CHAPTER NINETEEN
I want nothing more than to search the island for the Flame Freesia at first light, but I have to haul traps. Sam sets the gaff hook on the first buoy in our string and starts to pull. Immediately I know something is wrong. There’s no tug at the opposite end of the line. The rope slicks too quickly through the pulley, pulling up only seaweed.
“What happened?”
“We lost a string.” One string, three traps.
“How?”
I pull up the rope, fan my thumb over the sprig of tufted rope that sprays wild as a snipped braid. “Someone cut the line.”
“What? Why?”
“Happens all the time. It’s a shitty way to settle a dispute.” I scan the sea for other boats, one that might be watching too closely, but of course there’s no one. Cowards never stick around.
“You think it was Benner? Retaliation for what you did to his traps?”
“Most likely.” But a small worry grows inside of me that this sabotage could have been Reed because of the things he said—the argument that may have been too harsh for us to come back from. I shake off the thought. “There’s no better way to tell someone they don’t belong on the water.” I set my course for the next buoy, my rage building toward Benner. “We need to check the next string.”
The next string is fine. The next thirty strings are fine. Sam and I band the keepers and it’s almost a good enough haul to calm my anger for anyone messing with my traps. Until Sam pulls a slack rope at the end of our run.
“Rilla?”
I join him at pulley. The last line is cut, just like the first line.
“This isn’t a coincidence, is it?”
“I’d say that’s about as far from a coincidence as you can get.” It’s Benner telling me girls don’t belong at sea. I know it the way any lobster fisherman would know.
“What happens to the traps?”
“They’re ghost traps now. They’ll sit on the bottom of the sea forever.”
“With lobsters inside?”
“The tiny ones might crawl out, but the big ones get stuck in there.”
“And they die?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes the trapped lobsters attract new lobsters to climb in and one cannibalizes the other. No one really knows how long something like that can go on.”
“Not good.”
“Arizonians and their understatements.” I toss the buoy into the back of the boat to join the severed line from the first string. “The sea bottom is littered with ghost traps.”
“I’m sorry, Rilla.”
I thrust forward on the throttle. “Nothing you need to be apologizing for unless you’re the one who cut my line.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“There isn’t a lobster boat captain alive who would joke about ghost traps.”
We deliver our haul to the co-op, and it’s decent. Four hundred and six pounds. “I’m gonna go grab a check for this.” I wave the sales slip at Sam. “Mind waiting on the boat?”
“I’ll hose her down.”
I nod and head toward the office.
Hoopah’s smile welcomes me inside. “Good ta see ya.”
“It’s good to be seen.”
“Whatcha got there?”
“Today’s slip. Just need to get paid out today.”
His brow creases. “That’s not like ya. Don’t want the check sent to ya account?”
“Not for this haul.”
He nods toward my slip, and I hand it to him. He studies the value. “Ayuh. A good day, Rilla.” Hoopah flips the checkbook open to a new page and uses a calculator to multiply my catch weight by today’s price per pound.
“Make it out to Sam Taylor.”
Hoopah nods. “If that’s what ya want.” He writes out a check and signs his name. He tears it off, hands it to me. “You’d make any father proud, Rilla.”
I fold the check, slip it in my coveralls. “You haven’t heard any chatter on the docks, have you?”
“Nothing but chattah.”
“Two of my strings were cut today.”
He narrows his eyes. “That so?”
I nod. “I know you likely won’t hear anything, but just in case.”
He scratches at nonexistent facial hair on his chin. “I’ve got my suspect.”
“Me too.”
“Ya watch ya’self now.”
“Always.”
He nods. “Ayuh.”
On my way back to the wharf, I see Reed and his grandfather stacking new traps onto his grandfather’s boat. They’re shining green and don’t carry a lick of clinging seaweed. I stare at Reed, know he sees me. And I don’t mistake how he doesn’t wave, doesn’t even raise his head in a nod. I hate the way my suspicion flares for Reed being partly responsible for my six traps being lost to the sea.
I go to my boat, where I slip Sam his pay.
“What’s this?” He unfolds the check. “Good God, that’s a lot of money. Why are you giving me so much money?”
I turn over the engine. “That’s a paycheck, Sam Taylor.”
“That’s a ridiculously big paycheck.”
“You got lucky. The next time might not be the same.”
“How do you mean?”
I throw the Rilla Brae into gear and leave Reed and his grandfather and the docks behind. My angry suspicions won’t leave me. “My dad always paid me on the seventh day of work. The full price of the seventh-day haul. On a good seventh day, you make more. On a bad seventh day, not so much.”
“This is too much.”
“It won’t feel like it next time when you get half of that.” I putter through the No Wake Zone and head toward Malaga. “Besides, that’s the way it’s done on this boat, and you’re on this boat. A lot of other captains will average out the week’s catch and give the sternman a fixed percent. But my dad was different.”
