Page 33 of Chance

Chapter 18

Kelly found the rush of diving indescribable. Trent took them down a couple times with him, and then he let them go on their own. Of course, they were connected to an oxygen tank, and it wasn’t that deep. It was so cool to be underwater and look around.

“You don’t want to go anywhere without a partner,” Trent had cautioned them. “Sometimes you can get disoriented, and your partner will save your life.”

Hand in hand, Kelly and Chance went over every nook and cranny. There was a little cave in this area, and she waved Chance forward. He shone his water flashlight on the walls, and they inspected the hieroglyphs engraved into the cave face. She wondered if this area of the caves had been out in the open a long time ago. Since her phone was waterproof, she took pictures of all the symbols. They found matches for the cross and the skull, and there were other carvings as well—bird carvings that she hadn’t seen before, as well as different versions of the cross and skull. Maybe they could somehow date them and figure out how long the symbols had been there.

There was something else that she couldn’t recognize at first. After staring at it for a minute, she realized it looked like a rose. She snapped a picture of it.

Chance took her to another area of the cave, where she snapped pictures of swords and what looked like some kind of face. She stooped low, and Chance had to come with her as she found something else. It looked like a heart, but it was broken and there was an L and a D in it. Had the Stones’ parents engraved it, or was it older?

Everything fascinated her, and she was startled when Trent started yanking on the ropes. They went up, and he asked them how they were doing as he helped them take off the gear.

“I’m great.” She felt exhilarated and happy and like she finally had a purpose in her life. Then she remembered that she was pregnant with Brian’s baby. No. Her baby.

Chance paused in taking off his gear, seeming to notice her change of mood. “What’s wrong?”

She didn’t want to tell him what she was thinking. “Nothing. This has been the best.” She smiled at Trent and then made a joke about the broken heart they’d found at the bottom.

Trent’s face lit up. “We have a story about L and D. They were lost lovers, and maybe when D found her, she was already dead, and he wrote their initials at the bottom to commemorate her.”

“Is that true?” That sounded horrible.

Chance laughed. “It can’t be true.”

“I think my sister Kensi wrote a story about it,” Trent said. “You should ask her.”

“Kensi writes stories?”

Trent puffed his chest out proudly. “She writes all kinds of stories and has started publishing them online. She writes under the name Kensi Stone, and she has a whole bunch of stories about me and my family. Of course, she’s changed our names. I’ve read them, and she’s talented.”

Kelly was finding out a lot about the Stone family today. She didn’t remember reading anything about Kensi being a writer.

Trent looked around, seeming disappointed. “I don’t think we found anything. That’s a bummer. I guess I’m used to it by now, but it’s still hard.”

Suddenly, the tide seemed to shift and all the water in the cave started moving.

“What’s going on?” Kelly asked, clinging to Chance.

Trent hurried to toss some of his scuba gear farther up on the shore. “Honestly, I don’t know. It seems like the tide changed, or something happened. I’ve never seen this before.”

The water churned faster and faster, and some of Trent’s scuba gear started going with it. He dove down to try to retrieve it.

Kelly wasn’t sure how long the water drained; maybe five or ten minutes. It settled down over time, but she was worried about Trent.

Luckily, he reemerged, and he was laughing. “I can’t believe it. There’s a whole intricate system of caves down here that I’ve never seen. When the tide took all of that water, some of the dirt moved with it, like it was sucked out. Let’s put on our gear and check it out.”

* * *

Chance and Kelly put their gear back on. Then they waded out into the water and dove down. Trent had them all hold hands, and he guided them toward a cave that Chance hadn’t seen only minutes before. How strange that the seas would change so suddenly. It felt like something else was in control of all this.

Maybe God’s hand?

He wondered what Kelly would think of that. He still was reeling from their conversation the night before. She’d said she wasn’t sure if she would keep the baby, and then her mind had changed overnight. Would he want to be part of her life, even if she had a baby?

Of course.

He was startled by how quickly the answer came to him.

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