Chapter 17
Annie broods at the kitchen counter with a basket of berries beside her.
She secretly hoped Walker would hate it on Galene, that the obvious choice was to stay here with her, clam, and find rogue objects on the beach. Maybe fish from the dinghy,
not too far out.
Instead, he comes home after dark, bursting with excitement. He looks like he’s grown an inch out there, or maybe she’s imagining
it. He reminds her of when she loved the water so much she couldn’t peel herself away. She sees herself in the rosiness of
his cheeks, his smile, his wind-blown hair. But he lacerated his shin with a fillet knife; the only part he didn’t enjoy.
Ruth is already asleep, so Annie repairs it.
“The skin is so thin . . . our bodies are so delicate.” He winces at the hydrogen peroxide. They have no lidocaine left; his
right eyelid twitches in pain with each suture.
“We’re more resilient than we look.” Annie is struck by the sturdiness in her own voice. She sounds like her dad.
Walker goes out on Galene every day that week.
While he’s away, the noise finds her. Even the forest sounds off-pitch—-the screech of a breeze through branches, the cries
of birds—-all building into an agonizing cacophony, the world shaking itself through her ears.
But when he’s back with his steadying sound, everything goes quiet again. She can breathe; she surfaces for air.
Stop being so dramatic, is what she tells herself, riding the pendulum, confused, feeling like she’s losing her mind, more
and more antsy about Walker being there and her being here. She’s unmoored without him, trying to keep busy by collecting
eggs, pumping water, foraging up the mountain, stringing laundry on the line. But around midafternoon each day, she’s done
everything she can think of doing.
Ruth cleans around her, scrubbing the kitchen counters and cabinets with a rag and bucket of soapy water. Annie isn’t sure
if it’s her own protracted silence or the fact she’s wearing her earplugs again that makes Ruth finally ask, mid-scrub: “What’s
happening over there?”
“Nothing,” she lies, removing the orange foam from her ears. A crescendo: the fizz of bubbles in the bucket, the rasp of the
rag across the countertop.
Annie’s anger-confusion-exasperation is on the cusp of boiling over.
Ruth puts down her rag and points to the earplugs. “What’s that really about?”
“My ears are ringing.”
Ruth retrieves her otoscope from the first aid kit under the sink. She flicks it on and looks into Annie’s ears. “When did
that start?”
“The day before the tsunami.”
“Like tinnitus?”
“It’s not really ringing. More like . . . everything’s too loud?”
“What happens when you wear those?”
“They muffle it.”
“Tinnitus doesn’t get better with earplugs.”
“I’m not imagining this.”
“I didn’t say you were.” Ruth lowers the otoscope and slides it back into its case. She picks lint off the Velcro closure before speaking again. “You’ve never been in the cabin this long in your life. Do you want to be on the boat after all?”
Ruth sounds as unsure about it as Annie is.
“No.” Annie squeezes the earplugs between her fingers. “Besides, someone should be here with you.”
“You think I’ll fade away while you’re gone?”
She does think that. “You’ll probably need a transfusion soon. Then what?”
“I’m fine, honey.”
Annie stares at the beige, flecked countertop until it blurs into sand dunes. She can’t bring herself to ask all the specifics,
like what will they do when Ruth does need another one? Where will they go? Should they be planning for it? Instead she says,
“Henry doesn’t need me out there.”
“Henry always says you’re a better skipper than he is. He can’t sail like you.” Ruth pulls the bucket onto the countertop.
Annie puts her earplugs down in front of her. “I can’t make myself go on a sailboat yet.”
“I get that.” Ruth dips her rag in the bucket and wrings it out. Then she stares at Annie, as if she’s trying to figure something
out. “But you want to be with Walker, is that it?”
“No.” It sounds unconvincing. Annie rubs at a smudge on the counter with her thumb. “He loves sailing. You can tell.”
“He does seem to have a knack.” Ruth wipes the smudge away with her rag.
Annie crosses her arms on the counter and rests her head on them. “I tried to swim. I couldn’t even get in the water.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself.”
Annie speaks into the dark crooks of her elbows: “Do you think they’re dead?”
Ruth breathes in and out twice, then says quietly: “It’s possible.” The words drop like stones.
Annie closes her eyes. “Walker said they could be alive. That we can’t know.”
“It’s unfair for him to suggest that.” An edge rises in Ruth’s voice. “He has no idea what he’s talking about.”
“I’m worried I’m forgetting them already.”
Ruth softens. “All you need to do is look in the mirror. You’re just like your parents.”
