This was good. This claimed my whole attention. Everything had to be right, because I was about to bet my life on these machines, these tubes, these frail connections. On the way to the car, I checked the weather and the tides on my phone app and then drove straight to the abandoned fishing pier. Here in September, midmorning on a school day, I was alone on this sunny stretch of beach. I hadn’t even called Davis or the shop to tell someone where I was. Smart divers did not solo, I told my students. Not even at familiar walk-in spots like this one. But I dropped my bag and peeled my dress over my head and kicked my sandals off anyway. I geared up and did my final checks, then walked into the green-blue waves.

The water rose around me, slowing my unwieldy steps, until the low waves were slapping at my upper thighs. It was enough. I fell forward, arms out, and the water caught me. It took me in. It let me under.

The ocean was thick with bits of green seaweed. Low visibility, but I was almost glad. I didn’t want to see too far ahead. I had no desire to look behind me. I wanted only to be in this now, the water a living world of green surging around me. The ocean had its own breath, and, suspended in the huge, relentless inhale-exhale of the tide, I matched mine to it as I slipped my fins on.

For the first time since Roux had said that word to me, “justice,” I felt as if the air I drew got all the way inside me. I exhaled in regulated, even ways, using my own breath and the ocean’s to keep my body angling ever downward, following the sloping sand into this sacred, silent space. It was huge enough to hold the things inside me.

I came to the wreckage of the pier, where the baitfish churned in schools, flashing silver in the green gloom. They swam, like with like, hundreds banded into a single organism. Each was its own self, but they all stayed in formation, each hoping it would not be singled out. Two long, thin shadows took shape in front of me. Barracuda, drawn by the baitfish, and this was the way the world worked. Predators came, drawn to easy meat. They watched me go by, impassive.

Near the end of the old pier’s remains, a nurse shark lay basking under a rock ledge. He was a good-size fellow, almost as long as I was. He regarded me in profile with his calm, taupe-colored eye. A remora, slim and busy, worked around his gills.

I was more than thirty feet down now, and I kept on going, gliding past him, to the remains of the last pylon. If I wished it, I could simply keep on swimming, out to where there was only ocean and more ocean. I could follow the sloping sand down so deep I’d get narc’d. Giddy-high on oxygen, I could press on until my gauge told me my tank was in the red. I’d drink my last scant air while I stripped down mother-naked. I’d hold my weights, to keep me in the cool, dark deeps. Then I would learn what the real Lolly Shipley had learned, the day she walked into her neighborhood pool. I could watch my last bubble rise, follow it with my eyes as high as I could see but not rise with it. My past would sink with me.

I could see how it would be. I was not afraid of it. If Roux had come seven years ago, I might even have done it. Just kept going, south and down and out. But the life I had now was so sweet, so very dear. Above me, somewhere in airy sunlight, Oliver played with Ruby, safe under Char’s watchful eye. Davis worked in his office, maybe grading papers. Maddy was sneak-texting or doodling her way through math. I had to return to them.

But not yet. And truthfully, if Roux had come seven years ago, I wouldn’t feel this way. Seven years back I had been easy meat. I might simply have given her whatever she wanted. But now? The stakes were higher than she knew. I could feel my heart rate rising. Too much thinking. I was breathing hard now, sucking gas like a newbie. I had to shut it down.

I breathed myself up a foot and flutter-kicked toward the largest heap of rubble, and as I passed, the nurse shark stirred himself and followed, curious. He sailed easily past me, then circled back, clearly used to divers. He angled in close, pushy as a cat, and I scratched his head gently with my fingertips. His skin was smooth and cool, a pleasure to my bare fingers. He slid past, then circled again, coming back in for another scratch.

For this small and stolen moment, I let there be no shore, no small son needing me, no family, no friends, no job. No Roux, invading, knowing things she could not know.

There was only breath and now. The ocean surged around me, teeming and seething with urgent life, each animal, each plant, each cell bent to its own singular business. Time passed, though I was not truly aware of it as time. It was only numbers winding down on my computer, reminding me my stay was finite as I moved in easy loops around the site, the nurse shark shadowing me.

