CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sam’s car arrives right at five o’clock the next morning. I dress, pull my hair into a messy ponytail. I head down the stairs, past the black-and-white photographs that hang along the stairwell. My ancestors peer at me through the sepia-toned edges of the past.
Sinclair and Thomas Murphy in their WWII uniforms before they left for Normandy. My frail great-grandmother at the water’s edge, Malaga behind her in the middle distance. The photo of my gram, the earliest photo I’ve ever seen of her. She’s an infant, bundled near the fire, her face satisfied with sleep. There’s a small Christmas pine on the table behind infant Gram, presents wrapped with plain paper, twine bows.
I stare at her photo now as I did last night, knowing she’s the connection to Agnes. Did my great-grandmother name my gram after the child from Malaga? Did something so terrible happen to Agnes’s infant that my great-grandmother wanted to honor her memory? Or could Agnes have given birth to my grandmother?
I squint to the photograph, notice a carving on the button set at the bonnet’s neck. Only three lines are visible, the horizontal lines of the E.
For Eleanor.
The black-and-white photo is too deteriorated to know for sure if my grandmother wears the same bonnet my great-grandmother gifted the child Agnes held in her arms.
I go to the kitchen, where Sam waits with Gram. The room is a fog of steamed oats.
“How ya feeling this morning?” It’s a question Gram can’t stop asking, and I really can’t blame her, considering.
“Right as rain.” I kiss Gram on the cheek and feel the warmth of her soft skin. Her skin. What was it that her mother said about the infant Eleanor’s skin? A blood endowment for the youngster in this hateful climate. Gram’s mother knew about the racial tension building toward Malaga residents. The awfulness of everything that happened to the islanders swarms me. It’s why my great-grandmother wouldn’t open the door to Agnes. Because of the color of her skin. And the growing intolerance toward the people of Malaga.
There’s so much I want to tell Gram, ask Gram. But how? How do I tell her anything when I only have questions? And how would she feel about the possibility that our family—the Brae and Murphy lines that she’s so proud of—might not be our blood family at all? Our ancestors—Sinclair and Thomas Murphy, everyone who came before—what if we aren’t blood kin? Because that’s our story if my gram was the infant tucked so close to Agnes’s heart.
And if Gram was the infant in Agnes’s arms, who brought her to Fairtide? And why?
“Be safe out on the water today,” Gram says.
Be safe. They are the same words my great-grandmother told Agnes.
They’re the words every fishing family extends like a prayer.
I grab the keys to the Rilla Brae, and Sam follows me to the dock. The mist is low on the water today. Its haze creeps in front of us, summoning us toward the island, the same way fog brought the Water People to my mother. Called her to the Water People.
My grip tightens on the wheel of the Rilla Brae, prepared now for the unexpected. I scan the sea around me, a gray and unyielding mass. There is so much more underneath, not just the ecosystem I’ve studied my entire life, but the otherworldliness that lurks just below the surface.
The just-waking sun guides us to the shores of Malaga. The dawn, a time of the in-between. The tide is low and our boots get pulled by tidal mud, each step suctioned by the grabbing, wet earth. The air is layered with the smell of clams and salt. I pull it into my lungs, my blood, letting it wake all my senses.
Sam and I walk the beach and then the granite rise of the island.
Today the king’s shack is here, the unmistakably large two-room house. I don’t know how its structure greets me in the morning light, but I can see racks of salted cod hanging and drying in the sea air, vegetable gardens throwing out vining crops, creeping tomatoes. The door opens, and a child steps outside. He’s a young boy with high boots and standing-up hair. His shirt is too big for his small body, and the open neck exposes his collarbone. I recognize him from the photos of unidentified children at the schoolhouse. My heart reaches for him.
The boy runs to the back of the house, calling for Aggie. My breath stills, waiting for her to come.
“What is it?” Sam asks.
“Don’t you see?”
“See what?”
“The king’s house.” My words are a whisper. “The little boy.”
I draw in the smell of smoke. It rises from the chimney, curling into a twist as it reaches for the dull morning sky. The smoke makes the scent of boiling fish rise, and something else, too. Something as thick and starchy as the clouds crowding the sky. Potatoes, I think. Fish and potato stew. The little boy darts out from behind the house and runs off in the direction of the boatbuilder’s house.
