Chapter 41
Cookie’s absence fills her room with a strange heaviness, and each step through it is an unbearable slog.
Gone is her thick Lummi blanket with its red and white stripes, replaced by plain ticking.
The brass hooks that used to hold her robe, her straw hat, and her mobcap stick out like winter twigs, robbed of their purpose.
Even the plaited basket has been removed from the dresser, though the scent of fir still daubs the air.
What happens if that will gets overturned? Cookie asked me the night before the Gatheround. Who gets it?
Nash, though I get the feeling he doesn’t want it, I replied. But Mr. Sanders had a plan for making sure Nowhere succeeded if he died, and I can’t just walk away.
She’d never complained about sharing a room with a child she didn’t want.
Didn’t expect looking after a newborn would be part of the job.
How much had she resented being stuck with me all these years?
Perhaps that was why she never bonded with me the way a mother might. She was a caretaker, and no more.
But to me she had been more.
Mr. Sanders once made Daniel, Nash, and me count the rings of the great sequoia table.
The tree had been born in the time of Caesar; its rings marked the printing press, the founding of America.
On each ring is written a tree’s history: its triumphs, its struggles, its riches, its storms, he said.
Imagine—if we sawed you in half, what would your rings tell us?
I was disturbed at the time by the notion of being sawed in half, but the lesson stuck with me. Cookie hid her rings well. Or maybe I just never bothered to look deep enough.
The emptiness is suffocating, the ceiling lights too harsh on my vision.
I need to be outside, among wild things whose only job is to thrive.
I hurry out of the room and take the servants’ staircase.
People pass, but I keep my gaze fixed ahead.
Don’t think about Cookie’s betrayal or everyone will see, like an open wound on my heart.
Finally reaching the east door, I stumble outside. A cool evening greets me. It must be around nine o’clock, the time when night wrestles a dark blanket over the day’s stubborn and flushed face. The electric lights have begun to glow.
A Rifle—not Koa—ambles his horse along the sea path.
I make my way to the alcove with the Marry Tree and the Peace Rock.
The whoosh of the ocean is a mother’s lullaby, and a whir of flocking birds—maybe waxwings—sounds from high in the branches.
Suede-smooth, the red wood of the madrone invites me to touch it.
It warms my hand. This singular madrone, growing here when Mr. Sanders bought this land, carries the memory of me as a child. She sees me now—older, but still lost.
Dora had been too preoccupied by stolen jewelry to notice the letter, but Cookie must have seen it in Flossie’s hiding place.
She knew the opportunity it presented. Out here, the picture grows clearer.
Swore he’d never take more than he could use, she said of Mr. Sanders.
A tree only needs so much rain, or its heartwood will start to rot.
She’d grown disheartened at Mr. Sanders’s continually expanding empire.
We’re supposed to take care of the land. Not own it.
Did she take the letter to sabotage what she saw as a decaying network?
If the will is deemed invalid, Sveyn, Boots, Kagaoka, and Eva will no longer receive their share, and Mr. Sanders’s tightly constructed empire will crumble.
She’ll have done what she thinks she must, even if it means throwing me to the wolves.
Tears wet my face, a bit of the ocean trickling out of me. Do sea wolves weep too? I lean heavily against the tree, feeling like all my bones have dissolved inside me, and it is only this stalwart trunk that is keeping me up.
The sound ripples in front of me, silvery flashes catching the dying light. But it is more than the water speaking. There is a music to the plunks and plops, and the joy of something returned.
“Salmon,” says an awestruck voice, and Nash’s warmth fills the space behind me.
A giddy feeling runs through my belly, like fingers through delicate blooms of sea blush. “Yes, salmon.”
He comes up beside me, and we marvel at the moving scene before us.
Have the sea wolves somehow brought them back?
Or at least given them the room to return?
Perhaps there is no connection between today’s congregation and the fish’s reappearance in the East Sound.
But if there is, have I had some hand in causing the island’s lifeblood to flow again?
Nash’s courtly brow furrows at the sight of my tear-streaked face. “Tell me what’s wrong and who I must make pay.”
“I believe Cookie stole the letter, and I almost understand why. She hated what your uncle built. I think she hated me.”
His eyes, warm like tobacco, drift from mine, working out the how, what, and when of things. He shakes his head. “I don’t think she hated you. She might have felt despair. Don’t worry about the letter. Just because you don’t have it doesn’t mean you killed my uncle. That’s a syllogistic fallacy.”
