Chapter 63
The parka that Harper had wrapped around herself before she ventured out the back doors of the kitchen did little to protect her from the pelting rain and wind.
Even in the dark she could see tree branches downed, the neatly organized garden flattened in places by the destruction.
Harper charged forward to the groundskeeper’s cottage, where Meg had raised her family, her heart leading the way.
Anna looked shocked as she opened the door. She was wearing sweatpants and a fleece sweater, her hair messy, eyes confused. “Harper? Get inside.”
She stood back as Harper entered, dripping in Anna’s entryway.
“Don’t move, I’ll get a towel and some dry clothes. Stay,” Anna said emphatically and disappeared.
Harper nodded and looked around. The cottage was exactly as she had imagined it.
A cozy living room centered around a stone fireplace where a fire was crackling.
Harper could feel the welcome heat from the doorway.
A small kitchen off to the side, the new appliances at odds with the stonework on the walls, a narrow staircase led up to what Harper presumed were the bedrooms. Harper could feel the generations of love that had existed under this roof, the refugees of Bell Island, escapees from the waking world who had found a mystical island and a more free existence.
“Here. Change in here. I’ll make you tea.
” Anna handed her a towel and a bundle of dry clothes.
Harper closed the door to the bathroom and emerged in Anna’s black sweatpants and a matching sweater.
Anna motioned her to the sofa in front of the fire, where a mug of steaming liquid waited on the coffee table.
“Okay, now that you’re not half drowned. It’s delightful that you came for a visit, but very unexpected. All good?” Anna tucked her legs under her and leaned back into the sofa. Harper stared at her for a moment, taking in her sky-blue eyes, the way her fingers curled around her own mug of tea.
“I … had to see you. I finished the story that Lady Bell wanted me to find in the library,” Harper said quietly. Now that she was actually here, she found that she didn’t quite know what to say.
Anna nodded. “I knew something was up. You okay? You look a bit stunned.”
Harper chuckled and sipped the tea, the warmth spreading through her chest. “Yeah, I think so. I … it’s a lot.
I’ve been remembering a lot of things since I came here, things I had forced myself to forget.
It’s all just sort of coming back to me, and I …
don’t know what to do. But I had to see you, that was all I knew for sure.
I wanted to see you.” She stopped and stared at Anna, her heart beating hard and fast, terrified of what Anna’s reaction would be.
Anna met her gaze and set her mug on the table, then took Harper’s mug from her hands and set it down beside the other mug. She took Harper’s hands in her own, the touch was an electric shock that left Harper’s skin buzzing.
“Tell me.”
So Harper talked. She told Anna all the things she had been seeing and remembering.
She told her the stories her mother had whispered to her about meeting her father in a biology class at the University of Iceland.
How they went for a weekend to Vestmannaeyjar to see his family and she fell in love with the sea, the island, and the promise of their life together.
Harper told Anna about their cramped flat at the base of Eldfell, and the smell of salt and ice in the air.
Harper described the weekends on the water in kayaks, watching the tourists be carted to the shore from their grand cruise ships.
She described the rock walls where the gannets nested, their black-tipped wings contrasting against the sky. The quiet perfection in it all.
Anna got up to stoke the fire as Harper told her of the explosion that killed her parents, the truth of what she knew now.
Anna’s face twisted with empathy as Harper spoke, and she took Harper’s hand in hers.
Harper whispered the aftermath, sitting in the dorm at school in Grindavik, knowing that nothing would ever be in focus again.
Knowing that the path she’d been on had collapsed under a landslide of tears.
That was when she started to forget. Started to block out all the memories of hikes up the scraggy rise of the volcano, the peace of the midnight sun, the quiet walks, and the unearthly glow of aurora in the winter.
She locked away all the memories of her father and his booming laugh, his long dark hair, and his endless patience, how he took his coffee, the way his brow pinched when he was mad.
Harper’s mother faded also, the dark amber hair and freckles, a face so like Harper’s.
Harper had begun the process of forgetting as she sat huddled in her dorm, awaiting the félagsráegjafi, the social worker who would decide her fate.
“Where did you go?” Anna asked as she placed a fresh cup of tea in front of Harper.
“I already attended a boarding academy, the International School in Grindavik, due to my parents’ work.
They traveled so much. I was thirteen, due to start secondary.
I didn’t have any family. My father’s parents had passed, my mother’s family was gone before I was born.
The félagsráegjafi petitioned for me to have an exeat stay at the boarding school, it means to stay on holidays and weekends.
My parents had money set aside for me. In the summers, I went back to Vestmannaeyjar for a time; there was a sort of fósturheimili, or foster home.
It was just a woman who I had known growing up who cared for children.
She was kind, she had known my parents. At seventeen, I got early admission to Boston Scientific Institute, and I left.
There’s so much I didn’t remember that I can see now. ”
“You were in shock,” Anna said softly. “Was it strange to go back in the summers?”
Harper swallowed a lump that was growing in her throat. “Very. I was pushing all my memories down, and in Vestmannaeyjar, I was surrounded by them, by people who had known me my whole life. It was like being in a dream where everyone knows you but you have forgotten everything about them.”
“You were coping the only way you knew how,” Anna soothed.
Harper whispered the foggy details of those last years of school, and her first at the university.
She tried to explain what it was like to watch her memories disappear into the fog, and to let them go.
How she ended up feeling like she was floating by herself in a vast ocean, unmoored, unconnected to anything except her grief.
A creature who had no starting point, who lived on the edge of existence.
By the time Harper whispered the story of what she now knew about her parents’ death, the fire was a cinder.
The wind outside had lulled for a moment’s respite.
Anna watched Harper in silence. “Poor Shuri.”
“Yeah, her mother was perhaps the one moral compass on that crew,” Harper said softly. “I’ll call her when whatever this is”—she gestured to the window where the rain still fell in sheets—“is over.”
Anna nodded thoughtfully. “And it was the papers they had you reading in the library that made you remember everything.”
Harper stared at the dying fire. “In a way. The papers were the story of a girl who came to Bell a very long time ago; it was a story I’ve seen in dreams my whole life. I never thought they meant anything. Lady Bell said Meg’s story found me, that was what drew me to Bell.”
“Bell Island has a way of finding its own,” Anna said softly. “What are you going to do?”
Harper shook her head. “I don’t know that I have a choice. I mean, I suppose there’s always a choice, but this path only leads to one place.”
“Come here.” Anna pulled Harper into her arms and held her. She could hear the rhythmic beat of Anna’s heart as her exhausted consciousness slipped into darkness.