The Rattled Bones(20)

I want to tell him about my father’s story, how I’m one of only two people who can keep it alive now, but I don’t. The way Sam honors his discovery makes me know this moment is for something bigger than us and our individual stories.

He gestures to a flat rock nearby. “I’ve got a long way to go here yet. This dig will go on for years and probably without me. But first, sustenance. Yes?” His energy is welcoming and safe, a world apart from Benner and his unapologetic sexism.

“Sustenance it is. You’re not the first person to make Gram’s biscuits a priority.”

“Biscuits? Ah, come on. You never said anything about biscuits. You really do need to work on your openers, Rilla Brae.” Sam takes a few loping strides and drops onto the ledge, settling into an easy cross-legged position. He pats the granite next to him, inviting me down. I sit and see Whaleback Ridge in the exact position of the old woman’s photo. This is near the spot where she gardened from her small porch, rocked in her tall chair. My curiosity burns. Did that ornate metal piece belong to her? What story does it hold?

I pull off my pack and sit opposite Sam. “I asked my gram about Malaga.” I unload the plastic containers, spread them out between us.

His eyes fire. “Should I get my notebook? She must know a ton.”

“Just the opposite.” I pop the top from the biscuit bowl, hand it to Sam.

Sam raises a biscuit to his nose, draws in its butter scent. “Heaven.” It is a murmur, as if he’s talking to himself.

I take a biscuit and it’s dense with cold, almost heavy in my hand. I set out the jar of jelly, place a spoon into its thick boysenberry center. “My gram didn’t know anything about the island.”

“Bummer, but not too much of a surprise, I guess.”

“How so?”

Sam looks out at the distant sea. “There’s a lot of shame surrounding what happened out here, Rilla. People aren’t in a hurry to claim the shameful things.”

I think of the old woman, the suspicion in her eyes. What happened to her?

“When I first arrived in town, I had to get my mail forwarded. The postmaster was making small talk, asking me what my summer would look like. When I told him about the university’s dig, he was very clear that I had no right dredging up the story of Malaga.”

Allen Hilton, the postmaster with his grizzled gray beard. He’s old but not old enough to know about Malaga firsthand. Eighty years is a long time. Anyone who might remember was only a kid then.

“When I told him I had a job to do, he warned me that the island was haunted.”

“Haunted?” A shiver crawls up the ladder of my spine. Haunted? I think of my vision of the tidal wave. The rocking chair. Is a ghost trying to make its secrets known?

He shrugs. “I think it was an attempt to scare me off. Or maybe it’s a way for him to make sense of the senseless—name it something impossible.”

Impossible.

“But I think this island holds more history than the university could ever uncover. And there are endless ways for secrets to slip out into the world.”

“You mean ghosts? You’re talking about ghosts now, right?” The girl singing at the shore. Her disappearing boat, the way her dress vaporized into the trees.

“I will say that I am by nature an unflinching optimist. This world has never once stopped reminding me that it holds infinite possibilities.” He takes a bite of biscuit, chews it down. “But ghosts? No. I’m a pragmatist and a scientist, if they are even separate things. I believe secrets can be recovered from the ground.” His gaze returns to the crisp blue field of ocean. “And people. I think secrets find their way out of people when the time is right.”

Did a ghost make the water rise in a tidal wave that claimed our lawn one second and was gone the next? Could a ghost have been in my room, rocking in the chair behind me? Is the girl singing to make her secrets known?

I wish I had the nerve—or the trust—to tell Sam about the girl I’ve seen on the island, her song that reached me under the weight of water. But my dad is gone and I don’t want to admit out loud that my loss has made my mind bend, possibly enough to resemble my mother’s. “You’ve never seen anything out here . . . you know, suspicious?”

Sam laughs a laugh that is so quick and full, it almost scares me. “Well, there was some questionable behavior displayed by a couple of mating harbor seals on the beach last week. Other than that, nothing I’d classify as otherworldly. I haven’t exactly had a hand reach out from the earth and grab me or anything.”

Chilled bumps blanket my skin. “Creepy much?”

He shrugs. “A hand from the ground is like Creepy 101. The universally worst ghost fear. Like, when you were a kid, did you look under your bed before going to sleep? Afraid something would grab at your ankles?”

I shake off the memory of the rocking chair, the ice cold trapped in the seat. Me, searching for a girl who may be haunting me on land, calling to me in the sea. “Most nights I was too scared to look under my bed, so I’d leap from my desk chair to my mattress.”

“Ha! Exactly. The brain is a powerful tool, Rilla Brae. And mine is weak. It’s pretty easy for me to project my worst fears onto a place, and I’d like to not do that while I’m out here, please and thank you.” He takes a bite of Gram’s biscuit and his face softens.