Tidewater

Daniel drove the whole way with his jaw set like a man chewing on a grudge, which, to be fair, he was. I watched the pines slide past the passenger window and did the math on how many hours of silence I could reasonably sustain before he called it sulking.

"You didn't tell me he'd be here," he said finally.

"I told you the station has a new manager." I kept my voice flat. "I didn't tell you his name because I didn't think it mattered."

"George Reyes, Rosa. Your George."

"He was never my George." I turned to look at him. "He was my research partner for three years, six years ago. We sampled eelgrass and argued about statistical methods. That's the whole biography."

"You don't have to go."

"Daniel. My name is on the grant. My name is on the survey. I have four weeks of fieldwork and a station that needs a benthic assessment before the permits expire. I'm going." I paused, then said the thing I probably shouldn't have. "Also, we're signing divorce papers this month. I'm not asking permission to do my job."

His hands tightened on the wheel. "So that's how it is."

"That's how it's been for about two years, yes."

We didn't talk after that, which suited me. The road narrowed and turned to gravel, and the trees opened up onto the sound, gray and flat under a sky the color of wet newspaper. Tidewater Station sat at the end of the spit like something the tide had left behind and forgotten to take back. Three buildings, a dock, a boathouse with a listing roof, and wind. Lots of wind.

"You picked a romantic spot," Daniel said, and it came out with edges.

"It's a research station, not a bed and breakfast."

Kelli was on the dock when we pulled in, hauling a cooler that was clearly winning. She was twenty-five and chatty in a way I'd come to find useful, because she told you everything, whether you asked or not.

"Dr. Marsh! Finally." She dropped the cooler and wiped her hands on her jeans. "The truck with the new filters came Tuesday, so we're not totally doomed. Hi, I'm Kelli. You must be the husband."

"I'm the husband," Daniel said, in the tone of a man accepting a life sentence.

"He's staying the week," I said, before either of us had decided anything. Kelli's eyebrows did a little dance and I pretended not to see it.

"Oh, cool. Awesome. We've got the guest room in the main house, it's small but the heater works, mostly." She hoisted the cooler again. "George's in the lab if you want to check in. He asked twice when you were getting here."

"Did he," I said.

"Three times, actually, if you count the text."

I took my duffel out of the trunk and carried it toward the main house without hurrying. Daniel followed, pulling both his bags, because Daniel never traveled light, not even to a place with one shower and a generator. The main house smelled like coffee and old salt. It smelled, in fact, like every field station I'd ever worked in, and something in my chest unclenched a little at that, which made me angrier at Daniel for a reason I couldn't name.

The room was small, like Kelli had promised. Two beds, one window, the sound visible if you leaned. Daniel set his bags down and looked around like he was pricing the real estate.

"This is where you'll be living?"

"For four weeks. I've slept in worse. I slept in a tent on Sable Island for a month, you remember that."

"I remember you came home smelling like fish."

"Well. Marine biology. It's in the brochure."

He sat on the bed and checked his phone, which had one bar and would have one bar all week, a fact I was savoring in advance. "I'll work remotely. It's fine. Someone should keep an eye on things."

"Keep an eye on things," I repeated. "I'm here to count invertebrates, Daniel. Not to have an affair in a boathouse."

"That's not what I said."

"That's what you meant."

He didn't answer, which was its own answer, and I went to find the lab.

George was at the bench with his back to the door, sorting sample jars, and I swear he knew I was there before I said anything, because his shoulders changed first. Thirty-six now, a little grayer at the temples than the last time I'd seen him, same rolled sleeves, same habit of holding a pencil he never wrote with.

"Marsh," he said, turning around.

"Reyes."

"Six years."

"Six years, three months. I keep better records than you do."

He laughed, and the sound of it did something unfair to me, so I busied myself with the sample log on the bench. "Kelli says you asked when I was getting here. Three times."

"Kelli says a lot of things." He set the pencil down. "I asked because I wanted to know if you were coming. That's all the investigation you need to do."

"Daniel's staying the week."

"I heard. Sound carries here, and Kelli carries faster." He leaned against the bench and crossed his arms. "Rosa. I'm glad you're here and I want to say that plainly, because last time we talked, I wasn't plain about anything, and it cost us both something."

"You walked away from a joint appointment to take a solo posting. That's not a crime. People do it constantly."

