The Rattled Bones(21)

I pretend like my head isn’t crammed with questions and slather jam onto a biscuit half. I offer Sam the jelly when I’m finished.

Sam waves off the jar. “I’ve never been a big fan of condiments. I take my berries round and my bread plain.”

“My gram made it. Boysenberry. It’s wicked good.”

“Wicked good, huh?” I nod, and he laughs.

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s just that using the words ‘wicked’ and ‘good’ next to each other like that is a contradiction in any other part of the world. You realize that, don’t you?”

“We’re not in another part of the world. We’re Downeast with some wicked good biscuits.”

He smiles and smooths the jelly onto the soft doughy middle of his roll. When he takes a bite, he chews slowly, almost intimately. Some part of me thinks I should look away, but I don’t.

He winks open one eye. “This, Rilla”—he holds up his jellied bit—“is a testament to embracing the unexpected. I had no idea I was starved for biscuits and homemade boysenberry jam, but I think it’s all I’ll ever want to eat for the rest of my life.” He takes another bite, and a slow, deep smile relaxes his features, closes his eyes. “Damn. This is amazing.”

“Even with the jelly?”

“I was talking about the jelly.”

“Gram’s specialty.”

“Is it weird that I’m in love with your grandmother?”

I smile. “There is literally nothing weirder.” Okay, not true lately. But still.

“I would like to marry her, please.”

“I don’t know about that. No man’s been good enough for her yet.” Gram never married my grandfather or even lived with him. She wanted to be a mother but never a wife, as scandalous as that notion was when she was pregnant with my mother. “I’m not sure she’d have you.”

He feigns being offended. “What? I’m a great catch. I mean, I’m riddled with baggage—same as anyone—but still, great catch.”

“I’ll be sure to let her know.”

“Please do. Put in a good word for me. And maybe ask her to bake up another batch of these rad biscuits.”

“Rad, huh?”

“So rad.”

“Are you trying to outdo my regional linguistic flair?”

He laughs. “Maybe add to it. Like, these biscuits are wicked rad.”

My smile deepens. “Work the sea and she’ll make them for you every day.” I look out toward home, hope Gram isn’t worried about me. I should have radioed in when I got to the island.

Sam reaches for another biscuit, and I pull a leaf of young goldenrod from its stalk. I bring it to my nose, trying to coax out the smell of honey the plant will produce weeks from now. Today it smells only of green. I slip the leaf between my palms, rub back and forth. The grinding is said to make good fortune rise. My father taught me how Maine’s indigenous people used the goldenrod seed for food, but I don’t know if this species is edible. But could it be a descendant of the old woman’s garden? A seed that has set roots with each spring? “I found some photos online. Of the island.”

“Yeah?”

“There was this one woman, an older woman by herself in a—”

“Rocking chair.”

“You know her?”

“I know the photo. There aren’t many photos that exist of the islanders. Believe me, I’ve studied them all.” He waves his hand. “You were going to say something about it and I interrupted you. I’m sorry.”

His apology surprises me. A boy who apologizes for interrupting a girl might be as rare as photos of the island. “She had a vegetable garden in front of her house, some raised beds.” I pluck another early goldenrod from its stem. “I was just thinking that if she grew herbs, this plant could be part of a kind of floral footprint she left behind.” It’s impossible not to think of Gram’s floral footprint at Fairtide, all her gardens, each with their own purpose. Each flower and vegetable telling its own story, thanks to the bees.

“Floral footprint, I like that.” Sam smiles wide. “The university has mapped out where each resident lived, where they kept their livestock, but we don’t know a lot about the gardens and I don’t know anything about plants. You?”

“Some.” If she grew herbs, maybe she was a healer. Something about this feels right. “Sam? Why did the islanders leave? What happened out here?”

Sam reaches in his backpack, pulls out a moleskin journal, its elastic straining from all the added pages. “What happened was the end.” He passes me the book. “This is the beginning, or as much as we know.”

I flip open the neat pages. Taped to the first page is a printed photo—a group of children, their youth nearly a hundred years old now. Some faces black, some white, some brown. The children are thin in the way of children then. I search the faces for my girl, but the kids are years younger than she appeared. The little ones wear the same wary look, shared across the squint of their eyes. None wear shoes. Their shirts are thin and worn and ill-fitting, slouching around the neck or rising too high at the arms. These children stand so close to one another in a line of seven, shoulder pressed against neighboring shoulder as if for protection.