Near the end I found a blue crab peering at me from under a slab of rock. He spread his claws out wide, trying to make himself look bigger, just in case I was a thing that dragged crabs out from under rocks and ate them. I found myself smiling around my regulator, charmed by his bravado. I was all right again. I looked at the crab, fronting large, and I knew what Roux was. I knew I owed her nothing. I was ready to face her.

I made my way back, angling up the sloping sand toward shore, making a safety stop and then surfacing. By the time I’d stowed my gear and traded my wet suit for my damp and sandy dress, it was past noon. I repacked the car, my mind a calm blank, and got in behind the wheel. I didn’t start the engine. Instead I dug my phone out of the glove box and went to Google Docs.

Char had added Roux’s contact info to our shared files. We kept the phone list alphabetical by first name, which put Angelica Roux in second place. The pettiest little piece of me didn’t like seeing her name just under mine, almost touching. She didn’t go by Angelica, so why not shove her down among the R’s where she belonged? I resisted the urge. She had my secrets, and they were not safe with her. I knew what she was. I had to seem compliant, keep her calm. I pushed my salt-thick hair back from my face, breathing steady, staying centered.

When I was ready, I dialed. It barely had time to ring twice before she picked up.

“Hello?” She sounded tense.

“Hey. It’s Amy,” I said. “I think—”

“You take your own sweet time, don’t you?” she said, and I realized she was not just tense. She was downright angry. I couldn’t afford to like this, but I liked it. “Are you coming?”

“In a little bit,” I said, and she snorted.

“Oh, in a little bit? God, who are you?”

“Who are you?” I asked her back. “When you said I owed—”

“Never on the phone. Come over. Now.” And that was all.

“Oh, you bitch,” I said, soft, into the dead connection. Half of me wanted to regear, take my second tank, go straight under again. But I was as ready to face her as I was going to be.

By the time I got back to my neighborhood, it was past one, and I had to pick up Oliver. I didn’t want to take the baby to Roux’s, but Char had that appointment. I left my car at the house and walked two blocks farther down to the cul-de-sac to collect him, not even stopping to clean up the mess I’d left in the pantry or change. I was mostly dry by then anyway.

I thanked Char profusely, promising to pay her back the time with interest. Oliver’d gone down for his big nap, passed out in his bucket seat. I snapped it into the top of the stroller without waking him and wheeled him two doors down.

The red car was gone, but I could hear faint music playing inside. Somebody was home.

I rang the bell, and almost instantly I heard footsteps coming. Roux jerked open the door. Some kind of jazz was on in the room behind her, janky and discordant. She was barefoot, wearing low-rise yoga pants and a workout top that barely covered more flesh than a bra. She was not as calm as I was, her mouth set in an angry line, her forehead furrowed as much as her Botox would allow.

“Come in. I sent Luca to run errands, so we have the place to ourselves.” She stepped back to let me push the stroller in.

I found myself in a dingy living room, crammed with the kind of ugly, durable furniture that ends its life in rental houses. I got an instant case of déjà vu, and yet I’d never once set foot inside the Sprite House. It was dim, mostly because a thick gray blanket had been tacked up over the picture window, but as my eyes adjusted, I could see Roux staring at me with big, wet eyes, both furious and wounded.

She was still in character.

“I can’t believe how long you kept me waiting. Considering.”

“Stop it,” I said, the way I might tell Mad to stop clicking her spoon against her teeth in that enraging habit she had while eating cereal. “You are not Lolly Shipley.”

Roux’s wounded eyes went high-beam. “How can you say that? I saw the whole thing—”

“Not from inside the car. Plastic surgery isn’t a time machine, Roux,” I said, bald and mean. “You’re pushing forty, I would guess.”

A fraught pause, and then she straightened. All her accusing sorrow, it slithered off her like a cape she’d been wearing. I could almost see it puddling at her feet. Her anger stayed.

“I’m not forty,” she snapped. “I could easily—”

I cut her off. “Lolly Shipley died.” Simple. Bare. I kept my eyes on hers, steady. I did not allow my voice to shake.

That took her down a notch.

“Well, shit,” she said. “When?”

“She was five. She drowned,” I said, as calm as I could be, considering.