Chapter Seven #3
Days ago, I watched a fly buzz along a living room window, then I saw a black butterfly with white bands across its wings in the garden, but when I asked Clay if the insects made it across the sea to the island, if the mainland might not be too far away, he only shrugged.
“Maybe. Insects can lie dormant for months, nae telling what’s brought them here. ”
I close my eyes, then open them again.
Too many days have passed, and I can no longer convince myself that any of this is a dream. That I might wake in my hotel room and shake off the absurdity of the nightmare.
I walk up the stone-lined path to the garden, wearing a pair of leather boots that Clay set out for me—boots that were surely his wife’s, but apparently hold less meaning than the rain boots I foolishly pulled on days ago.
Clay has tilled a plot of dark soil, and he’s walking the rows slowly, a canvas bag slung over one shoulder, his right hand dropping seeds into a narrow trench.
He wakes earlier than usual now, to check on the lamb, and spends an hour in the barn each evening, ensuring that they’re settled and fed.
He cares for that lamb as if it were the most precious thing on the island—and maybe it is.
I place my hands against the garden fence. “Can I help?”
His blue eyes lift, a twitch at his temple, like he’s unsure of the question.
But he wipes at his forehead, then nods.
I step into the garden, and he removes the satchel from his shoulder, then lifts it over my head.
It’s heavier than I expected, but he’s so close I can feel his exhale against my cheek, the scent of mint on his hands.
“Drop them in every few inches, like so.” He reaches into the bag, pulls out a handful of large seeds, then tosses one into the damp soil.
I nod, understanding, and he takes my hand, placing the last few seeds into my palm.
“What are we planting?”
“Beans.”
Methodically, I work down each tilled row, plunking seeds into the trench, and Clay follows behind, using a metal spade to fill in the soil over top.
We find a rhythm to the work, and I like the satisfaction of nesting a seed in the ground, watching the soil fill in around it, knowing in time, something much larger will grow here.
An ordinary kind of magic. And it will give back what is given to it.
In the easy motion of our work, I begin to whistle softly, just under my breath, almost unconsciously.
“Nae,” Clay says behind me, not slowing his work. “Ye’ll be whistling up a wind iffen ye keep that up.”
I frown back at him, not entirely sure what he’s just said.
“An old sailor’s superstition,” he clarifies. “Never whistle on a boat or ye’ll bring on a bad storm.”
“We’re not on a boat,” I point out, dropping three more beans into the trench.
He balks. “We’re floating out at sea, ain’t we? Best not to push our luck.”
I can’t help but smile, slanting my eyes back at him, and his mouth pulls up at the edges. “I’ll refrain from whistling,” I agree.
It takes three more hours, the sun warming my skin, sweat at my temples, but we manage to plant the entire rectangle of land—an expansion of the already large garden.
I hook the empty satchel around a fence post and lean against the railing.
My hands are sore, blistered in places, but my body feels tired in a good, earnest way.
The nagging anxiousness that has haunted me since arriving on the island is briefly dulled.
I exhale, gazing out at the calm sea. It’s the first time I’ve seen it like this, so subdued, and it reminds me of my childhood—when the ocean was once a thing I loved, a thing I found beautiful.
Before it became a place that ruined my life.
“Solasta,” Clay says, resting an arm against the garden fence and nodding out to the sea.
When I don’t reply, he adds, “It’s a Scots word for shimmering, or luminous in the right light.
My father used to say it every evening at sunset.
He believed the Scots were gifted this land because only we could truly appreciate it.
Anyone else widnae see it for what it is.
A place where the luckiest of men reside. ”
The sun nears the sea, the air is faintly sweet in my lungs, lilacs and wild rose from the garden, and I feel a sense of contentedness I haven’t known, maybe ever.
“Your parents were born in Scotland?” I ask.
“My father, aye, died there too, on the land he loved. But my mum was American, born in upstate New York.” His eyes cut over to me, his face as calm as the sea.
