“You can speak to the outside world if you’re feeling up to it.” Adam, he thought, was reading his mind all too accurately. “There’s a microphone on your left. Just press the red button and talk into it.”

Ben looked for the microphone, found it, and picked it up. He held the button down. “If you look carefully in the tank ahead of you,” he said, “you can see the very rare bent marine biologist.”

On the other side of the glass, Caddie and Hudson broke out in smiles. They crowded closer to the glass. “Well,” Ben said, “maybe not so rare. But definitely popular.”

“You’re giving that white shark the aquarium has a run for its money,” said Leo’s voice. “We’re going to have to start charging admission.”

Caddie’s hands were pressed against the glass. He saw the lines on her palms, the scar across the right one where she’d fallen and cut herself on broken glass when she was six. There was a new cut there as well, a pinkish-red slice across the three middle fingers of the hand. She got that pulling me in, he realized. It’s where she held on to my BC.

Suddenly he wanted to be alone. It was too overwhelming to sit inside what amounted to a fishbowl with nothing to look at but his own life. He wanted to close his eyes and go somewhere else, if only for a while. There, perhaps, he could rest. His world would still be there when he returned.

He pressed the button on the microphone again. “You two should go get something to eat,” he suggested.

Caddie shook her head.

“I’ll be fine,” he told her. “Besides, I’m getting tired of looking at the two of you. Take a walk and come back later. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

Caddie stepped away. Hudson put his hand on the window, waving good-bye with the other. “We’ll be back,” he mouthed silently.

The two of them walked out of sight. Ben, staring after them, saw that they had left palm prints on the glass. He reached out and touched the whorled ghosts of their fingertips. I’ll be here, he thought. I promise.

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 45

“How did you know something was wrong?” Caddie asked, picking up a shrimp and pulling it from its shell before plunging it into the dish of butter and spices.