He’d found a motel in San Luis Obispo, and it was only a thirty-minute bus ride west out to Morro Bay. The surf was only three- to four-foot at best, but it was forming nice right-handers off the stone breakwater. It was a good feeling just being in the ocean, even late in the year, coming into October. He liked to sit out beyond the break, dip and rise with the swell, let the motion ebb away at his thoughts, give him clarity. Every now and then on the crest of a wave, quiet and balanced and almost weightless, water clacking softly on the fibreglass, he thought he understood why he’d got on that train, and sat down across from Gutierrez.

It was the life he’d thought he would have a few weeks ago, working for Lamar. Surf, read, work on his script. He couldn’t imagine getting tired of it.

Erin took nearly four days to come round. He’d been checking on her regularly, sitting with her a lot. Her ex-husband and her son, Alex, had flown down from Chicago. Vincent had met them one morning at the hospital. The kid was nice. He was pale and nervous, but he looked Vincent in the eye and shook his hand. His father seemed like he had other things he’d rather be doing. He struck Vincent as a consummate asshole—that blank expression and lingering gaze, crafted to ascribe guilt, culpability. He couldn’t make it through a conversation without checking his phone at least once.

It was Tuesday morning, ten-thirty, when he went in and found her awake. The ex-husband—Tony—was sitting in the corridor, reading a book. Vincent stepped into Erin’s room, and she turned her head on the pillow and smiled at him. Alex was on the bed with her, curled up asleep, and she was stroking the boy’s hair. Vincent went over and sat in the chair beside the bed and held her other hand.

He said, ‘How long have you been back?’

‘Few hours, I think.’

‘How do you feel?’

‘Too soon to tell.’ Voice cracking and then coming back mid-sentence. She looked at the ceiling again.

Vincent said, ‘I’m just glad you made it.’

‘Me too.’

‘Do you remember what happened?’

‘I think so.’

Vincent said, ‘Do you remember the part where you said we were going to go on vacation, maybe in Malibu?’

She laughed quietly, looked at the child beside her. Eyes shut and lids twitching faintly with sleep. ‘I do remember that.’

‘That’s good. That’s the most important thing.’

But her eyes were closed again now. She squeezed his palm, stroked the back of his hand with her thumb. She’d lost her colour. There were tubes in her arm, tubes snaking in beneath the covers to her torso, draining her injuries. A laceration on her head was sutured in an ugly ladder along her hairline.