The Art of Keeping Secrets by Patti Callahan Henry Read Free Book Online

fishing trips; this was Sofie’s favorite boat.
    “Why do you call it the Delphin pod?” John asked.
    Sofie looked up at him. “I named the lead dolphin after one from a Greek myth—a love story.”
    “Ah,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to ask. You think he likes your name for him?”
    She shrugged. “Probably not. I didn’t like his name in the catalog—Spike, after his torn dorsal fin—but, hey, I might not like the name he’s given me either.” She laughed and ducked her head against the wind as she flipped the switch on the machine.
    She became lost in her work as she photographed the identifying dorsal fin of each dolphin, then logged their movements around and behind the boat. She carefully noted the exact times so that the visual and sound records would coincide. She could never tell how many hours had passed when she worked like this—usually John had to call to her that the boat was ready to dock. Time collapsed in on itself, disappearing like morning mist without warning.
    Water burst over the side of the boat as the crew pulled up the fishing nets. Sofie looked up from her logbook and realized that the sky had darkened. As John came to her side, another splash of cold water across the bow hit Sofie full in the face. She backed up, wiped her eyes and stared down at Delphin, who had clearly just sprayed her. “Not funny,” she said.
    The sleek gray dolphin’s fluke shot out of the water, which meant he was going deep for food—probably for the bycatch of the nets. Sofie sighed. Swimming so close to the nets was how the dolphins became entangled and injured in them, was probably how Delphin had lost that chunk out of his dorsal fin. The pods were becoming accustomed to eating the bycatch off the fishing boats. If she only knew their language, knew how to tell them to steer clear of the nets.
    The water began to churn, and the dolphin pod shot from the water and swam in a quick group toward the mouth of the sound, riding one another’s currents and calling out. Each dolphin had a signature whistle, which she matched to a prerecording so she could be certain who was calling and who was initiating the movements of the pod. Years ago she’d learned that the hearing part of the dolphin brain had twice the number of nerves as the human. Maybe that was why she believed the dolphins understood her soft, whispered words.
    How she wanted to speak their language, call their names.
    Her own name had changed three times since birth, although only she knew this fact. The thought that the most beautiful creatures on earth had names they kept all their lives was a comfort to her. The loss of loneliness began with the naming.
    She was blessed to have this job, to be able to be on the water with her dolphins almost every day. The Marine Conservation Technology Lab had chosen Sofie to work on this project for her summer research. She’d worked with the center since she was fifteen years old, always willing to do whatever was needed. She’d cleaned tanks, swept floors, filed and entered data, until this year when she’d been hired as an intern to record the movements, behavior and vocalizations of the dolphins around commercial fishing boats. The head of the lab, Andrew Martin, said her meticulous record keeping made her one of the best interns they’d ever had. There was already a thorough catalog of identified dolphins from New Jersey to Florida, so after identifying each dolphin, Sofie could spend her time recording and listening to the mammals. What Andrew didn’t know was that the acoustic records were contributing to her own private investigation into whether dolphins called each other by name.
    She didn’t understand her deep-seated need to prove that the dolphins loved one another enough to give names. And maybe they named the humans they also loved. She’d once read an essay by Loren Eisley in which he called the human need to bridge the gap between human and animal “The Long Loneliness.” It was