By the time my husband chose his ex-girlfriend for the only rescue helicopter leaving our boat, my left leg had gone numb from the knee down—and he was the one man aboard who understood exactly what that could mean.
Chapter 3
The divorce was simpler than the marriage had been.
We had no children, and neither of us wanted a long fight. The only complicated issue involved years of photographs and promotional footage I had produced for Blue Current without charging the company because I had believed marriage made keeping score unnecessary.
My attorney, Nora Chase, helped me separate what belonged to me from what I had willingly given.
Ryan offered compensation for past commercial use of my work.
Nora asked whether I wanted to push for more.
“No,” I said. “If it’s mine, I’ll take it. If it isn’t, I’ll leave it.”
For the first time in years, enough felt like enough.
Three months after the accident, Ryan and I met to sign the final papers.
He looked older.
“Do you think you’ll ever dive again?” he asked.
I froze.
By then I could walk without a cane on good days, but I still felt uneasy beside deep swimming pools. I had not put my face underwater since the accident.
“I don’t know.”
“You loved the ocean.”
“I still do.”
He looked confused.
I closed the folder containing our divorce papers. “Loving something doesn’t mean I have to run back to it after it hurts me just to prove I’m not afraid.”
Ryan nodded.
“I’m sorry, Claire.”
For years, whenever Ryan apologized, I had made it easier for him.
It’s okay.
I understand.
You didn’t mean it.
This time I said, “I know.”
Then I signed the last page.
My leg healed better than doctors initially predicted. Six months after the accident, I walked normally. By nine months, I could jog.
But I still did not dive.
I took land-based assignments with marine laboratories, coastal restoration teams, fishing communities, and research vessels. I photographed the ocean from decks and shorelines.
People kept asking the same question.
“When are you getting back underwater?”
At first, it embarrassed me. I felt as if refusing to dive meant Ryan and the accident had defeated me.
Then my physical therapist, Denise, asked me something nobody else had.
“What if you never dive again?”
I stared at her.
“Would you still be Claire?”
“I don’t know.”
“That might be the question worth answering first.”
She sat beside me.
“You aren’t Claire because you can dive. If you want to go back, go back. If you don’t, you’re still you.”
That year I met Evan Brooks, a marine acoustics researcher who studied whales and underwater noise caused by shipping traffic.
His team hired me to document the deployment of acoustic equipment.
“I don’t do underwater work anymore,” I told him before I accepted.
“Okay.”
I waited.
No questions came.
“You don’t want to know why?”
Evan looked up from his project notes. “Do I need to know for the shoot?”
“No.”
“Then no.”
Something about that answer made my chest loosen.
We finished the project and went for burgers at a marina restaurant. Halfway through dinner, Evan noticed I had barely touched my fries.
“Bad?”
“Too salty.”
He tried one of his.
“Wow. This place has officially lost the only thing it had going for it.”
I laughed.
That was how we began.
Nothing dramatic happened. There was no immediate confession, no grand gesture, no sense that destiny had entered the room.
We simply kept choosing another dinner.
Then another.
Evan was not perfect. Neither was I. We disagreed about work, schedules, money, and whether air-conditioning needed to be set cold enough to preserve meat.
But when I said something bothered me, he did not immediately explain why it should not.
A year into our relationship, we were preparing for a documentary assignment in the Bahamas.
The contract included underwater photography.
Evan looked at me. “Do you want the job?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want to do about the underwater part?”
“I can hire another camera operator.”
“Okay.”
That was it.
No encouragement that was secretly pressure.
No speech about overcoming fear.
On the third day, we were anchored over twenty feet of clear water. I could see white sand beneath the boat.
I stood at the stern for several minutes.
Then I said, “I want to go down.”
Evan stopped working.
“Today?”
“Yeah.”
“How deep?”
“Twenty feet.”
“How long?”
“Ten minutes.”
He nodded. “Want me with you?”
I thought about it.
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
We entered the water together.
For the first two minutes, I checked everything obsessively: pressure gauge, regulator, depth, computer, Evan, then pressure gauge again.
My breathing came too fast.
Evan did not grab me.
He did not make an “Are you okay?” signal every ten seconds.
He stayed where I could see him.
Five minutes into the dive, a sea turtle glided over the sand.
My hand moved before my fear could object.
I lifted the camera.
For fifteen seconds, maybe twenty, I followed the turtle through the viewfinder.
When it disappeared into blue water, I realized I had forgotten about the accident.
Back on the boat, I started crying.
Evan handed me a towel and sat beside me.
“I thought I’d never do that again,” I said.
He nodded.
“Then that’s enough for today.”
It was one of the safest things anyone had ever said to me.
Not because he promised to rescue me.
Because he did not use my ability to keep going as a reason to make me go farther.
