“I did. Of course I did. I felt like you weren’t the same anymore. I felt like I’d lost my mom all over again.”
She strokes my cheek.
“It’s the female right whales who are more likely to die from being hit by a boat,” she says. “One theory is that it’s because the mother whales stay near the surface while their calves nurse, but that’s where they’re most vulnerable to marine traffic. I wish I could have been strong like that. I shouldn’t have gone,” she says, her voice breaking. “I should have stayed near the surface with you. I should have protected you.”
I wrap my arms around my mother, wanting to protect her, too.
“What made you come back here?” I ask. “Why didn’t we move out east so you could work?”
She takes a moment to collect herself. “Your father would have. We’d talked about it. A few days before I decided to comehome, I watched a rescue crew try to free a whale from the thick line that was caught around her neck and back. Her injuries were already deep, but the whale was fighting. It’s difficult, dangerous work trying to free an entangled whale. And as I watched that whale thrash around, I thought about how lucky I was.” Her eyes are still glassy. “We’re all entangled in our own way, but I, at least, had chosen my bonds. I was tethered to you, your brothers, and your father, and I had pulled as far on that line as I could have. I knew I needed to find my way back.
“But also,” she says, “I threw up every time I was on a boat.”
“What?” I choke on a laugh.
“I have no sea legs,” she confesses, looking out at the field. “I thought I’d develop them, but no. The number of times I vomited overboard was disgusting and embarrassing, but it also felt like a sign.”
I take in my mother, this woman who’s far more complicated than I’ve allowed her to be.
“I know I was horrible, but I was happy you came home.”
“Me too.”
“And what about Francesca?” I ask. “When was she last seen?”
Grief fills her eyes. “Honey, I don’t know how to tell you.” She takes my hands in hers. “Francesca died two years ago.”
This catches me off guard. I put a hand on my chest. “How?”
“It was a vessel strike.”
“A boating accident?”
My mom nods. “They found her body floating off the coast of Virginia. Her spine was dislocated. There were fractures to her vertebrae and lower back.”
“Oh.” It’s all I can manage.
“I didn’t think you’d want to know,” my mom says. “And it really was so sad. Before she was killed, she’d been spotted with a calf near Florida. The whale was too young to survive without her mother.”
“So they’re both dead?” I wipe away my tears.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I didn’t really hate her, you know?” I’d always assumed she was still out there, my sister whale.
My mom kisses my temple. “I know you didn’t.”
We sit there for a long time, staring out over the field. When the wind ripples through the grass, it moves just like the ocean.
Chapter Forty-nine
I say goodbye to Francesca that night, alone in my bedroom, reciting the lines of the familiar story.
“Once upon a time, there was a girl named Francesca and a whale named Francesca. Francesca the girl lived by the sea, and the best thing about living by the sea was the whales.
“Francesca loved the whales that fed in the waters by her home on the Bay of Fundy. She waited all year for them to arrive. She waited for winter to turn into spring. She waited for spring to crawl closer to summer, because that’s when the first of the whales would come. Enormous finbacks and marvelous minkes appeared with the harbor porpoises. Soon, the white-sided dolphins and the humpbacks sailed in. By the time school was out, almost all the whales were there. Pilot whales and sei whales, and—if she was very lucky—belugas, blues, sperms, and even orcas. Francesca loved all the whales, but there was one whale she loved most of all: a North Atlantic right whale who was also named Francesca.
“It was the funniest thing to share her name with a whale, but Francesca didn’t mind. Because Francesca was a very special girl, and Francesca was a very special whale. Every morning, the girl would rush from her bed and look out her window onto the bay, and her whale would greet her by leaping from the water and landing with a tremendous splash.
