The Rattled Bones(65)

“I don’t know. I’m not sure it is.” I rub at my wrapped wrist, the bones I felt scrape across the rocks. “But someone attacked me, Sam. I felt his weight on me, the smell of his tobacco. I didn’t make this up.”

He reaches for my hand. “I’m not saying you made anything up, Rilla. I believe you.”

My mind’s not slipping. I felt that attack. I felt the man’s strength. And more than that, I felt his anger, his intention. “I think he may have hurt her, Sam.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Am I? Is this what okay looks like?”

Sam squeezes my hand. “We’ll figure this out, Rilla. I swear. But I promised your gram I’d keep you safe, and I’m pretty weirded out right now.” He scans the island. “Are you good to walk back to the site? You can sit, get some water.”

“Yes.” I stand, Sam helping me up. I steal one more look toward Fairtide. Its sloping lawns, the dormers in its roof, my bedroom window. We walk past the dirt patch holding the two words I inscribed there: YOU’RE HERE.

The invisible man is real.

The girl is real.

They are connected.

To each other. To me.

When we reach the dig site, Sam invites me to sit.

“I’d actually prefer to stand.” I pace the length of the excavated earth.

He rummages in his pack for a bottle of water and hands it to me.

I gulp at the water, still so cold. I wipe at my lips with the back of my hand, watch as a paddling of mallard ducks swim atop the rolling waves, their dark feathers buoyed against the sea-glass-green ocean. “I saw her here with you, Sam. The girl.”

“With me?”

“She followed you up to the dig site when I went home with Reed the other day. She was behind you.”

He rubs at the skin on his forearms. “That’s creepy.”

“I realize, believe me.” I look behind me, fearing my attacker. Not that I’d see him, but still. “Sam? Is it possible the girl lived on the island but wasn’t here when census workers came? There’s that note in your journal about how some islanders worked on the mainland.”

“That’s true, they did.”

“She could have been on the mainland. Maybe that’s why there aren’t any photos of her.”

Sam nods. “Possible.” Sam considers this reality like we’re not talking about a spirit that haunts me. “I’m not sure we’ll ever conclusively know everything about the settlement, Rilla. So much has been lost to time. But your girl could have lived here. There are discrepancies almost everywhere in the record keeping. Even today sources can’t agree on how many graves were removed from the island or how many residents were forcibly committed to the state asylum—and those are pretty major occurrences. The state failing to document a resident or two seems totally feasible,” Sam says.

I think of another of Sam’s notes, how one of the bodies—the body of a child—was lost overboard when the state ferried the graves off the island. “Or two? You mean her baby.”

“You say she has one.”

“I’m not sure. I know I’ve heard an infant cry more than once. A terrible cry.” My skin burns with the heat of bruises setting into my skin, the attack with me still.

“Maybe your girl gave birth after the census workers were here. Population was determined in July of 1931, but the evacuation didn’t happen until the following year.”

“Plenty of time for a baby to be born.” My mind latches on to this possibility.

“Except.” Sam’s face falls. “There was the threat of imprisonment if the residents didn’t show on the day the census was taken. Remember?”

I do. The newspaper clippings in Sam’s research journal. The warning notice posted on the island and mainland weeks before the day of the census. Islanders would have feared that threat, same as any free person. What would cause the girl to defy the government? The law? “What if she couldn’t be here?”

“Couldn’t?”

“What if she had her baby on the exact day the census workers came?”

“Then we’d have records of her and the baby.”

“Unless she wasn’t here when the child was born.” The wind sings about my ear. FIND ME, it pleads.

“You’re thinking she was in the hospital?”

“No.” I quicken my pacing. “Malaga women would’ve had their babies at home. And with the hate building toward the residents, I’m not sure the hospital would’ve admitted her.”

“So then . . . what?”

What? I have no idea. “I don’t know. I’m only speculating. But what if she was a domestic worker and was on the mainland when her baby came? Or on her boat? An island woman would’ve been strong enough to endure childbirth alone.”

“You think?”

“Any girl would have seen a half-dozen babies born on the island during her lifetime. Girls would have helped with births—or at least the cleanup.”

Sam considers. “It’s a good theory.”

“But it’s just a theory.” I need more. The girl wants me to know more.

Sam’s eyes drop with sadness. “A theory is likely as close as we’ll ever get to the truth.”