The Rattled Bones(66)

The girl isn’t always with the child and I’ve never seen the infant’s face. Perhaps it’s something else she’s carrying. But then, no. I heard the child’s wailing. Even that first day I knew that cry was unmistakably that of a baby’s. “She had a child.” I know this as clear as I know my own name. “I think maybe that’s what she’s trying to tell me.” I stop, look at Sam. “Does that sound impossible?”

He stands, comes to me, takes my hands in his. “I think everything that happened out here was unforgiveable. It’s honestly hard to get my head around it most days. But the scientist in me wants proof.”

“Proof??”

He nods. “I wish we had something, Rilla. Anything to tie your girl to the island.”

“You have me. Everything I’ve told you.”

“Then that’ll have to be enough.” He lets go of my hands, and his absence makes my skin go cold. He bends at his knee and rests a palm to the earth, as if listening to its story. I imagine it vibrating with the hum of bees. “I was at a friend’s birthday party when I got my first kiss.”

My head shoots up at the randomness of this information.

“Johanna Light. I’ll never forget that kiss. She was so beautiful.” He gives a short laugh.

“Sounds like a good kiss.”

“It was the best. That first kiss. It ripped through me like a thunderbolt.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because the weird thing is that the kiss happened when I was living with my aunt. But when I was returned home months later, my mother knew about the kiss.”

“Someone told her?”

He shakes his head. “No. She said she saw it. Like watched it.”

“Weird.”

“No, Rilla. You don’t understand. There was a whole state between me and my mom then but she told me that she was on the couch, closing her eyes for a short summer nap, and she saw me kiss Johanna Light. She described everything—Johanna’s dress, the tree we stood under, the other kids fooling at the tire swing near the birthday table filled with chips and drinks. She even saw the yellow balloons tied to the table’s legs.” He steals a breath. “Man, I hadn’t remembered the yellow balloons until just now.”

“I don’t get it.”

“My mom said that’s the way love worked. That when someone you love feels this ultimate joy—or sadness—the people you love feel it too.”

I brush at the bumps rising on my forearms.

“She said love meant our hearts and minds were connected even when we weren’t together.”

I can’t help but wonder if my own mother has seen snippets of my life in her dreams.

“It happened one other time, when my brother had to go to the hospital. She knew every detail of his accident. As if she’d been there.”

“There aren’t a lot of people who would believe those stories.”

“But you do, right?”

“I do.”

Sam smiles. “My mom always said my brother and I were born from her heart since she didn’t give birth to us, you know.”

My heart skips with a lovely pain. “That’s beautiful.”

“I’ve always thought so. But everything my mother taught me about love makes sense here, too. Maybe this girl’s heart is connected to yours somehow. Maybe that’s why you can see her.”

I think it.

I fear it.

I know it.

Want it.

The crisp whine of a calling gull cuts through the silence that settles over us.

“And you . . . ?” Sam stops, waves away the thought. “Nah, forget it.”

“What? You can ask. Nothing is too weird now.”

“You’d mentioned maybe your mother saw the girl too?”

I sit, pull my knees closer to my chest, holding this possibility in my heart. It is a reason for my mother leaving. A reason that isn’t me. “I think maybe she did.”

“Do you think your mother was attacked? That hers is the memory you felt?”

“No.” I know this even if I don’t know how I know. “It was the girl’s memory. But I think the girl visited my mother somehow. My mother used to call them Water People, the people she thought lived in the ocean. But maybe there was only one Water Person.”

One girl reaching out to my mother.

“The last time I saw my mother, she was collecting stones from the sea.”

My mother’s hands so delicate.

“I watched her in the surf, how she filled her pockets with those stones. I remember being so excited for her to bring me all her treasures.”

Rocks trampled by dinosaurs, squeezed by continents of ice.

Broken glass from a pirate ship, purple and exotic.

“She used to collect broken bits of clay from the shore and tell me tales of how the Water People left their pots behind.”

“Whoa.”

“But on her last night here those discarded pieces weren’t enough. My mother added rocks to the pockets of her skirt. Small ones at first. I was only six when I watched her walk straight into the waves, carrying so much extra weight. I knew she was going to the Water People, and I’d never been so scared.” My breath hitches. “I knew she wanted them more than me. She was choosing them over me, and all I could do was watch. She was leaving me behind, and I didn’t know how to make her stay.”