“…And?”
The woods loom in my mind. I’m deep in the shadows of the ghost gum, heart hammering. My hands are trembling, but I force them to stay still. The underbrush rustles again, closer this time. I wonder if Heath is seeing them, too, the Wicked Woods, our childhood playground. Wonder if he’s remembering the other thing that happened there to Amy Anderson. The thing he never asked me about.
I don’t answer, can’t answer. He already knows what Dad did.
Heath grabs my hand like he’s drowning, fingers digging in. “I’m so sorry,” he chokes out, voice cracking with fury. “God, where was I?”
“It was my fault,” I say, the words dull, lifeless. “I followed him.”
I stare out at the water, trying to make sense of something long broken. “I don’t even know why.”
He shakes his head, his voice low but fierce. “No. You weren’t the problem.Hewas. Something in him wasn’t right, Min.”
“You know,” I say slowly, “I’ve carried this secret with me all my life. Every step I took, I brought that dead man with me.”
I don’t say it, but we’re both thinking it.
And now you will, too.
Heath sighs heavily, shoulders slumping.
“I’m going back to the woods,” I tell him. “I need to find Donny.”
He gives me a look. “It’s done, Min. Let the dead bury the dead. No good will come from digging it up.” He pauses, lowering his voice. “And I still have to make a living here.”
I find myself watching him closely, reading between the lines of what he’s really saying.
I still have to make a living here.
“Heath…is there anything you’re involved in that I should know about?”
There’s that look again. Thedon’t ask too many questionslook. He turns, staring at the sea, and it’s like watching a door quietly close in front of me.
“You don’t have to make a living here, you know?” I tell him. “You can leave.”
“I don’t want to,” he says plainly before nodding at the sea. “You know what that is, out there?”
“What?”
He smiles. “That’s my son’s legacy.”
I watch the sea, listening to the waves crash and the whistling wind. We take it in, separately and together. I see Jonah, grown, skipper of theDeep Sea,reeling in fish after fish while my brother watches from the bow, beaming.
I open my mouth to speak, but he beats me to it. “How long are you staying for, Min?”
I half smile. “Sick of me already?”
“Never,” he says sincerely. “I wish you’d work with me on the boat. I wish…” He hesitates before continuing, “You’re not a city girl, Min. I don’t understand why you won’t come home.”
He’s right. I hate the city.
“I had my job,” I offer weakly.
I don’t add that I left because I was losing pieces of myself to this town, little by little. I thought that by leaving I could claim them back, but I never did. I kept emptying myself, pouring myself intoOliver’s mold, Joy’s mold, becoming whattheyneeded. I swam to new waters, but I was still the same fish.
“And now?” he asks gently. “Do you want to come home for good?”
When I think of home, I think of this. Heath and I, heads tipped all the way back, watching the stars. Absolute galaxies of them. A fire burning at our feet, cups of cheap noodles in our hands, plumes of steam rising to the stars, the sea, the fire, and the dark.
