CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When Gram wakes me, she has the doctor by her side. I sit up, see the sun fading from the day. The light is gone from the room, the air heavy warm with summer. I cast my eyes to the windowsill, to the rocking chair. I turn to the pillow beside me even as I know the girl isn’t here again.
“Hello, Rilla.” Dr. Brower Walsh stands at my bed, all lean giant with his tidy haircut and wide brown eyes. Doc Brower makes house calls for only a few families, people his grandfather treated when he was the area doctor and traveled from house to house. “Your grandmother tells me that you had an accident.”
My head throbs. “Yesterday.”
“You gave her quite a scare.” He holds up two fingers, looks to my neck. “May I?” I nod and he sets his fingers above my collarbone, looks down as he counts to some number in his head. “Good. Good.” Two hands now—all fingertips maneuvering around the contours of my neck, ears, skull. “Any headaches?”
I think of the burning light assaulting my brain, the strands of ember words searing there. That was no headache. “Earlier with Gram, I felt a little dizzy.”
“Her eyes practically rolled into the back of her head.” Gram’s voice is twisted, worry making her words low and shaky.
“Mmm-hmmm.” Dr. Brower removes a thin instrument from his bag. “I’d like to check your eyes. Follow the red light.” I do. My eyes track back and forth. Left to right. Right to left. “Do you happen to remember if you hit your head when you fell overboard?”
I remember so much, the moments playing in slow motion in my brain. The bubbles spraying around me as I was plunged into the deep. The race to cut through the rope binding my ankle. The girl yelling for me, telling me not to go. The underwater squeezing my lungs. The darkness that stretched on forever. “I didn’t hit my head.”
“No other issues since your spell in the water?”
“Not that I can think of.” Not that I can talk about.
“She had a fight with Reed just before she collapsed.” Gram is reaching.
“Ah.” Dr. Brower nods, checks the range of all my joints. Elbows, knees, ankles, wrists.
“How are you sleeping?’
“Not great.”
He presses the stethoscope behind my ears. “And your diet?”
“Good.”
He looks to Gram for confirmation. She nods. “No changes.”
He surrenders his stethoscope to its perch around his neck and takes my hand, his touch pressing gently against the burn that’s still healing at my wrist. “Is there anything else going on that you want to tell me about, Rilla?”
“No, nothing.”
“What happened here?” He taps at the very edge of my bandage.
“It was an accident. I singed it on my engine.”
“May I take a look?”
I nod, knowing he’s looking for signs of self-harm.
He removes the bandage slowly. “Yes, that’s healing nicely.” He wraps my wrist gently, expertly, before resting my arm at my side. “I think you may have experienced a stress-induced anxiety attack, or panic attack. That dizziness you felt, was it accompanied by a racing heart? Sweaty palms?”
“Yes.” Even though I know this isn’t anxiety. I’ve had a panic attack before, when my entire body filled with my heartbeat and I wanted to flee from my own skin. This isn’t that. This is my brain trying to make sense of something that isn’t as natural as the fight or flight instinct.
“I’ll prescribe you some antianxiety medication. You can take one when you feel like you’re getting overwhelmed. They do tend to make people drowsy, though, so I don’t recommend that you use them while out at sea, okay?”
“Okay.”
He takes out a small pad, scribbles some words before tearing off the top leaf of paper. “This medication might also help you sleep because it can calm the mind.” He pats my leg. “Take one only if you need it.”
Gram reaches for the prescription and I don’t see a hint of argument in her eyes, which scares me more than the visions. Normally Gram would argue that lavender or chamomile would be enough to calm my mind. Instead, Gram clutches the prescription to her heart, letting me know we are both in out of our depths.
Doc Brower throws closed the clasp on his traveling medicine bag, its leather worn enough to have been inherited from his grandfather’s practice. “A good night’s sleep is critical, Rilla. Especially after losing your father. The death of a loved one is one of the greatest stresses that the human mind can endure. Be easy on yourself. Try not to do too much.”
“I’ll try.”
Doc Brower reaches for my hand. “We need you to be good and healthy before you head to college and make this peninsula proud.”
His words are so close to something my father would say that they make sadness shoot through my core. “Yes, sir.”
He squeezes my hand. “Take care, now. You can call if you need anything at all.”
I need so much, but nothing the doctor can help me with.
Gram walks Doc Brower out of my bedroom and switches off the overhead light as she leaves. She doesn’t return until she has my prescription bottle in hand. She sets down a fresh glass of water before twisting at the medicine’s cap. She taps out a small green pill. She sets it under my bedside lamp. Then she kisses me on the forehead and leaves a stamp of warmth there. “Ya need your rest, Rilla. I’ll be right here if ya need me.”
“I’ll be fine, Gram.”
She pats at my hand. “I know ya will.”