Annie sits up and puts the earplugs back in. “Should I be afraid of that?” It’s out of her mouth before she can stop it. “Why
did Mom never leave the boat?”
Ruth is quiet.
“They say she was crazy,” Annie says. “Maybe I’m crazy, too?”
“You’re not crazy.”
“I can’t stand being around other people. I hear too much and it’s all too loud. I feel like my brain is going to explode.”
Ruth bites her lower lip like she’s holding something back.
“Maybe they wouldn’t be dead if I had been with them,” Annie says. “I should have been with them.” Her throat is closing up.
“That wouldn’t have changed anything, and you know it.”
“Or if Mom hadn’t insisted on the boat.”
“Annie, listen.” Ruth sits down before launching in: “Your mom . . . Aiden didn’t meet her at the hospital. He found her after
a boating accident.”
“Where? When?”
“Out the channel toward Bella Bella, about four years before you were born.”
Annie hugs her arms around herself. “I thought she was from the Aleutians.”
“We never found her family. They had to hospitalize her for a long time.”
“Because she was injured?”
Ruth hesitates. “No . . . not physically.”
“Tell me, please.”
“For a while, she wasn’t making sense. She would talk about . . . sea creatures.” Ruth waves her hands. “Water gods. Things
like that.”
“Water gods?”
“She had a mental health disorder.”
Annie lowers her voice. “She had . . . psychosis or something? My mother was psychotic?”
“Things straightened themselves out once they moved to Amphitrite.”
“Oh my god.” Annie covers her eyes.
“You’ve always been the most important thing for them. Having you was healing.”
“He found her on the beach?” Stories collide into one another. Annie tries in vain to connect them.
Ruth scratches at a chip in the countertop. “You couldn’t have kept your mom ashore, that’s my point. Even if you tried. I
won’t have you torturing yourself.”
“Is this going to happen to me, too? Am I going crazy?”
“No, honey. You’re fine.”
“Am I, though?” The story about Mara’s psychosis feels wrong. The boating accident feels made-up, too. Somewhere in the basin
of Annie’s heart a voice says neither is true.
Ruth stands and retrieves a pamphlet from her jacket pocket. She hands it to Annie. “And no one is saying you have to choose
the life they did.”
Annie unfolds the pamphlet.
“The coast guard was here this morning. They’re planning to relocate everyone,” Ruth says.
In Annie’s peripheral vision, a large soap bubble in the bucket pops. “Leave Hale’s?”
“They won’t have space until October.”
Annie reads the letter, paralyzed.
“This is a chance for a new start,” Ruth says.
“I don’t want a new start.”
“You and Evan will be safer in Vancouver. Think about the opportunities. No one is trapping you in any kind of life. No one
is trapping you anywhere.”
“Evan hasn’t even been here.” Irritation rings in Annie’s voice. “He should be here.”
Ruth nods. “He will be. He’s sorting things out with Isaac.”
Annie clenches her jaw. “And you’ll go with us?”
“They say we all have to.”
Annie waits for her to say more, but Ruth picks up the bucket and walks out to the porch.
“But you don’t want to leave, do you?” Annie says, following. “Unless you get sicker, and you have to?”
“We’re talking about you. It’s not a bad thing for you to have your feet on solid ground for the time being, to give you a
new perspective.” Ruth pours the dirty bucket water over the railing.
Annie watches the water drain into the earth. “I wish I could talk to Mom.”
Ruth opens her mouth to speak but then stops herself. She shakes the last of the water from the bucket before turning to Annie.
“I love you, honey.”
“I love you, too.” She takes the empty bucket from Ruth’s hands. “I’ll fill this up again.”
Annie reads the coast guard notice again shortly after.
She tries to imagine climbing aboard a boat and leaving, a wake frilling out behind them, Hale’s fading in the distance. It
feels wrong. She folds the pamphlet again, hiding the words.
She wants to hide herself in a drawer, too, some inner compartment where her ears will shut off.
In the garden, she uproots weedy intruders with her hoe and watches pink earthworms scoot around the dirt. Then she kicks
around the beach alone, digging clams and checking the lines for mussels. Near the shoreline, she finds a flip phone with
a single crack through its screen and puts it in her pocket as she searches the empty horizon for Galene’s return.
Walker’s sound is too faint for relief.
Back inside the cabin, she opens the closet and adds the phone to her collection. On the middle shelf, her eyes land on something unexpected.
A sand dollar lies waiting for her, white and smooth and delicate.