In the Deep

by White, Loreth Anne

  “It’s Ellie,” I corrected. It was fine for Martin to call me El, not her.

  Her smile wavered, but just for a nanosecond. “I’m so thrilled to be part of a Hartley Group project, Ellie.”

  “Excuse me?”

  A tiny frown crossed her brow. “The Hartley Group,” she repeated.

  “The Agnes Marina project has got nothing to do with the Hartley Group.”

  She glanced at the brochure in my hand. I followed her gaze. The back page was covered with a glossy photograph of my dad, a copy of his signature in bold black underneath.

  “Your father’s backing is a huge sales point for us,” said Lennin. “Sterling Hartley has . . . well, he frankly has a sterling reputation. Our association with him has been a super-hot selling point.”

  My heart beat faster. I shot a look at Martin. He’d turned away from me and was using a remote to flip through advertising collateral on one of the monitors.

  Heat burned into my face. I said to Lennin, “My father isn’t a part of—”

  “Ellie!” Martin called. “Come over here and see this.” He aimed his remote and clicked. Aerial footage filled the screen as a drone moved over long stretches of beach fringing endless mangrove swamps with dark, twisting rivers. “We’re going to need more of these drone shots, I think. See there?” He pointed the remote at the screen. “The marina channels will be dug into the mangrove flats at the north end. And over there, that’s where the eco-lodge and wildlife viewing platform will be. We’ve already constructed temporary scaffolding with a platform near an abandoned homestead so prospective buyers can climb up and see the view potential. I’ll take you out there now.”

  “Martin,” I said quietly, “my father is not backing or endorsing this project. His company—the Hartley Group—has nothing to do with Agnes Basin. This is my—our—financing. It’s an Agnes Holdings development, not a Hartley Group project.”

  He flicked a glance at Lennin. She quickly went into the adjacent office and shut the door. Martin waited for her to disappear, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “Our association with the Hartley family is a fact, Ellie. You are a Hartley. Your dad financially backed you, knowing what this was all about.”

  A buzzing grew loud between my ears. “That’s not an endorsement. You can’t use his name. This is my fund. My father basically invested me out of his life. He threw this money at me because of some paternal guilt thing. He did not invest in Agnes Basin.”

  “It was his lawyers who helped you set up the financing and the holding company, El.” He nodded at the brochure. “It’s just semantics. Juxtaposition. We don’t actually say in there that he’s our backer. It’s just the illusion that he is. Nothing is a lie.”

  “It’s misleading at best, fraud at worst.”

  His eyes narrowed sharply. His jaw tensed. His gaze ticked to the closed office door. Quietly he said, “We’ll talk outside. I’ll explain how these things work. This is all new to you—a children’s artist with a literature background. I appreciate it’s a steep learning curve.”

  Anger sparked through me. “I might not be informed about the real estate business,” I replied curtly, “but I’m not an idiot.”

  He grabbed my upper arm, hard. Shock ripped through me. “Come, now,” he growled as he forced me out the door. He slammed the door shut behind us. Hot wind tugged at my hair. Martin ushered me into the parking lot well away from the building. He bent his head close to mine.

  “The fact is, you are a Hartley, Ellie. And I—”

  “I’m your wife, Martin. I’m Mrs. Cresswell-Smith. Before that I was Ellie Tyler, Doug’s wife. Using my maiden name in advertising collateral is deception.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, it’s not deception—that’s who you are. The ‘Hartley Heiress.’ Anyone who reads more into that, well, that’s their fault. They don’t have a legal leg to stand on. Think about it like a lawyer.”

  “I’m not a lawyer. Neither are most of the buyers who’ll be misled by this.”

