“Like newts,” Rebecca says, and the woman nods.

“I knew that,” I say, primarily to myself. “It has to do with their habitat, tide pools. In a tide pool, waves come and destroy the marine equilibrium every few minutes, so nothing ever really gets a chance to settle.”

“True,” the woman says. “Are you a biologist?”

“My husband is.”

Rebecca nods. “Oliver Jones. Do you know him?”

The woman sucks in her breath. “Not the Oliver Jones. Oh, my. Would you mind very much if I brought someone here to meet you?”

“Dr. Jones isn’t with us on this trip,” I tell her. “So I don’t know as I’d be all that interesting to one of your colleagues.”

“Oh, you most certainly are. By association, if nothing else.”

She disappears behind a panel that I didn’t realize was a door. “How did you know about tide pools?” Rebecca asks.

“Rote memorization. They’re all your father talked about when we were dating. If you’re a good girl I’ll tell you about hermit crabs and jellyfish.”

Rebecca presses her nose up to the glass. “Isn’t it awesome, that someone in Chicago would know Daddy? I mean, it kind of makes us celebrities.”

In the oceanic community, I suppose she is right. I hadn’t even associated this aquarium with Oliver, at least not on a conscious level. These delicate fish and quivering invertebrates are so different from the hunkering whales Oliver loves. It’s hard to believe they exist in the same place. It’s hard to believe that a whale wouldn’t take up all the space, all the food. But then again I know better. These tropical fish are in no danger from the humpbacks, which are mammals. Whales don’t prey on them. They screen plankton and plants through their baleen.

I have a vision of a sample falling two stories in a Ziploc bag, smashing against the blue Mexican tiles of the foyer in San Diego. Baleen.

“Mom.” Rebecca tugs on my T-shirt. Standing in front of me is a bookish man with a goatee and the thinnest eyebrows I have ever seen on a male.

“I can’t believe this,” the man says. “I can’t believe I’m standing here face to face with you.”

“Well, I haven’t done anything, really. I don’t work with whales at all.”

The man smacks himself on the forehead. “I’m such a jerk. My name is Alfred Oppenbaum. It’s an honor-an honor!-to meet you.”

“Do you know Oliver?”

“ Know him? I worship him.” At this, Rebecca excuses herself and ducks behind a tank of zebra fish to laugh. “I’ve studied everything he’s done; read everything he’s written. I hope-” he leans forward to whisper, “-I hope to be as prominent a scientist as he.”

Alfred Oppenbaum cannot be more than twenty, which tells me he has a long way to go. “Mr. Oppenbaum,” I say.

“Call me Al.”

“Al. I’ll be happy to mention your name to my husband.”

“I’d like that. Tell him my favorite article is the one on the causality and sequence of themes in humpback songs.”

I smile. “Well.” I hold out my hand.

“You can’t leave yet. I’d love to show you the exhibit I’ve been creating.”

He leads us into that panel of the wall that masquerades as a door. Behind are twenty-gallon tanks filled with crustaceans and fish. Several nets and small receptacles hang from the sides of each tank. From this angle we can also see the backs of the tanks that are displayed in the aquarium.

Everyone wears white coats that turn faintly blue under fluorescent lights. As we pass by, Al whispers to his colleagues. They spin around, their mouths agape. “Mrs. Jones,” they all say, like a line of servants as royalty passes by. “Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones.”

One of the bolder scientists steps forward, blocking my path. “Mrs. Jones, I’m Holly Hunnewell. And I wonder, do you know what it is Dr. Jones is researching now?”

“I know that he was planning to track some humpbacks on their way from the East Coast of the States to the breeding grounds near Brazil,” I tell her, and there is a resounding, Oh. “I don’t know what he’s going to do with the research,” I say, apologetically. Who knew Oliver had such a following?

Al leads us to a blinking set of tubes. “Doesn’t look like much, does it? It works under black light.” With a nod to a colleague, the room goes dark. Al pushes a button. All of a sudden his voice fills up the room, a commentary over the yips and churrs of humpback whales. The frame of a whale appears out of nowhere, neon blue, and unfurls its fluke. “In the 1970s Dr. Oliver Jones discovered that humpback whales have the capacity, like humans, to develop and pass down songs from generation to generation. With extensive research, Dr. Jones and other colleagues have used whale songs to identify different stocks of whales, have used the songs to track the movement of whales over the oceans of the world, and have speculated about the changes these songs undergo yearly. Although their meaning still remains a mystery, it has been discovered that only the male whales sing, leading the foremost researchers in the field to believe that the songs may be a way to woo mates.” Fade out of Al’s voice, crescendo the ratchets and oos of a whale.

“Oliver would be proud,” I say finally.

“Do you really think so, Mrs. Jones?” Al asks. “I mean, you’ll tell him about it?”

“I’ll do more than that. I’ll tell him he has to fly here to see it himself.”

Al almost passes out. Rebecca puts down a small box turtle she’s been tickling and follows me back into the exhibit hall.

When we are safe in the dark aquarium, I sit down on one of the marble benches that spot the floor. “I can’t believe it. Even when your father isn’t here, he manages to ruin a perfectly good day.”

“Oh, you’re just cranky. That was really kind of neat.”

“I didn’t know people in the Midwest knew about whales. Or cared about whales.”

She grins at me. “I can’t wait to tell Daddy.”

“You’re going to have to wait!” I say, a little too sharply.

Rebecca glares at me. “You did say I could call him.”

“That was back then. When we were closer to California. He’s not home now anyway. He’s on his way to find us.”

“How come you’re so sure?” Rebecca asks. “He would have found us by now, and you know it.”

She’s right. I don’t know what is taking Oliver so long. Unless he is jumping the gun by flying to meet us in Massachusetts. “Maybe he went to South America after all.”

“He wouldn’t do that, no matter what you think about him.”

Rebecca sits back down and scuffs her sneakers on the edge of the bench. “I bet he misses you,” I say.

Rebecca smiles at me. Behind her I can make out the silver fins of a paper-thin fish. Oliver would know its name. For whatever it is worth, Oliver would know the names of all of these.

“I bet he misses you too,” Rebecca answers.

The first time I ever saw Jane I was waist deep in the murky water at Woods Hole. She did not know that I was observing her on the ferry pier, jackknifed over the rotten railing, with the fine madras print of her sundress blowing against the curve of her calves. She did not know that I witnessed her watching me; if she had known this, I’m sure she would have been mortified. She was very young, that much was evident. You could see it in the way she chewed her gum and traced patterns with the toe of her sandal. I was studying tide pools at the time, but she reminded me of a gastropod; a snail in particular-remarkably vulnerable if removed from its external casing. I was overwhelmed; I wanted to see her exposed from her shell.

Because I wasn’t very good at those sorts of social overtures, I pretended that I hadn’t noticed her at all; that I hadn’t seen her glance back at me when she boarded the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. As simple as that I assumed she had tripped through my life, and I would never cross her again. But I stayed at the docks recording observations two days longer than was necessary, just in case.