The Water Keeper(101)

“I know. You told me . . .”

As Marie’s life drained into the ocean and her lungs held less air, she pulled me toward her. She was cutting me free. “Tell me what you know about sheep.”

We had started this way, and we would end this way. It hurt too much. I shook my head.

“Tell me.”

“The needs of the one . . .”

She closed her eyes.

“Outweigh those of the ninety-nine.”

She laid her hand flat across my chest. Just two kids on a beach. She pulled herself toward me. “One more thing . . .”

Her pulse had slowed to almost nothing. I waited.

“Spread my ashes where we started . . . that shallow water near the north end of the island.”

I stared six hundred miles north. Past my mind’s eye. To the beach where we played as kids. I shook my head. “I—”

Blood spilled out the corner of her mouth. “Where we fell in love.” The flow was deep red. Then frothy. She was choking now. Rather than fight for air, she chose to speak. “Did then . . . do now. Always will.”

She wrapped her fingers around the thin leather necklace hanging around her neck and lifted it off. The years had worn it thin. Tarnished the outside. The side that lay next to her chest had been polished to a shine. She set it in my hand and closed her fingers around mine.

Marie stared at Ellie and then at me. She lifted her hand, extending her fingertips and waiting for mine. I rested her in the water, and we wove our fingers around each other like vines. She tried to breathe but couldn’t catch it. That was it. Marie’s life would end in my hands. I didn’t want to let her go. I couldn’t. Seeing my pain, she pressed her palm to my chest, flat. Then pulled me to her and pressed her lips to mine. There she held me. A moment. A year. Forever.

She crossed her arms, smiling slightly. I stared out across the water, but my heart had blurred my eyes and I couldn’t see a thing. I nodded for the last time. She let go, and her body lay limp in my arms. Her words were gone. She’d spoken her last. Only the exhale remained. The light in her eyes was fading.

I leaned in. Forcing her eyes to focus. I managed a broken, “I’ll miss you.” She blinked, telling me that singular muscle movement was all that remained. I rallied what little strength remained in me. “You ready?”

Her eyes rolled back, then she drew a surge of energy from the depths and focused on me. One last time.

While she may have been ready, I was not. The words of her life were draining off the page, black to white. From somewhere, she mustered a final word. Although she didn’t speak it. With her eyes closed, I felt her fingertips on my chest. She was writing her name over my heart.

With one hand beneath her neck and one hand covering her chest, I spoke out across the surface of the water. “In the name of the Father . . . the Son . . . and the . . .” My mouth finished the words but my voice did not.

She blinked, cutting a tear loose, and I pushed her beneath the surface.

In that second, her body fell limp, the last of the air bubbles escaped the corner of her mouth, and the water turned red.

Her body felt light as I lifted her. As if her soul had already gone. When she surfaced, her eyes were open but she wasn’t looking at me. At least, not in this world. And the voice I’d once heard I could hear no more. I carried her to shore and set her on the sand, where the waves washed over her ankles. Her arms lay flat across her chest—yet even in death her fingers were screaming at the top of their lungs: “23.”

I pulled her to me and cried like a baby.





Chapter 51


Bones rented a house on the water where they tell me I spent the first three days sleeping. He brought in doctors and nurses to tend to each of us. My physical wounds would heal. I just needed time. The wounds on my heart were another matter. Angel’s wounds were deeper than skin. Hers, too, would take time. Fortunately, she had a good bit of that. She and Summer were never far. Arm in arm, Summer and Angel walked up and down the beach to sweat out the toxins in Angel’s body.

When I woke, it was to the rhythmic sound of a chair moving under the lazy weight of someone enjoying the moment. I cracked open my eyes to find Clay sitting in a rocking chair, an IV bag hanging above him from a stainless pole on wheels. I found myself in a hammock swung between two posts on the porch. Sea breeze cooling the sweat on my skin. In the distance I heard the sound of small waves rolling onto shore. And women’s laughter.

Clay looked good. Whatever was dripping into him was helping. I sat up and tried to climb my way out of the hammock, but I was still too tired. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, it was dark and I smelled a campfire and heard soft conversation. I watched as the girls roasted marshmallows on sticks around a fire on the beach. Staring into the firelight, I felt Summer’s hand on my shoulder. Then a kiss on my forehead.

When I woke again, it was still dark, the fire had burned out, and the beach was quiet. Only the stars spoke above me. I looked to the rocking chair, but instead of Clay, I found Summer. I wriggled myself out of the hammock, laid a blanket across Summer, and walked barefoot onto the beach where the moon shone down. Gunner limped up alongside me, licked my leg, and stood staring up at me. I rubbed his head but was too sore to bend over. I walked out on the beach, let the waves wash over my feet, and then waded out into the water. When the water reached my thigh, I squatted, sat on my butt—or rather fell backward—and soaked. An hour later, that’s where the sun found me when it broke the skyline.