It's Not Over Yet

When the tiger shark made direct eye contact with me, I stepped back automatically, drawing in a sharp breath. Giant rays, and fish in every colour glided around and over the aquarium’s plexiglass tunnel where I waited. Although I didn’t understand why Caroline said to be here in this spot, on this day, at this time, I was here and completely immersed in the experience. The bright sun filtered through from above, while the blue light and ocean soundtrack gave a sense of actually being on the ocean floor. It was mesmerizing.

“Mesmerizing, isn’t it?” His voice startled me. He was unfamiliar, but not quite a stranger. I stared for a second longer than was polite before the voice, the face, and the man standing beside me came together in my memory.

“Craig?” My mouth actually gaped open and I laughed. “What are you doing here?”

“Marcy.” He smiled. “I could ask you the same. Does it have something to do with this?” He held a small black notebook in his hand.

“Oh my God. Classic Caroline.” I pulled an identical notebook out of my bag and laughed again, feeling nervous and nineteen, like the first time we met.

“What do you suppose my sister is up to? Messing with us from beyond the grave seems extreme, even for her.” Craig ran his hands through his hair, crossed his arms, then uncrossed them and shoved his hands in his pockets. I wasn’t alone in feeling thrown off at our unexpected meeting.

“Do you want to go somewhere?” Craig asked, moving out of the way for family of tourists. “There’s a coffee shop down on the waterfront.”

I was very aware of his hand hovering near my lower back as we exited the tunnel, back out into the hot Hawaiian sun.

Over iced coffee, we relaxed into conversation like old friends do. We sat at a small table outside, the air heavy with the scent of sea salt and tropical flowers.

“I wish I’d known Caroline was sick.” I fidgeted with the straw in my drink. “We kept in touch a bit after graduation, but we were down to Christmas cards the past few years. And then suddenly I get a package from her lawyer with this notebook; a letter and vague instructions that landed me here with you. I just – I really wish I’d known.”

“I’m sorry.” Craig’s hand felt warm and comforting on mine where they met in the middle of the table. “She was a bit stubborn about that. Didn’t want everyone coming around to say goodbye. The weight of making other people feel better was too heavy.”

“I get that. I do.” I carefully pulled my hand away, under the guise of tucking my hair behind my ear. “Did you know that Caroline left me some money? $20,000. I didn’t want to take it, thought about donating it to a charity that Caroline would have liked. But her instructions explicitly said to use it for this trip and for anything else that felt important. Also as payback for all the times we ordered pizza and she came up short.”

Craig chuckled. “And then she told you to be at the aquarium at 10:30 this morning?”

“Exactly.”

“Me too. 10:30 sharp. No other details.”

“I think we’ve been set up. Feels like 1996 all over again.”

It really did feel like the first time we met. Caroline told me her air force pilot older brother was coming to town for the weekend. We made plans to meet him for dinner, but at the last minute Caroline got ‘called into work’ and left me at the restaurant with Craig. It was a thinly veiled set up, and the beginning of a first grown-up relationship for both of us.

Craig filled me in on Caroline’s life, her stage four diagnosis eight months earlier, and the family she left behind. Three kids.

All I’d ever wanted was one.

“And what about you?” Craig glanced at my left hand. “Are you married? Kids?”

“Divorced. A couple years ago. No kids.” I looked out at the harbour, at the steady stream of boats, and at the distant splashes of humpback pectoral fins. “Did you see that? They’re amazing!”

“Want to get a closer look?”

“You mean, on one of the whale watching boats?” I looked at the time. “I wonder when the next trip leaves?”

“We can take my boat.” Craig swiped at his phone and I saw that he was checking weather and tides.

“Wait…You live here?”

He nodded. “For six years. I left the air force and settled here. Now I fly passengers instead of fighter jets. But mostly I spend time on the boat. Or at the beach. I keep trying to pretend I’m young enough to take up surfing.” His smile was exactly as charming as it always had been.

“And… do you have a family?” I struggled to maintain eye-contact, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

“No. I never married.” There was a long pause. “My boat is up in Lahaina. We can pick up some lunch and have a picnic onboard.”

I hesitated. “But what about Caroline’s instructions? She had us meet at the aquarium. Now what?”

“Maybe that’s for us to figure out.” He winked. “Let’s go.”

An hour later, with a bag of groceries and an extra layer of sunscreen, we left the Lahaina harbour and headed out to the open water. I watched Craig navigate and manage the radio, could easily see him at the controls of an aircraft.

The twenty-some years since we’d seen each other hadn’t changed him much. His tall frame was lean and toned. I thought he must still be a runner. And while his dark hair was peppered through with grey, his tanned face was lined only around his mouth and eyes; he looked like someone who smiled often.

