The Rattled Bones(36)

“I know. Hopeful thinking. I get the very clear sense that you have more important things to do than spy on me.” He gestures toward the lip of the dock, asking if we can sit. I do. Sam joins me. He takes off his sneakers and socks and tosses them behind him onto the grass. “I should wear boots tomorrow.”

“You should.”

“My sneakers smell like chum.”

“They do.” I smile, find the rising paper moon. “I hate to tell you, but those sneakers will never not smell like chum now.”

“That’s unfortunate. A tragic end to a trusted pair of Chucks.” He dips his feet into the cold ocean water, and the waves bounce against his shins. “How do you not spend every second of your life out here?”

“I basically do.” I remember thinking how much I’d miss this shore when I was set to go to Rhode Island. I pull my knees to my chest and concentrate on the waves lapping against the pillars of the dock, the way their white foam sprays up, reaching. There’s no fog tonight. Only a fair wind.

“This is how I pictured it would be, you know. Maine. The shore. But it’s actually more beautiful than I imagined, and it’s just your backyard, like it’s no big deal, like it’s not the most magical place on earth.”

His words make the familiar new.

“Your grandmother is great too. Good family is important.”

“You miss yours, huh?” A fact Gram unearthed.

“Sure. They’re the best.” He liberates a small pebble from between the aluminum wharf ?boards and rolls it along the cup of his palm. “I’m adopted.”

“Lucky.” Just as I say this word, I want to pull it back. Who am I to say he’s lucky when I know exactly zero about what lucky would look like for him?

“Huh.” He looks at me, his eyes wide. “Not the usual response when I tell people I’m adopted.”

“There’s a usual response?”

“Unfortunately, the follow-up question rarely varies. People ask where my real parents are.” I feel his weight shift beside me, how uncomfortable it is for him to say those words. “So I’m kind of fascinated to know why you think I’m lucky.”

I stare out at Malaga, the mound of earth darkened by night. “Your parents chose you. Out of all the kids, they chose you. Maybe you weren’t old enough to choose them, but—”

“I was twelve when I was adopted. Three when I met my mother, but twelve when it all became official and legal and forever.”

I smile. “Twelve was quite a year for you.”

“You have no idea.” He tosses the pebble across the waves, where it disappears.

“So you got to choose your mom and dad?”

“I did.”

“See? Lucky.”

A low grin spreads on his face. “Can’t disagree.” He throws another pebble and it kerplunks before disappearing into the waves. “Even after everything I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

I want to ask after his “everything,” but I’m not ready to share my own.

“Your grandmother would get along great with my mom. She’s a little”—he searches for the word—“nontraditional. An eccentric-artist type. But she’s superwarm. Like your gram.”

“My gram’s a painter.”

“Yeah?” He turns to me, crooks one leg between us. “What does she paint?”

I shrug. “I have no idea. It’s kind of her private thing.”

Sam nods, full of knowing. “Everybody’s got one, right?”

“One what?”

“Their private thing.”

I think of my “private things”: Dad’s death. My mother’s struggle with sanity. My hallucinations, which might make me too much like her. Then there’s the guilt over wanting to leave the only home I’ve ever known. And the desire to know if my family forced Malaga residents off their island.

Sam throws another stone. “My dad’s a sculptor, makes things with recycled junk.”

“Your parents sound cool.”

“They are. Tucson is kind of a mecca for cool. Musicians, artists, sunshine. It’s a mix that makes some parts feel more like a commune than a municipality.”

“I can’t imagine. Most Mainers can trace their family back ten generations on the same land. Mainers aren’t big on leaving Maine.”

“What about you?”

“I’d planned to go away for school, but I always knew I’d come back.” Even as much as I tire of gruff men barking over property lines and fishing grounds, this place is in my blood. “Hard to leave what’s in your blood.”

“Hence no one leaving.”

I laugh. “Exactly.”

Sam pulls his other foot from the water, sits cross-legged. “You still plan to leave for college?”

“I don’t know. The answer is kind of wrapped up in my private thing. It’s one of my private things anyway.”

“Fair enough.” He turns back to the sea, dangles his feet. “You know how I told you that ancient book was the reason I came to Maine, to Malaga?”

“Of course.”

“Well, that wasn’t exactly truthful, or at least not the whole truth.”

I find I want to know Sam’s whole truth. I want to know if he holds back parts of the truth because he’s protecting pieces of him, no different than me.