Ky swam around the barrel. When he removed his knife and struck the cannon with the hilt the metallic sound rang out strangely. Kate was certain she’d never heard anything more musical. Her laughter came out in a string of bubbles that made Ky look in her direction and grin.

They’d found a corroded cannon, he thought, and she was as thrilled as if they’d found a chest full of doubloons. And he understood it. They’d found something perhaps no one had seen for two centuries. That in itself was a treasure.

With a movement of his hand he indicated for her to follow, then they began to swim slowly east. If they’d found a cannon, it was likely they’d find more.

Reluctant to leave her initial discovery, Kate swam with him, looking back as often as she looked ahead. She hadn’t realized the excitement would be this intense. How could she explain what it felt like to discover something that had lain untouched on the sea floor for more than two centuries? Who would understand more clearly, she wondered, her colleagues at Yale or Ky? Somehow she felt her colleagues would understand intellectually, but they would never understand the exhilaration. Intellectual pleasure didn’t make you giddy enough to want to turn somersaults.

How would her father have felt if he’d found it? She wished she knew. She wished she could have given him that one instant of exultation, perhaps shared it with him as they’d so rarely shared anything. He’d only known the planning, the theorizing, the bookwork. With one long look at that ancient weapon, she’d known so much more.

When Ky stopped and touched her shoulders, her emotions were as mixed as her thoughts. If she could have spoken she’d have told him to hold her, though she wouldn’t have known why. She was thrilled, yet running through the joy was a thin shaft of sorrow—for what was lost, she thought. For what she’d never be able to find again.

Perhaps he knew something of what moved her. They couldn’t communicate with words, but he touched her cheek—just a brush of his finger over her skin. It was more comforting to her than a dozen soft speeches.

She understood then that she’d never stopped loving him. No matter how many years, how many miles had separated them, what life she had she’d left with him. The time in between had been little more than existence. It was possible to live with emptiness, even to be content with it until you had that heady taste of life again.

She might have panicked. She might have run if she hadn’t been trapped there, fathoms deep in the midst of a discovery. Instead she accepted the knowledge, hoping that time would tell her what to do.