Sam slips the check into his jeans pocket. “Rule number one: Captain’s always right, right?”
“There’s a lot I’ve been wrong about. But I’m hoping today I’ll get something right.” I tell him about my dream and the flower and my hunch.
My body is electric with hope as Sam and I scour the island for the Flame Freesia. My dream had to mean something, the girl transporting the very plant that Gram’s mother held so dear. It connects my family to the island in a small way. Connects my family to the girl, even if it was just a dream.
Though it feels too much like bees carrying their stories. This flower, carrying a story.
We grid the surface of the island with our footsteps, no different from how Sam grids his dig sites. We walk normally at first, our excitement not wanting us to be slow about the search. When our hunt turns up nothing, we get down on our hands and knees, scour again.
“I don’t know how this can be.” I’m exhausted. Deflated. I sit with my knees pulled against my chest. “I really thought we’d find it.”
“Finding the echoes people leave behind isn’t always easy.”
“But I was so sure. Really sure.”
“My professor tells us not to expect anything from the earth so we’ll be that much more rewarded by what we do find. She says hyped digs can be the most disappointing.”
“Like today.”
“But there’s always tomorrow,” Sam says.
Tomorrows always arrive lighter.
* * *
When we get back to Fairtide, I’m not ready to go inside or give up. I’m frustrated by the cut traps and our inability to find the flower I was sure would be on the island. My chest is too tight to pull a deep breath into my lungs. I need a swim.
“Would you mind bringing up the cooler? I’ll be in. I just need five.”
“Sure thing.” Sam lifts the cooler onto his shoulder and starts across Fairtide’s green. I wave to Gram to tell her everything is all right. I kick off my rubber boots and stand at the dock’s edge. It’s strange how I miss the girl; how I was so certain I’d find her today, or a clue from her at least. But my optimism was stupid, because the flower could never survive on the island without someone to care for its roots the way Gram does. Sadness rises with the feeling of failing the girl, and my family.
The waves are dark in the early evening, their rolling motion churning oil-black seaweed in its grip, spitting up the sea with its weeds and seafoam. I inch forward, my toes gripping the edge of the dock. The waves splash against the pilings, jumping up, wetting my toes. The water sings to me, its waves a melody. Calling to me.
Come here, come here
My dear, my dear.
Won’t you come here and be my dear.
Be near, my dear.
I’m here, I’m here.
Won’t you come near and find me, dear?
The song rises across the backs of the waves, its words like dolphins playing, beckoning me.
I am the dear.
The girl wants me near.
Did my mother hear this same summons so long ago?
Is that what she heard when she packed all those stones into the pockets of her long yellow skirt, its hem dark with seawater? My heart surges, remembering how much I feared my mother that night, but I don’t feel that fear now. The song brings peace.
The song of the Water People.
Come here, come here
I’m here, I’m here.
Come to the sea and find me, dear.
It’s an invitation carried on rolling waves.
Calling to me.
I want to be with the Water People. The Water Girl.
Be near, be near
My dear, my dear.
Be with the waves and find me here.
I strip down to my T-shirt and hold a breath. I dive. The ocean rushes its ice all around me. I propel my body under the crashing waves, listening for the underwater song. I want the girl to be here. I want her lullaby to call me. Only me. I swim through the black world of the ocean, let the cold press into my chest.
When I finally surface, I slick my hair back along my scalp and take a breath that expands my lungs, skin, everything.
The sun is gone now. The fat white moon hangs directly above. Darkness floats everywhere. How long was I underwater? A boat bobs close to the shore. Approaching. So familiar. I twist toward Fairtide, the water swirling around me. Our dock is shorter somehow, made of wood now. The Rilla Brae is gone.
The small boat rows to Fairtide’s dock. A rope is thrown from inside the boat. And then the girl. She steps onto Fairtide’s dock, her fingers fastening a quick running bowline knot. She hoists a bundle from her boat and settles it onto her back. She starts toward our deck, which is impossibly no longer there. I follow the beautiful girl in her white dress. She knocks on Gram’s door. Our back door. But it’s not Gram who answers.
A tall, frail woman peeks out of the slit of doorway. I can only see half of her face, though I know she is Gram’s mother, so similar to her hanging portrait above our living room fireplace.
My great-grandmother. The wood dock. The girl with her perfect black braids. The oil lamplight bouncing at my great-grandmother’s features as she holds the flame to the darkness. All signs of decades ago.
“Good evening, Mrs. Murphy.”
“Agnes. Good evening.”
Agnes! My girl. A name.
A shiver crawls over my skin.
My gram’s mother opens the door wider. I don’t miss how she looks to the night, as if suspicious that someone could be watching. I feel heat push forth from the house, our kitchen stove warming bones even then.
