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Contents (45)
  1. ALSO BY AUDREY SCHULMAN
  2. THE DOLPHIN HOUSE
  3. ONE Tampa, Florida Feb. 1965
  4. TWO Aug. 1957 Ogunquit, Maine
  5. THREE May 1965
  6. FOUR March 1958 Orlando, Florida
  7. ARRIVAL
  8. FIVE June 4, 1965
  9. SIX June 4, 1965
  10. SEVEN June 5, 1965
  11. EIGHT June 6–10, 1965
  12. NINE June 11–16, 1965
  13. TEN June 17–26, 1965
  14. ELEVEN June 27–30, 1965
  15. TWELVE July 1–8, 1965
  16. THIRTEEN July 9–13, 1965
  17. FOURTEEN July 14, 1965
  18. LANGUAGE LESSONS
  19. FIFTEEN July 15–17, 1965
  20. SIXTEEN
  21. SEVENTEEN July 18–25, 1965
  22. EIGHTEEN July 26–Aug. 1, 1965
  23. NINETEEN Aug. 2–7, 1965
  24. TWENTY Aug. 8–15, 1965
  25. TWENTY-ONE Aug. 16, 1965
  26. TWENTY-TWO Aug. 17–30, 1965
  27. HOMEARIUM
  28. TWENTY-THREE Homearium, Day 1
  29. TWENTY-FOUR Homearium, Day 3
  30. TWENTY-FIVE Homearium, Days 4–7
  31. TWENTY-SIX Homearium, Week 2
  32. TWENTY-SEVEN Homearium, Week 3
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT Homearium, Week 4
  34. TWENTY-NINE Homearium, Week 5
  35. THIRTY Homearium, Weeks 6–8
  36. THIRTY-ONE Homearium, Weeks 9–11
  37. THIRTY-TWO Homearium, Week 12
  38. THIRTY-THREE Homearium, Week 13
  39. THIRTY-FOUR Homearium, Week 14
  40. THIRTY-FIVE Homearium, Week 15
  41. THIRTY-SIX Homearium, Week 16
  42. THIRTY-SEVEN Homearium, Week 18
  43. THIRTY-EIGHT
  44. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  45. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

So she just floated in the water, studying them, searching for clues of what she was doing wrong. Gradually they began to get used to her, moving around more. The water was dappled and columned, the animals sliding through it.

They cut through the water with little effort, their tails barely pumping. They spun, twisting and gliding. Even at the speed with which they moved, they didn’t collide. They were like professional dancers performing complex routines, sliding smoothly around each other.

Occasionally she threw a fish into the water, but she never saw the dolphins eat anything she threw. The dolphins didn’t look weak or emaciated, but she wasn’t sure she’d recognized the signs. They examined her with each circuit, creaking their noises in her direction, no longer startling each time she moved. She didn’t know if they were a family, caught together, or strangers to one another, each caught separately.

Around three that afternoon, a school of butterfish entered the lagoon along the chute, scooting around, looking for food. The dolphins shot forward and snapped them up, their hunger apparent in their bolt of speed.

Perhaps they wanted prey that moved.

She waded out of the water and searched through the building until she found a fishing rod in a closet. She cut off some fishing line, thin and transparent. Tying one end around a whole fish, she walked up the sluice about 10 feet, then dropped the body into the water. It tumbled down the sluice toward the lagoon. She jerked the string every second or so. She’d jigged for fish this way before with her granddad, was competent at it, letting the body roll with the current, then jerking it up in a way that made it appear alive, at least to simple predators.

None of the dolphins even approached it.

The dolphin with the cut on its side stuck its head out of the water and stared, not at the jerked corpse, but at her holding the string.

* * *

At the end of the day, as the sun went down, Tibbet stepped on the veranda above, his skin appearing to glow red in the sunset. His defenseless watery eyes. He called out—Did they eat anything?

Blum had clearly told him she was hard of hearing because he half yelled these words while pointing to the dolphins and then his mouth.

She was out of the water, sitting on the dock, watching the lagoon and thinking. Her hair dry and her glasses on.—No.

He grunted, exchanging glances with someone inside and turned away, already considering her gone.

SEVEN
June 5, 1965

The Cantab, the restaurant she had worked at, was built on a wharf extending out into the water, popular not so much for its food as for the view and location. About two weeks into working here, there’d been an accident. At the point it happened, the men at the table in the far corner of the deck, the table with the best view, were telling her the story of having killed a shark.