Because she could find no compromise, Kate opted to do what she’d decided to do in the beginning. She’d ride with the current until the summer was over. Perhaps by then, an answer would come.

They spoke no more of percentages. Kate quietly dropped the notion of keeping her hotel room. These, she told herself, were small matters when so much more hung in the balance during her second summer with Ky.

The days went quickly with her and Ky working together with the prop-wash or by hand. Slowly, painstakingly, they uncovered more salvage. The candlesticks had turned out to be pewter, but the coin had been Spanish silver. Its date had been 1748.

In the next two-week period, they uncovered much more—a heavy intricately carved silver platter, more china and porcelain, and in another area dozens of nails and tools.

Kate documented each find on film, for practical and personal reasons. She needed the neat, orderly way of keeping track of the salvage. She wanted to be able to look back on those pictures and remember how she felt when Ky held up a crusted teacup or an oxidized tankard. She’d be able to look and remember how he’d played an outstaring game with a large lazy bluefish. And lost.

More than once Ky had suggested the use of a larger ship equipped for salvage. They discussed it, and its advantages, but they never acted on it. Somehow, they both felt they wanted to move slowly, working basically with their own hands until there came a time when they had to make a decision.

The cannons and the heavier pieces of ship’s planking couldn’t be brought up without help, so these they left to the sea for the time being. They continued to use tanks, rather than changing to a surface-supplied source of air, so they had to surface and change gear every hour or so. A diving rig would have saved time—but that wasn’t their goal.

Their methods weren’t efficient by professional salvor standards, but they had an unspoken agreement. Stretch time. Make it last.

The nights they spent together in the big four-poster, talking of the day’s finds, or of tomorrow’s, making love, marking time. They didn’t speak of the future that loomed after the summer’s end. They never talked of what they’d do the day after the treasure was found.

The treasure became their focus, something that kept them from reaching out when the other wasn’t ready.

* * *

The day was fiercely hot as they prepared to dive. The sun was baking. It was mid-July. She’d been in Ocracoke for a month. For all her practicality, Kate told herself it was an omen. Today was the turning point of summer.