The Late Show

44

Ballard got to the water late that morning because of the drive up the coast to collect her dog. By the time she had pitched her tent on Venice Beach and was walking toward the surf with her board under her arm, the morning layer had completely choked off the sun and visibility was low. She stepped in undaunted. It had been too long since she had been on the water.

She spread her feet to the edge of the board’s rails and bent her knees. She started digging deeply into the water and shocking her muscles with the workout.

Dig... dig... dig... glide... Dig... dig... dig... glide...

She headed straight out into the fog and soon she was lost in it. The heavy air insulated her from any sound from the land. She was alone.

She thought about Chastain and the moves he had made. He had acted nobly on the case. She thought maybe it was his redemption. For his father. For Ballard. It left her bereft and still haunted by their last encounter. She wished in some way they had settled things.

Soon her shoulders began to burn and the muscles of her back cramped. She eased up and stood tall. She used the paddle blade as a rudder and turned the board. She realized there was no horizon in sight, and the tide was in that short moment of stasis before it shifted. It was not going in or out, and she wasn’t sure which direction to point the board.

She kept her momentum with languid paddle strokes, all the while looking and listening for a sign of land. But there was no sound of waves crashing or of people’s voices. The fog was too dense.

She pulled the paddle from the water and twirled it upside down. She rapped the handle end hard on the board’s deck. The fiberglass produced a solid sound that Ballard knew would cut sharply through the fog.

Soon afterward she heard Lola start to bark and she had her direction. She paddled hard again and started to glide across the black water, heading toward the sound of her dog.

As she came through the mist and caught sight of the shore, she saw Lola at the waterline, panicked and frantically moving north and then south, unsure, her bark now a howl of fear at what she could not understand or control. She reminded Ballard of a fourteen-year-old girl who had done the same thing on a beach a long time ago.

Ballard paddled harder. She wanted to get off the board, drop to her knees in the sand, and hug Lola close.