He caught me watching him. “Have you spent much time on the water?”

“We had a boat for awhile, but we were both pretty busy with work. And then, in the end, it just wasn’t fun spending that kind of confined time together on the lake.”

He nodded in understanding. After awhile he shut off the engine, dropped an anchor, and joined me in a shady spot on deck. I adjusted my skirt and hoped I didn’t look too sweaty or wind-blown.

“What happened? With your marriage. You don’t have to tell me. I just-”

“No, it’s okay. We had some good years together. But he wanted a family, and I… I couldn’t. He said it was fine, but it wasn’t really. The resentment and regret wore us down, drove us apart.”

“You couldn’t have kids. Because of what happened?” He leaned toward me slightly, concern lining his forehead.

“Yes.” I closed my eyes, recalling the shock of a senior year mid-semester positive pregnancy test, the cautious excitement and whispered phone calls, the traumatic miscarriage and the permanent damage it did. The dark place I lived in after. The secret I kept from everyone. Even Caroline.

“Marcy, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I would have –“

I interrupted him, not willing to go there. Not yet. “Tell me more about Caroline.”

He sighed and I saw grief and sadness in his eyes.

“She never changed. Always joyful, the life of every party. When she got sick, she tried every treatment. Gave up sugar. Gave up wine.” He chuckled, raising one eyebrow. I nodded, imagining what that must have cost her. “When they ran out of options on the mainland, she and Mike packed up the girls and came to Maui. She loved the island as much as I do. They stayed with me, we spent Christmas together, and then just after New Year’s, we had to hire hospice care. She hung on another two weeks, but when she finally passed it was… peaceful. We opened the patio doors at dawn and watched the sun come up over Haleakala. She closed her eyes, and that was it. Caroline was gone.”

I rested my hand on his forearm and we sat in silence for a few moments.

Craig cleared his throat, wiped tears off his cheek with his palm.

“She mentioned you, the last night. We were alone in her room, around 3am. She couldn’t talk much then, but she pulled me in close to her and told me that I was stupid for letting you go. Almost twenty five years, and she still hadn’t forgiven me. Before she fell asleep again, she tried to punch me in the arm.” Craig rubbed his bicep, remembering Caroline’s touch, and an invisible bruise that was never there.

“It wasn’t your fault.” I truly meant that. “I should have told Caroline everything. I didn’t know she blamed you.”

“It’s fine.” Craig ducked into the cabin, checked our position, and returned with a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a small plate of cheese and fruit.

“To Caroline.” Craig raised his glass, and I joined him in the gesture.

“And to second chances,” I added. I understood now, Caroline’s letter, the cryptic instructions, and why I was here, on this boat off the Maui coast, with Craig.

“To second chances. And bossy, conniving sisters.” Craig handed me his notebook.

I flipped past the letter from Caroline to her brother. That wasn’t for me to see. Craig’s list of instructions was like mine, but with a decidedly sibling tone. On the next page was another list.

“That was Caroline’s bucket list,” Craig said. “When she got here in December, she made a list of all her favourite spots on the island, but we didn’t get to many of them. I think she included her list in the notebook so we could finish it for her. Together. I think that’s why she brought you here.”

He turned toward me and took my hand. It felt familiar, but also foreign. And exciting. In his eyes I saw regret and hope. “I’m truly sorry about what happened. And how I handled it.”

“You don’t have to –“

“Yes, I do. For you. For Caroline. Maybe for us. I didn’t understand what you’d been through, how bad it was. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We can talk about all that later. Right now I just want to enjoy this.” I breathed a contented sigh.

A sound off the starboard side caught my attention. A few meters away, a humpback surfaced, dark and shining in the water, her breath leaving a spray of rainbows in the air above.

“I didn’t know they were so big.” I gasped as she surfaced again, flapping her massive pectoral fin against the water. The boat rocked gently in her wake.

I stood at the boat’s railing to get a closer look, felt Craig’s hand on my shoulder, his breath warm on my neck.

“Look.” He pointed with his other hand. “A baby.”

A smaller fin waved and slapped the water, imitating its mother.

The water went still.

“That was amazing.” I placed my hand on Craig’s, leaned back into him. He squeezed my shoulder.

“Just wait,” he said. “It’s not over yet.”

And it wasn’t. Out of the ocean’s depth the humpback rose, no more than 20 meters from the side of the boat. The whale propelled almost her entire body out of the water, then breached, spiraling in the air, before crashing back below the surface, sending an arc of salt spray over the boat. The baby followed, with a considerably smaller splash.

“Well. That wasn’t on Caroline’s list.” Craig tossed me a towel from the cabin and I hoped my tank top, wet and nearly transparent, would dry quickly in the sun.

“Hand me your notebook,” I said. “We’ll make our own list.”