“Only one tonight,” Gram’s mother says, handing over a bundle. The girl rests it in the crook of her free arm.
“For you, Mrs. Murphy.” Agnes passes her package through the door.
“You always do such a nice job cleaning, Agnes. I don’t know how you get those tea stains out.”
“The secret is the salt water, ma’am.”
Flickers of light coat my great-grandmother’s features as she lowers her gaze. “Agnes? Is that her?”
“My baby, ma’am.” Agnes shifts her arms, and it is only then I see the infant strapped to her chest.
“Wait here, dear. I have a gift for you.” Gram’s mother disappears from the open door to expose a sliver of our kitchen, the windows just as they are now, the stove anchoring the space. She returns, a small swatch of fabric stretched over one hand. “It is a meager token, only a bonnet. I knitted it myself.”
“It is lovely, Mrs. Murphy.” Agnes’s voice lifts, joy floating her words.
“May I?” Gram’s mother nods toward the infant’s small head.
“Of course.” Agnes brings the infant out from her middle, but only some, as if her heart can’t stand to feel distance from the tiny child.
Gram’s mother settles the bonnet onto the baby’s head. “Eleanor is a fine girl, Agnes. You should be very proud.”
Eleanor?
Agnes nods, her eyes only on her child. The infant coos then, no different from a little bird.
The air warps. Eleanor?
“She looks pale, Agnes. Is she well?”
Agnes’s back straightens. She pulls the child closer. “Pale, ma’am?”
“Her skin, Agnes. Her skin is quite light compared to yours.”
There’s a lift in Agnes’s shoulders. “Yes, Mrs. Brae. My husband hails from Ireland. His skin does not like the sun.” There is a laugh in this last statement. Love sewn in her words.
“Yes, well. What a blood endowment for the youngster in this hateful climate.”
Agnes looks to her child. “I don’t understand, Mrs. Brae.”
My great-grandmother looks at Agnes with something like sorrow. “Agnes.” She wrings her hands. “I have to ask you to leave the linens at the back of the door from now on. I will be unable to answer should you knock.” She points to a spot near Agnes’s feet. “I’ll set a box there, for you to leave the clean things within.”
Agnes nods. “Certainly, ma’am.”
Gram’s mother hands something to Agnes. The jingle of coins. “I fear I will not see you again, dear.”
“I will always be close,” Agnes says. “Malaga is no distance at all.”
“Yes.” My great-grandmother’s face softens in the light. “I wish you and your family well. Be safe. You are a fine mother, Agnes.”
“It is fine to be a mother, Mrs. Murphy. I wish the same for you one day.” Agnes lifts the new parcel into her hands, a neat cloth wrap of dirty linens. She carries her child and her work back to her boat. A tune rises, one that is so familiar now. She sings this song to the child named Eleanor at her breast. Come here, come here, my dear, my dear.
And I call to Agnes over her song. I scream the words she has carved into my room, the words she sang in the sea: “I’m here! I’m here!”
Agnes sings to the sea, to the child. She doesn’t hear me, can’t see me. She doesn’t break her rhythm as she pulls her oars through the heaving swells, her boat headed toward Malaga.
My head warps with the thoughts racing too fast. The name Eleanor. My great-grandmother knowing my girl. The girl from Malaga. I dive to follow her, and the ocean rushes around me.
The waves bring my name, no different than they’ve brought Agnes’s song. “Rilla!” The sound carries through the thick of water, stretches into a melody.
Agnes. I push out a breath and bubbles burst around my lips.
“Rilla!” My name again, called from the water’s edge. “Rilla!” The sound is wonky, the syllables shimmering through to the underwater.
I swim to the sound. My heart thunders for the chance to know Agnes, ask after her child. Ask if the baby is my grandmother.
But when my head breaks the surface of the water, the world slips around me. “Rilla!” It is Sam’s voice.
“Sam!” Water fills my throat, scratches with its salt. Sam is on Fairtide’s dock. Fairtide’s aluminum dock. I cough up the seawater.
“Dinner’s ready.” Sam says it like no time has elapsed. Like I didn’t just visit the past. He boards the Rilla Brae and grabs a towel.
I tread in the water, unable to leave the sea that’s transported me through time. I want to dive underwater, find Agnes again, swim through years. I take a breath, ready for the plunge.
“Rilla?” Sam waves the towel for me.
I see the worried look on his face, how his eyes plead for me to be okay.
“You good?”
I turn to look at Malaga, so beautiful in the afternoon light. There is so much light now. And even though I can’t explain how it’s possible, I feel good. Settled. I feel the truth of it in my bones. As much as I want to follow Agnes into the past, I want to be in the present with Sam more. I climb the swim ladder and press the cotton against my face, dry my eyes. “I met her, Sam.”
“Who?”
“Agnes. My girl.”