“He often joked that he betrayed his country when he married her, but that’s what a good woman will do to ye.
” A smile touches his eyes before he turns back to the ocean.
He’s half American, which explains the odd tenure of his accent, why at times he sounds like a full-blooded Scotsman, and other times there is a softening of his words, without a hint of Scottish-English.
He’s a little of both, swaying fluidly between them.
“And your name?” I ask. “Clay… is it Scottish?”
He tips his chin. “My grandfather’s given name was Clayton.”
His eyes settle back on the sunset, and as I watch him, my heart aches.
He is a man with so much loss carved through him, I can’t believe there’s anything left.
Not only did he lose his wife and unborn children that terrible night, but he lost his country.
The land of his birth. And I wonder if he longs for it now, to return?
I long for things too, and I swing my eyes back to the horizon, thinking of Nana, of the gray-shingled house facing the sea. Hoping there might be a way back.
“My nana used to say that right at sunset, when the shadows are long, you can see a glimpse of the afterlife. Like a crack in a doorway, you can peek through, but only for an instant.”
Clay nods, as if he knows this to be true himself. And we stare out at the last golden rays of light, like we’re both looking for it. That brief flash, a sliver of the truth—of meaning.
But I’m also looking for a doorway of another kind. A way out of here.
“Thank ye,” he says. “For yer help in the garden. An’ with the house.
It’s been—” His eyes drop to his boots. “I’m grateful for it.
” Maybe he was going to say it’s been nice having me here.
Someone to help with the daily chores—washing linens and sweeping dust from the house.
A quiet relief inside him. The kind that makes him realize how long he’s been alone.
I smile a little. “You’re welcome.”
The colors of the sky grow deeper, darker, and he exhales, his shoulders settling. “I’m sorry about the boots,” he says. “I shouldn’t have—”
His jaw pulses, and he shifts his weight, resting his forearms against the railing.
“My wife was wearing them the day she went into labor. She’d been up with the chickens, a fox had snuck in the night before, taken one of them, and she was worried about the others.
She called to me, and I knew the babies were coming. ”
The sun flashes against the water—a surface of jewels—beginning its final descent.
“But the labor came on fast. There was no time to go for help. It all happened too quick…” His words trail off, and I sense that he’s said more than he intended.
If the old stories are true, the island broke away from the mainland that same night, and he’s been adrift ever since, never having another soul to share his grief with, someone to listen as he recounted what happened.
This may be the first time he’s ever spoken about it out loud.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell him, knowing more about his past than he likely realizes. The world beyond this island believes he is a fable—a folktale told by the old-timers. He doesn’t know that there is a woman named Helen who has built a podcast about his story. He doesn’t even know what a podcast is.
He nods, looks away from me. Then clears his throat. “I’m sorry too,” he replies. “Sorry there’s no easy way off the island.”
I lean forward against the wood fence, the sky turning taffy-pink, stretched out, dissolving into the sea. “It wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have gone into the water. I shouldn’t have swum out here.”
“Ye have someone waiting for you?” His eyes fall to my hand against the railing, the diamond gleaming in the setting sun. A thing that seems garish in a place like this. I should have taken it off before starting our work in the garden, and I pick at a clot of soil beneath the band.
“His name is James.” Even to my own ears, the words sound thin, tasteless. “He asked me to marry him just before I left.”
Clay lifts an eyebrow. “Why did ye leave, then?”
“I needed to see the island.” I clench my hand closed.
“I needed to see if it was true, if this place was still… if it was real.” Air slips between my lips, a shaky exhale.
“If you were real.” I turn, and he’s watching me.
Eyes bottomless like the sea. Like we’re both trying to calculate the strange fate that brought me back here after all these years.
“The sea has a way of setting things right,” he says. “Ye’ll find yer way back home, to where ye belong.”
I nod, forcing a smile.
His words are meant to comfort, but they stir up something else I can’t quite pinpoint.
“Rain coming,” he adds, tipping his eyes up as drops begin to explode against the dark soil. “Best head in.”