The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(77)

“And you need to rest.”

“Please,” Alby said.

“I won’t leave you,” she said, her heart still aching from the loss of her family. “I’m going to stay right here with you, all night if I have to. I’m not going anywhere.” She curled up next to him on the floor. She covered her mouth with part of the blanket.

“I’m so glad I found you,” he said. “I’ve never known anyone like you before.”

“Someone like me?”

“A friend,” Alby whispered. “I’ve never had a real friend before,” his words slurring as he succumbed to fatigue or fever, the rocking of the ship. “I always… wondered what that would feel like.” She could see him smile for a moment in the darkness. “It feels… good. I want you to know… how grateful…”

Lai King waited for him to finish his sentence, but he was already fast asleep.



* * *



Lai King woke in the early morning to the sound of cooking pans and realized Auntie Anna was up, making breakfast, kneading dough. The woman hummed as she worked, occasionally singing a happy tune, which sounded out of place in the darkened hold where Lai King had slept. In the pitch black of the room, she crawled across the floorboards to where Alby was. She had a vague memory of him coughing, waking up, and leaving the room to use the privy.

“Can you make it okay?” she’d whispered. “It’s dark down here.”

“Don’t worry,” he said with a slight wheeze. “I’ll find my way back to you.”

She fell asleep again, unsure of when he returned.

Now as she reached the blankets, they were cold and he was missing. “Alby,” she called out, “Alby, where are you?”

She called out again as the door to the storage room creaked open and she squinted at the brightness. She shaded her eyes from the glow of the gas lamps that flooded the cramped space. Backlit was a tall, broad silhouette, spoon in hand.

“I thought I heard you awake in there,” Auntie Anna said.

Lai King stood, rubbing her eyes as she asked, “Where is he?”

There was an awkward silence between them. Then a pot of boiling water bubbled over, hissing on the iron stove. “I thought he was in there with you,” the woman said before she rescued whatever she was cooking. “Oh dear. Oh, my heavens…”

“Where did he go?” Lai King asked in desperation.

Auntie Anna said nothing.

“Where did he go!?” Lai King shouted, then pushed past the woman and climbed the ladder as fast as she could. She emerged on deck as the sun, a globe of radiant orange, peeked above the horizon. Her eyes adjusted to the light, and she saw there were no passengers anywhere, just a handful of sailors, tending watch.

“Alby!” Lai King shouted, painfully aware of how small and feeble her voice was, lost in the chorus of the ocean, the creaking of the ship’s timbers that groaned like a slowly ticking clock.

Mr. Cappis spotted her from the forecastle, where he was talking to another officer. He donned his cap and descended a ramp. He walked soberly in her direction.

She shouted, “What did you do to him? He was away from everyone else, he wasn’t going to hurt anyone. I was taking care of him. He was…” She scanned the deck.

Mr. Cappis straightened his black coat. He didn’t smile, but he didn’t frown either. “Miss, I would ask you to calm yourself if you’re going to address me in this way.”

Lai King fell silent, though inside she was screaming.

“I didn’t do anything to anyone,” he said. “If you’re talking about the boy…”

“Where is he?”

“I have no idea,” Mr. Cappis said. “But I can assure you I didn’t do anything to your young friend.”

Lai King felt quiet relief. “Then where is he?”

She stepped to the taffrail and stared down at the endless sea, which for once was unusually calm, like a sheet of glass. In the distance, she spotted a single dolphin skimming the surface of the water, leaping once before it plunged and disappeared.





16 Dorothy




(2045)

Dorothy sat on the main deck of the MV Suquamish, looking through the rain-streaked windows of the old ferry that served the thirty-five-minute route between downtown Seattle and Bainbridge Island. Annabel sat on the green, cushioned bench directly across from her mother, staring at the water as though searching for something and restlessly banging her tiny heels against the metal beneath her seat.

Dorothy gave her daughter a look and she stopped, though she kept fidgeting.

“Why can’t I go outside?” Annabel asked, pointing to the bow of the ship.

“Because it’s raining, Baby-bel,” Dorothy said. “And it’s windy and nasty out.”

Annabel recently refused to go to preschool because she said she had nightmares during nap time, so Dorothy suggested that the two of them take what she liked to refer to as a swimming lesson. Dorothy took the idea from an old poem by Mary Oliver, about finding your way back to land after being tossed in the sea. It was Dorothy’s idea to take a mental health day; Louis, however, called it a lack of wealth day. Because from his perspective, Dorothy being a frequently out-of-work teacher was already akin to a vacation. Why would she need any extra time away from that?