the courage to do it. How she’d gotten him to shore, he didn’t know, but however she’d accomplished it, he knew that it had taken great strength. Ben thought not about any debt she might owe to him but of the one he now owed to her.

The headache that had held his head in its viselike grip was relaxing. He opened his eyes. Outside the window, he saw Caddie standing with Hudson. Both of them looked in at him with troubled expressions. He realized, with some surprise, that Hudson had his arm around his daughter.

They think I’m dying, he thought. But surely Adam had told them that he wasn’t. Yes, he answered himself, but you wouldn’t believe it either if it was one of them in here.

No, he admitted, he wouldn’t. Even though he trusted Adam’s and Leo’s experience, even though he believed that he would be all right, he wouldn’t have the same faith if it were anyone else inside the chamber. Anyone I loved, anyway, he thought.

It was odd—unsettling, actually—how love magnified everything. Small joy was turned into overwhelming happiness; worry became heart-stopping fear. It was as if love became a magnifying glass turned on the heart, taking whatever was there and making it appear many times its normal size.

He was reminded once again of being inside a submarine. Only this time, he was descending not into the Monterey Canyon but into his own heart. Outside were not strange invertebrates and curious fish, but the two people most important to his world. Still, he regarded them with the same sense of awe and mystery, as if he saw them for the first time.

Caddie, he realized looking at her, was not nearly as strong as she pretended to be. Yes, she was full of fire, too full perhaps. But she still needed direction. She needed to know that it was all right if she tried and fell, that someone would be there to pick her up and put her on her feet again. She doesn’t think she has anyone, he thought. That’s why she’s so unhappy.

And Hudson? He was, in many ways, a deeper mystery. Like Caddie, he had come to Ben’s aid and brought him to shore in a way no one else ever had. What had happened between them had shown Ben who he really was, or really might be if he decided to live without fear. That was something Ben and Caddie had in common, he realized. They were both afraid. But Caddie had Ben to pick her up, and now Ben had Hudson.