"I didn't just walk away from an appointment."

"We're not doing this in the first hour," I said, and my voice came out sharper than I meant. "I'm here to work. There's a divorce on my calendar with an actual date on it. Whatever unfinished business you think is lying around, I don't have the shelf space."

He nodded slowly, and he didn't push, which I remembered him being good at. "Okay. Then work. The boat's due back Thursday, storm window's closing after that, so if you want the outer beds surveyed, we go early."

"We?"

"I'm still listed as station manager and support diver on your permit. I filed the amendments myself." He picked the pencil back up. "Figured you'd need me. Figured you'd be mad about needing me. Both things can be true."

"That's annoyingly correct."

"I've had six years to workshop it." He nodded toward the window, where the water had gone darker. "That front coming in Tuesday is a real one. Weather service says it might park over us for days. So whatever your husband's keeping an eye on, he's going to be keeping an eye on it from very close range."

"Wonderful."

"For what it's worth," George said, and he said it carefully, "the guest room has a lock on the door. The main house doesn't believe in locks, but that room does. I put it on myself when I read the staff roster and saw your name."

I looked at him for that. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. I also broke the coffee grinder and haven't told anyone."

"That I will hold against you forever."

"Good," he said, smiling. "Forever gives us somewhere to start."

I took my bag to the guest room and unpacked what I needed for four weeks of mud. Daniel stayed on his bed with his phone. Neither of us suggested dinner together, and neither of us had to.

Kelli made dinner that first night, which meant pasta with a jarred sauce she'd doctored up, and we all ate it at the long table in the main house because Tidewater Station doesn't believe in eating anywhere else.

"So Daniel, what is it you do again?" Kelli asked, ladling seconds she'd already decided he needed.

"Investment banking," Daniel said. "I'm consulting remotely this week."

"On what?" I asked.

"Various portfolios."

"Various," Kelli repeated, delighted. "That's so mysterious."

"It's finance," Daniel said. "It's not meant to be exciting."

"Well, Rosa's job is exciting," Kelli said. "She counts things that live in mud."

"Charismatic mud," I said.

"See?" Kelli pointed her fork at Daniel. "You could learn from her. She makes mud sound fun."

Daniel smiled the smile he used at dinner parties, the one that never reached anywhere near his eyes. "It's admirable, really. Playing in the mud at thirty-eight. Some of us grew out of it."

The table went quiet in the way tables do when everyone hears a thing and nobody wants to be first to name it.

"Actually," George said, not looking up from his plate, "the benthic survey she's running is why the state hasn't shut down half the leases on this sound. So it's mud with consequences."

"Still," Daniel said, "it must be nice. No deadlines that matter. No one waiting on you."

"I have deadlines," I said, light as I could make it. "The permits expire this month, which is why I'm here counting things in mud, Daniel. It's literally on the calendar."

"Of course. I just meant it must be relaxing. Compared to real work."

Kelli looked at me, and George looked at his fork, and I did the thing I'd gotten good at over the last two years, which was swallowing it and passing the bread.

"More pasta, anyone?" I said.

"I'll take some," George said, and that constituted the entire rescue operation, and I was grateful to him for it.

Later I found him rinsing dishes at the sink while Kelli dried, and I picked up a towel and joined them, because that's what you do at a field station, you do the dishes, it's the law.

"Your husband's a piece of work," Kelli said, cheerfully, quietly, the way she said everything.

"He's having a hard week," I said.

"He's having a hard life, sounds like."

"Kelli," George said, not unkindly.

"Sorry. Not sorry. But mostly sorry." She flounced off toward the bunkhouse and left us at the sink, which was worse, because then it was just the two of us and the sound of the water.

"You don't have to manage me," I said. "I can absorb one dinner's worth of insults."

"I know you can. I've watched you absorb worse from bigger men. Department heads, mostly." He handed me a plate. "It's just strange, seeing it."

"Seeing what?"

"You. Handling him like a load you're used to carrying." He shut off the tap. "Six years ago you would have lit him up at the table."

"Six years ago I had more fight in reserve. I've been spending it on other things."

He didn't say anything to that, and I remembered that about him too, that he knew when a thing was finished being discussed. It was one of the reasons the three years of fieldwork worked and one of the reasons, I think, the thing after it didn't.

The storm was supposed to arrive Tuesday. It jumped the schedule, because