Gram sits on the rocking chair, her worry forcing her back so straight. I roll the pill in my hand. It is small and round and chalky. It’s green, not red. Did my mother start with the green pills? My mother. Reed’s angry words swim at me, joined by the ember words scrawling across the attic door, filling my room. The memory of being pulled into the deep.
I take the pill, swallow it without water.
I lower my head to my pillow and my mind races with Dad’s funeral, Malaga’s history, the girl with the song. Gram’s attic and the wood grain that rearranged to tell me IM HERE. And then. Then the scenes quiet. My mind fogs with some internal lullaby. The bombarding images turn to black. An all-consuming black. Soothing. So opposite the institutional place I’ve always feared. I walk into this blackness knowing I’m safe. Knowing the blackness is there to hold me. Comfort me.
I give over my trust.
I surrender my independence.
I let the black carry me off.
* * *
I wake from another world. The pill Doc Brower prescribed me knocked me out. I even slept through my alarm, apparently, since I feel Gram prodding me in the arm to open my eyes.
“I’ve been trying to wake ya for nearly five minutes, Rilla. Are ya all right?”
“Fine. Yes. All good.” I give Gram the reassurance she needs. “I just needed sleep, like the doc said.”
Gram’s eyes are creased with worry. “Sam’s downstairs.”
“I’m up.” I sit against my headboard despite the lasting ache trapped in my back.
“How are ya feeling?”
“I feel great.” I rub at the corners of my eyes. “I slept great.” No dreams, no interruptions.
“That’s a balm for my heart.” Gram pats me on the shin. “The medicine helped, then?”
“Definitely.”
Gram squeezes my shin. “Ya feel like having some breakfast?”
“I’m starving.” Gram has always equated an appetite as a sign of good health.
“I’ll fix something. Can ya come down?”
I nod. “Of course.”
Gram smiles as she leaves, closing the door gently behind her. I wait until I hear her footsteps on the stairs before I go to the windowsill. The window is closed, locked from the inside. I move the shirt that clings to the sill. Just below the words FIND ME and DONT GO! are scratched two additional words. Familiar now. IM HERE
FIND ME
DONT GO!
IM HERE
I let my thumb trace the thin ridges of the words. I don’t know how the words are scrawled here, how the girl can visit me and mark my world in this way, but I know the words are hers. And I make a promise to find her.
I look out at Malaga and hold my hand against the glass. “I know you’re here.” I press my forehead to the cool glass and give in. “But why?”
So much of me doesn’t want her to answer.
Too much of me needs her to answer.
I exhale hard against the window, causing a spray of fog to spread across the glass. I raise my finger, write: WHO R U? into the circle of steam. I return my forehead to the glass, maybe waiting for an answer. Or maybe I’m just relieved the morning feels so still and my bones feel so rested. But there’s an emptiness in me that I know belongs to my mother. It’s the same emptiness I felt when friends had their mothers picking them up from school, throwing them birthday parties—an absence. For the first time since I was six, I wish my mother were here. I wouldn’t ask her to explain her choices, her leaving. I’d only ask her to talk me through what’s happening, let me know how close I am to the edge.
* * *
I dress for normal. White tee, black leggings. I pinch my cheeks so the red will rise. I stretch my face into a smile. Normal. Normal enough for Gram to let me slip out onto the boat.
She’s with Sam, eating cubed watermelon at the table, by the time I get to the kitchen.
“There’s your tea there.” Gram nods toward an empty mug next to the kettle, but keeps her eyes trained on me. I pour a cup, bring my mug under my nose, breathe in the clover leaf and orange rind. For clearing the blood and the lungs. I take a sip and let the hot liquid river its ways to my stomach.
“Sam tells me ya two have plans to go buggin’ today.”
“Have to. Some pots have been soaking for four days now.”
“Is that a long time for a trap to soak?” Sam asks.
I nod. “Ninety-two hours is the longest the law says a trap can stay in the water. Any longer than that and the lobsters won’t have any food to survive.”
Gram tsks. “Maybe we should be thinking about your wellness, Rilla, not those bugs.”
“I feel okay, Gram. Really.” I grab the jam from the fridge, the peanut butter from the shelf.
“We already made lunch,” Sam says. “Egg salad with celery.”
“My favorite.” I spear at a watermelon cube on Gram’s plate. “We should get going, then.”
Sam nods. “Ready when you are.” He stands to clear the dishes.
“Ya stay with Rilla at all times.” Gram folds her paper napkin, smooths it against the table.
“You have my word.”
“Around here that means something, Sam Taylor. Your word is a contract.”
He nods his understanding. “You have my contract. Rilla will not be alone on the boat today, and we’ll be extra careful.”
“Do I get to weigh in on this at all?”