I point in the eager boy’s direction, but only with a small flick of my finger, oddly afraid someone will think me rude for pointing at this boy who doesn’t see we’re here. “There.” My fingers fumble for the side of Sam’s shirt and tug at it so that his eyes can follow the boy.
But then the child is gone.
“I don’t see him, Rilla.” Sam keeps his voice low.
I turn to the house, but it has vanished too. Only the starch clings to the air, an echo of fish and potatoes and fire. “He ran off. Toward the carpenter’s house.” That place where I was attacked. I fear for the boy.
“Can you see him still?”
I will my eyes to re-see, re-conjure. “No. Everything’s gone now.”
Sam takes my hand, and I’m so fully aware of my body in this moment. I want to tell my limbs to return to that other place, the in-between place where a boy can run in front of me, run out from the past. “What else can you remember, Rilla? This is important.”
The sky begins to gather light. Soft at first, a painted promise of the sun.
“You saw the house and the boy for a reason. There has to be a reason.”
“How is this possible, Sam? I’m literally seeing things that aren’t there.”
“What’s happening to you, Rilla, it’s special. Only you can see the islanders, their past. That has to mean something.” His voice is so soft, as if he doesn’t want to wake the people that might be on Malaga still. The Water People. The Island People. “I envy you.” He seems to realize he’s holding my hand and lets it go.
“You envy me?”
He thrusts his hands in his pockets. “The reason I dig in the dirt is so the past will talk to me. But you’re there, Rilla. Something is taking you there.”
“Or someone.”
“Not just someone. Agnes.”
“That’s what the little boy said, just now.” I bring up this additional detail for Sam. “He ran out of the house yelling for Aggie. The boy was running to the site of the boatbuilder’s house, like he knew he’d find Agnes in that place.”
Sam hikes his pack higher on his back. “We need to dig there.” I hear the excitement in his voice, like he knows the earth will help us.
As we approach the spot where I was attacked, my heart races. My skin fires with fear. I take small steps, waiting for those invisible hands. And then I find my words, scratched into the dirt, a twig as their underline.
YOU’RE HERE.
Above them, a blooming Flame Freesia.
Its bright orange cups glow in the rising sun. I bend to this fiery orange mound, steady a soft bloom between my two fingers.
Sam falls to his knees next to me. “This wasn’t here yesterday.”
I shake my head. “But it’s here now.”
“And there.” Sam points to another flaming orange plant just down the slope, it’s green mound showing off a healthy spray of blooms.
“How did we not see these before?”
“I don’t think we missed anything, Rilla. I think they’re a new trail. Look.” He nods to the handful of plants leading toward the water on the opposite side of the beach. The south side, the one that holds deadly rips. The plants are all blooming, thriving. They’re scattered from one another, a dozen feet or more between each burst of bloom. Sam is right; they’re a trail. “Agnes left us a map of flowers.”
“A floral footprint.”
My skin wraps my bones in cold.
We walk slowly along the jagged line of Flames. The sun rises to shed its full light. I drop my bag at the last bloom. “Here.”
Sam lowers his pack, cordons off a new dig site with his stakes and twine, creating a neat rectangle that is so similar to the tidy vegetable gardens that once fed island families.
It takes hours just to peel back the first inches of dirt, our trowels and brushes intent on finding the clues that will lead us to Agnes. By midday the sun ducks behind the clouds, which threaten rain.
“Will you tell your professor about what we’re doing here? Following clues like this?”
Sam sits back on his ankles, shakes his head. “I think this is definitely our private thing.”
I like the idea of a shared private thing with Sam. I lean toward the center of our excavation site, brush away the dirt, speck by impossibly tiny speck.
It’s Sam who discovers the bowl of a pipe. He brushes it free from generations of silt, holds it up with his gloved hand. “The islanders were scorned as degenerates because of their use of tea and tobacco.”
“What weren’t they judged for?”
“Too right.”
I think of the old man and that beautiful chair he brought to my gram, my dad. Was he from the island? Was he too ashamed of his past to name the place he was from? I want to believe my family helped his family, the island people. Or at least let them be free.
We dig all day. My back aches from bending over the earth, carving out its secrets. We find only buttons, more battered pottery.
The moon joins us before I’m prepared to meet it.
“We should be heading back.”
I nod, reluctant. “I have to haul tomorrow.”
