Now Nana looks up into my eyes, thin-as-paper creases lining her forehead. “I know you want to believe what happened that night was all in your head. I know it’s easier that way.” Her mouth puckers, chin steady. “But you were never a child who lied, who made up stories. Whatever happened that night”—she clears her throat, her expression turning solemn, the gray of her eyes reminding me of a winter storm—“whatever you remember, is probably the truth.”
My old room is a museum, a relic.
My younger self haunting every corner.
The wind roars against the windows and my skin feels jarred by it—trying to remember a time when the wind soothed me, when I fell asleep to the thrashing of the sea and the howling easterly winds against the roof eaves. I was another person then.
The bed is neatly made, fresh sheets smelling of salt and basil. When I was younger, Nana used to put herbs inside my pillowcase to help me sleep. Now, my cotton pajamas and thick socks do little to keep out the cold sea air, and I tug the heavy, seashell-patterned quilt up to my chin.
My phone buzzes from the bedside table and I reach for it, the blue glow illuminating the shadowy room. It’s James. I forgot to text him, tell him where I am. He’s probably worried, especially since the last time we had spoken, he’d slid a ring onto my finger and now I’ve packed a suitcase and vanished. He might think I’ve run away, couldn’t handle the pressure.
But I set the phone back on the nightstand.
I feel guilty for doing it. Only a heartless person would let him continue to worry. And I know he might make me feel better: hearing the normalcy of his voice, the rasp of the Seattle air in his lungs. Or it might make things worse, unraveling this tenuous thread that’s holding me together right now. I need to be alone, here in the old beach house where it all happened.
My phone stops humming, then goes dark.
I climb out of bed and stand at the window, pulling the memory up easily: the flickering lamplight out at the cape, rain blowing against the glass. When the little boat reached the rocks and I tied it ashore, scrambling onto the island, my legs staggered, adjusting to the ground. It felt odd, slick in places, muddy, the soil rich and good for planting.
I picked my way up the steep rise to a well-worn path, and there, sitting like the sturdy mast atop a ship, was the house. White walls, stone chimney, smoke coiling up into the wet sky.
Someone was inside.
I stood for several seconds, unsure of myself, of what I was seeing. It felt like a dream—I think that’s why later it was so easy to convince myself that it was. That perhaps I had never left my bed. Or had been out sleepwalking.
I reached the greenhouse first, a rectangular glass structure coated in a brine of moss and mildew. I peered inside at the vines and greenery growing thick and pressing against the graying windows. But it was the house that drew my focus away, the lights blazing inside. What I had thought was only a single lamplight was actually several, a whole houselit by the glow of candles. I crept up the back slope, my boots slipping on the damp grass, my hair soaked through. I had no plan, no solid idea of what I would do when I reached the house. I was a kid driven by curiosity, by the hope of a fairy tale come to life. It was reckless, stupid, but I wouldn’t know this until later.
The stone steps were black from the rain, the wind wailed in my ears like the faraway cry of a dying wolf. I touched the knob at the back door—I was naively unafraid—and I was going to let myself in, just stumble in out of the storm, uninvited, with no idea what would be waiting on the other side. But before I could turn the knob, a hand clamped my shoulder—strong, pinching—and when I looked up, a man stood over me, towering, the dark hood of a raincoat obscuring half his face. He pushed open the door and dragged me inside.
My heart spiked into my throat, seizing the muscles that kept me from screaming. But after he slammed the door shut behind us, he released me—quick as that—then strode across the dry, earth-scented kitchen to a cast-iron stove waiting on the far wall. The room held a dim glow, a rough wood floor beneath me, plaster walls, an old stove for cooking, a sink surely fed by a well, plates and mugs neatly stacked on shelves with wood slats at the front to the keep the dinnerware from sliding off onto the floor during bad weather. This is what struck me, the little things that my eyes caught on, logged and remembered: the basin for shoes that held them upright, the leather straps that could be fastened to the dining room chairs to keep them from tipping over. The house was built like a ship. It was meant for sailing. It had voyaged across the seas, through gales and sudden squalls and Atlantic thunderstorms.
The man didn’t speak, just stood with his back to me, warming his hands beside the fire. I craved the warmth, too, but didn’t dare move any closer. I cleared my throat, wanting to ask a dozen childish questions—did he navigate by the stars, how long had he been at sea, had he ever seen the North Pole—but he lifted his head and beat me to it. “How’d ye get here?”
I flashed a look to the door behind me—knowing suddenly that I needed a way out, an escape—and said, “A boat.” I swung my eyes back to him, his dark hair long enough to be tied at the base of his neck. “I saw your lights from shore.” My voice trembled. “I thought you were a ship that had run aground on the outer rocks.”
“What coastline is this?” He turned his head slightly so I could see his chin, the stubble along his jaw. He had a structured face, hard-lined, just like his shoulders. If he were a boat, you’d say he was well-built, meant to withstand the most violent of storms.
“This is Maylarch.” When speaking to the fishermen down on the port, I had come to discover that the rougher my voice—the more like a man’s—the more likely they were to reply to me when I asked if they had any old crab pots they didn’t want anymore. Any buckets or line that were no longer of use. I had gotten in the habit of collecting these things, all part of an idea I’d developed that summer, of one day having a boat of my own, of becoming a fisherman just like them.
The man shook his head, then turned to stare back at me. His eyes were nearly translucent, reminding me of the green glass I sometimes found among the pebbles in front of Nana’s house. “What continent?”
I felt my face pucker, felt the fixed tension in his stare, the threadlike, almost-invisible rim of sorrow that hung in his eyes, then answered, “Nova Scotia.”
He blinked, water making puddles at both of our feet. “Ye need to get warm.” He nodded at my shaking hands, then took several steps toward the kitchen table, hefting one of the chairs and placing it beside the woodstove. I barely remember crossing the kitchen, but I do recall the heat from the fire once I was seated in the chair. I watched him at the sink, filling a kettle with water. His hands were rough and workworn—he had been at sea a long time.
“Your house is a ship?” I asked. When I think of it now, I realize how innocent I had been. How easily I accepted the oddness of the whole encounter: speaking to a man on an island that shouldn’t exist. I askedhim questions as if I were on a school tour, and I’d be writing an essay about it on Monday morning.
He blinked back at me, his jaw chewing over the words he wouldn’t speak, like he was trying to sort out what kind of creature I was.
I pressed him with another question. “How do you steer, where are your sails?”
The kettle began to hiss, and he removed it from the woodstove, pouring water into a mug, then handing it to me. It smelled of sweet mint and oat.
He went back to the sink, his features cold, unwelcoming, and he looked to the window where the wind was gaining strength, thrashing against the walls. But I sensed the house had seen far worse gales than this. “I don’t have sails,” he answered stiffly.
“Then how do you know where you’re going?”
“I don’t. The seas take me where they wish.”
