The Water Keeper(65)
It read:
Dear Florence,
You have been offered provisional acceptance into the Sisters’ initiate. We eagerly await your arrival.
Sincerely,
Sister Margaret
Something rattled in the envelope, so I turned it on its end, emptying it completely. A ring fell onto the seat. It spun like a top, wobbled, and then settled.
When it did, it took my breath away.
It could only mean one thing.
Chapter 29
I picked up the ring, turning it in my hand. The band was made of three thinner platinum bands woven together. Mounted above the vine-looking band sat a single diamond and two smaller emeralds, both mounted in silver settings on either side. Ellie looked at me. Her head tilted sideways. She stared at the ring as I placed it into the palm of her hand. When I did, something passed from me to her. Something I can’t name and never knew was there. But something real, something palpable, left my body and wrapped around hers.
She looked at the ring with incredulity. Shaking her head. Anger rising. She was about to throw the ring in the water when I caught her hand. “Wait.”
A vein had popped on the side of her head as she crumpled the letter. Speaking to the wad of paper, she said, “Just say it. You don’t want me. Never did. Just throw me out with the trash. Why the riddle? Why all this? Just freaking say the word!”
“Maybe she is.”
Ellie shook her head. “What do you mean?”
I straightened the letter. “I don’t know any of this for certain, but I think your mom did not intend to have you, and when she found herself pregnant, she gave you up and then went to this convent. Where she might be still. So maybe . . . you . . . we . . . should just go here”—I tapped the letter—“and ask around. Can’t hurt.”
Her shoulders rolled down at the edges. “I’ve been waiting my whole life for somebody, anybody, to tell me who I am and where I come from and why nobody wanted me—and all I’ve got is this stupid letter and this ridiculous ring that’s not worth squat.”
I stared at it. “It was to her.”
“How can you say that? She dumped it in this box thirteen years ago and hasn’t looked back since.”
I shrugged. “You don’t know that.”
She cocked her arm again as if to throw it.
“Wait.”
She set her hand in her lap.
“You can throw that if you want, but don’t let your pain speak louder than your love. Thirteen years ago, pain took that ring off and love put it in that box. The fact that you’re holding it now is a message, I think, from your mom. Before you bury her at sea, you might try to figure out what she’s saying.”
Ellie stared out across the water and shook her head.
I pointed south down the IC, toward the Keys. “Can I tell you a story?”
She did not look impressed.
“I know you see me as this ancient old man with arthritis and bad eyes, but I was actually in love once.”
Her complexion altered ever so slightly. “Why would I care about who you loved?”
I ignored her. And while I was working hard to keep her attention, I had all of Summer’s. “Sophomore year of high school, we’d all gone to this party. Big house on the river. Ski boats. Jet skis. Parasail rides. The parents even had a helicopter and were taking the kids on rides. Pretty wild party. Entire school was there. Maybe two hundred kids. I was sweet on this girl named Marie. She liked me but I was quiet, kind of a nerd in tenth grade, and not real popular. In my spare time, I fished and looked for stuff. Like sharks’ teeth or Indian artifacts.
“Marie and I had been friends longer than most. Childhood. We kind of grew up together. She was my best friend when guys weren’t supposed to have a girl as their best friend. We shared secrets. Hopes. Dreams. She knew I had my heart set on the Academy and she was just about the only person who told me I had a chance. That I could do it. Marie believed in me, and as a result, I did too. When I broke forty-eight seconds in the four hundred meters, set the state record, she was cheering me on. Without her, I don’t think I’d have broken sixty.”
“If Marie had an Achilles’ heel, and she did, it was acceptance. I couldn’t have cared less, but her identity was inextricably woven into the fabric of the crowd she hung with. She liked the popular guys with letter jackets and college offers. The ones everybody was talking about. I was night shift. Community college. Nobody was talking about me. She also had a thing for fast cars and fast boats, and I had neither.
“It was a Saturday. I worked at a tire store and got off work about nine p.m. When I got home, word of the party had spread. I had one interest in that party, and she wasn’t real interested in me. So I grabbed a light, a few poles, hopped in my Gheenoe, and fished a full moon and a flood tide. Big redfish love a full moon, and they were hitting on top of the water, making a loud smack. If you’re a fisherman, it’s a good sound.
“Midnight found me toward the mouth of the river, where the IC meets the St. Johns. It’s big water and no place for a Gheenoe, but the reds were there, so . . . About twelve thirty, I heard a distant helicopter. Then I saw a boat motoring slowly downriver with two large spotlights searching the surface of the water. Never a good sign. A moment later, the helicopter passed overhead, a larger searchlight, and then the boat, which circled through the inlet and sent a wake my way that nearly swamped me. I heard loud, frantic voices. I flagged them down and saw several guys I recognized from school, the guys with letterman jackets and college offers. They told me they’d gone night tubing and one of the girls had been thrown off. They couldn’t find her.