The Second Mother

by Jenny Milchman

  “What happens if another lobsterman, you know, not in your gang, puts his trap down in your spot, say he finds it with the depth-finder thingy? I mean, it’s the ocean.” Julie gestured beyond the boat. “It’s not like there are police.”

  Callum steered toward another buoy and lowered the gaffer. “Well, there are. But that’s not how such a thing would be settled.”

  “Settled,” Julie repeated.

  Callum started the winch. “Dumping in the wrong spot is a sure way to find yourself hurting the next day. Some of the novices do what you say, follow a more experienced guy around, drop their traps on top of his. They find themselves with a string of cut lines, perfectly good traps sunk, and not too many can afford that kind of loss.” Callum flipped open a second trap. “The nicer guys might try to fool the novice, lower a series of concrete blocks into an area no self-respecting lobster would burrow. And the nastier ones? They use their fists to prove their point. Or worse.”

  “That sounds pretty cutthroat. For seafood.”

  Callum began sorting the contents of his new trap. “Seafood can be a fifty-thousand-dollar tuna in Japan. And the stakes are no lower here. It’s people’s bread and butter. How they survive.”

  Julie thought about the kids leaving school to help out at the trap house or on their dads’ boats. “Are people entering the field in good numbers? Young people, I mean.”

  “Fewer and fewer,” Callum told her, tossing clumps of seaweed over the side. “There’s a long apprenticeship program now, it’s pricey to set yourself up with equipment, especially the new stuff, bait prices keep rising, and the cost of buying a house near the coast is astronomical. I know men who live six hours from where they tie up.” Callum examined the underside of a lobster, then threw it back to sea. “Climate change means lobsters live farther out—more time on the water. And unless you have a relative to show you the ropes, it’s tough to gain experience, which is paramount to success, as my story shows. Way more than the equipment you use or boat you drive.”

  What Callum had basically done was confirm the grandmother’s whole diatribe. Thanks to his highliner dad, Peter was uniquely set up for success in a business that was in peril. Fewer young people entering meant a dying industry—or rather, one ripe for corporate takeover, the oceanic equivalent of big agribusiness. But lobstering could still accord a luxe, rich living to those lucky enough to be at its pinnacle. All that the grandmother had lived and built and loved could topple or rise in a single generation.

  “All this space out here,” Julie mused, watching the water lift and sway. “It’s bigger than land, and there are scary enough things on land. You guys are brave who do this.”

  Callum let out a bellow so loud that Depot leapt to his feet.

  Julie tried to walk forward, stabilizing herself against the side of the boat. The lobster that had been lying across Callum’s palm had gotten a piece of his skin between its pincers. Callum gave a furious tug and flung the creature overboard.

  He’d torn his hand, a bead of blood welling up.

  Julie went to look for a first aid kit, but Callum’s stark, dead tone stopped her.

  “I’m a goddamned coward,” he said.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  “I’ve been a fraud ever since I met you. Since the night we saved Depot anyway.”

  We was overly generous. “What are you talking about?” Julie said.

  Callum swung the boat around a little too fast, and a plume of water struck her. Julie gasped, and Callum turned to face her, steering with one hand behind his back.

  “What haven’t you told me?” Julie asked, squeezing water from her shirt.

  Water lapped the sides of the boat as it rose and sank with the swells, a cradle gently rocking. Callum turned the engine off with an abrupt twist of his injured hand. Blood had worked its way to his wrist.

  “I’m not an only child,” Callum said.

  Julie might’ve told him that wasn’t the biggest oversight, except she sensed the depths beneath his statement.

  Callum wiped dampness from his face; he had gotten wet during his reckless spin as well. “And I know what it is to feel responsible for a tragedy even when you’re not.”

  Julie’s eyes stung with salt and sudden tears. “Oh.”

  Callum faced the sea. “My brother and I learned to fish together. He was better at it than I was, but not by much, and he was two years older. We had a rivalry—who could drive the boat faster, drop more traps, whose lobsters were legal, who used less bait, threw less crap back—we could compete over anything. Girls, our mam, losing our accents, Gaelic.”

  Julie smiled sadly. “Sounds like brothers.”

  “Yeah, well, one day it came to blows. I got a good slug in, and Declan went over the side. That wasn’t so unusual, Dec was always throwing me overboard. As I got bigger, I took him with me when he had me in a good hold.” Callum placed his hurt hand against his mouth. “Only this time, Dec didn’t come back up.”

  Julie ducked her head. She well remembered the only reaction she could tolerate after Hedley had died. A near-invisible nod of acknowledgment, no surprise or dismay or sympathy conveyed because the lesser degree of that person’s emotions just served to emphasize the fact that Julie’s own were all-encompassing. Swamping her, pulling her down, while the other person would at least be left standing.

  “I dove for hours, searching for Dec,” Callum said. “Dove until it was dark, till I got so far away from the boat, it was a miracle it didn’t smash on rocks and strand me. Wouldn’t matter if it had—I didn’t drive it home. Another lobsterman came and fished me out of the water.” Planes in Callum’s face shifted like tectonic plates.

  Julie had grown chilly, the sun sliding behind a wall of clouds. Depot came and rubbed his body against hers, but even that wasn’t sufficient to warm her.

  “My mam died less than a year after Dec,” Callum went on. “She died swearing it wasn’t my fault. Trying to tell me how easily it could’ve gone another way, and Dec would’ve swum back up to the surface, laughing and taunting me for not being able to haul him into the boat. If the rock he hit his head on had been one inch deeper, or to the left, or the right. If the line he got snagged on were frayed and he could’ve pulled free. Or some scenario we never considered.”

  Julie wrapped her arms around her shivering frame. The meaning Callum was trying to impart felt crucial—for them both—yet cold had sapped her ability to follow.

