Chapter 8 Ace
ACE
Ace watched Willa go to her son.
She crossed the cave with her back straight, her voice already composed by the time she reached Andy.
Ace watched her crouch beside her son and hand him the water bottle and say something low and practical that made Andy nod and settle back into his sleeping bag, and the whole thing was done in under a minute with the seamless, instinctive efficiency of a woman who had spent seventeen years knowing exactly how to be what her children needed the moment they needed it.
She didn’t look back.
He turned to the fire.
He fed it a piece of wood he didn’t strictly need to feed it yet, crouched on his heels with his forearms on his knees, looked at the flames, and let the past ten minutes sit in his chest without trying to move them on.
Ace had said it. Twenty years of choosing every other available word instead of the true one, and he’d finally run out of alternatives in a cave on a storm-battered island. Great timing, Ace!
He almost laughed.
“Well,” said a voice behind him, quiet, dry, and entirely familiar. “It’s been a very bad time here on the island.”
Ace didn’t turn immediately. He knew who it was as he’d known that voice since they went to kindergarten together.
“How much did you hear?” Ace asked, keeping his eyes on the fire.
“Enough,” Margo said.
He heard her settle onto the rock beside him, not the flat working rock near the entrance where he had been sitting with Willa, but the lower one just to the left of the fire ring, close enough to speak without being overheard by anyone still sleeping.
Ace straightened up from his crouch, sat properly, and looked at her.
Margo looked back at him with the expression she had been giving him his entire life when he’d done something she considered simultaneously reasonable and completely avoidable.
“Don’t,” Ace said, still feeling too exposed.
“I haven’t said anything,” Margo pointed out.
“You don’t have to,” Ace told her, using his hand to indicate her face. “Your face is doing that thing it does when your mind is shouting—what an idiot.”
“I don’t have a look on my face like that,” Margo said defensively.
“You have different looks you give,” Ace pointed out. “That one in particular I’ve known since kindergarten. It means you have an opinion about my conversation you were eavesdropping on.”
“Okay…” Margo looked at him. “I do. But only because I love you like a brother and you know that!”
Ace sighed. “Yeah, I know.” He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a gentle squeeze. “You’re my sister and one of my best friends.”
“Then, as your sister and best friend, I’m telling you that while you have the worst timing,” Margo told him. “I’m proud you finally came out and told Willa how you feel.”
“Thanks,” Ace said, dropping his arm and rubbing a hand over his face. “But I think I just blew up a friendship.” He gave a mocking laugh. “Guess there’ll be no more family Sunday lunches at the Parkers for me.”
“Well, I’m sure Willa is not like that,” Margo assured him. “But, if that is the case, you can always have Sunday lunch at my place.”
“Thanks,” Ace said, smiling at the woman who had known him most of his life.
“Just give her some time,” Margo suggested. “Willa is still holding onto Shaun’s memory, and she has the kids to think of.”
“I know!” Ace nodded.
Margo was quiet for a moment. The fire crackled with a slow pulse of warmth across the cave floor, reaching the sleeping bags and the still shapes inside them.
“Willa’s struggling with so much right now,” Margo said carefully.
“The memorial is in a few weeks. Andy’s been having a harder time than he lets on this year.
She carries Shaun every single day, you know that, and around the anniversary of the fire, it gets heavier.
” She paused. “That doesn’t mean Willa doesn’t know what she feels.
It means she doesn’t feel she has the right to feel it yet. ”
Ace looked at Margo and then glanced at the fire.
“I know the timing was poor,” Ace admitted quietly. “But, after what happened with Willa being washed out to sea and the ten-year anniversary of Shaun’s death…” He sighed. “I just couldn’t hold back.”
“There is no perfect time,” Margo said sympathetically, looking at him sideways. “And it was bound to pop out one day after you’ve held your feelings for Willa in for what…”
“Twenty years,” Ace added.
Margo smiled, and she shook her head very slightly, blowing out a breath. “Yes, you’ve held on to your emotions for far too long.”
