Sally's Secret

Chapter 32

A/N: For the next eight weeks, I have a college paper due every week, so I have to spend a good chunk of my time on research and scholarly nonfiction when I'd rather be writing this story. I had hoped to build up more reserve chapters (or finish) over the summer, but it didn't happen. So one update a week is probably the most I can do for a while. I don't know how close I am to being done. (I make it up as I go.) If I'm not done in 8 more chapters, I can go back to twice a week sometime in mid-October. Thanks for sticking with me. Some star votes would be nice in the meantime.

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It wasn't long before life at Tracy Island returned to normal. Normal for them, anyway. Maria got her scuba certification, although why a live instructor was even necessary baffled her. Gordon didn't really have very much to teach that wasn't in the manual. He was super competent at what he did, just not quite as good in imparting his expertise. Then again, Maria realised she was probably biased about how teaching was supposed to work. She spent tons of her time working on shark visuals and coming up with interesting ways to present the information that catered to their individual learning styles, and inventing fun ways to review.

Gordon, on the other hand, gave her the scuba manual, which she studied voraciously and completely memorised, but then he acted surprised and maybe a bit affronted that she had even read it, like she had stolen his thunder or something. Why did he give her a manual if he didn't expect her to read it? He did try some conversational instructions, but it was almost all a rehash of what was in the book. Maria let him think this unnecessary review was 'teaching' because she was afraid of insulting him after he'd wanted so badly to be her instructor. The main thing he was good for was explaining the dive computer in greater detail because the book wasn't specific to any particular model and she wasn't that great with electronics to begin with.

He accompanied her on three dives before he finally declared she was fit to go solo. At first, Maria took longer than an hour to swim around the whole island, because she was faster and more experienced with the above-water crawl stroke than the underwater frog stroke, and because she had fallen out of practice and lost fitness from the time she was sick. Fins made up for the slower strokes and as soon as she built up some better kicking muscles, she could complete the circuit in about the same time as before. The exercise was nearly the same, but the aesthetics were infinitely better now that she could see the underwater vista.

Her garden needed some serious rehabilitation after being neglected in her absence, but at least she was able to harvest the radishes she had planted the day she'd been kidnapped. Scott was happy at the harvest and told her so this time. She planted an entire package of radish seeds so the next harvest would be double in size.

Sally was growing steadily weaker and Maria started to worry that she would take a sharp turn or even pass away before she ever told her family. Beyond the fact Maria would be devastated by the loss herself, she would be stuck telling the family that she knew it was coming. Still, Maria just couldn't muster the courage to prod Sally about telling them. She had to know she was getting close and it was still not Maria's place to say it needed to be done.

Sally did, however, accept more help. She let Maria fold the laundry and she stopped trying to stand or take stairs by herself. To facilitate napping, a couch was set up in Jeff Tracy's rarely-used old study as it was on the same level as the lounge and didn't require Sally to take any stairs just to lie down for a while. Maria only did her swimming or her supply runs when Sally was napping or she was reasonably sure someone else would be around. Even then, she tried to keep her absences short.

Alan and Scott had taken Thunderbird 3 to rescue a stranded crew of astronauts who were advance scouting for a new research base on Titan. Brains said they'd be gone nearly three weeks. Maria was just glad Virgil didn't have to go. She knew a long rescue like that was possible, but the thought of being separated from him for that long was not appealing at all. She could live without Paris and she could live with the fact most of their time together was interrupted for missions or the need for sleep, but the thought of not being able to share a kiss or a hug for over a week made her shudder. If it ever came to pass, she would put on her big-girl britches and make the best of it, but she definitely didn't look forward to it.