“I don’t have decompression sickness,” she interrupted. “No symptoms. I had Luca take me to the ER anyway. We were there most of the day, kickin’ it with the drug-hunting oxy heads and the loudest child on earth. He’d broken something. Not a classy place, the ER. I really thought that would be today’s low point. But look. Here we are.”

As if to illustrate, the shaggy boys put quarters in the ancient Playboy pinball machine near the pool table. It burst into sonic beeps and hootings, the ears and tails on the Bunnies lighting up.

“I would have thought almost drowning was the low point,” I said, and she did not react. “You’re lucky you’re not in a hyperbaric chamber right now.” Or dead, I thought.

“I’m eighteen percent body fat, my resting heart rate is under sixty, and I hydrate like a motherfucker,” she said, waving luck away. She was about to say more, but the beach bum appeared with our drinks just then.

“Thanks,” I said.

She waited until he walked away before she spoke again.

“Is that why I’m here? So you can make sure I’m not going to fall down dead of the bends? How sweet.” Her voice was rich with irony. She reached for her drink and took a large, long swallow. She made a face. “What is that? What gin did you order?”

“I didn’t order a specific gin.”

“God. This tastes like Lysol.” But she drank again. When she set her glass down, it was half empty. It was my only indication that she wasn’t as collected as she seemed.

“Why did you go inside?” I said

She propped her head in her hands, looking up, as if the answer might be written on the ceiling. “I hate fighting with Luca. Earlier, Mark and I looked in that hole, and my light caught something glinting on the floor. Round. Looked like old brass. Maybe a compass or an antique pocket watch. I started to join you, but that fight . . . I was still mad, and I knew Luca was, too. I thought, what if I popped back down and got that compass? For him.” I felt my lips compress. It was illegal to steal treasures off wrecks. Either divers left them for the next diver to enjoy or, if an item was unattached and likely to be washed away, we brought them up to donate to museums. But considering every damn thing else Roux had done, pirating a wreck treasure was hardly worth mentioning. “It looked like an easy in and out. I didn’t see the netting up in the ceiling.” She stopped. I waited, staring her down. She had yet to apologize. She had yet to thank me. Finally she said, “What? What do you expect? Fuck you, Amy. All you did was your job. I’m glad I’m not dead. Thanks for that. Lucky me, I’m still here. And poor you, nothing’s changed.”

She was wrong about that.

“Except that I decided not to pay you,” I said, easy and cool.

We continued to stare each other down for a few more seconds, and then she picked up her drink and drained it.

“Where’s your phone?” she said. I handed it over. I’d already turned it all the way off. She checked, then put it in her pocket and stood, picking up my full drink as she rose. “Ladies’ room.”

She was stalking off across the bar before I could answer. I got up and followed her. She set my drink down on a different table, right by the women’s restroom, then went through the swinging door. I did, too.

The grungy bathroom had avocado-colored floor tile and graffiti in archaeological layers on every inch of the stall doors. She stayed by the chipped sinks, holding her hands out, and I stepped toward her, for once unfazed. I had held her body, racked with shudders, terrified. I had cut it free, carried it up into the air, cradled it until the boat came. My ownership of her body in those moments somehow negated the invasion of her hands now.

She started with my hair again, working her way down as before, talking the whole time. The words came clipped and fast, and I could feel the rising tide of her fury kept in check behind them.

“You aren’t noble. Come on. I can read you easy. I can read you, because I am you. You checked the angles, Amy. If you let me drown, you were so fucked. You never saw my certifications. You lied, on paper, to your shop and that crew. That would have come out. You would have lost your job, maybe faced charges. Probably been sued, and your husband, your neighbors, your coworkers, they all would have wanted to know why you would lie like that for me. Maybe all your secrets would have come out anyway. But you saved me to save your own ass, and oh, now you’re supposed to be my hero?” She was being quick but thorough, already crouching to check my legs and feet, her skirt hiked up to keep the pale, pretty fabric of her dress off the filthy tiles. She glared up at me. “While I’m down here, should I rain tears and kisses on your feet, dry them with my hair? Should I say, ‘Oh, Amy, thank you for my life, let’s call it even’? And just like that you’re off the hook.”

I shook my head. I’d known that wasn’t how this would work right after we broke the surface. Even as she’d floated helpless as a baby in my arms, she’d been rasping at me that nothing had changed. She was too desperate for the money to absolve me now. It was interesting to hear how she tried to justify it, though, and I understood her better. She’d mocked me for living a lie, but she did it, too, exactly the same.

She got up and stomped out of the bathroom, and I went with her, back to the new table. We sat, and she picked up my drink and took a big gulp of it.

“Another round?” the bartender called.

I shook my head. “We’re good.”

Roux ignored the exchange, her eyes on me, insistent. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

I shrugged. There was truth in what she was saying.

“I thought some of those things, but that’s not why I saved you,” I said.

“Sure,” she said, that disbelieving word, but this time it was not enough. She leaned across the table, hands on my drink. “You’re such a liar. You’re lying to yourself right now.” I was looking at her with a kind of pity, because every word she aimed at me was really about her. That story she told Luca, about people needing to pay and her helping them, as if she were the high priest of karma itself, she believed it, too. She had to, to live with herself. It was the largest silent lie I’d ever seen, and I lived with some whoppers. She was trying hard now to find a way to stay karma’s agent, the hero, and still take my money. “I see you, Amy. I know you. You’ve wrapped yourself in a pretty skin so thick it even fools you, but I see you. You can keep that skin on if you want, but you’re damn well going to pay me for the privilege.”

I shook my head. Maybe so, but how thick does a skin have to be before it’s realer than the meat inside? I was already working to undo my steps, rewinding myself to the woman I’d built, reattaching to the family and the home I’d made. I’d started with Tig Simms, sending him a single text.

We missed our window. I love my husband, Tig. I’m not the kind who’ll ever leave him.

I’d hit send, and then I’d blocked his number and deleted our text history. I thought it would be enough. We hadn’t started anything. Not really. Not yet. We’d only heard the echoes of what might have been, the lives we could have owned if any of a thousand little moments had been different. Tig, with his love/cake tats and his easygoing smile, wouldn’t pursue me. If I wanted it to happen, I would have to move toward him, and I would not. I couldn’t keep Tig as an escape route. I couldn’t have a fallback plan. If I was going to fight to keep my family—and I was—I had to be all in.

“I want you to understand,” I told her, and my voice was very gentle. “I am a lot like you. I see myself pretty clearly right now. I could fight you, Roux. I could even win.”

The Polaroid I’d stolen was tucked away inside my purse. I took it out now and slid it across the table to her. She stared down at this version of herself, her mouth working.

“You’ve been busy.” I could hear the smallest tremble in her voice.

“I’ve been playing,” I told her. “You were right. I was in the game. Deep in. But I’m done now.”

She ran her fingers over the image of her own ruined face, and she must have been wondering what else I’d found. I could see wheels spinning behind her eyes, cataloging the secrets hidden in her house; I was under no illusions I’d found everything she had to hide.

“When?” she asked, tapping the photo.

I waved that away. “Doesn’t matter. I was there. And I saw what I saw.”

Her spine elongated. “Now you’re playing poker.”