A fifty-foot blue-black peak breaking top to bottom …

In that fraction of a moment I hated him.

And in that half second … I knew there was no way I could get to him in time. I had missed my moment.

She wonders if the world really needs this confession, but she knows that she does. It’s been three weeks since rising from the almost dead. Her memories are creeping back, and they frighten her but she can face them.

So she saves the story and attaches it to a note to her Surf Tribe editor.

Apologizes for taking so long.

Hits send.

Jen spends the next hour walking her dark, autumn-cool beach town. She loves this city, its buildings and streets, its beaches and waves and coves. The boardwalk. The smells of the Pacific and eucalyptus and the restaurants, the smell of the Barrel when it was alive, the smell of the roses up in Heisler Park. Loves the people, the artists, the eccentrics, the homeless huddled in their blankets in the cold retail doorways on Forest Avenue.

Live here; die here in this privileged, charming bubble.

We ride huge waves for the rush of it. And the joy and the danger. We pretty much ignore the rest of the world. We are not superfluous people, but we are highly specialized. We Stonebreakers are the stock of champions, who are, of course, made, not born. We beat fear.

Right now she feels released from her past, although found guilty as charged. By a jury of one: herself.

Freed by her confession, born again by truth.

And Jen hopes—she’d pray if she knew how—that Casey and Brock and her mom and dad and Mike and Marilyn will understand and forgive her for missing the chance to save John’s life. If not, well, she’s given them a foundation of truth rather than a half-truth.

Jen puts one foot in front of the other as she traverses the sleeping city.

An orange-and-black Corvette howls through the crosswalk at Brooks Street, just ten feet from her.

Jen freezes mid-stride.

Another chance to write a new destiny, she thinks. To do for Casey and Brock what you couldn’t do for John.

Keep them alive. Protect and serve.

And do something for yourself, she thinks. Finally. Something for the Jen Stonebreaker drowning in regret and fear for all those many years.

Drown no more.

Ride wild horses again.

41

Belle Becket has her fortune-teller’s table set up near the sea wall just south of the Laguna Hotel. The wall has the painting of John Stonebreaker banking off a comically perfect wave at Brooks Street—just a few blocks south of here. For the first time, the painting shows its age to Jen: the gray cement divots, the weakening colors, John’s hair fading from yellow to white.

Belle has on the same tie-dye hippie dress she was wearing last month. Her hair is its usual tangled mess, her gray eyes piercing, the racoon makeup lurid.

The November day is sunny and blustery, and the breeze wobbles her sign. Jen notes that Belle has raised her prices. Now the short future forecast is five dollars and the long one ten.

Belle comes around and Jen hugs her gingerly, tries not to breathe. Since almost drowning she dares not hold her breath. Sends a panic through her—her body just won’t do it. She breathes in Belle’s sharp, wild-gourd scent.

Belle steps back, taking one of Jen’s hands in both of hers. Gives Jen an alarmed look.

“I’m sorry about the Barrel! I’m so glad they arrested Jimmy Wu! Good police work.”

With a lot of help from Bette, Jen thinks.

“I walk past it every day,” says Belle. “The rehab is going faster and faster.”

“I got the loan and the builders are good.”

“I see a beautiful Barrel there by summer.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I’m always right. Short or long today?”

Jen has five twenties balled up in the pocket of her jeans. Pushes them into Belle’s almost-empty mason jar.

“Long, Belle. Tell me what you see.”

“Sit.”

Belle moves the shadeless lamp that holds her handwritten grocery-bag sign, then takes Jen’s hands and stares at her as Jen closes her eyes.

Then Belle.

“Now I’m underwater with you, Jen. Seeing through you. Feeling what you feel. You are frightened and alone and rolling over a reef. You hit a rock but your helmet stays on.”

“It was terrible, Belle. I almost died.”

“I read your story.”

A long silence. Jen knew that Belle would read her piece. That was one of the reasons she wrote it.

“You push off the rocks for the surface. You break into the light. You gasp for air but the whitewater hits your face and mouth.”

Jen concentrates on this. It’s another memory that has stolen back into her. It’s like seeing it happen for the first time. She feels the terror again, those cold, bony fingers trying to take hold of her.

“Now I see nothing but black,” says Belle. “You have stopped seeing.”

Black indeed. Thoughtless silence, forever.

But now Jen opens her eyes to the breezy gray light of Laguna. Colliding with death has changed her. She can face the memories of it, and feel the fear—but she can also banish them from her inner eye. Replace them with the bright, living world around her.

“The black can’t hold me down anymore, Belle. I can make it. Make it to the surface and breathe.”

“It is the euphoria of survival. And congratulations on Casey winning. You must be proud. Your mother, too.”