Chapter Three #2
But two nights ago, staring at him in the candlelight, the taste of red wine on my lips—his eyes overflowing with hope—it felt like a switch flipped inside me. A strange, unnamable fear, as if life was pushing me toward something I wasn’t prepared for. Somewhere, maybe, I didn’t want to go.
“People will forget about the island with time,” Nana assures now, the wind sliding through the gray waves of her hair. “They always do.”
But it feels different this time. Too many people spotted the island—or they think they did.
The photos will get international attention, they’ll be circulated through the media, dredging up the long-rumored history of Saltwell Island, and perhaps more reporters will seek me out.
The thought of facing it all again, answering questions, makes me cringe—a sharp blade driving up the center of my spine, separating the scaffolding of my bones.
I’ve spent my whole life trying to bury the past, but somehow it still finds its way back to me, unearthed, time and time again.
I slow my pace, looking at Nana. “What do you think happened to me that night?”
Her mouth flattens, the sea skids up across the beach, nearly reaching our feet before falling back into the swell. “You were lost for a little while…” she muses gently, “but you came back.”
“I was lost for a week.” I squeeze her hand, needing her for balance now. “But it only felt like a single night to me. It really did.”
She nods and pats her hand against my arm, as if it were a detail so tiny it hardly warrants mentioning.
But I remember the look on her face as dawn broke over the sea and I motored the little fishing boat up to the beach.
She was out on the shore, fully dressed, the gray house lit up behind her, every lamp and overhead light switched on, which was strange in that early dawn hour, and she wasn’t alone.
Strangers—who I would later learn were detectives and neighbors—were gathered on the back porch and inside the house, hands worrying over maps spread out across the dining room table, trying to track the route I might have taken if I had run away.
Or the route someone else might have taken if they’d snatched me from my room.
The little boat slid up onto the sand, and Nana ran to me, pulling me out and up into her arms. She was crying, deep and gasping, her tears staining my hair.
I didn’t understand why she was so upset, why there were police and searchers combing the beach for any sign of me.
I had only been gone a few hours. I was surprised she even knew I wasn’t in my bed.
“Where have you been?” she kept asking as her hands shook with relief.
“There was an island,” I told her. “It ran aground on the cape.” But when I turned and pointed out to sea, to the rocky headland where the storm was clearing away, there was no island. It was long gone. Just like the man had said it would be.
Now Nana looks up into my eyes, thin-as-paper creases lining her forehead.
“I know you want to believe what happened that night was all in your head. I know it’s easier that way.
” Her mouth puckers, chin steady. “But you were never a child who lied, who made up stories. Whatever happened that night”—she clears her throat, her expression turning solemn, the gray of her eyes reminding me of a winter storm—“whatever you remember, is probably the truth.”
My old room is a museum, a relic.
My younger self haunting every corner.
The wind roars against the windows and my skin feels jarred by it—trying to remember a time when the wind soothed me, when I fell asleep to the thrashing of the sea and the howling easterly winds against the roof eaves. I was another person then.
The bed is neatly made, fresh sheets smelling of salt and basil. When I was younger, Nana used to put herbs inside my pillowcase to help me sleep. Now, my cotton pajamas and thick socks do little to keep out the cold sea air, and I tug the heavy, seashell-patterned quilt up to my chin.
My phone buzzes from the bedside table and I reach for it, the blue glow illuminating the shadowy room.
It’s James. I forgot to text him, tell him where I am.
He’s probably worried, especially since the last time we had spoken, he’d slid a ring onto my finger and now I’ve packed a suitcase and vanished.
He might think I’ve run away, couldn’t handle the pressure.
But I set the phone back on the nightstand.
I feel guilty for doing it. Only a heartless person would let him continue to worry.
And I know he might make me feel better: hearing the normalcy of his voice, the rasp of the Seattle air in his lungs.
Or it might make things worse, unraveling this tenuous thread that’s holding me together right now.
I need to be alone, here in the old beach house where it all happened.
My phone stops humming, then goes dark.
