MILES APART

THE WOMAN IN THE WATER

MILES APART

A Novel

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by Brian Mutale Sampa

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Copyright © 2026 by Brian Mutale Sampa

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

First Edition: 2026

Cover design by [Designer Name]

Author photograph by [Photographer Name]

ISBN: 978-1-234567-89-7 (Hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1-234567-90-3 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-234567-91-0 (eBook)

Published in Zambia and the United States by [Publisher Name]

www.brianmutalesampa.com

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For the ones who cross our paths at exactly the right moment,

and change everything—even though they don't stay.

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CONTENTS

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Part One: The Distance Between Strangers

Chapter One: The Woman in the Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter Two: The Language of Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Chapter Three: Epiphytic Algae and Other Complications . . . 24

Chapter Four: The Geometry of Proximity . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Chapter Five: The Fisherman's Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Part Two: The Space Between

Chapter Six: First Kiss, Last Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Chapter Seven: Learning to Be Seen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Chapter Eight: The Photographs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Chapter Nine: The Unspoken Countdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Chapter Ten: The Last Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Part Three: The Distance Between

Chapter Eleven: The Morning After . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

Chapter Twelve: The Silence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Chapter Thirteen: The Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

Chapter Fourteen: The Leaving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

Chapter Fifteen: Buenos Aires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

Chapter Sixteen: The Photographs (II) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

Chapter Seventeen: San Diego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

Chapter Eighteen: The Opening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

Chapter Nineteen: The Letter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Chapter Twenty: Miles Apart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

Epilogue: Five Years Later . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

Author's Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

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Part One

The Distance Between Strangers

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Chapter One

The Woman in the Water

The Atlantic was cold in April.

Elara Mbeki had been standing in it for forty-seven minutes, and her toes had progressed from numb to a distant, throbbing ache that she'd learned to ignore three degrees ago. The waterproof notebook in her hand was filling with measurements—shoot density, leaf length, epiphyte coverage—the careful, repetitive language of restoration ecology that had become her native tongue over six years of university study.

Zostera marina. Eelgrass. The unsung hero of the coastal ecosystem.

She knelt, water sloshing against the neoprene of her waders, and ran her fingers along a blade of grass, feeling for the subtle texture of new growth. The seagrass meadow here, just off the beach at Vila do Mar, was one of the last healthy stands on this stretch of the Portuguese coast. Her fellowship at the Centro de Ciências do Mar had one objective: figure out why this meadow was thriving while others were dying, and document how to replicate it.

Simple, on paper.

In reality, it meant standing in forty-eight-degree water for hours at a time, fighting the Atlantic's endless desire to knock her over, and explaining to curious locals why a Black woman with a British accent was up to her waist in their ocean taking notes about "weeds."

She'd learned the Portuguese word for seagrass on her second day. Erva marinha. The old fisherman who'd taught it to her—João, eighty-three years old, missing three fingers on his left hand—had laughed and told her the erva marinha was good luck. When the seagrass was healthy, the fish came back. When the fish came back, everyone ate. Simple math.

Elara liked simple math.

The morning sun was climbing over the cliffs to the east, burning off the last of the coastal fog. Another hour in the water, then back to the lab to process samples, then an afternoon of data entry, then—

A flash of movement on the shore caught her eye.

Someone was on the beach. A figure, crouched low near the rocks where João and the other fishermen mended their nets each morning. Elara squinted against the glare. Tourist, probably. They'd start arriving in earnest next month, once the water warmed up enough for swimming, though she couldn't understand the appeal. The Atlantic didn't warm up. It merely became slightly less aggressive about trying to kill you.

The figure stood, and she saw the camera.

A long lens, professional-grade, pointed directly at the fishermen. Or—she followed the angle—pointed directly at her.

Elara straightened, her spine stiff from hours of hunching over transect lines. The figure lowered the camera, then raised it again. Definitely pointed at her.

She felt her face heat, and it had nothing to do with the sun.

In her experience, people with long lenses on public beaches fell into three categories: birdwatchers, perverts, and journalists. Birdwatchers stayed in the dunes and didn't photograph women in waders. Perverts were more creative about hiding what they were doing. Which left—

"Hey!" she shouted, her voice carrying thin across the water. "Excuse me!"

The figure lowered the camera. Even from this distance, she could see the hesitation in his posture, the universal body language of someone who'd been caught doing something they shouldn't.

She pointed at herself, then at him, then made a universal gesture for what the hell do you think you're doing?

For a long moment, neither of them moved. Then the figure slung the camera around his neck, raised both hands in a gesture that might have been apology or might have been surrender, and started walking toward the water's edge.

