Chapter 33 Hailey
Hailey
“Jack! Jack!” Hailey shouted, tossing mulch at his window again, breathless in the damp and the fog, as the silvery cove lapped
the seaweed-lined rocks nearby.
He came to the window. “Dude! Hales! What’s wrong?”
“Come on! We need to go to town.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes!”
He nodded and disappeared. The light went out, and a moment later he came out the back door, wearing his typical shorts, flip-flops,
and T-shirt, plus a quizzical smile. “What’s up?” He nodded toward the road. “You’ve got your car pointed in the wrong direction.”
She let out a little, inappropriate laugh—she was full of those today—looking over her shoulder at it. Yes, she had driven
her Protegé the wrong way down Summerland Cove Point Road to get to Seabreeze quicker, after her mom had come inside and started
arguing with her grandma again, and now Hailey didn’t care about the wrong-way thing, because at least she was pointing toward
the exit. “Come on!” she told him, running for the car.
“Jesus,” Jack said. She’d told him all of it as she drove faster and faster along the narrow highway through the forest, the fog encasing everything.
Her grandpa had dementia, they had to sell Innisfree, Noah had been there and been a jerk and her grandma had pulled a gun on him, and he had gone and now Hailey didn’t know if he would still want to marry her, and she’d tried calling him from the Innisfree landline but he hadn’t answered.
Then her mom and grandma had started fighting again, and she didn’t know when her dad would be back, and her siblings had all gone to Rhode Island for reasons she didn’t understand.
So, Hailey needed cell signal to see if they’d called or texted, or if her dad had, or if Noah had, if he was furious with her or if he would possibly apologize for .
. . well, for what? For not standing between her and the gun that had been pointed at them?
For running away instead? And she guessed she hadn’t really needed Jack to come along to town—except, for moral support, she had.
Her car was a manual, and every time she went to shift, her hand was shaking worse, and the peaceful farmhouses they passed
seemed like jokes to her. Places where happy, normal families lived, where they put out coolers full of cartons of eggs from
their chickens with a sign that said $4 and trusted anyone who came along would leave the exact right change. Places where they were hammering on new shingles, tending
to the lilies in the garden, letting the goats roam free. Her head was hurting like it was clamped in a vise.
“You need to take a break,” Jack said briskly, in a tone like an army officer. “Pull over right here.” He pointed to the side
of the road up ahead where there was a small cemetery encircled by an iron fence filled with rows of crumbling gravestones.
Hailey spotted a small driveway beside it and braked, managing to slow down in time to pull in and stop the car. She rubbed
her head. “Let’s take a walk,” Jack said, opening the door and getting out.
“Jack, the ticks in here are going to be insane,” Hailey called after him, but he was already making his way through the long grass toward the cemetery gate, so she turned off the car and got out and followed him.
Whatever. Getting a tick bite would just be the icing on the cake, with everything else that was going on.
Her headache was making her feel like she was going to throw up again, but that seemed almost normal by now.
Jack had stopped inside the gate and was looking at a gravestone. When she came up beside him, he said, “Here. Abigail Spoonhorn,
beloved wife of Jacob. Born March 2, 1805. Died May 7, 1828. And next to her here is her baby. Harriet Spoonhorn. Born May
7, 1828, died three days later.”
“Oh, God,” Hailey said, rubbing her temple absently again. She didn’t know what he was up to, but she couldn’t help feeling
drawn in. “That’s terrible. She died giving birth, and then the baby died, too. I wonder what happened to her husband.”
Jack shrugged, stepped over to the next grave, and read off the tall monument. “George Carpenter, born 1794, died 1850. His
wife Mary Carpenter. Born 1799, died 1876.”
Hailey found herself imagining the lives these people might’ve lived. She reached to brush her fingers over the letters of
Mary Carpenter’s name. “Is this supposed to be making me feel better?” she said, though in fact her headache had eased a bit,
and the dampness of the air felt soothing on her skin.
Jack was already at the next grave. “And here. Annabelle Winthrop. Born 1847, died 1865. She was only eighteen.”
An angel was carved into the top of the stone. “I wonder if she died in the Civil War,” Hailey said. “I mean, like, maybe
she starved to death on account of it or something.”
“Did people starve to death around here?”
“I don’t know.”