“Yeah, well, Shaun was my best friend, and having feelings for his wife just seemed rude,” Ace said, standing up.
The need to move had been building for the past several minutes, a physical restlessness that wasn’t quite agitation and not quite urgency but was somewhere between the two.
The kind that came when your mind was too full, and your body had been still for too long, and the only available remedy was to do something with your hands.
“The wood stack is getting low,” Ace noted. “We might need more before the coast guard gets here.” He peeked outside. “The storm has been knocking branches down all night. There’ll be fallen wood just inside the tree line.”
“It’s still raining, though,” Margo pointed out.
“I know.” Ace nodded, his eyes landing on the yellow rain slickers that Margo and Rad had come on the boat with. “I’ll use one of those.” He pointed to the items.
“There are also still strong gusts of wind.” Margo stood, moved toward the entrance, lifted the tarpaulin, and glanced out.
“I know,” Ace told her. “I’ll be careful.”
She looked at him for a long moment with a particular, assessing expression. “You’re not going out there alone.” Margo glanced outside again. “I’m coming with you.”
“Fine, but stick close to me,” Ace advised, moving toward the slickers. “And do as I say.”
Margo nodded and took the slicker Ace handed her.
They put them on and then snuck out of the cave.
Outside was a different world from inside the cave.
The air hit him immediately, cold and full of moisture, not the driving horizontal rain that had first hit the island, but the heavy, intermittent downpour of a storm that was retreating without grace.
And still throwing weight around in the spaces between its larger movements.
The sky above the tree line was the gray of old pewter, low and packed with cloud, and the light it gave was flat and strange, making everything look like the beginning of something rather than the end.
The ground was saturated. Ace’s boots found solid purchase on the rock near the entrance but slipped slightly on the wet soil at the edge of the cave’s apron, and he adjusted his weight, slowed his pace, and moved with the deliberate care of someone who had already spent too much time dealing with the consequences of moving too quickly in difficult conditions.
Margo was right beside Ace, her hood pulled up, her eyes scanning the ground ahead.
“Stick to the rock where you can,” Ace told her.
“Okay,” Margo moved a little closer behind him.
The tree line was eight feet from the cave entrance, and the fallen wood was there exactly as he had predicted.
Lots of branches were brought down by the wind during the storm.
Some of them were still wet but workable.
While others that had landed under the partial shelter of the canopy were damp rather than soaked.
Ace started collecting the wood, pulling the best pieces, and stacking them under his arm.
Margo did the same beside him without being asked or shown how.
Ace smiled to himself, remembering the many summer camps they had spent on this island growing up.
Being taught by the island’s rangers how to gather wood.
How to shelter down in a storm. Plants and creatures to avoid, and many other basic survival skills.
They had all grown up knowing this island, the forest and shoreline surrounding Sandpiper Shores like the back of their hand.
Ace had often bragged he could probably navigate around their town and the forest blind folded.
He raised a brow at the memory as it hit.
They had tried that once when they were about sixteen.
It had ended with him breaking his arm. Ace gave a soft laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Margo asked.
“Just thinking of the time I tried to navigate the campgrounds blindfolded,” Ace reminded her.
“Ah!” Margo nodded. “My mother and your grandmother were not very happy with you. As I recall, we had to rush you to the clinic with a broken arm and a concussion.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t one of my best dares,” Ace stopped and laughed. “I miss those days.” He sighed.
“I do too,” Margo agreed with him. “And our group of daredevils.”
“We did get up to some crazy things,” Ace said with a nostalgic sigh as a gust of wind hit them, reminding them that nature wasn’t quite through with its temper tantrum yet.
“We’d better get what we have inside.” He glanced at the pile Margo had already gathered. “You have more than your fill as well.”
“Agreed,” Margo said with a nod.
“Come on,” Ace called and turned with an armful of wood, looking toward the cave entrance. “Let’s get back.”
Margo carefully moved past him to go first, moving back across the apron of rock toward the entrance with her armload of branches.
Ace followed a step behind her, his eyes on the ground, reading the surface the way he’d been reading surfaces since they came out.
