And now, they had been joined by her folks’ best friends and a younger couple the two had recently met when they’d been out at a local restaurant or somewhere. Her mom and dad were happy to bring out-of-towners out on their boat with them for the day.

Katie didn’t care—today was her birthday for her folks day.

Her actual birthday had been last week, and she’d spent it with her friends, including her boyfriend, Brad. Her parents had been great about it.

But being fifteen didn’t change her love for her family or the water. In fact, it brought her closer to her dream. She’d go to college. She’d learn how to run a business. Because eventually, she’d have her own company, be a certified dive master. And then maybe she’d get serious about boys. And if Brad was still around, and still hot, well...

Yep. She knew she was envied by other girls her age because Brad was hot. She grinned around her regulator mouthpiece. He just wasn’t as good a diver as she was yet.

One day she would change that!

You never, ever dive without a dive buddy. The best divers in the world might perish when a problem could be easily solved or alleviated if a partner was just at hand.

Her father had hammered that lesson into her.

She suspected that during her father’s time in the navy, he had been in the water a few times on dangerous missions when a partner had not been with him.

But she wasn’t alone today; she was following the rules.

She’d thought maybe the young woman they’d just met, Jennie, who was with a guy named Neil, might have wanted to get in the water again. But Jennie seemed to be a bit of a prima donna: she wanted to be on the boat but not in the water. She said she could dive, she was certified, she just didn’t feel like being all salty with wet hair.

That was all right. Katie wasn’t alone. She might have wandered a bit from the anchor line, but her mom’s friend, Anita, was in the water near her somewhere. Mrs. Calabria was always cool: she might have wanted to stay onboard with the other adults, but if so, she hadn’t let Katie see that. She had just enthusiastically excused herself to her new friends, Dr. Neil Browne, doctor of what Katie didn’t know, and his girlfriend Jennie someone, from somewhere up north. Katie didn’t know much about Dr. Browne or Jennie, but they were a younger duo, full of energy, eager for new experiences—except for getting wet, so it seemed. They seemed nice enough, though she had to wonder if her parents and George and Anita might be trying a little too hard to keep up with them. Like her folks, George and Anita were older now.