Jack stood looking at her, and somehow just his presence was making her feel better. In the fog and the lowering dusk, his
hair and eyes seemed darker, like they were catching shadows rather than light. “Close your eyes,” he said, and when she cocked
her head, questioning, he added, “Just trust me for a second.”
She looked at him another moment, liking the angles of his face, then closed her eyes.
“Take a deep breath.”
She inhaled. The damp air was thick with the scent of pine and pollen.
“Listen.”
She heard leaves rustling in the slight breeze high above. A bird sounded a single note.
She felt him move closer. “I guess my point is the world’s a really big place,” he said. “And your life is going to be long.
This is just one moment of it. A really shitty moment! But just a moment. I promise. Nothing lasts forever.”
She opened her eyes, and he was close to her, looking at her softly.
What if everything were different, Hales?
She took a step back, her head pinging with pain again. Stop, she told herself. She thought she felt a tick crawling on her ankle, and she reached to brush it off, wrenching herself back to reality. “We
need to go to town,” she said. She needed to talk to Emma. Their dad would be back soon, and Emma and Eli and Cody needed to be here when he arrived.
Also, Hailey badly needed to talk to Noah. Patch things up, whatever it took. Because, when her dad got back, no way was Hailey
going to tell him and her mom—in the middle of this unimaginable news about her grandpa, about Innisfree—that everything they’d
done for her, everything they’d paid for, had been for nothing.
Jack nodded, looking into her eyes. “Lead the way,” he said.
She let Jack drive her car so she could close her eyes. By the time he parked in the lot downtown, behind a row of old two-
and three-story brick buildings and beside a wide spot in the tidal river, darkness had nearly fallen. The fog hadn’t reached
this far inland, and the sun was an orange ball sinking for the horizon in a darkening sky.
There were no missed calls from Noah, no texts.
Jack, saying he’d give her some privacy, got out of the car and set out walking toward the town landing and dinghy dock at the other end of the parking lot.
Hailey watched his silhouette for a moment, then caught herself and, from the passenger seat, clicked to dial Noah.
She listened to the ringing in her ear. His voicemail picked up.
The mechanical voice: “The number you have reached is not available.” She said nothing, ended the call.
He’d be back at the restaurant by now. She should really drive to Portland,
be there to talk to him when he got off work, but she felt too sick to drive, and she obviously couldn’t show up with Jack
in tow.
Should she send a text? What would she even say? Sorry my grandma threatened to shoot you, still wanna get married?
Hailey rubbed her temple and dialed Emma, who answered and put Hailey on speaker with Eli, too. Hailey swallowed hard to think
how they’d feel when they learned about Grandpa, about Innisfree. She’d always imagined she would spend summers at The Cove
for the rest of her life. With her parents as they grew older, with the family she’d imagined she’d someday have, and with
her brothers’ and sister’s families, too—just like Dad and Kate and Josh had done at the yellow cottage. Now none of that
was going to happen, and that she was the only one of her siblings who knew it made her feel hollow and alone.
“I couldn’t believe you guys just, like, left,” she said. “You need to come back. Cody, too. Get him to drive you tonight,
even if he has to drive back down to go to work tomorrow. Dad’ll be back soon, and . . . and there’s some other stuff going
on, too.” She wasn’t going to tell them about Grandpa and Innisfree over the phone.
“We have some things we need to take care of here,” Emma said.
A fresh knife of pain stabbed Hailey’s head. She tried to get it out of them what they were doing, but they wouldn’t say.
“By tomorrow, you guys better be back up here,” she ordered finally, in her best big-sister tone, though she knew the odds
of them obeying her were slim. She said goodbye and ended the call, then she fumbled to open the car door, got out and ran
the short distance over to the grass by the river, and threw up.
“I’m taking you home,” Jack said a few minutes later, pacing near where she lay on a park bench beside the river, her knees
drawn up, rubbing her head, wishing she could get rid of the horrendous taste in her mouth. Unfortunately, the noise of her
getting out of the car and throwing up had drawn Jack’s attention. At least he couldn’t have truly seen the horror show, she told herself, since it was dusk and he’d been on the other side of the parking lot. He’d run to her,
but by the time he got there, she’d been crawling to this bench, climbing up and stretching out. Normally, after she threw
up, the pain would ease. Not this time. Of all her recent headaches, this was the worst by far, and she hated that Jack was
seeing her like this. “You need to be in bed,” he said.