Chapter 1 - THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GLASS
My son pressed his palms against the shark tank and pointed to the man on the other side. “Mom, why is Dad holding her hand?”
An hour earlier, Reid had handed me three regular tickets and said an emergency at work meant he couldn't stay.
For a moment I thought Miles had mistaken someone else's green jacket for his father's. The man across the water had his back to us, and a sand tiger shark was passing between the two viewing areas. Then he turned toward a little girl in a yellow sweater, and I saw the small white scar beside his eyebrow.
Reid.
He was standing on the private viewing deck we had told our twins was sold out.
The little girl took his hand. A woman beside them raised her phone, and Reid crouched until his face was level with the girl's. He smiled for the picture with the easy patience I'd spent all morning trying to provide for our own children.
“That is Dad,” Miles said.
His sister Mae stopped reading the sign about shark teeth. “Where?”
I put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Stay with me.”
That morning had begun with a drawing taped to our refrigerator. Miles had made a map of Tidewater Aquarium from its website, with a crooked blue star over the shark exhibit. Mae had added a sea turtle wearing a crown. We'd planned this Saturday for weeks, the last free weekend before school started.
At breakfast Reid had pointed to the drawing and said, “First stop, the sharks. Then you two can show me everything I missed.”
The twins had laughed because he couldn't have missed anything. None of us had been there yet.
We drove together. Reid found a spot in the garage, bought our tickets at the front kiosk, and gave me three of them instead of four. His phone was pressed to his ear before I could ask why.
“The cooling system at a client's building is down,” he said when he ended the call. Reid managed service accounts for a heating and air company. Weekend calls weren't unusual, but he had promised the kids that this one was theirs.
“Can you fix it from here?” Mae asked.
“I wish I could, peanut.” He bent to kiss the top of her head. “I'll come back if I finish in time.”
Miles held up the folded aquarium brochure. “What about the tour above the shark tank? The one where you can watch the feeding?”
Reid barely glanced at it. “Sold out. I checked.”
He tucked the parking ticket into my purse, kissed my cheek, and hurried toward the garage. I watched him go while both children waited for me to make sense of it.
We made it through the touch pool. I helped Mae wash her hands after she put two fingers against a starfish, and Miles spent fifteen minutes asking a volunteer whether a ray could recognize a person's face. I told myself Reid was going to call back, apologize, and show up before lunch.
Then we entered the shark gallery.
The main tank stretched from floor to ceiling. Across it, partly hidden by rocks and moving water, was a smaller platform behind another window. A sign near us identified it as the Private Viewing Deck. I hadn't realized people on one side could see the other.
Miles spotted his father before I did. Across the tank, Reid had a blue VIP band on his wrist. The woman beside him wore one too, as did the little girl. There was no work badge, no client with a broken air conditioner, no reason I could imagine that made him unable to stand beside his own children.
“Dad!” Miles shouted.
Several people in our gallery turned. On the other side, Reid was looking down at the little girl. The water muffled everything, even if he could have heard us through two walls of glass.
I lifted my phone. In the first picture a shark obscured his face. In the second I caught him looking straight at the woman's camera, his arm behind her shoulders. The clock on my screen read 11:18 a.m.
“Why is he over there?” Mae asked. Her voice was smaller than Miles's.
“I don't know yet.” It was the only answer I could give without making up another lie.
Miles pressed closer to the glass. “He said there weren't any tickets.”
I wanted to walk around the tank, find the VIP entrance, and ask Reid to say that to our son's face. But Mae was holding the brochure so tightly it had creased down the middle. Miles was still waiting for his father to look up. Neither child deserved a confrontation among strangers.
“Come on,” I said. “Let's find the turtles.”
Miles didn't move at first. Then he took his sister's hand and followed me out of the gallery. I kept my voice steady through the turtle exhibit and bought them pretzels at the café, though we'd packed sandwiches.
I sat with their drinks between us and turned my phone face down on the table.
May you like
It buzzed. Reid's message lit up the screen.
Still at the client's building. Tell the twins I'll make it up to them.
