The Rattled Bones(16)

“How’s that exactly?”

“Someone must have left it because”—there’s a choke in my throat, but I push past it—“my dad. Paying their respects, or whatever.”

Reed settles, his face softening. “Oh.”

I don’t tell him about the rocks placed in a circle, ceremoniously. Reverently. The way a child would mark the grave of a dead animal.

“Was your boat docked here?”

“What?”

“At Fairtide. Were you home? When you found that flower thing?”

“No.” Reed’s fishing for who boarded my boat without permission. “I was out at Malaga.”

His eyebrows squint. “Malaga? Why?”

“I needed to think.”

“That’s why you blew off the quarry?”

I shrug, the only energy I’m willing to commit to the subject of the quarry. “Hey, have you ever heard of anyone living on that island?”

Reed laughs. “Ah, no.”

“I know, right? But the thing is”—Sam, the Google images. They can’t be wrong, can they?—“someone from the University of Southern Maine is out there on an archeological dig, looking for artifacts from when people lived out there.”

“A billion years ago?”

“Eighty, but so close.” I twist at a stray thread on my comforter. “There’s this guy, Sam—”

“Sam?” He tries his best to look suspicious, but I can tell he’s losing steam. “Maybe he gave you the flower.”

“Not even.”

“Let me guess. Sam’s from away.”

“Think so.”

Reed settles his head onto the pillow, hangs his leg over mine. “?’Course he is. People are always coming to Maine looking to change something around here. Now they’re digging up our past? Lives are too boring where they’re from.”

“Maybe, but this is the university.”

“Groan.”

I roll my eyes and elbow his side. “You cannot possibly be so close-minded to all educational institutions.”

“Oh, but I can.” He laughs, like all of this is so easy to dismiss.

“He’s just an intern, so maybe that says something, like they don’t take the dig all that seriously. Who knows.” I don’t. I don’t have a clue how research works, who’s in charge, who foots the bill. “But there must be something to it. I Googled the name of the island. I think he might be right.” I tell him about the elderly woman with the wise shoulders, the daring look in her eye. I tell him about the schoolhouse, how Sam says the state took it away.

I don’t realize Reed’s been asleep until his foot kicks out violently.

I throw off his leg and his breathing stutters, churning to a low snore. I grab my computer and find the woman once again, her skeptical eyes almost waiting for me. “Aren’t we a pair?” I whisper. “You skeptical of me. Me skeptical of life on Malaga.”

In the distance of the photograph, a rock ridge bulges from the earth. The ridge is too smooth against all the hard jagged rocks on the coast. The stone rounds like the back of a surfacing whale. I know this granite ledge. I rub my thumb over the outcropping on my screen. Whaleback Ridge. Its name is on every nautical map of these waters. Since I was a kid, I’ve thrown this whale a nod as I pass in the Rilla Brae. Because, why not?

I turn off the light, slip out of bed, and move to the window, where Whaleback Ridge swells in the moonlight. The rock whale juts from the earth, the sea below her.

Out on the island, the moon rakes its yellow over the tips of the trees, throws its shine to the edge of the water. I wonder as to the exact spot where this old woman sat in her long dark skirt and high-neck white blouse. I want to know where her house was, with its small roof and the tiny window that looked out over vegetable gardens vining out of crude raised boxes.

The small shingled home looked too frail to withstand another winter, but the woman—the woman appeared as strong as the Whaleback.

I grow hungry for her story.

Was she an island resident? Did she send her grandchildren to the school? Did she help build the school, tell the men where to position the structure so the most light could cascade in through the windows?

My room beats with the push and pull of my standing fan as it gathers and twists the air. I press my eyes closed, conjuring this woman in the sunlight, rocking in her chair. Little ones from the island scrambling around her feet.

What stories would she tell? Did she see lantern light at Fairtide after Gram’s grandfather built this home? Did our families know one another, fish the seas together?

The sway of her rocking chair mixes with the air moving in my room, back and forth, back and forth. Then her soft breath travels against the base of my neck, the heat of it sending my pulse racing.

My skin warms. My heart darts.

I open my eyes and turn around, but there’s only Reed and his rumble of a snore.

Shadows shift in the far corner of my room.

My own rocking chair sways.

The steady tick-tack-tick sound of wooden rails slaps the floor. Ticktacktick. Ticktacktick. Back and forth. A slowing metronome. The chair glows gold in the moonlight as it creeps to a rhythmic stop. I rub at the skin on my neck, trying to quiet my fear. I dare to kneel before the rocker, even as I’m afraid it will move again. Afraid that there really is more than air in this room with Reed and me.