  “It’s goddamn marketing. Buyer beware. It’s how the world works, from photoshopped models in everything from soap and toothpaste to car commercials. Do you think the guy on TV in a white lab coat is really a doctor? Do you think the model with nice skin got her complexion that way from using the product she’s shoving down your throat? Do you think the shampoo really gave the actress her nice thick hair? Jesus. Grow up, Ellie. The Hartley name is like the lab coat. It inspires subliminal confidence. It’s helping kick-start presales. And if we continue with this volume, we will make headline numbers, and it’ll force the big banks to take notice, and they’ll clamor to throw more equity at us for the next phases.” He dragged his hand irritably over his hair, making it stand up. Sweat gleamed on his face. “Look, I understand. You don’t get it. You’ve never had to hustle for your next paycheck because you’ve lived your entire life in an ivory tower. People like you can afford shallow philanthropy—you can afford to sit on a high horse. But this is how you hustle.”

  “People like me?” Sweat trickled down my belly into the waistband of my jeans. Heat pressed down thicker, wetter, stifling. The world around me swayed with the movement of the river alongside us. I felt like I was going to throw up. “What about you, Martin? From the postnup figures your lawyer put on the table, you can afford a pretty high horse yourself. Or was that a lie, too? Perhaps my father was right and I was an idiot for not thinking of a prenup before we tied the knot in Vegas.”

  He blinked. Alarm sparked across his features. His eyes darted toward the sales office. I followed his gaze. Lennin stood in the window watching us. A gust of hot wind creaked the sales office sign, and a memory prompted by Lennin’s hair speared through me. In my mind I saw the man I’d mistaken for Martin kissing a woman with chestnut-colored hair before they climbed into an orange car in the underground parking garage. That memory oozed into another of an identical car parked outside my apartment on the rainy night Dana had last visited. I’d never managed to ask Dana who she’d spoken to inside that car. Dana had refused to take any of my calls after that night had ended our friendship. I missed her suddenly. Like a big hole in my heart. The world tilted around me and my knees buckled.

  Martin caught me as I sagged.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, supporting me by the arm.

  “I . . . Just exhausted. Dehydrated. I . . . feel weird. Need to sit down.”

  “I’m so, so sorry, Ellie. I’m throwing far too much at you at once. Let me take you out on the boat. It’ll be cooler on the water.” He helped me away from the sales office, away from the watchful eyes of Lennin. “You must be hungry, too.”

  “Just exhausted and a bit ill.”

  “We’ll take the boat up the inlet, anchor, have a picnic, and then see the viewing platform before we drive back to Jarrawarra Bay.”

  “Martin, I . . . I’m really not feeling so good. I need to get some rest. I—”

  “You can nap on the boat. I’ll anchor us somewhere in the shade.”

  He walked me down to a jetty.

  “What about my suitcases in the back of the truck?”

  “I’ve got a cover over the box. Lennin will keep an eye on the ute.”

  I swallowed. My tongue felt thick, foreign in my mouth. I felt like I was slurring my words. “Where did you find Lennin?”

  “She’s great, isn’t she?”

  I wanted to say more about my father being used in the collateral, but I couldn’t think straight enough to argue more coherently, and my fuzziness was my own fault. I shouldn’t have taken the lorazepam and then the cider on top of that. I was suffering now because of it, and craving another hit to make this feeling go away.

  He helped me along the dock. I stumbled again. Alarm pinged through me. Something was really wrong. This felt like more than jet lag and sedative withdrawal. He hooked his arm around my waist and led me up to a boat moored against the dock.

  “There she is. Beautiful, isn’t she?”

  The watercraft was whit
e and blue. It nudged against the pilings and tugged gently against the ropes.

  “It’s a Quintrex cuddy cabin,” he said. “Good all-rounder. Very small but usable cabin. Has plenty of room at the rear with a fold-down lounge seat. Windscreen is higher than a runabout. Good for deep-sea fishing as well as spending a night somewhere. Almost seven meters in length. Nice stability with the blade hull, too.”

  I saw the name emblazoned on the side. Abracadabra.

  Another memory swam into my fuzzy consciousness—the magic show on the night before our wedding. I recalled my husband’s feverish animation as we’d watched the magician and he’d spoken about trickery and cunning.

  “We crave the deception. We want to see our world as a tiny bit more fantastical and awesome than it is. That’s why we go to the theater, or movies, read books. The magician is much the same as a storyteller—a trickster who uses misdirection . . .”

  “Vegas,” I said quietly. “You named her after the club?”

