“So you know Dave Rich?” he asked.
That took her by surprise.
“Yeah, I know him,” she said.
“I’ve seen him walking up your stairs. I figured you guys were … is he your …?” And he blushed again.
It was really rare to meet a guy who blushed. Dave had told her that she was intimidating to guys, an observation she took offense to at first. Was she supposed to reduce her strength or power so as not to intimidate guys? “No,” Dave said. “You’re just beautiful and confident, and guys get stupid around you.” She told him that was a nice save to get out of a feminism discussion, and they’d left it for the time being. Was that what was causing Ryan to stammer and blush?
“No, he’s not my boyfriend,” she said. “But we’re close. So … anyway. I need to ask you if you saw anything weird this morning. Did you see anyone hanging around here?”
“Ummm, I don’t think so,” he said. “I was in the water starting at about seven AM, though. So what time would this have been?”
Madison realized that most of the people in the houses and apartments near her weren’t around when she went out for her run at seven thirty that morning. Either they were on their way to work, difficult at that time of the morning to get out of La Jolla with traffic, or in the water surfing.
“Oh, right. Okay. Well, can you let me know if you see anything weird? I had something happen this morning, and I’m trying to get to the bottom of it.”
“No problem,” Ryan said. “If I’m not surfing I’m usually at home studying, so I can keep an eye out.”
“Studying? Where do you go to school?” she asked.
“Oh I’m getting my master’s in mechanical engineering at UC San Diego.”
The only thing Madison liked more than surfers was smart guys. “Cool,” she said. She stood up to indicate that they were done, and he stood up to be polite and knocked into her by mistake; her immovability and his trajectory caused him to fly back down onto the chair. Nothing like knocking over a six-foot-tall guy to make you feel feminine, Madison thought. They both laughed.
“Well I better get going,” he said, and stood without falling this time. “But I wanted to ask you: do you think you’d want to have dinner with me tomorrow night?”
Madison wasn’t good at being asked out. Her inclination was always to say no. In fact, she usually said no without thinking. Part of it was her attachment to Dave; part of it was that she didn’t want to make small talk at dinner with a stranger: she’d rather stay home by herself and read. But Dave did not practice the same faithfulness, and she spent enough time alone as it was. It might be nice to have someone to do things with. She didn’t have to marry him. And he was the kind of guy who blushed.
“Sure, why not?” Besides, going out to dinner would give her mind a break from the dangerous investigation she’d decided to pursue.
Chapter Six
Madison had stared at the whiteboard and her tweets for another hour after Ryan left, and she decided that was enough. She walked down to the beach for sunset, a Windansea tradition. All of the locals, and now some of the Airbnb tourists, had a tradition of walking down to the beach with their plastic cups of wine and beer or cocktails to stand on the bluff and watch the sunset together. It was one of Madison’s favorite things about living there. It allowed her a sense of community without demanding too much of her. She could smile at her neighbors and acquaintances, but there was no expectation of talking to other people.
She walked out her front door, turned right, and was at Neptune Place—the place to be in the summer and every evening throughout the year. Less than a mile long, it was the demarcation for Windansea Beach. A small parking lot fit the surfers’ cars during the week; on summer weekends every available parking space was taken with beachgoers who’d discovered the short stretch of beach, covered in boulders at high tide but gleaming with a mile of white sand at low tide. Named for a hotel built in 1919 along the beach that had long since burned down, Windansea Beach boasted a palm-covered shack built in 1946 as its landmark. At night Madison could hear the waves, which were sometimes too loud to sleep. The waves were always louder at night.
It was a perfect summer evening: the sun was near the horizon, shining on both the water and the gray clouds in the distance, melting a deep amethyst hue onto the entire scene. It was chilly despite being summer, and Madison had thrown a UCSD hoodie on over her tank top. She’d always wanted a Windansea Surf Club sweatshirt, but only actual members of the club, who were initiated mainly on their surfing ability, could wear the shirt. It made her want it even more.
She scrabbled down the short bluff onto the massive boulders that stood high above the sand. The tide had been high but was going back out, so there was sand available for her to sit on. She stepped and then shimmied down the boulders until she reached the sand, then sat tucked against a boulder as she faced the water. The crowd on the sidewalk above her was no longer visible; she was hidden in her own little world.
No matter how many times she sat here, she thought of her father’s last days. She’d rented a condo for him in his last month of life, just a block down from her apartment. She had stayed there with him, watching the dolphins with him during the day and barbecuing on the front patio at night. They knew he was going to die—an inoperable brain tumor would take his thoughts and his life in almost exactly the thirty days the doctors had given him—so she worked on making his last few weeks memorable. He told her, right before he died, that it had been the best weeks of his life.
A surfer Madison recognized as a friend of Dave’s came out of the water and grabbed his flip-flops and towel that he’d left on the beach. Madison had seen him at a Windansea Surf Club “Day at the Beach for Special Surfers,” where the surf club members taught developmentally challenged children and adults to surf. Was his name Mike? She couldn’t remember. It had been the last community event before he became a member of the club. Being among the best surfers in the country wasn’t enough to get you in the club: you had to show considerable community involvement. The guy clambered up the path to the sidewalk, shouting a greeting to someone he saw there.
Just then Madison spotted Dave surfing in the last wave of the night. She could never figure out which of the surfers he was when he was far out in the water, but as he got closer to the shore, his silhouette was distinctive. Tall and broad shouldered, he had thick blond hair that he always kept too long.
“Hey,” he said. He jumped off his board and walked the rest of the way in, flipping his wet hair out of his face as he approached her. He squinted to see her better, to assess her mood. Squinting caused his blue eyes to be even more piercing.
Emotion was like a drug to her: she couldn’t have just a little, or soon she’d stop being able to function. She had perfected her equanimity. But the sight of Dave Rich always shot a thrill from her tailbone to the top of her scalp, even after all these years.
“I thought that was you,” he said. “But I thought, ‘Maddie wouldn’t be waiting for me, would she?’”
“My God you’re vain,” she said. “I’m watching the sunset. I didn’t even know you were in the water.”