Gram stands, steadies her hip against the table. “Not right now ya don’t. Ya just focus on keeping your feet on that boat today, keeping your mind clear. Can ya do that?”
“I can, Gram. Promise.” I kiss her on the head, then pull the Rilla Brae’s keys from their holder. Today Gram has threaded a wisteria vine around the chain. For love and longevity. I double back, kiss her again. “Thank you, Gram.”
“Ya come home safe.”
“Always.”
Sam and I head across the lawn. Today’s waves barely break into rolling whitecaps. There is only a soft wind. The air seems still, like it too is recovering.
“So . . . did you really pass out last night?”
“Um, no. Is that the story Gram’s selling you?”
“The long and short of it.”
“I had a headache, that’s all. But then I slept like a rock. I feel good.” It’s not entirely untrue. We reach the dock and I climb aboard. Sam unties the ropes from their cleats.
“Did it have something to do with that girl? Did you see her again?”
I freeze. It’s strange hearing Sam talk about my girl, but I don’t overthink the consequences of letting the fullest truth swim out: “Yes.” I can’t say how she conjured the blinding embers of light or how she wrote more words in my sill. I know only that she’s here. Somewhere. “I need to find her, Sam.”
“We will.” He looks toward the house where Gram is on the deck, arms planted at her hips. “But first we fish, okay?”
“Okay.” It takes me a second to start the engine. It seems like an impossible gift that Sam will help me find the girl, that he doesn’t judge me or doubt me. Then there’s a movement on the shore, a hovering. A blue heron sweeps down to the water, her prehistoric wings parting the air with grace. She lands, stands statue still in the shallow tide, waiting for her prey.
“Did you know that the heron is a bird of the in-between?”
I turn to Sam, my eyes all question.
“Herons prefer to hunt at twilight, which is a symbolic time of ‘in-between’ since it’s not night, not day. And the heron’s at home on earth, in the water, and in the air. Some American Indians see this as a sign of liminality—of easily crossing into the space that is neither here nor there.”
The heron’s head twitches, her gaze finding us. “My dad taught me that blue herons were lucky.”
“That too.” Sam unties the final rope, gathering it into a circle hung at his wrist. He lays the bundle on the dock, steps over it to board the Rilla Brae. “Maybe it’s a sign that we’ll have luck with the in-between.”
The heron pushes upward and lifts to the bluest sky, her wings finding their glide. “I hope so.”
* * *
Something in our first pot is flailing when Sam hauls it to the rail. “What is that?”
I move to the trap, spring the coils. “Puffer shark.” I grab for the small fish and toss her to the deep. “Gotta get her back in the water before she takes a gulp of air and blows up like a balloon.”
“Would it really do that?” He moves to the lobsters, throwing out three tiny ones without even measuring.
“In the ocean they swallow water to blow up four times their size. To ward off predators.” I measure a keeper, band her, and toss her in the tanks. “If a puffer shark’s out of the sea too long, they’ll breathe air, and then they can’t swim for hours. They just float on the surface in a helpless ball.”
“Does it hurt them?” Sam rebaits the trap.
“Dunno for sure. I’ve seen young kids who keep them out of the water for fun so they can watch them bob, but it was always my dad’s basic rule that we don’t kill or harm anything we’re not here to catch.”
“I like your dad.”
Still present tense. Even now. “Me too.”
Sam and I catch a good rhythm, and we’re through with all of our pots by early afternoon. A lot of hungry lobsters found our cages in the time they soaked, and we head to the co-op, where Sam unloads with Hoopah.
“Rumor has it ya fell in the drink,” Hoopah calls to me as I dump the bait bucket, the screeching gulls diving for remnants.
“I may have taken a little swim.” It’s best to make light of what happened yesterday so no one gives it too much thought. It may be fishing superstition, but we all know it’s better not to call too much attention to the near misses at sea.
“It might be best not ta swim with a rope grabbing at ya ankle, but that’s just me.” He gives me a wink, one that tells me he’s glad I’m safe.
“I’ll remember that next time.”
“You’d better. Ya fathah would want ya fishing these waters for a lotta years to come, Rilla.”
“I plan on it.” Despite Reed believing otherwise.
Sam hands me the slip, his face trying to contain the biggest smile. “Five hundred and eighteen pounds,” he whispers. “Boo. Yah!” He doesn’t whisper the last part.
“Damn.” I take the slip, double-check the number.
“Our best haul yet, huh?”
It’s another superstition that keeps me from calling any haul the best haul. “It’s impressive.”
He wipes his hands on the bib of his rubber overalls. “I think I might change my major to fishing.”
“Ha! We’ll make a salty dog of you yet.”
“I think maybe you already have. This fishing stuff gets in your blood.”
It does. “Sure does.”
