Chapter 24
Walker and Annie are quiet on the hike back.
Her mind churns like a cement mixer, torturing her with what-ifs and unanswered questions. Will she and Evan find their way
back together? Or is Walker leading her down a different path? His hum drifts around them as they walk. She wants to fold
herself into it and stay there.
It’s Friday. The week stretches out, alone and together in the cabin. Walker bends to straighten the mat inside the doorway.
As his spine arches, a strip of skin reveals itself around his lower back. Annie tries to distract herself with Ruth’s list
of chores on the counter.
“I know you’re worried about her,” Walker says, coming over.
“You’d think I’d come to terms with her being sick.”
He says nothing, in that way that he does when there is nothing to say.
She can’t help staring at him—-at the soft bow of his upper lip, the muscles of his neck—-until she realizes she’s doing it
and abruptly looks back down. How is he so beautiful?
Ruth has delegated a range of chores—a long and individualized list for each of them—as if she wanted to keep them fully and separately occupied in her absence.
And alongside “water the chickens” and “get more propane from the coast guard supply,” she’s written “pack for October.” Annie traces her fingers over the words.
Then she folds the paper in half and sticks it in the drawer next to the car keys and Ruth’s measuring tape.
“Should we do chores?” she asks.
“Is that what you want?”
His sound feels more tactile than usual. Butterfly wings at the back of her neck, across her fingertips. All she wants is
to get closer, and she’s scared of how badly she wants it.
“We should tackle them before it’s too late,” she says instead, not sure how to ask for more sound.
He looks at her briefly, then he grabs the compost bucket from under the sink. “Chores it is.”
Walker scrubs the last of the laundry and hangs it on the line. Annie collects eggs from the chickens. Her desire builds up.
But is it desire for the sound, or desire for Walker? Or are they the same thing? And why is it so potent and demanding?
She buzzes with nerves.
More work: She cleans out the kitchen drawers for Ruth, scrubs sand and crumbs and rogue peppercorns from the corners. Walker
goes to the beach to collect mussels off the rocks.
From the window, she watches his lanky body, his long strides.
It’s the end of the day by the time they’ve done all the chores and eaten. When they sit down on the couch, the sun is heading
toward the horizon. Annie sinks onto the cushions. Walker reads Birds of the North Pacific.
“You want to hear this?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Albatrosses. They can go years without touching ground. They sleep in flight.”
Annie has seen the white-winged birds aloft in the sky, off the bow of Amphitrite on the open seas. Alone in the middle of nowhere. Her dad used to say they were primordial.
“Their heart rate is the same sleeping and flying,” he finishes.
“Do you think they’re lonely?”
“I think they’re free.” His words drift between them. “Did you ever feel lonely sailing so long?”
“Sometimes.”
“But not always?”
“Most times I didn’t ever want to come ashore.”
“Mmhm.” He looks at her.
“But that part of me felt a little unhinged, too. Like if I gave in to it, I might float off and lose track of everything.
You know?” She takes the book from Walker’s hands and skims the page, then reads a section aloud: “Albatrosses spend the better
part of the year sailing above the open ocean alone but return to the same partner on land year after year.”
Walker studies her face. “You like how that sounds?”
“I want to feel . . . not alone? Like I belong somewhere.” Annie meets his eyes. Why is he looking at her so attentively?
“You know, you’re never alone,” he says.
“I feel like I am.” Tears threaten. “I keep trying to imagine leaving in October. Then I’ll have no home base at all.” An
image of herself appears in her mind: nice clothes, coffee cup in one hand, a city street. No hum. It makes her feel exhausted
and small.
Walker takes her hands. “Can I show you something?”
“Please.”
He presses their palms together, entwining their fingers. “Close your eyes,” he says.
She does.
All at once, the couch melts away and, in its place, a float-tank feeling—-no grounding at all. She loses track of up from
down as the water sinks into her. A deeper outside-in pressure builds against her limbs.
Her vision fills without opening her eyes: She’s lying on the ocean floor. The sea rests upon her, soaking into her arteries
and organs, filling her to the brim.
It feels . . . real.
“There,” he says quietly.
When Annie opens her eyes, she’s back in the living room. “What was that?”
He’s smiling. “You’re getting good at it.”
“What did I just do?”
He pulls her up to the window and presses his other hand to the glass. “What do you feel when you look out there?”
Her body feels warm and suspended in softness. She leans her forehead against the cool window. “I feel better.”
“Maybe you already know what you need.”
Her breath fogs the window. “Live on a sailboat again?” she asks. “Everyone thought my mom was crazy for doing that.”
“So?”
Annie pauses. “She loved the sea more than anything.”
“Because the sea is so beautiful.”
Walker says it with a longing Annie feels in the front of her neck, something so tender it brings more tears to her eyes.
She can’t help but ask him again.
“Where did you come from?”
He stares out the window for a moment. “Have you ever worried that the thing you most wanted to say could ruin everything?”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I wish I could tell you everything I know,” he says. “But that would only interfere.”
Annie shakes her head. “I need to know.”
“You think you don’t have everything you need, but you do.” Walker looks down to the left and pauses. “If I get too close,
I’ll only screw it up.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Walker levels his eyes at her. “I love how soft your skin is. That you like to make everything into doubles, like your sand
dollars.” He looks to the ceiling. “I love the way your nose scrunches when you’re upset.”
“Is it bad you love those things?”
Walker shakes his head. “I shouldn’t be thinking about those things,” he says.
Annie leans in close enough to sense the heat from his skin. “What if I feel the same way?”
She wraps her hands around his waist, closing the distance between them.
“God, Annie.” He tilts his head back, a desperate look on his face. “Are you sure about this?”
She wants to inhabit everything he knows, to be absorbed back under the water. Can he do this? Lifting her head, she brings
her lips close to his and takes a single breath.
Then she kisses him.
It’s soft at first, until he surrenders. With his arms around her, he melds them together. She’s never felt like this before:
Her body does not exist, and instead, an aura of everythingness, the doors flung open to somewhere else. Somewhere faraway.
“Tell me you felt that,” Walker whispers.
Opening her eyes, she reorients herself. She’s back in Ruth’s cabin, her feet on the floor. On the wall directly behind Walker
is the framed photograph of Ruth with her arms around Evan and Annie when they were children.
Annie pulls away and moves to the couch.
“You’re thinking about him,” Walker says, sitting down next to her. He doesn’t sound upset, but rather worried.
“We were in love,” she blurts. “But I don’t know what’s happened to him lately.”
“Another reason I shouldn’t get in the way.” He lowers his head and slides toward the other end of the couch.
“No.” Annie reaches for his hand before he gets too far. “Don’t go.”
“I know how important Evan is for you.” Walker sounds like he’s chastising himself. “He’ll figure himself out. I know he will.”
“But he’s not here.”
Walker strokes her hair. In his touch: a vast sea, moonless, black.
She reaches for him again and can’t stop herself. She’s in his lap, pressing her lips against his again. The living room vanishes
into an underwater dreamland.
He tastes like salt, like the sea.