  “In memory of the night you proposed.”

  I glanced up at him. He grinned broadly, dimples showing. But through my groggy lens his face looked garish, like a clown’s, his complexion shiny in the heat, hair too yellow-blond atop his bronzed face.

  “Our respective second chances.” His grin deepened. I hadn’t noticed before how his eyeteeth were slightly longer than the rest. It gave him a malevolence in this shimmering haze. A bird of prey circled up high. It keened. A flock of lorikeets startled into the sky, colors harsh and bright. I swiped at the perspiration leaking down into my eyes.

  “That’s . . . sweet,” I said. I felt totally drunk, to be honest. Worry slithered deeper. Was I getting ill?

  He helped me into the boat, seemingly unfazed by my state. Maybe it wasn’t noticeable to anyone but me? He fetched the cooler box and handed me a life jacket. I fumbled to do it up. He leaned over and buckled it for me. He untied the boat, pulled in the ropes, and started the engine chugging. He backed out of the mooring, and the motion forced me to sit down with a thump on the rear lounge seat. A pelican watched our progress.

  We headed up the inlet, a dark wake swelling out behind us. Martin handed me a pale-blue ball cap to shield my face from the sun. I put it on and closed my eyes behind my shades, feeling the hum of the engine and the rock of the swell, drifting in and out of consciousness.

  “There’s cold water in that esky at your feet.” His voice startled me awake. I opened the cooler, found a bottle of water among ice blocks, swallowed half the contents, and wiped my mouth. Martin was talking loudly over the noise of the engine, but his words droned on unintelligibly as the fogginess in my head suddenly worsened.

  “Tidal,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The inlet. It’s tidal. The current flows up to the basin when the tide pushes in, then reverses and flows out to the sea when it pulls out.”

  “Oh.” I felt even more dehydrated after the water. My tongue grew thicker, further slurring my attempts at speech, so I fell silent.

  We entered a lake. It shimmered and danced with refracted sunlight. I shuddered at the sight of glassy bubbles of jellyfish everywhere just beneath the surface.

  “Agnes Basin,” he said. “From here smaller rivers lead off this basin in all directions . . .” Martin was pointing. Bronzed arms. Hair shining gold on his forearms. Handsome man I’d married, or was he ugly, too large . . . ? My thoughts were jumbling. I closed my eyes again.

  “The estuary is like a maze. Can get really turned around and lost in these swamps if you don’t know your way about.” He steered the Abracadabra into a narrow channel. It was dark among trees that pressed close, the water an iron color. The boat slowed. Branches scratched at us. Water slapped against the hull. Thick reeds drifted with the tide. Martin angled up to a dock beneath a big gum. Behind the dock was a shallow bay. The bank of the bay was tangled with trees that sent gray, elephantine roots into the water. He dropped the anchor with a loud splash. Mosquitoes buzzed.

  How long had it been since we’d left the jetty near the sales office? I’d lost all sense of time. It seemed to have gotten darker, or maybe it was just the somberness of the vegetation.

  “Why are we stopping here?”

  “Nice and private,” he said. “And listen.”

  Strange noises came from the tangled mangroves—a scream of birds, fluttering sounds. A haunting call. Squabbles and cackles. A fish jumped next to the boat and slapped back into the water. I startled.

  He laughed at me. “This is a dock we built. The abandoned farmhouse is along a trail from here. It’s where we’ll construct the eco-lodge. A network of boardwalks—interpretive trails—will fan out from the lodge into the swampier portions of the land. I’ll take you to the viewing platform near the old homestead after lunch.”

  He opened the cooler, took out containers of cold chicken and potato salad. He dished the food onto plates, poured chilled wine into real glasses, added ice. He handed me a plate and a glass.

  I blinked at him. I couldn’t quite believe I was actually here. I’d been plucked out of a wintry softness and dumped into this strange antipodean land that was hot and harsh and angular and filled with strange discordant sounds. Perhaps I’d wake up and still be on the plane . . .

  “Cheers, El.” He held up his goblet. Light danced off the liquid. Ice clinked against the glass. Thirst gripped me by the throat.

