Saundra Mitchell - Mistwalker

The fog had burned off enough that I could. Haze hung like banners between the houses, but the streets were clear again. My phone said it was almost six, but that didn’t seem possible. I wasn’t gone that long. I wasn’t even gone long enough for a cup of cocoa.

Shadows stretched long and crept around corners, and as I hiked it toward home, lights went on all down the street.

They glowed in the mist, some sherbet orange, others sick green. Had to do with the insides of the bulbs, Mom said, the gas they pumped into them. But to me, it looked like a swaying string of faery lights.

My front porch glowed silver, a white light pure and diffuse. I didn’t dig for my key. Nobody in Broken Tooth locked their doors. Pushing the door open slowly, I hoped for an empty living room. Maybe they went to dinner. To the police station. To the movies.

No such luck. My mother shot off the couch, all but dragging me inside. “Oh, look at this. You just stroll in like how-you-do! Where have you been, Willa?”

“Milbridge,” I said. The lie came out easy. “There’s a boat for sale . . .”

“And you couldn’t call us?”

“No signal.”

Mom’s eyes widened. She stepped back, raking me with a look. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and her mouth was pale and tight. “Is that blood?”

Automatically, I clapped a hand over the cut on my arm. “I fell. It’s nothing.”

“Where were you really, Willa?”

Ducking my head, I tried to push past her. “I told you, Milbridge.”

When Mom grabbed my elbow, her hands were cold and rough. They could be gentle; she was about the best in the world when you were sick. Knew when to pet you and when to leave you alone. Most people don’t get that balance down.

Right then, though, she was mad. Hauling me into the kitchen, she let go when her feet hit linoleum. Snatching an envelope from the counter, she turned and shoved it at me. When I opened it, a fan of papers unfurled. They smelled like a stranger’s cologne.

“That’s your summons,” Mom said, reaching for the phone on the wall. “They’re going to serve you at school tomorrow, and you’d better be there.”

My fingers trembled as I unfolded the papers. I didn’t understand the way it was written out. There were TOs and FROMs and REGARDINGs, but the title made it pretty clear. I had a court date so they could take my fishing license. Even though I’d known it was coming, it felt like a blow.

Slumping against the wall, I flipped through the pages. The gist was all there. I was accused of cutting off Terry Coyne’s gear, and I had to appear. My date was before his. I had to go to court before he did.

That’s how it was, huh? Everything moved real fast for cut-off lobster gear. But if you walked out of shadows and fog and shot somebody, you got to lollygag around town, turned out on bail. For months. Maybe forever. I hated him so much.

“Your father’s been out looking for you in this. And now he’s not answering his phone.”

“Sorry,” I said.

Mom pulled a hand through her hair, then twisted it tight. It smoothed the lines from her forehead but opened her eyes too wide. The whites ringed the irises. She was a deviled version of my mother, brittle and frightening. Swollen with a held breath, she exhaled in a rush. “This family is falling apart.”

I stood there, stuffing the summons into its envelope again. She wasn’t wrong, and I didn’t know how to fix it. If it even could be fixed. Time wasn’t going to go backwards. Levi wasn’t going to come home. Everything broke at that seam.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was.

“You don’t want to hear it,” Mom said, turning away from me. She watched my reflection in the window, meeting my eyes exactly in the glass. “Your dad doesn’t either. But I think you ought to own up to the judge.”

I managed a wounded sound, but Mom talked over me.

“The fine’s not that much, and three years isn’t that long.” Bracing her hands on the counter, she stretched between them. “You heard that prosecutor. Bringing up a gear war like she knows something. I can’t have her talking crazy in front of a jury. They won’t do their job.”

Cold realization wormed through me. I folded the summons and pressed it flat against my chest. “Ma . . .”

She turned. “If you don’t fight it, if they know you already did the right thing . . .”

“How is it even gonna come up?”

“If this gets to trial, you don’t just sit up there and answer the prosecutor. That man’s lawyer gets a bite, too. He gets to ask you whatever he wants—no, shut up. You just listen this time, Willa.”

Closing my mouth, I steeled myself. Mom pushed herself off the counter and caught my chin between her fingers. We were the same height, so when she studied me, I saw every light and angle in her eyes. She turned surgical, talking to me like a police dispatcher instead of a mother. It wasn’t cold, it was precise.

“When you get up there, you need to be broken. They’ve got to see you doing penance. I don’t want one mainlander on that jury thinking, Well, what Terry Coyne did was a crime, but what she did was a sin .”

It could happen. It had happened on Matinicus, just a couple of years ago. If I went to court and fought the citation, I might keep my license. They knew I worked the Jenn-a-Lo with my dad; they knew we couldn’t afford to lose the rest of the crew.

But it wasn’t until then, with my mother close enough to share my breath, that I realized keeping my license could ruin us in a worse way. It made me sick to think about that man going free. Getting to fish again. It was my fault Levi got shot. So getting justice for him, that was my responsibility. A cold, hard shell formed around me and I nodded.

“It’ll be all right, Ma,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”

She smoothed her hand against my cheek. Her steel peeled away to velvet, and she murmured, hushed, “Maybe you can go to college with Bailey.”

It was too much to think about right then. Every single thing I’d planned for myself was over. Trying to figure out what to do instead . . . I may as well have been planning to go live on the moon. Bumping my forehead against Mom’s, I squeezed her arms, then slipped away. “I’ll worry about that later.”

Drifting upstairs, I slid my shoulder along the wall. It hissed and filled my ears up with comforting white noise. It sounded like the wind on Jackson’s Rock, and falling into white sheets was like disappearing into the mist. An entire day had passed there in an hour, it seemed. As I slipped into a hard sleep, I couldn’t help but wonder: what would a hundred years feel like?

Sunlight breaks through my window, and that’s what wakes me. Last night, I left the fog to do as it willed, and today, it’s decided to dissipate.

The sky is unmarred, a perfect shot of blue. It’s so clear that at the horizon it reflects the ocean, just as the sea reflects the sky. The edge of the world is exquisite and endless. Everything gleams—the ashes and oaks aren’t cloaked in ordinary shades. Today, they’re scarlet and bronze, flickering and dancing on the wind.

Rushing my ritual, I dress, I shave. And today, I pull a grey ribbon from my armoire and pull back my hair. I loathe the length of it, not to mention the way it coils and snakes around my shoulders. I’m an albino Medusa, and scissors alone fail me.

For the whole of 1950, I sheared myself. Each morning, I shaved my scalp smooth. I was horrifying.

The first thing I’ll do when I’m free is get a proper haircut. Barbers are fine talkers; I’ll listen to anything. Reports of foreign wars or agricultural accountings. Complaints of lumbago, lies about fishing. It won’t matter. It will be another voice. Another face. A new place, so much better than this one.