Spells for Forgetting(29)

I hadn’t had the guts to read another one, but the address alone explained why I couldn’t find them.

Somerfield.

All those months searching, I was looking for Eloise and August Salt.

At first, it was just the weekends. We didn’t have internet at the shop or the house back then, so I’d go into the city to use the computer, scouring the internet for any trace of August. I would wake before my parents and take the first ferry to the city, arriving just before the downtown library opened.

I started with basic strategies, plugging their names into search engines and clicking on every single result. When I found nothing, I tried each of their names with every state, hoping that I could find a location to go off of. I tried the post office next, mailing a letter to August’s house on Saoirse and hoping that they had set up a forwarding address. But they hadn’t. The letter arrived in his mailbox a couple of days later and when I saw the mailman deliver it, I burst into tears.

I created accounts on every social media platform I could think of and searched for his name, my heart racing as I scanned the thumbnail pictures of each profile, hoping to see his face. It became an obsession. It was all I thought about, day and night. Eventually, weekends in Seattle turned into weekdays in Seattle, and as spring turned into summer, I was almost never home.

I lied to my parents about where I was, telling them I’d gotten a job at a coffee shop in the city to save up some extra money. The charade went on for months until the day I came home after dark and they were sitting at the kitchen table waiting for me.

This has to stop.

He’s not coming back, Em.

The words were like an arrow to my chest. Like the sickening snap of broken bone. I could still remember the pain in my lungs turning to fire, and a sound escaped my lips that I’d never heard before. A hollow, shattered cry from the deepest, darkest part of me.

It wasn’t until that moment that I believed it. He wasn’t coming back.

The road came to a dead end in a dense circle of trees and I hit the brakes, throwing the gear into park before the truck had even stopped. I snatched the letter up and shoved it into my pocket, pushing the old, rusted door open with a pop.

My father’s fishing cabin was more a boathouse than a home. It sat on stilts in Frost’s Cove, where the water was like glass in the evenings and the trees were so tall that you could make out only a tiny circle of the sky. Two boat slips reached out from the wraparound deck, where his catamaran was docked, its red and white sails rolled up tight.

I walked down from the road with the letter crumpled between my fingers. I didn’t bother knocking when I came up the steps, turning the handle and letting the door swing open in front of me. The faded blue light and the smell that soaked the wood paneling found me, putting flesh to the bones of a thousand memories. It was the reason I didn’t like coming to the cabin. Between these walls still lived candlelit nights and icy mornings and rare, sunny afternoons on the dock. Each one of them was colored with the same face—August. And no matter how much time had passed, the gilded edge of those moments hadn’t dimmed, widening the hole inside me.

“Dad?” My voice filled the emptiness, but there was no answer.

My father spent most of his time and ate most of his meals at the pub, but it wouldn’t be open for another couple of hours. Stacks of papers littered the old driftwood countertop, where a single propane burner and a tabletop icebox were stacked as a makeshift kitchen. The patchwork quilt was smoothed over the bed in the corner and my father’s boots were missing from where they usually sat.

I came around the counter, pressing two knuckles to the half-filled coffeepot. It was still warm.

He wasn’t supposed to be out on the water until his cough was gone, but of course he was. I went to the windows that overlooked the dock, scanning the trees until I spotted him. He was lowering his fishing pole into the boat.

There was no one I trusted more than my dad, and in a matter of moments, I’d know if he’d lied to me. I hesitated, weighing the cost of that knowledge. What it would do to me if it was true. But this wasn’t just about the night of the fire and everything that came after. It was more than that.

I pushed through the screen door and took the rickety steps down from the deck. As soon as he heard me, he perked up, giving me a slanted smile.

“Hey, honey.” He pulled the hat lower over his ears before he bent low to retie the line.

I stopped before him, a flash of heat licking my skin beneath my sweater.

He stiffened as his eyes focused on me. “What’s wrong?”

My mouth opened and then shut. I shifted on my feet.

“Em?” His tone deepened, the way it did when he was worried. That sound, in itself, was a memory.

Before I could change my mind, I pulled the letter from my pocket, holding it between us. He looked confused, taking a step toward me so he could read the handwriting that scrawled over its surface. It wasn’t until his eyebrows suddenly lifted that I let out the breath I’d been holding. I didn’t even need to ask.

“You knew about this?” I whispered, my heart sinking.

He turned toward the water, his eyes scanning the horizon before he glanced up over my head, to the cabin. “Why don’t we go inside and talk?”

“Dad.” I said the word like it was the last thing tying me to the hope that I was wrong. “Did you know?”