She and Hudson had come to Bubba Gump’s, in the middle of Cannery Row. It was a place neither of them would normally go into, packed with tourists and overflowing with kitsch. Yet they’d gravitated to it naturally, as if they needed to be someplace so alive that they couldn’t help but be reminded that life was still going on despite their worry over Ben. Now they sat near a table filled with raucous teenagers whose eagerness to appear older than they were was having the opposite effect of making them seem like spoiled children. Still, something about their youth made it impossible to believe in death, and neither Caddie nor Hudson suggested moving.

Hudson sipped his drink, a too-sweet combination of strawberries, pineapple, and coconut milk. It was also too cold, and pain, ice bright and sharp, pierced his head. He rubbed his temples futilely, waiting for it to pass. When it did, he answered Caddie’s question. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I was just coming down to say hello.”

Caddie poked at the empty shells lying, like the mounded skeletons of ghosts, in the bowl before her. “Good timing,” she remarked.

Hudson wasn’t sure what to make of that. Now that the initial shock of the accident was wearing off, perhaps she was back to hating him. But he didn’t think so. Something in her had changed since the morning, as if the accident had killed something invisible in her rather than destroying her body. There was still anger in her—it was visible in her face and in the tightness of her movements—but he felt it was no longer directed at him.

“Do you remember much?” he asked her.

Caddie shook her head. “I remember trying to breathe and not being able to get any air,” she said. “After that, it’s mostly a blur. I didn’t even know he was holding on to me until we were on the surface.” She drew a shrimp languidly through the butter, held it up, and watched the golden drops fall back into the bowl. “I really thought he was dead.”

“So did I, when I saw him,” Hudson told her. “He was so ...” His voice trailed off as he stirred his drink, watching the layers of red and white swirl together.

“I used to pretend he was dead,” Caddie said.

Hudson looked at her. She was picking the shrimp apart, using her nail to split the back and pulling the legs off one at a time. When just the meat was left, she dropped it onto the shells, then licked her fingers. “When I was little,” she said. “That’s when I did it.”

“Why?” Hudson asked.

Caddie shrugged. “It felt like he was,” she answered. “He was never around, and I got tired of people asking me where he was, so one day I just started telling everyone that he’d died.”

“Did you mother know that?”