I push at the throttle and the engine hums. The salt breeze swirls around us as I head through the sea of buoys bobbing their colorful necks out of the glistening Atlantic.
We’re about a half mile from home when Sam joins me in the wheelhouse. “Hey, Rilla?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think we could anchor out here for a little while?”
“Too deep to anchor here. What’s up?”
“Nothing.” Sam gazes out at the expanse of blue where the horizon and sea bend to meet each other. “I just wanted to float for a while. I’ve never done that.”
I check my gauges, my depth finder. The only boat traffic is far off the port bow, so I cut the engine. “We can float.” It was one of the things I liked to do most with my dad. Sit in the waves and watch for marine animals. As if they know, a pod of dolphins swim by, their sleek backs lifting in and out of the water in precise rhythm. Two juveniles play at the rear, teasing us with their backward swimming and head nods.
Sam watches, awe lighting his features. “That is by far one of the coolest things I have ever seen.”
I smile. “It’s pretty cool.”
“In Tucson the sky is so big and blue that sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s real. But here, it’s like there’s a blue sky and then another one just below it, one that’s alive and breathing.”
“I think you should change your major to poetry.”
Sam laughs. “A fishing poet?”
“It’s honest work.”
“I’ll consider it.”
When the last of the dolphin pod disappears, I take a seat next to where Sam’s got his feet up on the cooler. I lean forward and rest my elbows over my knees. I let the sea fall around me, the humidity curling the tiny hairs around my face. The spray from the waves coats my skin with wet and salt. I lick at my lips, draw the salt onto my tongue.
“I think I’d like to get to the desert someday.”
“See the ocean of sand.”
“With sage plants instead of waves.”
“And coyotes howling instead of wind.”
“That too.”
“Look me up when you do.”
I laugh. “Will do. Considering you’re the one person I’ll know there.”
We let the waves rock us for some time before Sam says, “I think I might really have the ocean in my blood. Being out here feels like coming home.”
“Same.”
“I’m also kind of afraid of it, if I’m being honest. It’s still so wild. But don’t tell your grandmother that the sea intimidates me or she’ll never trust me on the water with you again.”
“Your secret’s safe.” I tilt my head back, let the sun reach inside of me.
“You know that book I found in my parents’ shed? It had this section on men fishing off this coast, how they didn’t even need fishing gear to pull cod from the ocean. They could just lean overboard and grab a six-foot codfish out of the ocean with their bare hands.”
“Sure. That’s how Cape Cod got its name.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep. And Gram says that her great-grandfather used to fish by throwing a simple net over the side of his boat. No hook, no bait.”
“For real?”
“For real. And that was after most of the cod stocks had been reduced.”
“Do you think it was that way for the Malaga fishermen?”
I remember the open dory at the shore when I first saw the girl. It was big enough for four men, men who would pull their catch up and over its edges. “I do. I think the fishing was different then. Less people. Fuller ocean.”
Sam leans forward, assumes my exact position. “I looked for your girl last night. I read and reread every article written about the island, even accessed the state archives and searched the records of the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“University perk.”
“Anything?”
Sam shakes his head, unable to hide his disappointment.
But I know her story exists somewhere. “My gram always says that bees bring stories.”
He squints, looks at me. “How’s that?”
“She taught me that bees bring stories on their wings, deposit them into plants as they pollinate. Then humans eat the plant, share the stories.”
Sam sits back, a smile rolling over his features. “I like that.”
“She believes that stories connect us, make us appreciate all the shared parts of being human.”
“I feel the same way about the earth. That it keeps our stories.”
“Exactly. And what if . . . what if the girl has a story that can’t be told through the archives or your dig site?” How far would she go to crawl under my skin, make me know her truth? “What if the girl from the island has a story she’s trying to tell me?” The girl from the sea, the girl with her song. Is she trying to tell me not to make a mistake?
DONT GO!
Or is she trying to tell me about a wrong that was done to her?
IM HERE
“I’d like to know her story,” he says.
“Me too.”
“Can you tell me what you know?”
I stretch my gaze to the sea, to the blue horizon with its straight line and perfect predictability. And I let go.
I tell Sam about her voice singing from the shore, singing from the deep. I tell him about the scratches in my sill, the flower she left on my boat. I tell him about the baby’s wail, the fingers at my window, the girl in my bed with her matted hair, the cut on her lip, the raw of her fingertips. I tell him everything because we’re supposed to share our stories. Some so they bring joy. Some so we don’t repeat our mistakes.
I slog up the stairs when I get home, my muscles tired, even if my head feels lighter for sharing with Sam. I run my fingers through the divots of scratched wood at my sill.
DONT GO!
“I have to,” I tell her. “I have to go.” I need to see the bigger world.
Then I trace IM HERE and press my palm over the two words, honoring them.
“I know,” I tell her. I know.