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first, the wet suit was indistinguishable from the dark water. The sail was blue with a small horizontal stripe of yellow, and it wasn’t until we were nearly on top of him that I realized a man’s shadowy form lay facedown and half submerged across the sail. I knew before we pulled alongside and I touched his cold wrist to feel for a pulse that it was Nestor and he was dead.

V

    “Oh, great,” Berger said and rubbed his hand across his mouth.  
    I couldn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on the horizon like a seasick person who feared she was going to vomit. The idling outboard filled the boat with fumes, but it was neither that nor the sight of Nestor that made me feel ill. It had been Berger’s voice. He’d sounded about as emotionless as the computerized voice that reads the NOAA weather on the Coast Guard radio.
    We got a line onto the windsurfer’s boom and stood by waiting for the Coast Guard to arrive on the scene. Berger and I didn’t say much as the last streaks of light evaporated from the western sky and a few stars began to blink between the swift-moving clouds overhead. I moved up to the bow of the open runabout and sat on the padded seat that ran in front of the center console. I thought about Catalina and how fresh and alive and in love they had been that morning at breakfast. I didn’t want to break down and bawl in front of this asshole, but I felt like my chest and throat were pulled in so tight and hard that I was going to suffocate if I didn’t let it out. I wanted to hit something and scream curses at the stars. At nature. At fate. At God. Why Nestor? I pulled my knees to my chest and gritted my teeth, but when I pictured Nestor smiling behind Catalina, his arms wrapped around her waist and patting the bulge that would be their child, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I let go.
    When the Coast Guard arrived in their forty-foot utility boat, I dried my eyes on the backs of my hands and handed the young crewman a bow line. Ted had taken out his spotlight and was shining it on the windsurfer and sail so the Coasties would know to come alongside on the other side of his boat. His spot cast a stark light on the bright sail and the neoprene-clad body, which I could now see was tangled in the lines from his mast and harness. A young man in a blue uniform wearing a bulky life jacket leaned over the rail of the Coast Guard boat and took several flash photos of the body. At first, I was offended, thinking he was just taking souvenir shots, but then when they hoisted the body aboard, Nestor’s head turned, and I saw the discolored and swollen contusion at his temple. I realized the photos would likely be needed as forensic evidence.
    It was a somber procession that headed back into the harbor. We’d been told the police would be waiting and that they would want to talk to us. We were to follow the Coast Guard to their dock, so Berger cruised back slowly in the big boat’s wake.
    “So what do you think happened?” Berger asked.
    I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on the white stern light of the Coast Guard boat. I was angry and embarrassed that this stranger had seen me sobbing, had witnessed that raw grief. I couldn’t wait to get off his boat and away from him. “I don’t know. Maybe a strong gust, maybe it flung him headfirst into the mast, knocked him unconscious, then he drowned?” I turned to look at Ted’s profile. “What do you think?”
    He was nodding slowly, mulling over my theory. “What you said sounds about right to me. I think that’s it,” he said as though it were up to him.
    I watched the lights of the hotels and condos at what used to be the old Truman Annex. There had been many times when I wished I could turn back time, but now I just kept thinking that maybe if I had done something differently—if I had gone back to the Power Play with them and we had watched movies all afternoon, anything. If I had just done one thing different, Nestor would be alive. Much as I