The Rattled Bones(14)

“Island?” She turns to face me now.

“Malaga.”

She nods the slightest nod, something clicking into place. “I thought that might have been your boat out there, but ya know these eyes of mine are as dependable as a storm.”

“It was stupid not to radio in. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Gram pats my knee. “Ya just focus on being a kid, Rilla. Don’t worry about the rest.”

“But—”

“Ya know I hate that word.” She nods toward my cup. “Drink up.”

Drink the skullcap. Cap my skull. Gram’s way of telling me I need calm. I take a sip, let the hot liquid warm my insides.

“Are ya storing your traps on the island?” It’s a fair question. A few local fishermen stack traps there for the off-season.

“No. There’s a guy out there. Doing an archeological dig of some sort.”

“The English language is so limited that ‘a guy’ is the only way ya can explain this person to me?” She tsks in her way.

“Sam. His name is Sam. He’s a USM student working on a summer internship.”

“What’s he looking to find?”

“Beats me.”

She gives me that look that tells me to use my language with more respect. “He didn’t give ya any idea?”

“He mentioned a schoolhouse.”

This makes Gram’s eyebrows rise. “On Malaga?”

“My reaction exactly.”

“Sounds like that boy’s digging in the wrong island dirt.”

I laugh. “I wanted to tell him that same thing. He’s not so great with boat navigation, so it’s plausible.”

“He’ll figure out his mistake soon enough.”

“Sam said locals would know more about the island’s history than the researchers. Told me I should ask Dad about it.”

A crease in her brow, a question low in her eyes. “He doesn’t know about your father?”

“He’s from away. I didn’t exactly feel like telling him anything about our private lives.”

“Saying a thing can be hard.”

The hardest.

“So this school?” Gram’s raises her tea to her lips, her question telling me that the subject will be changed.

“Sam says the state took it away in 1931.”

“Impossible.”

“I know.”

“Ya know what else is impossible?”

“What’s that?”

“That flower there.” Gram nods to the petals sitting primly on the table, like it’s offended her, like it’s here just to make her uncomfortable. “It’s native to Africa and has no earthly business blooming in Maine in June.”

This again? It’s just a flower. I know Gram’s a master gardener, but even experts can make mistakes, right? “I double promise I’ll ask Reed where he got it.” And how he was quiet enough to sneak onto my boat. I look out at the Rilla Brae—the circle of rocks still on her dash—and another memory catches, flashing quick as bee wings. My mother, walking the shore in the sunlight. Me next to her. My small feet, her larger ones. Making footprints in the wet sand and then running when the tide lapped high enough to erase our steps, drag them out to sea.

“Rilla?”

“Yeah, Gram?” I shake my mind free.

“Ya okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Where did ya drift off to?”

I’m not sure. I can’t say if it’s an actual memory or something my brain pieced together from the stories Gram used to tell about my mother. “I remembered . . .”

Gram watches me, doesn’t press.

“Running in the surf with my mother.” Your daughter. The first person we both lost.

Gram straightens, clearly not expecting me to bring up my mother, which is zero surprise. For my eleventh birthday, I told Gram my wish—that she’d stop telling happy stories about Marin Brae. I know Gram thinks my mother’s problems aren’t my mother’s fault, and she wanted to keep her daughter alive for me in some positive way. But it wasn’t my mother’s struggles that made me sad—it was the fact that she chose to stay away. I couldn’t have those stories in my life if my mother didn’t want to be in my life.

I rub my thumb and forefinger together, feel the ghost grooves of the rough stone’s surface. That stone from the boat, the way it felt too familiar. I mean, of course it did. I’ve picked up a million rocks. But sitting here now, watching the sea with Gram, something more falls into place.

“We’d try to outrun the tide, see how long our footprints would last before being washed away.” And how my mother would pick up tiny stones even then, tell me how they were once giant rocks before the sea made them small.

Gram looks anxious, likely because this subject has been dangerous territory since I turned eleven. When things were good, Gram used to say about my early, early days. But I rarely remembered when things were good. I couldn’t stop remembering that last night, when my mother tried to walk into the water and away from me. How she left in an ambulance. Gram’s stories reminded me how my mother has chosen to be somewhere else ever since her last night here. That fact seemed the most important thing to know. Then.