The Rattled Bones(12)

I pull back on the oars, cut through the top layer of water. “The sheltered side of any island sits out of the winds, away from the fierce currents.”

“Keep away from fierce currents.” He draws a phantom check mark in the air. “Got it.” His grip returns to the side of the boat, the knuckles on his other hand already bone white as I guide us through the choppy waves.

“I’m sure everything would have been fine.”

“You weren’t so sure ten minutes ago.”

“Well, worst case, your boat would have eventually washed up on the shore there.” I elbow toward Fairtide.

“Why?”

“That’s the way the current pushes here. Flotsam always ends up along that shore.”

“I’d like to be very clear that I don’t want my boat to become flotsam.”

“Duly noted.” I don’t do a great job of hiding my smile as I turn to approach the research boat.

We board, and I guide the larger vessel out of the way of danger. Sam is watching me too closely. I know he’s noting my speed, the way I navigate, but still. It feels like he’s seeing all the things in me that feel too messed up. When I anchor his boat next to the Rilla Brae, I nod toward home. “I should be heading out.”

“What about lunch? Isn’t that why you’re here?”

It is. And isn’t.

“I could eat now that I know I won’t be shipwrecked. Join me?” He sweeps his arm in a wave.

There’s a flicker of hope that Sam will give me another piece of my father, however small. “Okay.” I grab my bag for the second time today and hike up the island.

“My site’s just over the ridge there.” Sam points toward the trees, and I follow. He talks as we make our way, but I don’t hear every word. As the trees come closer, they loom bigger than a stand of spruce. They form a forest box that holds secrets. They gather as a shelter for a disappearing girl. A screaming baby. Who knows what else?

I sit facing the forest, not willing to make my back vulnerable. It’s not until I have my pack pulled off my shoulders and the front pocket unzipped that I see the dig site, just down the hill. He’s roped off a twenty-foot section of earth, metal indicators and twine marking the area. The enclosed dirt sits lower, a few inches of topsoil meticulously swept away. To its side is a raised table, a screen stretched across the large, flat top.

Sam follows my gaze to the excavated earth. “The old school grounds.” He sits next to me, but not too close. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate how he gives me my space.

“Like a school school?”

His smile curls. “That’s a lot of doubt for not a lot of words.”

I unwrap my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “It just doesn’t make sense. Why would there be a school here? It’s too remote. Who could get to it?” Here is the moment when I should relate my suspicions that his professor likely wants him to excavate another island. Maine has more than three thousand miles of coastline. It’s an honest mistake.

Sam rifles in his bag, growing distracted.

I take a bite of lunch, and the jelly is cold from being in my cooler. It wakes my mouth, and my hunger. Above me, a gull circles for scraps.

Sam empties the contents of his bag onto a patch of grass. “Oh, come on.” His words are a huff.

“Something wrong?”

“I forgot my lunch.” He swats his forehead with his palm. “Must have left it on the counter this morning. I’m kind of spacy about stuff like that. You should know that about me.”

“Um . . . okay.” I don’t tell him that this isn’t the first step in us getting to know each other, that I don’t need to be familiar with his idiosyncrasies. This is me looking for a girl. Not a boy. Still, I pull out my second sandwich, offer it to him.

He waves me off. “No. That’s super nice, but you made that for you.”

I didn’t. I made it for Dad. But Sam is the only person in the area who doesn’t know about my father’s death and I’m not about to change that. “My dad taught me that it’s rude to eat alone.”

“Yeah?”

I shake the sandwich. “Yeah.”

He takes the offering and smiles. “I like your dad.”

And just like that, Sam makes my father alive, right here in the present tense. I turn my head away, hide the choke in my voice. “So, this school . . .”

“Oh, the school’s long gone,” Sam says, bread tucked into his cheek. “The state took that away in thirty-two. No, thirty-one. Technically. It was December, so, yeah, 1931.”

“What do you mean ‘took it away’?” I turn to Sam. He has my full attention now.

“Why does anyone take anything? It had value.”

“That sounds like something my dad would say.” The minute the words are out of my mouth, I want to reel them back.

“So your dad’s a smart man, huh? Genius-level IQ, no doubt.” Sam smiles a smile that can only be described as triumphant.

“The smartest.”

Sam’s eyes gather the island spread out around us. “So he probably knows all about the school . . . Malaga’s history. You should ask him about it. Locals always know more than researchers.”

But I’m not so sure. Because it seems like this boy from away might know so much more than I do.