“We can come in the afternoon.”
It’s a small consolation.
* * *
At home, Gram’s left a note that she’s at Brenda Sherfey’s for their monthly Garden Club dinner. It’s late, but I’m glad to find the house quiet. My clothes are filthy, and I don’t have the answers for the questions Gram would likely ask about why I’ve been gone past dark. Why I didn’t radio in.
I go to my bay window. I trace my fingers over the scratched marks.
IM HERE
DONT GO!
FIND ME
I pull scissors from my desk and use their sharpened point to carve my promise under her message. I WILL FIND YOU AGNES.
It no longer matters that we’re separated by decades.
It matters only that I unearth her story.
I shower and make tea that would have marked me as degenerate in Malaga’s time. I go to the lawn, wanting to be on Malaga’s shores.
I watch the quiet island, knowing Gram’s parents would have witnessed the persecution of Malaga residents. My great-grandparents were part of a community that wiped out another community. Gram has to know something about the island people. Or how she got her name. Her mother must have shared some piece of this story. Maybe Gram needs help calling it up.
But even as I decide to approach Gram again, I’m afraid of all the possible answers. What if her father carried his rage and prejudice to the island? What if his boat was the one that carried the abducted islanders to the mainland? What if my great-grandfather was one of the men to commit eight innocent people to the state insane asylum? Someone had to sign those orders of commitment.
But no articles name those people.
No articles speak of the shame of their actions.
The storm that’s been threatening all day finally cracks open the sky. The rain runs in sheets hard enough to raise the sea. I let the cold pellets pick at my skin, form small river pathways down the length of my hair. The rain swells the grass. I stare through the veil of water, consumed by lonely Malaga. I blink away the drops that collect along my lashes. Rain would’ve been a gift to islanders, fresh water in a sea of undrinkable water. The pottery we found would have held this precious resource. I squeeze my eyes shut, willing my body to go back to the place where a young boy called Aggie’s name.
But it’s Gram I hear calling. “Rilla!”
Her voice is distorted. The rain slicks against her words. “Come in before there’s lightning!” I can’t see Gram in the doorway because the rain falls in torrents now, filling the sea with its rush. I don’t want to pull away. I want the ocean to overflow and have it carry me to this yesterday place, when Malaga was home to dozens of people. It feels like a long time and no time at all before I head inside, grab a dish towel to wring out my hair. I’m surprised Gram isn’t in the kitchen, prepared to warm me.
“Gram?” There’s no answer to my call. I light a burner, let the whoosh of gas bring flame. I grind a lemon peel, knowing Gram has retired to her attic, her place of repair.
The kettle screams, and I pull it from the heat. I pour the hot water into the mug, the scent of sharp citrus rising on steam.
“Rilla!” Gram’s voice curdles the air in the kitchen. “Rilla!”
I race up the stairs. “Gram?” The air in the hall is dense with oil, the waxy air of paint.
“Rilla!” Gram’s cry again. Her voice is hoarse, as if she’s struggling to make sound. Adrenaline rushes through me, filling my ears with its dull weight.
“Gram! I’m coming!” I push into her room, but she’s not there.
Behind me, the attic door slams.
“Gram!” I throw myself against the attic door, twisting the locked doorknob. “Gram! Let me in!” I pound on the door with an open palm. Thunder booms outside. “Open the door!” The door gusts open, its panel smacking me in the face. My back slams against the opposite wall.
The door shuts again.
Opens.
It swings wildly, a tornado of movement, pushingpulling, pushingpulling.
“Gram! Where are you?” The door stops in midswing, as if halted by someone.
But there’s no one.
I take a step toward the attic stairway. I place my foot on the short, narrow tread. A crackle of lightning beams its white light. I wait the length of a breath for what? To test the stair’s strength? To listen for Gram?
“Gram?” This time my call is a whisper.
I walk slowly up the attic’s bare wood treads, each one creaking as my footfall forces it to bear my weight. Creee-eeee. Thunder ricochets outside. And then silence. Except for my breathing, the groan of the stairs. Gone is the wind that burst the door open, then shut.
“Gram?” I let the question fall into the cushion of quiet. The total quiet. Silence pulls me up the stairs. The air turns colder with every ascending step. Paint, so palpable in the air now. I fumble at the wall when I reach the third floor but can’t find a switch. There’s a tickle at my face, a light brush. I reach for it and my fingers find string. I pull the cord, and light invades the attic.