“Philosophy won’t help me now.”
Nash’s gaze becomes steely. “No, but your money will. Put all your resources into hiring the best defense lawyer money can buy. The money is still yours until they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt you did it.”
Could I really use what’s left of the fortune, when I know it may bring the great nest of Nowhere crashing down? Did Mr. Sanders, in all his wisdom, envision an outcome in which nothing remains?
“We’ll hire private investigators to keep digging. I’d say Tavernish is our strongest suspect.”
I nod. The lime man is a habitual liar and had a strong motive to want my father dead.
Plus, not only had that first crime occurred on his property, but Tavernish had had ample resources—choppers and money—to get both jobs done.
Feeling dizzy, I reach for the reassuring bark of the tree.
My eyes catch on the name “Mary” carved into the wood, then drift to the more hidden spot where Daniel carved my name.
“Sure am glad Daniel will never know what happened to his father,” I breathe.
Nash’s head droops. “Yes, me too.” He watches my fingers pass over LUCY. “Danny saw me kiss you on the tennis court. Thrashed me a good one.”
I hide my astonishment. I didn’t see either Nash or Daniel until the next day, looking scratched and bruised, like they’d fallen out of a tree.
“He loved you. Said he’d marry you one day.”
I make a choking sound, remembering Daniel’s sweet mouth and the unexpectedly funny words that dropped from it, often at the wrong time.
“I’m sure he wouldn’t have, even if he wrote this.
We were just kids. He’d barely seen the world yet, all those stars.
He’d say something like, ‘They’re not the best stars I’ve ever seen—’ ”
“ ‘But they’re up there,’ ” Nash continues in Daniel’s jokey voice, and I laugh despite my tears.
He takes a step closer, his nearness making me tremble. “The thing is, he didn’t carve your name there.” He glances at the inscription. “I did.”
My heart fumbles. A little bit of happiness spins inside me, stopping all thought. I breathe in the honey notes of madrone and taste salt on my lips. The drum of my heartbeat pounds in my ear.
Nash brushes my tears away with his thumbs. “I promised to leave you alone forever, and when he died, I didn’t feel it was right to break that promise.”
Is that why I became invisible to him after that kiss?
“How do you feel now?”
“I looked for Daniel’s Poggie Number Two hat when he died, but it was missing from the Lady Vee.
” His lashes move in the direction of the marina.
“I figured it had gotten lost. But when you came aboard, suddenly it showed up there again. I took it as a sign he’d given us his blessing.
I think he’d want me to take care of you. ”
Something warm flickers to life inside me, a votive of remembrance for the boy we both loved.
His hand slips around my waist, and his face moves closer, now only inches from mine. “And once this is all over and your good name is cleared, maybe you’ll go to the moon with me.”
A memory of him grinning over a glass of amber liquid wells up in my head.
“I like Earth.” I can’t stop looking at his mouth, and suddenly I am brushing my lips against his. And then he is kissing me back, a kiss strong enough to call a tide on a night filled with silver.
A determined courting murrelet will chase his chosen through the air, even flying through water and back out again to show his resolve.
And once she says yes, they will swim side by side with their beaks tipped to the sky.
Why does she choose him? Maybe it is the way being held by him touches a place in her heart that is more than physical.
It is a resonance, the way certain pipes of the Aeolian organ cause a chest to vibrate, the way the drum of thunder makes the surface water jump.
Our kiss deepens, and I feel alive and out of control, and the ocean is a roar in my ear.
But suddenly his grip on me loosens. Though he doesn’t let go, there is a warning in his face. As I come down from the moon, I am vaguely aware of the jingle of reins passing behind me.
A different kind of sick fills my stomach.
Koa doesn’t even bother looking at me as Goliath ferries him by, so straight and perfect in the saddle he could get the waves to stand at attention just by looking at them.
“Koa,” I call out, hurrying after him, thankful that Nash doesn’t follow. Koa slows to a halt.
“I’m sorry,” I offer.
He holds up a hand. “Don’t.” Wincing, he glances away from me, toward the splashing, shushing black canvas.
“Jeddah hasn’t come home yet. I’ll continue looking for him tomorrow morning.
Best find Gilly another helper for your derby.
” He stares up at a sky pinholed with stars, his profile outlined in moonlight.
“Thank you,” I say at last.
Koa clicks his tongue and Goliath starts off. The great black stallion’s tail flicks, a last farewell, and a hairline fracture travels its way up my heart and breaks it in two.