Manhattan Beach

“What would be exposed if all that water should suddenly vanish? A landscape of lost objects: sunken ships, hidden treasure, gold and gems and the charm bracelet that had fallen from her wrist into a storm drain. Dead bodies, her father always added […] To him, the ocean was a wasteland.” 

Anna’s early fascination with the ocean and the secrets beneath it foreshadows her wish to dive. Her father, on the other hand, imagines the bodies drowned at sea, a perception that’s equally prescient. As the narrative later reveals, death at sea was nearly his fate—twice.

“Would she pipe up about having spent the day at Manhattan Beach? Eddie didn’t dare look at her. With his long silence, he willed Anna to be silent, too.” 

Here, Egan shows how Anna has gained an instinct for the secrecy of her father’s missions. At the young age of nearly 12, she is able to read his cues and respond accordingly.

“Each time Anna moved from her father’s world to her mother and Lydia’s, she felt as if she’d shaken free of one life for a deeper one. And when she returned to her father, holding his hand as they ventured out into the city, it was her mother and Lydia she shook off, often forgetting them completely.” 

Anna moves between the parallel worlds of both her mother and Lydia and her father. She sees no overlap between the worlds, and both afford her the opportunity to take on a different identity.