I expect to see my gram.
I don’t expect to see Agnes.
But she is everywhere. On canvas. Her painted face.
One painting of Agnes at the shore, washing a tub of white linens against the rocks. Another painting of Agnes training tomato vines up sturdy sticks within her garden. Agnes in her open boat, oarless and drifting. Agnes in her open boat, rowing through a storm. Agnes flying over the sea, her arms stretched eagle-wide, her dress floating behind her. Agnes sleeping, her eyes closed, peace drawn over her every feature. Agnes soothing a swaddled infant at her chest, the sun high behind her.
Her large eyes stare at me from the walls, the ceiling. Images of Agnes are stacked ten, twelve deep on the easels, each one holding as many versions of her as they can bear. I turn slowly in the space, surrounded by Agnes. My heart skips and I remember my gram, the way she called for me. I scan the floor, looking for where she’s fallen, but the floors hold only stacks and stacks of Agnes.
“Gram?” I whisper.
Silence.
I reach out for the nearest canvas, and I want to trace the long line of Agnes’s jaw, the full spread of her mouth. My fingers hover just outside of her image before the canvas jumps, swatting me across the face. I fall back. Another canvas smacks at my head. A painting whirls at my legs. The air is stirring now, the attic a tunnel of whirling wind. The canvases fly at me, hurling themselves like discs. A thwap to my skull. A cut to my ankle. The corner of a frame digging at my arm. I bring my elbows high, my arms crossed at my face. I try to see my way back to the stairs, but the hard wooden edges of the canvas portraits stab at my sides, jab at my flesh. I drop to my knees, crawl to the opening of the stairwell. A print soars at me, throwing me off-balance, pitching me down the stairwell.
The stairs thud at my back, my head. Pain sears my backside, my shoulders, my pointed parts rattling over the steep stairs, the unforgiving steps.
Gram appears at the bottom of the stairs, her chest heaving, her face washed of color. She gathers me to her arms as I break across the bottom step.
“You’re all right,” I croak.
The attic settles to a still quiet above us. Rain pounds at the roof, the only sound.
“Of course I’m all right. But, Rilla.” She looks me over, her thumb brushing across my cheek. She clears my hair from my face. “What happened?”
“I heard you calling for me.”
“I wasn’t calling for ya. I heard ya yelling for me.”
I bend to sit up, press my fingers to my temple. My one knee screeches with pain, as if a hammer smashed it—the first tumble. The crease of the stair. I gather my leg to my chest and push down the pain. I hobble to a stand, and Gram steadies me as my body adjusts to the wounded parts of me.
“Why were ya up there?” Gram says it like an accusation, like it’s my fault I fell.
“I thought you needed my help. I was worried about you.”
“I’m right here.”
“Gram.” I look her in the eye, see the love I’ve always known. The woman who has been my grandmother and mother and everything in between. “You know her.”
“Know who?”
“Agnes.”
Gram’s face wrinkles. “I don’t know any Agnes, Rilla.” She puts the back of her hand to my head. “Are ya sure you’re okay?”
I brush her off, move slightly so that I’m standing by my own might. “The girl in your paintings.”
Gram’s face pales, her eyes searching mine. It is a minute, maybe longer before she speaks. I watch her try to make sense of what I might be saying. I watch her wrestle with the notion that I might know her girl. “Ya know her?”
“I do.” I take Gram’s hand and we walk upstairs together.
The paintings are gone. They are shredded canvas, sprawled over easels, broken pieces hurled into the attic’s corners. Shreds of Agnes hang from the windowsill. Agnes litters the floor. Her eye. A part of her mouth. Locks of her hair.
Gram throws her hand to her mouth. “Did ya do this?”
“No, she did.”
“Who?”
“Agnes.”
“How?”
It’s a question I can’t answer. I don’t know how any of this is happening, what force tore the canvas to scraps, but I know Agnes has been haunting my grandmother for years. Visiting her paintbrushes, in the room above mine, all my life. I think of how Gram told me my mother’s mind deteriorated so terribly while she was pregnant with me and know that Agnes has been trying to reach the women in my family for too long.
And I know all the things I have to tell my grandmother.