But a spurt of rain hit him at an awkward angle, temporarily blinding him.
Ace wiped his eyes and saw the slick patch of rock a fraction of a second too late.
“Margo—” Ace bellowed as she hit it at the wrong angle.
Her boot went out from under her on the left side with the particular, horrible suddenness of a fall that offered no negotiation.
Ace acted without a second thought. He dropped an armload of wood and lunged forward, getting both hands on her arms, pulling hard and fast. Margo came toward him, grabbing his jacket as she found her footing.
They stood at the edge of the rock apron together, both breathing harder than the exertion warranted.
“I’ve got you,” Ace said, as she trembled in his arms, her head turning toward the drop beside them.
“You saved me,” Margo breathed heavily, swallowing against the shock. “Thank you.”
Ace let out a breath and straightened.
“We need to be careful here,” Ace advised her.
“The wood!” Margo’s head turned to where it had hit the ground, some of it spilling over the edge of the crevice.
“Don’t worry about it,” Ace told her. “I’ll grab it.” He glanced behind her. “Just turn and then step slowly onto the level ground.” Her eyes flew to his in wide panic, and he gave her an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll guide you.”
Margo did as Ace told and then took a step back toward level ground.
Once she was clear, Ace bent to get a few of the branches that lay in front of him.
As he did that, Ace’s right boot hit the wet rock at the edge where the apron dropped away to the lower ground.
The section he had just carefully guided Margo over.
Before he could correct himself on the water-slicked surface and with the awkward angle giving him nothing to correct with, Ace went over the edge.
Not a fall. Not exactly. He caught the lip of the rock with both hands as he went, his arms taking the weight with a jolt that rang through his shoulders.
Ace’s heart pounded as his hands gripped the wet rock edge, his legs finding nothing below them but a four-foot drop onto slick, uneven ground with the angle all wrong for landing.
“Ace.” Margo was above him on the rock apron, on her knees, her face over the edge, her hands reaching. “Give me your arm.”
“No, Margo. I’m too heavy for you, go get Rad,” Ace told her. He was focused on the rock under his hands, on finding the angles, on the left handhold which was better than the right and could take more weight.
“Give me your arm,” Margo said again, with a firmness that indicated she wasn’t having a discussion about it and ignoring his order.
She grabbed his left wrist with both hands and pulled.
He felt her weight brace against the edge and her grip tighten, and he helped where he could, getting his right elbow onto the rock surface and pushing, and for a moment it was genuinely unclear which way it was going to go.
Then it became clear it wasn’t going to go his way.
The rock under Margo’s knees was too wet. Her leverage was wrong. She could hold him, but she couldn’t lift him, and he could feel the slow, incremental loss of ground in both their grips.
“Margo,” Ace growled. “Listen to me. Let go and get Rad.”
“Don’t you dare tell me to let go,” Margo said, through her gritted teeth.
“You’re making it worse,” Ace told her. “I can hold this. But I need someone stronger than either of us to get me up.”
Margo stared at him over the edge.
“Go,” Ace said. “I’ll hold on as best I can.”
Her face told him everything she thought about that plan.
“Margo.” He kept his voice steady, calm, and completely certain. “Go. Now.”
Margo held his gaze for one more second.
“You just hold on,” Margo ordered. “Don’t you dare let go. Do you hear me, Ace McKenna? Don’t you dare let go.”
Then she was gone, scrambling back across the apron toward the cave entrance, her boots loud on the wet rock, her voice already calling ahead of her.
Ace looked up at the edge of the rock above his head. Then he looked at the distance to solid ground below.
He tightened his grip as his arms ached, but his fingers were slipping and cramping from the cold.
The rain decided it was going to torture him as it came down in a hard, spluttering rain, making the surface even more slippery.
Ace’s fingers started to slide off the ledge.
He tried to regain his grip but couldn’t, so he did the only thing he could do.
He flattened himself against the edge as his fingers slid loose.
Ace’s body grated against the side of the cliff as he slid.