The Deep Read Online Free

trawling license. A trawler and a yacht are pretty much the same thing. Just one’s a helluva lot nicer than another. Like upgrading to a Ferrari when you’re used to driving a Kia. Now you, however, a doctor  . . .”
    “My brother’s the brainiac,” Luke said. “I’m just a veterinarian.”
    “ Just? I’d say that’s a damn noble living.”
    “Sure, and I love what I do,” said Luke. “Just, y’know . . . had to get there on my own. My folks couldn’t afford to send me or my brother to school. Now for Clay, there were scholarships and grants and bursaries. Me? Shoveling shit out of dog cages at the ASPCA, midnight-to-8-a.m. shift, to pay for school.” Luke smiled. “So believe me, I’m no top-shelf liquor drinker.”
    Leo tipped Coke into Luke’s glass. They gave their drinks a quick stir around with their index fingers, thumbing their noses at propriety, and clinked glasses.
    “Cheers, Doc.”
    “Cheers to you, Leo.”
    Smoky, with a burned aftertaste. Whiskey had never been his tipple. Guilt crashed over Luke. Here he was drinking another man’s property—a dead man’s property in all likelihood—and he had no appreciation for it.

7.
    LEO USHERED LUKE to the helm. The instrument panel was lit in ghostly greens and blues. A monitor charted the present depth of the sea: 2,300 feet.
    “I’ve been on the ocean since I was a kid,” said Leo. “My pops owned a lobster boat. I was out on it soon as I could walk. By seven, I was holding the wheel while he dragged the pots. Dad had me stand on an old telephone book.”
    He laughed at the memory, his gaze returning to the water.
    “I love the sea, and I understand it—much as you can understand something like this. But I haven’t spent time under it, y’know? In my line of work, if you find yourself there, well, you’ve screwed the pooch.”
    The points of isolated stars reflected off the water. Luke and Clay used to stare at the stars from their bedroom’s skylight.
    The light we’re looking at right now, Clay had told Luke, took billions of years to reach our eyes. Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second. And still, it takes a billion years to get here. That’s how big the universe is. It’s 99.99999999 percent darkness. And did you know that the stars we’re looking at right now could be dead already? Burned up, nothing but a black hole. We’re just seeing their ghosts. Ghosts that traveled a quintillion miles just to say Boo !
    If they’re ghosts, Luke had asked, then how come we’re not scared of them?
    Clay just looked at him as if he’d fallen off the turnip truck—which, apart from an expression of mute dispassion, was the most frequent look he used on Luke in those days.
    On the main instrument panel, the ocean floor dropped beneath the yacht: 2,309 feet, 2,316, 2,325, a brief rise to 2,319, followed by a dip to2,389. A different world existed down there—an inverse of the one human beings existed on. After a hundred feet, it was permanent midnight.
    “Didn’t mean to put your feet to the flames earlier,” Leo said. “Asking about your brother and all.”
    It didn’t really matter to Luke. He hadn’t spoken to his brother in years. Clayton had never cared about maintaining their connection, anyway. A day, a week, a year, a decade. Time was immaterial to him—and people were even more forgettable.
    “ Hope ,” Leo said. “That’s the hardest part. Maintaining hope after what happens, happens. Because it already happened to my wife.”
    Leo’s eyes met Luke’s—Luke caught that wretched need to tell him what had happened. And Luke would let him. That was part of the pact in this new version of the world. Listen to people’s stories, tell your own. It was the only way to cope sometimes.
    “I met her in middle school,” Leo said. “Mona Leftowski. The skinniest, gangliest, most remarkable girl. We lived on the same block, and I made every excuse to spend time with her. That didn’t mean I was stuck