The Mackinac Islandferry loomed above the dock, its steel hull dirty white against the choppy gray water and leaden sky.
There were three kinds of people on Mackinac. The tourists and day-trippers who swarmed the island for six monthsevery year, buying fudge and souvenirs, renting bikes and taking selfies. The wealthy part-timers with their private airplanes and Victorian-style summer homes overlooking the water. And the locals who waited on them, who cleaned their houses and hotel rooms, who carried their bags and watched their kids, who worked for the stables or the park service.
Oh, and the fourth kind. My kind. The ones who went away.
I surrendered my bag to a dockworker and scuttled inside the cabin, taking shelter from a raw wind that cut through my puffer jacket. The temperature was twenty degrees colder than in Chicago, the April sky heavy with the threat of snow.
By habit, I took a seat in one of the back rows with the rest of the locals. A dozen teenagers with athletic bags and water bottles milled around, accompanied by a handful of adults—the track team with their chaperones. I recognized Mrs.Mosley, who gave me detention for setting the snake in science class free, and Principal Olson.
I shrank into my coat. I was a teacher now, the grown-up in charge, the adult in the room. But without Chris beside me, I had nothing to show for my expensive college education and all my big talk of becoming a famous writer. Nothing to prove I had changed from the weird kid who refused to grow up, who stared out the window and talked too much in class, who invented elaborate histories for her dolls and played horses in the woods long after other girls had given up pretending.
The ship shuddered to life.
“Hey there, Annie.”
I extended my neck out of my jacket. “Mr.Bartok. Hi!”
George Bartok had been a ferryman since my dad used totake me to the mainland to practice for my driver’s license. His son was married to my best friend.
He took off his feed cap, running a hand over his thinning hair. “Terrible thing about Rob.”
Emotion rushed in and clogged my throat. I didn’t know what to say. Chris would know. He talked to patients’ families about death and grief all the time. I searched my jumbled brain for an appropriate response and finally came up with, “Thanks.”
The bridge slid away behind us. The engine rattled and throbbed underfoot. The ride to the island took twenty minutes in winter. I pulled out my phone to text Chris—my port in the storm, my refuge.
Landed!
My thumbs hovered over the screen. Smiley face? No. I was on my way to my father’s funeral. Kissy face? Maybe.Wish you were here?My mind skittered like a squirrel in traffic before I finally added a heart and hitsend.
No reply. Which was totally fine. He was at the hospital, saving lives.
“Look, honey, a lighthouse!” a woman in a fur collar said to her companion.
Beyond it, the humped back of the island rose like a turtle from the great lake.
Home.
The word slid unbidden into my brain. It wasn’t my home. Not any longer. The island was myparents’home. My breath hitched. Mymother’shome.
My father was dead.
I huddled deeper into my seat, jiggling my leg along to the vibration of the boat. My mom made me take baths and do my homework. She fed me when I came in from playing, grubby and sweaty and covered with bug bites. She went to parent-teacher conferences and took me to doctors’ appointments. But during the summer months, she was gone—working at her fudge shop—from the time I woke up until she put supper on the table at six or seven o’clock. And when she was home, my constant fidgeting, my ability to lose track of time, and my tendency to blurt out whatever was in my head grated on her like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Less talking, more doing,” she would say as she nudged me to clear the table, to put away my shoes / book bag / mess, to sit down and be quiet.
But Dad listened. When Mom shooed me out from underfoot, he took me with him to his jobsites, nodding along as I chattered, grunting occasionally in encouragement. Now my anchor was gone. Who was I, without his belief in me? And how would Mom and I get along without his buffering presence?
The engines churned as the boat maneuvered into the harbor. I heard the freight doors rumble open and stood, clutching the back of my seat for balance, as the passengers filed ashore.
The dock was almost empty.
Motor vehicles were banned on Mackinac. There was a police car, of course. An ambulance, a couple of fire and utility trucks, and the snowmobiles we rode in winter when the roads became impassable for bikes.
But today, only a single carriage waited to take guests to the inn. A flatbed dray was being loaded with plastic-wrappedshopping totes, pallets of groceries, and cartons of summer merchandise. For the next few weeks, the island still belonged to the islanders. There was no waiting fleet of bicycle porters, strapping luggage to their handlebars with bungee cords. No line of horse-drawn taxis. No welcoming committee.
No Mom.
I grabbed my rollaway bag and bumped down the gangway, shivering a little with grief and cold.
A cream-colored dog with a heavy coat left the knot of workmen waiting around the freight ramp and approached, waving its fluffy tail.
