19. Jenna
JENNA
I t’s a sad, cold evening when the bus drops me off just in time to catch the last ferry to the island.
Friends, I am a complete failure.
“People move home all the time,” I remind myself as I lug along my dog and my rolling suitcase, onto which are strapped my stand mixer and pots and pans with duct tape that Hannah bought because she felt sorry for me. “It’s not the end of the world.”
Yes, but they don’t have to move home to the Cloudveil Collective compound.
The ferry docks on the island with a long, sad, wailing blast.
Truman and I are the only ones to hop off at the dark wooden dock. It creaks under my feet as, suitcase wheels squeaking, I lug my stuff to the gravel road .
The island is one of the most remote ones on the bay that stretches out in front of Seattle. The few early inhabitants, such as my mom, originally wanted it to be a place to commune with nature and raise their kids where they could see the stars.
That means that I’m walking home in pitch blackness, the super-tall evergreen trees swallowing up the yellow light from the dock.
I’ve walked these roads before, doing the walk of shame back from a night on the town in Seattle with Hannah when we were teenagers.
I never called to ask for a ride.
My mom would just send her latest boyfriend. I didn’t want them to start feeling fatherly affection for me if she was going to jettison them after six weeks. Picking up your teenage stepdaughter felt more fatherly than I wanted to allow.
And so I walk.
Ariana Grande plays on my phone.
“We’re getting exercise!” I sing along, out of tune with the music. “We’re going to be healthy.”
I think I hear the crunch of tires on gravel.
My heart starts thudding.
Truman’s ears perk up.
“It’s nothing. There are other people on the island.”
I move over to the side of the road in case the car needs to pass. Instead, I hear it speed up, tires spinning.
I scream as the car almost brushes me then speeds down the road, taillights dark so I can’t make out the license plate.
“That’s weird. A very weird coincidence, totally not related at all to anything that’s happened in the past week. It’s probably a tourist mad they missed the ferry. ”
Then why are my teeth chattering?
Truman’s floppy ears are high on his head, and he gives a few sharp warning barks to the dark.
“We’re okay. We’re fine, Truman… out here alone… in the dark.” I turn off the music.
In the dark, I hear the faint, faraway sounds of gravel crunching.
Is the car turning around? Is it Nathan? Shoot, is it Andreas or Brock? But Brock wouldn’t run me off the road, right?
He would for a prank video.
Maybe I am in over my head. Perhaps McCarthy is, maybe , just a little bit right.
If it was just me I was concerned about, I’d take my chances with ex-fiancé roulette. But Truman? For my dog? I’d do anything McCarthy says, even— gulp —tell him he’s right and I’m wrong.
The car’s definitely getting closer. It’s going slower this time, though.
My finger hovers over the green call button under McCarthy’s name. He’ll come if I call him. Even if the ferry isn’t running and it’s the middle of the night and I’m on a remote island, he’ll come rescue me. I know it deep in my bones.
It’s terrifying, that certainty.
A tinny horn sounds, and Cher, the old yellow VW bus with its faded flower mural, trundles down the dark road to pull up alongside me.
Truman barks happily as the window cranks down.
“Jenna!”
“Zephyr? ”
“Old Al at the ferry called and said he saw you come in. You didn’t tell your mom you were coming to stay. She and your great-grandma will be so happy to see you!”
Zephyr is chatty and friendly as he helps me load my suitcases and boxes and bags.
My arms ache from tugging the heavy load.
“Nathan didn’t disappear into the woods to use the little boys’ room, did he?” Zephyr jokes as I slam Cher’s door shut.
Truman perches on the dashboard, tail wagging.
Zephyr turns down the Grateful Dead music.
Oh, he’s not joking, I realize. He seriously thinks Nathan is out there.
“So, Nathan and I are, um…” I make an X with two fingers.
“Say no more.” Zephyr stamps on the clutch, and Cher lurches. “Your granny will be pleased. She was hoping you’d ditch him for the handsome and wealthy Mr. Svensson.”
“Don’t call him that. It sounds like a Jane Austen novel.” I groan. “I would never look that good in an empire waist.”
“Really?” Zephyr grins. He’s clothed today, at least; I recognize my mother’s weaving. “Because with the way Granny Mavis talks, he basically has an aristocratic title.”
“McCarthy is the furthest thing from a cultured aristocrat you will ever meet.” Crossing my arms, I stare out the dark window.
Zephyr makes a humming noise as we pull down the driveway.
“Your mom made foraged-mushroom crostini,” he says conversationally.
My stomach grumbles. For all her craziness, my mom is a good cook .
Truman hops out of the car as Zephyr helps me with my bags.
I steel myself on the front porch.
“Your great-grandmother’s been drinking,” he whispers to me, “so don’t worry, you won’t be the main attraction tonight.”