I climb out of bed and stand at the window, pulling the memory up easily: the flickering lamplight out at the cape, rain blowing against the glass.
When the little boat reached the rocks and I tied it ashore, scrambling onto the island, my legs staggered, adjusting to the ground.
It felt odd, slick in places, muddy, the soil rich and good for planting.
I picked my way up the steep rise to a well-worn path, and there, sitting like the sturdy mast atop a ship, was the house. White walls, stone chimney, smoke coiling up into the wet sky.
Someone was inside.
I stood for several seconds, unsure of myself, of what I was seeing. It felt like a dream—I think that’s why later it was so easy to convince myself that it was. That perhaps I had never left my bed. Or had been out sleepwalking.
I reached the greenhouse first, a rectangular glass structure coated in a brine of moss and mildew.
I peered inside at the vines and greenery growing thick and pressing against the graying windows.
But it was the house that drew my focus away, the lights blazing inside.
What I had thought was only a single lamplight was actually several, a whole house lit by the glow of candles.
I crept up the back slope, my boots slipping on the damp grass, my hair soaked through.
I had no plan, no solid idea of what I would do when I reached the house.
I was a kid driven by curiosity, by the hope of a fairy tale come to life.
It was reckless, stupid, but I wouldn’t know this until later.
The stone steps were black from the rain, the wind wailed in my ears like the faraway cry of a dying wolf.
I touched the knob at the back door—I was naively unafraid—and I was going to let myself in, just stumble in out of the storm, uninvited, with no idea what would be waiting on the other side.
But before I could turn the knob, a hand clamped my shoulder—strong, pinching—and when I looked up, a man stood over me, towering, the dark hood of a raincoat obscuring half his face.
He pushed open the door and dragged me inside.
My heart spiked into my throat, seizing the muscles that kept me from screaming.
But after he slammed the door shut behind us, he released me—quick as that—then strode across the dry, earth-scented kitchen to a cast-iron stove waiting on the far wall.
The room held a dim glow, a rough wood floor beneath me, plaster walls, an old stove for cooking, a sink surely fed by a well, plates and mugs neatly stacked on shelves with wood slats at the front to the keep the dinnerware from sliding off onto the floor during bad weather.
This is what struck me, the little things that my eyes caught on, logged and remembered: the basin for shoes that held them upright, the leather straps that could be fastened to the dining room chairs to keep them from tipping over.
The house was built like a ship. It was meant for sailing.
It had voyaged across the seas, through gales and sudden squalls and Atlantic thunderstorms.
The man didn’t speak, just stood with his back to me, warming his hands beside the fire.
I craved the warmth, too, but didn’t dare move any closer.
I cleared my throat, wanting to ask a dozen childish questions—did he navigate by the stars, how long had he been at sea, had he ever seen the North Pole—but he lifted his head and beat me to it. “How’d ye get here?”
I flashed a look to the door behind me—knowing suddenly that I needed a way out, an escape—and said, “A boat.” I swung my eyes back to him, his dark hair long enough to be tied at the base of his neck.
“I saw your lights from shore.” My voice trembled.
“I thought you were a ship that had run aground on the outer rocks.”
“What coastline is this?” He turned his head slightly so I could see his chin, the stubble along his jaw. He had a structured face, hard-lined, just like his shoulders. If he were a boat, you’d say he was well-built, meant to withstand the most violent of storms.
“This is Maylarch.” When speaking to the fishermen down on the port, I had come to discover that the rougher my voice—the more like a man’s—the more likely they were to reply to me when I asked if they had any old crab pots they didn’t want anymore.
Any buckets or line that were no longer of use.
I had gotten in the habit of collecting these things, all part of an idea I’d developed that summer, of one day having a boat of my own, of becoming a fisherman just like them.
The man shook his head, then turned to stare back at me. His eyes were nearly translucent, reminding me of the green glass I sometimes found among the pebbles in front of Nana’s house. “What continent?”
I felt my face pucker, felt the fixed tension in his stare, the threadlike, almost-invisible rim of sorrow that hung in his eyes, then answered, “Nova Scotia.”