Again, I pictured that garish viewing room as it had been, its air of cloying decadence and decay.
To whom had the box belonged? I wondered as I entered Evan’s office. He’d left a lamp on near the couch. I walked through the shadowed room and set down the box on his desk. It felt weird, like I didn’t know whether I was leaving him something he’d find offensive, or something forbidden.
Exciting?
What would Evan think when he saw it? How would he feel about me having seen it? I resisted a wild urge to open the box again. There had been an “E” in that list of letters and a date. Had that “E” referred to Elizabeth?
Or Evan?
Maybe both of them had been involved? My assumption was that the other initials referred to other participants.
A wave of nausea swept through me. I choked back a strong urge to vomit.
That old feeling of immaturity and inadequacy that I’d felt frequently at the beginning of Evan’s and my relationship plunged through me again, seemingly a thousand times sharper this time. It was as if it’d been there all along, but held at bay by Evan’s obvious desire for me.
By the fact that he’d made me his wife.
But what did I really know about him? What kind of cravings did he keep locked inside him?
Because I’m sinful.
I heard his muffled, deep voice echo around my head, shame and anger knitted into every uttered word. I gripped the edge of his desk and swallowed back my nausea.
You knew he had a past when you married him. You can’t hold things over his head that he did in another lifetime.
But what if those cravings remained, and he’s stifling them. For me?
Had Elizabeth shared in his desires at one point in his life… fulfilled them? I recalled him speaking with so much emotion. “I loved Elizabeth once, that’s true. I used to think she was the most perfect thing in existence.”
I groaned softly and pushed myself away from the desk. It was too much.
I walked away from the box.
Inevitably, I’d have to deal with it when I showed it to Evan after he returned. I’d have to cope with his response to it, whatever that might be.
But at that moment, that box represented mysteries I was too inexperienced—or maybe too unwilling—to confront.
Chapter Twelve
I thought I’d dream that night, but maybe my brain couldn’t handle any more stress after what I’d been through that day. I awoke feeling surprisingly refreshed to a pristine summer morning like only Tahoe can produce. Fears and doubts wilted and crumbled on a day like today.
Valeria’s brother arrived at around noon, just as I was coming down from the overlook after a decent morning of painting. Manny Caro reminded me of a male version of Valeria: compact, cute, and charming, with that athletic ease and comfort in his skin that I admired so much.
Valeria did another careful inspection of the dive equipment we planned to use. After she gave the okay, Manny, Valeria, and I hauled everything we needed out to the cruiser. Ever since Valeria had mentioned this drastic drop-off close to the shore—the Great Wall, as she’d called it—I was eager to explore it.
As I’d already discovered with Evan, scuba diving in Tahoe is not like diving in the ocean. There are no cute fish zipping around you, or colorful coral, or seaweed. The clarity of the water is stunning, but the underwater world is strangely barren.
My dive with Evan had been fantastic. I hadn’t told him this, but I’d also found it eerie. Beneath the surface, Tahoe was a beautiful but haunted place. As Evan and I got to a depth of forty feet or so, the sunlight penetrating the crystalline water turned an inky blue. There was a strange stillness that made me feel watched by some vast, cold consciousness.
Today, Manny used the sonar onboard the cruiser to find a good spot for our dive. We didn’t go out far. As I sat on the edge of the boat with Valeria, I could easily see the rocky shore and Les Jumeaux, and even the beige, waterproof locker up on the overlook where I stored my painting supplies.
Valeria gave me thumbs-up. We went over the edge into shallow water, only twenty-five feet or so deep. Once I’d gotten my bearings in the cerulean, sunlight-flooded waters, I spotted Valeria. She waved, and I followed her lead.
The surface below us consisted of a whitish-gray, rough sand. Everything looked bleached and clean.
Dead. Sunlight poured around us, but I saw no signs of life. There was something skeletal about diving in Tahoe. Something secret.
Suddenly, the floor dropped out beneath us. We swam over a cliff into a yawning, black depth. A thrill passed through me. Coldness immediately penetrated the neoprene of my suit.