Page 71 of Lovewell Lane

Derek

I hesitated as we breached the entrance of the aquarium. The air smelled faintly of salt with a hint of chlorine. Voices echoed around the cavernous lobby we were standing in. It was much cooler inside compared to the humid Georgia heat that we hadn’t been able to escape back home.

Tessa’s small hand tightened around mine. She was just as skeptical of crowds as I was.

“Should we go find the otters first or save that for last?” Margo asked, stepping ahead only to turn around to face us.

She looked at ease. There was a softness to her smile that made me forget, if only for a second, where we were. She looked around the room at the different pathways we could take, already planning out our day in her head.

I looked down to Tessa to gauge her reaction to the question. She shrugged and looked at me— expecting me to decide, even though I was just as clueless.

“What do you think?” I asked Margo.

Margo bit her lip and crouched beside Tessa. “Have you ever touched a stingray before?” Tessa shook her head. “Let’s do that first. I want to see if your dad is brave enough.”

I furrowed my brow. Surely, this place didn’t actually let anyone touch a stingray. Wasn’t that what killed Steve Irwin?

I was wrong.

“Come on, don’t be a chicken,” Margo teased. Her hand was underwater in the shallow pool of stingrays while I stood and stared at her like she’d lost her mind. Because clearly, she had.

I watched her successfully pet one of the small rays and looked around at the other families and kids surrounding the pool. Parents and kids all around were smiling and laughing while being up to their elbows in a tank filled with rays.

I’d caught plenty of animals in my day. Snakes, chickens, goats, you name it. All that I’d learned from doing that was don’t fuck with animals unless you knew what you were doing. Rays weren’t in my wheelhouse, so I didn’t want to mess with it. But Margo dared me. I had to. I couldn’t let the city girl outdo me.

No one else seemed cautious, so I put my hand in the water and tried it.

A small gray ray swam in front of me. I reached out for it and let it brush against my palm. Tessa let out a shriek of giggles as I made a face at the feeling.

“Do you want to try, Tess?” I asked, pulling my arm out of the water and holding it away from my body.

“Here, we can do it together,” Margo said. She grabbed Tessa’s hand and held it in hers under the water. They both burst into a fit of more giggles as a ray brushed against their hands and Tessa pulled her hand out of the water in an instant.

Touching strange creatures was just the beginning.

Tessa got braver after each experience. As we moved through the aquarium, Tessa pointed out anything and everything she recognized, and Margo made sure to read the plaques out to her with the names of animals she didn’t know along with their fun facts. Once we’d gotten through all of the pools of smaller animals, we came across the otter exhibit.

There was a small crowd in front of the glass, blocking Tessa’s view, so I put her up on my shoulders as we got closer. “Look, Daddy!”

“I see them, wow,” I said. Tessa’s hands rested on mine. She kicked her feet against me excitedly, and I couldn’t contain my smile at her excitement.

“They’re so cute,” Margo murmured, her voice just loud enough to catch.

I turned to respond, but an older woman barged between us, oblivious. My hand reached out without thinking— I hooked two fingers through the belt loop of Margo’s shorts and gently tugged her back to our side.

She looked at me gratefully before brushing her arm against mine.

We continued through the aquarium, lingering on the less crowded exhibits. Tessa proved that she knew her stuff, there were so many animals that she named without even reading a plaque. Her favorites were the seahorses. We stared at one tank for twenty minutes, trying to find all of the tiny seahorses that blended in with the coral they were wrapped around.

As our last hoorah, we went to the whale shark exhibit. Margo was convinced it was the big finale and would blow our minds. We walked into the big tunnel, and I literally stood still. The entire tunnel was made of glass, except for the ground beneath our feet. And surrounding us was a bigger fish tank than I could have ever imagined. It looked like we were standing beneath the ocean.

“There’s one of them,” Margo pointed out. Tessa and I followed her line of vision and Tessa gasped.

“Wooooah,” she gawked. “That’s a whale shark!”

“Mhm,” Margo murmured. “It’s really breathtaking isn’t it?”

Tessa and I both nodded. I stood back for a minute, watching them watch the tank together. Their necks craned up to be ableto see all of the fish swimming above them. Tessa’s hand reached for Margo, and Margo subconsciously slid her hand into Tess’s.

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