  We sipped. I sipped again, this strange thirst making me desperate. I drank deeper. He watched me. I took yet another big swallow. Clouds thickened in the sky above us, blotting out the blinding haze. The iron-dark water turned black. A brooding menace pressed down over the mangroves.

  Light flashed in the sky. I glanced up. Thunder rumbled and folded into the faraway boom of surf. Wind stirred. It brought a fetid smell out of the forest. I was not seeing what Martin saw in this place. I did not see beauty. I could not imagine here what the brochures showed. A terrible fear rose inside me. I’d done something awful—made a big mistake.

  “No worries, been thundering most afternoons lately,” Martin said. “Pressure systems building every day in this unseasonable hot spell. Should break and rain soon enough.”

  He topped up my glass. I sipped more of the cold drink and ate a bit. I felt a little better. He put down the back seat and gave me a blanket to lie on, which I did, staring up at eucalyptus leaves. My eyes began to close, and I finally felt free to allow the fatigue to wash over me. The world began to fade with the gentle rock of the boat upon the turning of the tide.

  I woke with a shock.

  I was lying on the bottom of the boat. It was dusk. Massive bats swooped down on the boat and then back up into the tree above. More hung there, squabbling. Confusion flared through me. Then panic. I scrambled up onto my knees, pulled myself up onto my feet. Unsteady, I hung on to the boat’s awning support.

  “Martin?” I called into the darkening mangrove shadows.

  A scream sliced through the air. My heart beat fast. Some kind of bird. Prehistoric-sounding. I looked up. Beyond the twisted silhouette of the forest canopy, the sky was slashed with vermilion streaks and angry blades of orange. I dropped back to my knees. Limbs wouldn’t work. I retched over the side of boat, a dry heave. Bitter bile soured the back of my throat.

  “Martin!” My voice was hoarse.

  With a crashing sound, he appeared through the bushes at the end of the dock. He carried a flashlight and a stack of signboards. I read the words on the top placard as he clumped along the wooden dock toward the boat.

  STOP AGNES MARINA! ACID WASH KILLS.

  “Where have you been?” I demanded, trying to stand again. “Where did you go . . . where are those signs from?”

  “Welcome back.” His voice was cool. Displeasure contorted his face. He climbed into the boat and dumped the signs with a clatter on the bottom of the boat.

  I looked at them next to my bare feet. When had I taken my shoes off? The tops of my feet were red and swollen from mosquito bites. Next to my
toes was an empty bottle of rosé. Hadn’t we been drinking white? A wine goblet lay on its side, rolling slightly back and forth with Martin’s movement on the boat. I touched my face. It was bitten and lumpy, too. Itchy. My lips were chapped.

  “I wanted to show you the homestead,” he said brusquely as he climbed out of the boat to untie the yellow-and-blue ropes. “I wanted you to see the view over our land.” He angrily tossed in the ropes, climbed back into the boat, and positioned himself behind the wheel. The engine coughed to life. “You really shouldn’t drink so much wine on top of jet lag and the cider, Ellie.”

  “What?” I pressed my hand to my damp brow. I couldn’t process. I couldn’t remember.

  “Put your damn life jacket on.” He reversed away from the dock, bubbles churning up from the propeller. “A bottle and a half? You’re going to feel it in the morning. And look at you covered with bites. Not even sober enough to put on the repellent I gave you.”

  “But I . . . didn’t drink—”

  He reached down, snagged the rosé bottle up from the deck, held it up for me to see, wiggled it at my face. “Empty to the last drop.”

  My mouth indeed tasted sour with old wine. I felt drunk. He stuck the empty bottle and goblet into a compartment along the side of the boat, right next to an aggressive-looking fishing gaff that had the name Abracadabra down the side. He angled the bow back into the channel. Martin increased speed, the dark water swelling into a V behind us. Trees reached out to grab us. Bats swirled and filled the vermilion sky. Shrieks and screams tore through the air.

  My gaze dropped to the signboards near my feet.

  STOP MARINA DEVELOPER.

  KILL MARTIN.