Hugh Howey - The Shell Collector

“I’m putting you in the widow’s watch,” he tells me. His voice is nearly lost in the hiss of the distant waves and the wind. We descend several flights of wooden stairs, follow a boardwalk that runs parallel to the steep dunes, and head to a house separate from the main estate. An in-law suite. But Ness called it something else. To me, it looks like a dollhouse swelled up to accommodate grown people. A little bigger than my New York apartment, it juts out from the dunes on thick beams. And there appears to be an even smaller house nestled on the roof. Ness lets me in and follows with the bags.

Somehow, the spectacular view outside is even better when framed by the floor-to-ceiling windows along the east side of the house. There’s a bed in the middle of the room, facing the view. White linen curtains are pulled back. I imagine the sunrise that will greet me in the morning. The house seems to levitate over the beach, and the windows compress the view to just the sparkling sea. It’s a dream. This will be like sleeping out on the clouds.

“Gorgeous,” I whisper.

Ness places the bags on the bed, then turns and studies the view for a moment, like he’s forgotten what it looks like. I try not to feel dismayed by the possibility that this room hasn’t been stepped in by anyone other than the housekeeper for years, that it just sits here empty and unappreciated.

“The better view is up top,” he says. “I figured you’d be more comfortable if we weren’t under the same roof. Considering my… reputation.” He smiles at me. Wags his eyebrows. I can’t decide if he’s being crass or if his sense of humor is just that unseemly. It’s like he’s forgotten my accusations the other night, or just wants that spat behind us. “Since you write for a living,” he says, “I also thought you’d enjoy the reading nook.” He leads me to a spiral staircase just off the small kitchen. The metal treads ring as he hurries up. I tear myself away from the view and follow him.

“I built this place for Holly, before she was born,” Ness calls down the stairs.

I laugh at the thought. “Most people paint the bedroom they’ve been using as an office, install a crib, change the outlet covers. You build this.”

“It didn’t seem like much. My dad bought a chain of islands when I was born and named them after me. That seemed excessive.”

I swallow any rude response. Several come to me with little bidding. At the top of the stairs, I find myself in the small room nestled on the roof. Four walls of glass, with a cushioned bench running along three of them. Two shelves of books ring the room beneath the bench, and more books are lined up along the deep sills. Ness cranks one of the windows open—they’re the kind with a spinning lever at their base. I turn and work the window opposite him. The sea breeze courses through the small space, whistling its way inside, between us, and then back out again. I glance up at the exposed beams overhead where a wind chime made of seashells softly rattles.

“Holly never really took to the place. It was my fault for making her sleep out here by herself when she was little. She got scared, tried to find her way back to the house in the middle of the night, and got lost.” Ness opens the door on the front of the small room and steps out onto the deck. He invites me to join him, then points down at the boardwalk leading toward the enclosed bay. “She fell asleep behind the rocks down there, out of the wind. I found her the next morning. It was the first really big fight Vicky and I ever had. I don’t think Holly has been in this house since. I just use it for guests now. Replaced all the children’s books with classics.” He waves his hand at the collection behind us. “I don’t think any of them have even been cracked.”

“Must’ve hurt, finding her out there.” I peer down at the rocks and think about what it must’ve been like for his daughter, running around in the pitch black, the crashing sea deafening and the wind chapping her face with her tears.

“I think I’ve overcorrected since then. Never really put pressure on her to be adventurous, to try new things. I have more regrets over all the stuff I didn’t do later in life than I do over that night.”

If this were a normal person, a normal conversation, I would ask how old his daughter is. But it’s Ness Wilde, so I know she’s twelve. If this were a normal person, a normal conversation, I might reach out and place a hand on his arm, let him know he’s not alone, that we all have regrets, that I feel his sadness, and that I’m sorry for him. But it’s not a normal conversation. In fact, I feel a sudden out-of-body sensation, the same surreal and disjointed feeling I felt in the White House, shaking the President’s hand. Like the Earth is tilting beneath me.

As my sister would say, my life is already strange enough day to day, with devoted readers recognizing my name as I make a reservation or hand them my credit card to buy groceries, that it takes the truly absurd before I realize how dumb lucky I am, how bizarre my life is. I’m standing above this commanding view with one of the most infamous and now most inaccessible men on the planet. Moments like this come with my job, but some still fill me with vertigo.

“I’m sorry, what did you call this place?” I ask Ness, trying to reel myself back down to reality. “Some kind of a watch?”

“A widow’s watch,” he says, perking up. He seems just as glad for the change in topic. The breeze tries to steal away his hat, but he grabs it in time and tucks it under his arm. He points toward the horizon. “A lot of the houses up and down the coast here had these before the sea swallowed them. They don’t build them as much anymore. Back in the day, women whose men went to sea would sit up here and watch for the sails that told them their husbands were returning. Often, they would come up and watch the empty horizon long after there was any hope. I have to admit, it’s a morbid name, when you think about the literal meaning.”

“I think it’s sweet,” I say. I stop myself from saying “romantic.” But that’s what I mean. The idea of such powerful longing, of hoping for a return, a reunion, is incredibly desirable. Most of the relationships I’ve been in lately, one or the other party was just looking for a way out, not a way back.

“Well, we’ve already missed the tide, and now it’s more my fault than yours, but if you want to get changed, we’ll hit the beach. I’ve got a very precise sequence of days laid out to show you where those shells came from.”

Ness shields his eyes and studies the shore below. Then he peers down the coast, and I turn and notice the lighthouse for the first time. The widow’s watch is just high enough, and the guest house juts out of the dunes just far enough, to see the tall pillar of mortar and stone sitting on the high bluff south of the estate.

“You brought sandals, right?” Ness asks. “The boardwalk will be warm. You can kick them off once we get to the beach.”

“We’re shelling right here? ” I try not to sound disappointed. It would be anyone else’s dream. “It’s just… I would’ve thought those shells you showed me came from someplace far away from here, someplace exotic. I mean, no one’s seen a lace murex in years. And the quality—”

“They didn’t come from all that far away, in fact.” Ness turns and heads back inside. I follow him, close the door behind me, and we take the stairs. “Besides, we’re not going to look for the murexes right now. I’ve got to show you what led me to them. It was years in the making, but I think I can tell the story in a week.”

“Why not just show me the molds?” I say, unable to stop myself from coming right out and doubting their veracity. “I was thinking maybe you move other slugs in, like a different species, after the shells are cast.”