Saundra Mitchell - Mistwalker

Didn’t matter, though. Ashley shook her head. “No! Is he seeing someone else?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“So weird. Because I was just wondering why he got into it with your dad at the co-op. Do you know?”

Veering toward a wall, I backed against it, out of the way of traffic. The wall held me up as I pushed a hand through my hair. Twisting it tight, I suffered a strange, cold roll in my belly. It took me a minute to get my words together.

Seth didn’t have words with people, let alone my father. Daddy got mouthy when he needed to, but what would he need to go at Seth for? Mismatched emotions competed for my attention, confusion winning out.

“As a matter of fact,” I told Ashley, “I do not.”

Ashley flumped next to me. It was obvious she was disappointed. “Ohh. I thought you would.”

It made sense, didn’t it? My ex-boyfriend, my father—I should have known. Just another gap in my life. Another silence where sound would have served me better. Holding up my hands, I tried to set Ashley free. The best way to do that was to put her on another subject entirely.

“Sorry. I heard Nick was getting his student license, though. Maybe that’s got something to do with it?”

Brightening, Ashley nodded. “It might. That’s a good . . . I bet you’re right.”

“Glad to be of service.”

Before she pushed off the wall, she leaned her head on my shoulder. We knew each other; it was a small town and a small school. But we’d never been close, so it was kinda weird.

Then she made it a little less weird by patting me as she pulled away. “Sorry about you and Seth. I thought you guys were getting married for sure.”

I felt a twinge. “It happens. You know.”

As soon as she headed down the hall, I started for the far end of the building. First half hour, before school started, Seth used to hang out with me. My best guess was that now he was trying to get as much space between the two of us as he could. I wound through the halls, down to the servant’s entrance and the porch out back.

Fully expecting to find him on the other side of the door, I threw it open. But it revealed nothing but empty forest. The leaves were falling in earnest now. Bright gold and copper lights flickered down. When I held my breath, I heard them land. Little whispers that went on, deep into the shadows, and beyond my sight.

Summer was over. Now autumn. Winter loomed, and I couldn’t imagine spring. I thought there might be a murder trial then. Bailey’d get early admission somewhere. I wouldn’t be running new rope or knitting bait bags or scrubbing barnacles from traps—or if I was, it wasn’t because I’d be heading out to fish.

Come spring, unfathomable spring, the rest of my life in Broken Tooth would drift away.

Sitting on the porch, I bowed my head and just listened.

When Daddy banged into the kitchen, right after sunset, I sprang to my feet.

“What’s going on with you and Seth?”

With rolled eyes, he brushed past me. He was dirty and wearing new bandages. I could tell all he wanted to do was heat a can of soup and watch some football. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to me.

Still, I followed him. “Must have been some blowout. Ashley Jewett knew all about it.”

“Then why’re you asking me?”

It was the perfect question. Not to please or defuse me; to drive me rabid instead. There was logic, and then there was Daddy logic. The kind with teeth and sarcasm, and just enough reason to it that it made me feel stupid and furious at the same time.

Cutting in front of him, I leaned against the pantry. “Because I want to hear it from you.”

Daddy looked me over. Then, with a sigh, he reached past me and pried the pantry open. He slid me out of the way like I was a sack of potatoes. Mumbling as he ducked in after his can of soup, he said, “Sorry you’re gonna go away mad, then.”

Briefly, I considered closing the door on his head. Instead, I snatched up my coat and slammed the back door as I headed into first evening. When he talked down to me like that, it made me feel melodramatic. Worse, I hated that. I liked being even. Quiet. I liked things just so.

All this too-big raging gave me the adrenaline shakes. Raising my voice, slamming up stairs, that was about as dramatic as I got. Walking real hard into the night. Maybe if I had a soundtrack, it would have seemed like a montage or something.

No personal soundtrack, though. I heard my feet and my heartbeat and the sea calling me back. My court date waited in the morning. My father waited at home. Not for me, just to suck up all the air. So I walked to my real home. To the wharf. To the water.

And this time, I didn’t wait for some mystic boat to show up for me.

Nothing was in my control anymore, and I wanted just one thing. The water and me. The ocean. This place between land and heaven that had been my home as long as I could remember—I wanted to master it one more time. I told myself that after court, I’d stay off the Jenn-a-Lo for good.

Right then, though, I boarded her proudly.

The cabin stank of cigarettes, and I’m pretty sure of beer, too. The whole thing was sour, like somebody else’s sweat. There was a Post-it on the dash, slashed with Daddy’s familiar handwriting. 42 pounds. Not even enough lobster to pay the light bill.

Stroking my fingers beneath the dash, I pulled the extra key from its hidden place and started the engine. One last time, out on the boat that raised and made and ended me.

It purred, mechanics sending a velvet vibration through the hull. I turned a light on long enough to maneuver past the rest of the fleet. Then I cut it and sailed into the dark. The lighthouse warned me away from the shallows and the shoals. Sailing into the night, I put Broken Tooth and Jackson’s Rock behind me.

When I cut the engine, a perfect quiet came in. Waves whispered, but no one spoke. No birds cried. I stepped onto the deck and turned my face to the sky. A storm raged on open water, miles away from me. A delicate lace of lightning unfurled. It touched the water and the sky at once. It was electric, and I vibrated with it.

A heavy wave rolled in, raising the Jenn-a-Lo, then dropping her. It wasn’t much of a lurch, a kiss from the storm in the distance. Dark clouds pressed black against blue, but where I sat on the water, they parted for the moon. It was bright and hung low, wearing a faint halo. That meant rain or snow soon, a near-perfect prediction.

Another wave swelled against the horizon, a brush of moonlight gleaming on its peak. It wasn’t a storm wave, nothing like. It didn’t chop or crash. It rolled, like a giant had dropped a boulder into the ocean. The swell skimmed toward me. It was slow. It looked lazy. But it burrowed beneath the boat and tossed her.

The hauler bashed the cabin wall. I slid across the deck and nearly went over. All I saw was black water. Felt the spray of it on my skin as the Jenn-a-Lo righted herself.

Grabbing the rail, I held on tight through the next wave. My heart beat too fast, making up for breaths that were too shallow. When a boat rolls, everything you see is wrong. The ocean above you. The sky underneath. Water slapping on the deck, looking like it flowed backwards.

I reached for the EPIRB, then jerked my hand away. It was a new one. It would send a distress signal. But if the Coast Guard came, I’d have to leave the Jenn-a-Lo on the open water, lost to the tides.

I didn’t know why I was panicking. I’d been on plenty of rough seas. Rode out waves so high and white, we called them bed sheets. Survived any number of pop-up squalls. So I clung to the cabin door’s frame as the next swell hit.

Everything shifted again.