Chapter 33
Chapter 33
“W hen I said that to your mom...” I sat on the bench, facing Ellie, and held out my index finger just like I had with her mom. She reached up, touched mine with hers, and I spread my fingers and intertwined hers with mine. “This silly hand gesture started on that beach that night. It became the fabric of us. Our thing. It was how we remembered the moment. We could be in a crowd of people, loud music, chatter, and all she had to do was touch my fingertip with hers, and immediately we were back in that water. Sitting on that beach. Her and me. Us against the world. Then it wasn’t so silly anymore.”
Ellie waited for me to tell the rest of the story. “That morning as the sun rose, we walked the beach. Hand in hand. Maybe the most perfect sunrise in the history of the sun rising. With the water foaming over our ankles, the sun hit the beach and shone on something at the water’s edge. I lifted it. A silver cross. Washed up by the same flood tide that had ripped her seven miles out to sea. It was hanging from a leather lace. I tied the lace in a square knot and hung it around her neck. It came to rest flat across her heart. She leaned against me, pressing her ear to my heart. Beneath the waves rolling gently next to us, she had whispered to me, ‘If I ever find myself lost, will you come find me?’”
By now, Ellie was full-on crying, so I just wrapped an arm around her. Whatever had been hurting her was leaving. Purged. Taking the pain with it. “And”—I smiled—“that was the first night I kissed your mom.”
She smiled. She liked that thought.
“Although to be honest, she kissed me. I was too afraid.”
Ellie laughed and wiped her nose on her shirtsleeve.
I continued, “I told you then, and I’m telling you now, finding people is what I do. I found your mom. And we will find Ruth, Miriam, and Sadie. I don’t know how, but we will.”
She leaned into me.
“I didn’t know what to do with all that hurt, so I began writing and didn’t stop until I’d emptied myself.” I pulled her closer. Up underneath my shoulder. “I don’t know if you know this, but I wrote a novel about a character named Fingers.”
Ellie laughed and smeared her tears on my sleeve. “Yeah. I know. I’ve read it like a dozen times.”
“Well, maybe you’ll remember the letter my protagonist wrote to the female love interest?”
She stiletto-poked me in the rib cage. “You mean Marie.”
A laugh. “The very same.” Ellie was laughing, and the breath coming out of her was healing.
“Well, anyway, I—I mean, my protagonist—wrote a letter.”
She nodded. “Dad, I feel like we’re in some sort of wrinkle-in-time thing here.”
“Me too. Anyway, it was a letter I—I mean, he—wrote to her when he couldn’t find her. It was everything he wanted to tell her and never got the chance. I think it goes something like...” I spoke the letter from memory:
My love, I know this letter will hit you hard.
You remember that night I found you out here? Everybody was looking for you, but nobody thought to look that far out. But there you were. Floating six or seven miles out. You were so cold. Shaking. Then we ran out of gas a mile from shore, and I paddled us in. You were worried we wouldn’t make it. But I had found you. I could have paddled the coast of Florida if it meant we could stay in that boat. Then we built a fire and you leaned into me. I remember feeling the breeze on my face. The fire on my legs and the smell of you washing over me. All I wanted to do was sit and breathe. Stop the sun. Tell it to wait a few more hours. “Please, can’t you just hold off a while?” Then you placed your hand on mine and kissed my cheek. You whispered, “Thank you,” and I felt your breath on my ear.
I was nobody. A sixteen-year-old shadow walking the halls. A kid with a stupid little boat, but you made me somebody. That night was our secret, and seldom did a day pass that we didn’t see each other. Somehow, you always found a way to get to me. Then my senior year came, and you were the only one who thought I could break the record. Forty-eight seconds. I crossed the line and the watch showed forty-seven-point-something, and I collapsed. We did it. I remember the gun going off but I don’t remember running. I just remember flying. Floating. A thousand people screaming and all I heard was your voice. It’s all I’ve ever heard.
I don’t know how to climb off this beach. I don’t know how to walk out of here. I don’t know who I am without you. Fingers said to forgive you, but I can’t. There’s nothing to forgive. Nothing at all. Not even the... I want you to know I’m sorry I didn’t find you earlier. I’m real sorry. I tried so hard. But evil is real and sometimes it’s hard to hear. I wish you could have heard me. So before you go, before... I just want you to know that I’ve loved you from the moment I met you, and you never did anything—not one thing, ever—to make me love you less.
My heart hurts. A lot. It’s cracking down the middle, and it’s going to hurt even more when I go to stand up and carry you out of here. But no matter where I go, I’m carrying you with me. I’ll keep you inside me. And every time I bathe or swim or drink or walk through the waves or pilot a boat or just stand in the rain, I’ll let the water keep you in me. Marie, as long as there’s water, there’s you in me.
W hen I finished, Ellie was pressing her face to my chest. Sobbing. She was crying so hard her shoulders were shaking, so I just held her. I just wrapped my arms around her and tried to shield her from the pain. Truth was, I couldn’t and I knew that, so I just held her while the aftershocks shook her. I kissed her forehead and waited for the tremor to pass. When it did, I brushed her tearstained hair out of her face.
She shook her head in disbelief. “You know it by heart?”
“Of course. That’s where it came from. So it stays in there. Here’s what I want you to know. Your mom did a thing in me. She made me who I am. I’m not me without her.”
“What about Bones?”
“Of course. Bones too. But without your mom, we’re not having this conversation. She’s the epicenter. She also gave me a gift. A priceless gift. And this magnificent gift has her mom’s eyes. Her mom’s laugh. Her mom’s grit. She’s crazy beautiful and she’s amazing. I can’t wait to see what and who she becomes.”
We walked, her arm locked inside mine, back to the bike. Sitting behind me, the engine idling, she took one last look across the world where she’d started. She spoke in my ear. “Dad?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it okay if I come back here to your island from time to time? Just to remember this?”
“Yes, but...” I shook my head. “It’s not my island anymore. It’s ours. Yours, mine, and your mom’s.”