Zephyr hasn’t been around that long. In my family? I am always the main attraction, whether I like it or not.
The room is packed with senior citizens itching for real drama, not wondering which chicken is going to get lost under the cabin’s crawl space.
“My baby! Jenna-bug is moving home!” My mom sweeps me into a hug and plants kisses all over my face. It’s clear she’s been hitting the mead a little hard tonight too. “We’re going to bake and weave and moon bathe and make flower crowns.”
Mercifully, a cup of mead is shoved in my hand—the drink is a cloudy deep-amber color and reeks of alcohol.
“I put some vodka in there for you, girlie.” Granny Mavis pats me on the hip.
Shoot. I deserve this. I knock it back. It’s foul and tastes like cat pee, but the warm fuzzies leach into my bones.
Nathan who?
McCarthy say what?
Don’t know, don’t care, can’t even spell his name.
My mother shrieking and kneeling in front of me to put her hands on my uterus?
“Keep ’em coming,” I say to my great-grandmother with a slur.
“It’s a new moon,” my mom sings as my glass is refilled.
She’s hazy in my drunken vision. “Edwina laid two eggs. It’s a sign!
” My mother is ecstatic. “You’re with child!
I read the tea leaves.” Pressing her hands to my midsection, she continues.
“I had a dream that my granddaughter’s name would be Driftwood. ”
“I don’t think Nathan’s going to go for that.” Granny Mavis snickers into her mead cup.
“ I’m not pregnant !” I shriek.
Great-Granny Mavis thumps her cane. “She was inspired by that hot young thing you brought by the other day. Shoot, I feel like I’m ovulating. Told Zephyr to buy me some tampons.”
“The cards are usually right. I read them too. There was a baby,” Crocus says, with her white hair hanging down her bare back—and yeah, she unfortunately is not wearing clothes, though if I look like her when I’m her age, I’ll call it a win.
“I need another glass,” I mumble, my mouth feeling like honey-laced cotton. I wipe at my mouth with the back of my hand.
“I think,” Zephyr says gently to my mom, “maybe we can change the subject to something less emotionally loaded for Jenna? She’s had a long day.”
“A long day?” Willow cups my face. “I’m an empath, Jenna. You can talk to me.”
“I’m fine, just tired.”
“Your heart is broken,” my mom declares. “Nathan is no more.”
The mead threatens to come back up.
“You finally offed the bastard. Good girl. He had it coming, if you ask me.” Granny Mavis dusts off her hands. “I’ll take the fall for the murder. Tell me where he’s buried so I can put my DNA on the body. Hell, I’m old. I’m going to croak before the state can fight my appeals. ”
“No, Granny, he’s fine. He’s alive, I mean. He’s not fine—he lost his job, he broke up with me, there’s another woman…” The alcohol lets the tears flow. I sob at my mom’s rough-hewn kitchen table. “She’s pregnant. And pretty.”
“I knew the goddess didn’t forsake me.” My mother is pleased. “I am gifted.”
“You’re not going to try and be that affair baby’s godmother or something crazy, are you?” I demand.
“It takes a village. I am a licensed birth doula.”
“Mom!”
“I think Willow just means that she’s still able to read the tarot cards,” Zephyr says reassuringly, sliding a plate of warm mushroom, wild-onion, and goat-cheese crostini in front of me.
“My life sucks,” I groan.
“Have some more mead.”
“No, have something stronger.”
Granny Mavis tips what smells like moonshine in my pewter mead mug.
“After this—” I hiccup, swaying in my chair. “I am going to look for a new boyfriend who has a house like it’s a full-time job.”
“Pssst! Girlie!”
I’m in my dream house, white with big windows and oak floors.
“ Girlie. ”
Hot, shirtless blond men offer me platters of pizza rolls.
“I want the pepperoni ones.”
“Girlie, wake up. ”
A hand-carved wooden cane comes down on my thigh. Someone stuffs a pillow over my face before I can scream.
“Don’t let Zephyr hear. He doesn’t want any of us driving.”
“Driving where?” I mumble.
“We’re going to give that cheating dog-stealer what he deserves.”
My grandmother’s elderly service dog makes a sickly coughing noise.
“You can’t let these men walk all over you, girlie.”
My great-grandmother is wearing a metal World War II army helmet. Another elderly woman, Sunflower, is wearing a backpack with a garden gnome duct taped to it.
“I’m going to show you how the Greatest Generation took care of triflin’ men, as you youngsters like to say.”
I moan. “I need an Advil.”
“You need to grow a pair of ovaries.” She pats her abdomen.
“I could stop a bullet with these. Steel ovaries is what they are. No female descendent of mine is going to be treated that way. Both your mother and her mother are disappointments. Don’t you join their ranks.
We fight them in the streets so they respect us in the sheets. ”