Elara waded toward shore, her legs protesting the change in motion after so long standing still. The water shallowed gradually, the bottom shifting from sand to rock to sand again, and by the time she reached the beach, she was breathing hard, though whether from exertion or irritation she couldn't have said.

Up close, he was younger than she'd expected. Late twenties, maybe, with the kind of tan that came from working outdoors rather than vacationing. Dark hair, longer on top, curling slightly at the temples from the humidity. Brown eyes that were currently fixed on her with an expression she couldn't quite read—embarrassment, yes, but something else too. Interest, maybe. Or assessment.

"Sorry," he said, before she could speak. His accent was American, but with something underneath it she couldn't place. "I should have asked first. That was—I wasn't thinking."

"No," Elara agreed. "You weren't." She pulled off her waterproof gloves, tucked them under her arm. "What were you doing?"

"Working." He gestured with the camera, a slight, self-deprecating motion. "I'm a photographer. Documentary stuff. I'm doing a project on the fishing community here, the traditional methods, and I saw you out there and—" He stopped, seemed to reconsider. "The way the light was hitting the water, and you were so focused on whatever you were doing, it just made a really interesting composition. I should have asked."

Elara felt her irritation warring with something else—curiosity, maybe. Or the simple surprise of being seen as something other than a slightly eccentric researcher.

"You could have just taken the picture and walked away," she pointed out. "Why are you apologizing?"

He blinked, as if the question hadn't occurred to him. "Because you caught me."

"Most people would just pretend they were photographing something else."

"I'm not most people."

She laughed before she could stop herself—a short, surprised sound that escaped without permission. "No. I suppose not." She looked at the camera, then back at him. "What's the project?"

He shifted his weight, seemed to relax slightly now that she wasn't actively yelling at him. "The old fishermen. The ones who've been doing this their whole lives. There's maybe a dozen left in this town, and once they're gone, the knowledge goes with them. The way they read the tides, the weather, the fish movements. It's not written down anywhere."

Elara thought of João, with his missing fingers and his encyclopedic knowledge of every square meter of this coastline. "There's a man named João. He comes here every morning, mends nets by the rocks. Have you talked to him?"

"I tried. He told me to go away, I was scaring the fish." A slight smile. "In Portuguese, so I'm pretty sure he added some words I didn't understand."

"He does that." Elara pulled off her hood, ran a hand through her braids, felt the dampness at the roots. "He taught me erva marinha. Seagrass. He says when it's healthy, the fish come back."

"I saw you taking notes out there. What are you studying?"

"Exactly that. The seagrass. Why it's healthy here when it's dying everywhere else." She gestured vaguely at the water behind her. "I'm with the marine sciences center in town. Six-month fellowship."

"And how long have you been here?"

"Two months." She looked at him more directly now, taking in the details she'd missed in her initial irritation: the worn leather bracelet on his wrist, the faded T-shirt for a band she didn't recognize, the way he held the camera like it was an extension of his body rather than a tool. "How about you?"

"A week. I'll be here for a month, maybe six weeks, depending on how the project goes."

"Just you and the camera?"

"Just me and the camera." He smiled again, and this time it reached his eyes. "I'm Leo, by the way. Leo Reyes."

"Elara Mbeki."

"Elara." He said it carefully, giving each syllable its due. "That's beautiful. Where's it from?"

"Greek mythology, originally. One of Zeus's lovers. My mother was a classics professor." She didn't add that her father had been the one to suggest it, that he'd read her the myths every night until she was old enough to read them herself, that he'd been gone five years now and she still couldn't hear the name Callisto without wanting to cry. Strangers didn't need to know that.

"It suits you," Leo said. "Different. Memorable."

Before she could respond to that—before she could decide if it was a compliment or a line or simply an observation—her phone buzzed in the waterproof case strapped to her belt. She glanced at the screen. The lab. Probably wondering where her morning samples were.

"I have to go," she said, surprising herself with the reluctance in her voice. "Data waits for no woman."

"Of course." He stepped back, giving her room to pass. "Hey—Elara?"

She paused.

"If I see you out there again, can I take the photo? For real this time? With permission?"

She considered him for a long moment. The earnestness in his eyes. The way he held himself, present but not pushy. The simple fact that he'd apologized without being forced to.

"Ask me again sometime," she said. "Maybe I'll say yes."

She walked up the beach toward the path that led to town, feeling his gaze on her back the whole way. When she finally turned at the top of the dunes, he was still there, camera raised, but pointed not at her—at the fishermen, finally mending their nets in the morning light.

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