Saundra Mitchell - Mistwalker

A weight fell on me, but not on my shoulders. My sternum. It felt like my breastbone cracked, split like a Sunday chicken. He said that, and he meant it. It wasn’t idle or angry. It was desperate. I didn’t understand how this could be the same man who’d ordered me off the Jenn-a-Lo. And not just once.

Grabbing the back of my father’s seat, I leaned forward to say something. To explain. But Mom put her hand up. It wasn’t much of a screen, but it was enough to cut me off.

“We’ll find the money somewhere. It’s three years, not the end of the world.”

“Like we found it this summer?”

Voice breaking, Mom strained against her seat belt. “We’re still here, aren’t we?”

“No thanks to you or me!”

Trapped in the back seat, listening to them get hoarse and ugly—I wanted to drip through the floorboards. The wheels wouldn’t even thump over me if I was oil that melted into the asphalt.

Everything had changed and nothing had. I still wasn’t the next in an unbroken line of Dixons fishing this shore. I still couldn’t go out on the water. I was still the reason Levi was dead, only now I had a stupid, useless hope that I could pay penance for that.

“Will you just shut up and listen?” my mother yelled. Again. “Look at the bigger picture!”

“Here’s a bigger picture! We’re losing the boat. We’re losing the business! Good thing the truck’s paid off. We can back it into the kitchen and cook on the engine block when they cut off the power!”

Dad was used to keeping his hands on the wheel and his eyes in front of us, no matter what storm came. So he could scream at my mother and burn down Route 1 at eighty without blinking.

I pressed myself against the door. Through the window, the world flashed. Autumn leaves blurred in long red-gold streaks, broken up by green, intruding pines. The flicker back and forth made my stomach turn. My fingers on the handle threatened to tighten.

It had been news to Dad that I was pleading guilty. It was news to me that he expected me back on the stern. And suddenly I was angry. There they were, yelling about me like I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t remember the last time any of us had talked. About anything.

Not that I could imagine sitting down and having a chat with my dad. He wasn’t that man. And to be fair, I wasn’t that girl. We liked silent agreement. And if we couldn’t manage to agree, just plain silence was good too. Mom and Levi had talked. They had the same eyes and the same temperament.

It worked, we all worked, and now we didn’t. None of the pieces fit, none of the edges matched up. Mom and Dad fought away in the front seat. I pressed myself harder into the glass.

When we rolled into Broken Tooth, I saw Seth’s truck at the bait shop. Since he wasn’t at the shore, maybe the Archambaults had gotten lucky and their boat had been spared too. Seth’s dad sometimes ran overnight charters—to Boston, occasionally up to Halifax.

“Stop,” I said. “I want to talk to Seth. I can walk home.”

Mom frowned. “I don’t think you . . .”

“Let me out!” I didn’t mean to scream, but I did. It was a raw, ugly sound. I thought my throat might bleed, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I’m done listening to this! I’m just done. Let me out!”

“You need to calm down right now,” Mom shouted back.

Dad, though, he pulled up to the corner. Hitting the universal lock, he unlatched all four doors at once. I pushed mine open so hard, it bounced back and hit me, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t breathe, but I was out, into the sun and the quiet. I didn’t know who I was, but I remembered who I used to be.

So would Seth.

“I feel bad,” Seth said. “We should be down there helping.”

We sat on the tailgate of his truck, at the farthest end of Stickels Cove Road. Pines closed around us, shielding us from the cool wind that came in with sunset. From our cliff perch, we watched Broken Tooth cleaning up after the storm.

Wounded boats rolled out of the water on flatbed trailers. A few had been righted and found seaworthy. Piles of broken wood and garbage rose at either end of the wharf. The Jenn-a-Lo bobbed at her slip, unharmed.

Peeling the label off my Moxie bottle, I nodded. Instead of untangling that rat’s nest of loose traps down there, I drank bitter soda with my ex-boyfriend. I put my drink aside and leaned forward. It was a long way down to the water; it made me dizzy to look over the side.

“I know. Why aren’t we?” I asked.

“Because we suck.”

The light falling on us was blazing sunset, and he blazed with it. I remembered when he lost his front teeth, and the big old Chiclets that grew in the gaps. How his pug nose was too wide and too blunt in middle school. Time had stretched him out. He grew into the teeth and the nose, and an old ember warmed me. I remembered why we’d had plans.

“Don’t we, though?” I said.

Seth finished his bottle and tossed it into the bin by his cab. Then he lay back in shadow to stare at the sky. “They took your license, huh?”

“Sure did.”

“Wish they’d take mine,” he said.

Another revelation on a day full of them. Twisting to face him, I couldn’t hide my surprise. “Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

He plucked the sleeve of my dress, familiar, bothering. He kept doing it, until I finally stretched out beside him. Even through his jacket, I felt his heat. For the first time in a long time, I noticed the scent of his skin.

Bumping my knuckles against his, I asked, “What happened to running charters?”

“I’m sick of doing the same thing over and over.”

I smiled faintly. “And the choir says amen.”

“I’m serious, though, Willa.” He furrowed his brow, idly hooking his finger in mine. “Aren’t you?”

“I’m just tired.”

“I thought everything was perfect. It wasn’t. I mean, don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t bad. That ain’t the same thing as perfect.”

There was a reason Levi had always written their song lyrics. Still, the sentiment was right. It was there. Sometimes we traded who was trying too hard and who cared too much. Half the time, we overthought it, acting grown and married and forgetting to just be. To have fun. To be in love.

Winding my fingers in his, I looked over. The sun had shifted. A crimson streak of light banded his forehead. He looked ancient, and beautiful. Swallowing hard, I bumped against him. “Can I ask you something?”

“Go for it.”

“Did you buy me a ring?”

Seth was quiet a long time. He seemed thoughtful, not afraid to answer the question. More like he wanted to get it right. Tightening his fingers in mine, he finally murmured, “Yeah, but I took it back.”

“Well, I didn’t think you—”

“The day after I bought it. Before we, before this . . .”

And yes, that stung. But at the same time, it let me breathe. Nothing had been wrong with us; a lot of things had been right. Comfortable. We were the same shortcut to the same secret place in the woods. Nothing new to discover, and we hadn’t even tried. Seth had realized it too. Maybe even realized it first.

“You should go to New York,” I said. It wasn’t comfortable, but I rolled onto my side. Propping my head in one hand, I dropped the other on his chest. “Make music. You used to talk about it.”

“The band’s gone,” Seth said.

“A lot of things are gone. Apparently we’re supposed to keep on living. That’s what everybody’s telling me.”

“We miss him too, you know.”

“I’m not talking about Levi tonight.” I meant it. It felt a little wrong to say so. To deliberately put him in a box and put him away, but I hadn’t lied. I was tired. Shifting to lay my head on Seth’s shoulder, I pressed one finger after another into his chest. “I want you to be happy. I also wanna know what you and my dad got into it about.”