53 pages • 1 hour read
Something in the Water
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Chapters 12-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary: “Things in the Water”
The next day, the storm has blown over. Mark goes to set up another scuba session. While he’s gone, room service brings a bottle of wine to the room. It’s from Eddie Bishop. Erin’s initially disturbed that Eddie knew where she was, but she rationalizes that anyone could have found her. She keeps the wine and decides “not to tell Mark” (94).
The storm dropped a lot of debris in the main beach, so Mark brings Erin to a different location to scuba dive. On their way back, they come across a bunch of paper floating in the ocean, and something bumps their boat. It’s a duffle sealed with both a combination and pad lock. Mark and Erin immediately think it’s a body but decide it can’t be because “the sharks would have had it by now” (102). They head back to the hotel, where they’ll turn in the duffle and be done with it.
Chapter 13 Summary: “The Day After”
Mark and Erin hand the bag in to the hotel, and Mark will talk to the dive instructor about it. While Mark waits at breakfast, Erin goes back up to the room, where she finds the bag “Sitting neatly on the floor at the end of our bed” (105). It disturbs her, but she doesn’t have time to investigate further. They spend the rest of the day enjoying the island, making friends with a couple (the Sharpes) on a hike and watching the hotel’s dinner show. Drunk later that night, Mark and Erin cut open the bag before falling into bed and forgetting about it.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Flotsam or Jetsam”
The next morning, Erin steps on the scissors she neglected to put away, which reminds her about trying to cut open the bag while drunk. She and Mark inspect the bag, finding one small hole and concluding they “didn’t get very far last night” (111).
Erin tries again with a sharp knife and, this time, succeeds. Inside, she finds several bundles of $10,000, diamonds, a gun, and a flash drive. Unsure if they’ve stumbled into something illegal, Mark and Erin research items found in the water. If the bag was accidentally thrown overboard (flotsam), the original owner still has claim. If it was purposefully tossed off a ship (jetsam), anyone can claim the find and even make money off selling what was found. Bottom line, they have to find out whether the bag is flotsam or jetsam to determine if they’ve broken laws.
Chapter 15 Summary: “A Dot in the Sea”
The next day, they go back to where they found the bag, but there’s “nothing left of the paper circle” (119). They scuba dive to look for evidence that will identify the bag as flotsam or jetsam. About 10 meters down, they find the papers that were previously on the surface and a crashed airplane with “A great gaping breach in its main hull” (121). The plane’s door is still sealed closed, which means there are people inside, and Erin panics. Mark calms her down, and Erin returns to the surface while he goes down to investigate.
Mark finds five dead people and evidence of criminal activity in the plane, which brings a new problem regarding the bag. Technically, it’s flotsam because it wasn’t intentionally discarded, but anyone is unlikely to publicly step forward because the bag’s contents are illegal goods. They head back to the hotel to find out who was in the plane and if anyone might be looking for them. If they find nothing, they’ll claim they found the bag floating in the sea, keep the money, and “use it for a better purpose than I’m sure it was meant for” (126).
Chapters 12-15 Analysis
The bag represents the rift in Mark and Erin’s relationship. The bag’s contents consist of money and secrets, the driving forces behind Erin and Mark’s strife, which becomes a source of fear and anxiety. The bag also acts as the next catalyst in Mark’s transformation. With the money and secrets inside, Mark sees his path to success and eventually a new life away from anyone who knew of his job loss and the failure it represents to him. Erin’s hope in Chapter 14 that everything will be all right is ironic. Everything is already not all right by this point in the story, and things only continue to get worse as she and Mark fall deeper under the bag’s influence.
Mark continues to keep secrets from Erin. In Chapter 15, Erin panics while scuba diving. She returns to the boat, giving Mark the opportunity to investigate the plane alone and gain the leverage he needs for his later deception. He doesn’t tell Erin exactly what he found in the plane, which she interprets as him wanting to protect her. Later, Erin wonders if he didn’t tell her as part of his deception. She still rationalizes that he wanted to protect her, showing how some things never change.
Erin also keeps secrets. She doesn’t tell Mark who sent the bottle of wine in Chapter 12 or about Eddie having her followed. Erin rationalizes that telling Mark would only worry him, but her reluctance to share harmless information with her husband suggests she subconsciously fears him. She doesn’t want him to overreact about Eddie and have her call off her documentary, never thinking Mark doesn’t have that kind of power over her. Erin submits to how she believes Mark might react, not to his actual reactions. Before his deception even begins, she falls victim to her own insecurity. Mark’s later emotional abuse works so well because Erin preconditioned herself to comply with his wishes.
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