  “It was the last lesson me ma ever taught me,” Callum said, voice deepening into an echo of the place he had come from. “How if me da had been standing next to a car that didn’t explode. If he’d fallen off the wagon and stopped for a pint, or been sober and didn’t stop for one, or didn’t go to work at all that day. The whole endless stack of events we can’t control or change—or maybe it’s the opposite, that even if we did alter them, it wouldn’t matter, because the thing we wish we could take back would just happen some other way. And to think otherwise is ruinous, and maybe arrogant too.”

  Julie was shaking too hard to nod. Her chin jabbed her chest and she flinched.

  Callum suddenly saw. “Christ, sweetheart, you’re cold.”

  The word momentarily stilled her shivers. Julie’s parents used to call her that. Papa Franklin and Uncle Vern. No one else. David had never been one for endearments.

  Callum strode over to a lidded bench. “Here,” he said, returning with a pair of waterproof waders. “Perhaps it’s fitting, as these were Dec’s. He died before he stopped growing, so they should do well enough.”

  “Wh-wh-why am I putting on waders?” Julie asked, stepping into the thick rubber legs of the pants.

  Callum took her by the elbow. “You’ll see.”

  * * *

  He led her over to a fifty-gallon barrel, the top third or so of which had been sawn off. Callum kicked a crate toward the side of the drum. “
Use this as a step,” he told her. “Get in.”

  Julie looked at the barrel, then back at him, her teeth clattering.

  Callum gave her a nod.

  Awkward in the waders, Julie lifted one leg over the rough lip of the barrel. Her foot touched a pool of water. The sensation was instantaneous, the liquid somewhere between bathtub hot and boiling. Balancing on the edge, Julie got her other leg over and lowered herself down. She moaned with sheer relief. “Oh my God. Why do you have a Jacuzzi on a lobster boat?”

  Callum laughed. “You might not call it that if you knew what it’s used for.”

  “I don’t care if you use it for skinning mermaids,” Julie replied, letting her hands skim the surface of the heated water. A pause. “Um, what do you use it for?”

  He laughed again. “It’s a dip barrel. Feel that coil you’re standing on? It heats the water to kill the sludge on the ropes. Also handy for heating up a can of soup.”

  “Callum?”

  “Ayuh?”

  “How am I going to get out of this thing? I used the box to step in.”

  Callum slipped both hands beneath Julie’s arms and helped her out, the rubber waders catching momentarily on the edge. Their faces drew near, and for a brief, searing moment, Julie anticipated a replay of their kiss, only less accidental this time. She felt her wet skin cling to his, their clothes a sheer layer between them, and a surge of longing seized her.

  Callum placed one rough palm on her cheek. “No,” he said, voice thick with sorrow, or desire, or both. “Not now, on a day that’s been touched by memory.” He took his hand away, but held it cupped, as if her imprint were still upon him.

  Julie felt his on her face as well.

  “The next time we kiss,” Callum said, “it will be for real.”

  * * *

  They emerged from the dock and walked through town.

  “Thanks for the orientation,” Julie said. “And the day, and the wisdom.”

  Callum gave an it-was-nothing sort of shrug.

  “Seriously,” Julie said. “Everything you told me. So helpful. Ellie’s given me some background, but it’s from her father, which is nothing like getting it right from the source or seeing things up close.”

  Callum stopped and faced her on the road. “What’s from her father?”

  Julie had kept walking, she paused a few feet away. “What Ellie has told me about lobstering. It all comes from her father.”

  Callum scrubbed his chin with one hand. “Ellie doesn’t have a father.”

  “Well, I know that, he died—”

  “No,” Callum told her. “Ellie never had a dad at all.”

  * * *

  Julie questioned Callum, then questioned him again, before they parted, but his certainty was unswerving. Ellie had come to live on Mercy around the age of thirteen, in the care of a single mother who never married, although she might’ve dated someone for a brief period, which still negated the possibility of a stepfather. In fact, Ellie’s mother and Callum’s had once tried to start a singles club, which Callum’s mother used to jokingly and heteronormatively refer to as Mums without Men.

  There was nobody home at Ellie’s when Julie and Depot reached the cluster of cottages. They walked the rest of the way back, Julie swaying a bit as she made her way through the woods along its humped and knotted trail. She felt as if she were still on the boat, not yet fully returned to land, but the wobbliness really resulted from Callum’s revelation. Why would her friend have invented a fictional father?

  Depot’s pace lagged as they crossed the scrubland. Julie had expected her dog to pick up speed when the house came into view, eager for food, but instead he slowed down, a rumble starting in his throat. Julie’s thoughts shot to Peter and she felt a shard of fear. What if the missing ledger had been discovered?

  She edged forward, taking a look around. Depot stuck to her side as if mortared there. Then he halted abruptly, his muscular bulk causing Julie to lurch. She stepped away from him, and his growls grew louder, crescendoing into a bark just as she reached the front porch.

  Peter didn’t stand in front of the door. No one did.

  But on the mat lay the crushed and mangled body of a bird.

  Part IV

  No Mercy

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Gully.

  Julie stared down at the desecration on her doormat, swallowing back the bitter taste of bile, her hands curled into fists of rage.

  Gully would benefit from no last-minute resurrection this time, Julie observed with another surge of bile, no sirree. Its wings were bent and crumpled; its whole body had been pounded. The bird’s gray form wasn’t intact enough to be certain of its identity, but whether it was actually Gully or one of its brethren, the message was clear.

  In her years as a dog owner, Julie had witnessed many a small, lurid death: creatures whose skeletons Depot chewed clean before Julie and David became habituated to the full extent of his appetite, and before the wilder parts of Depot’s nature had been habituated to civilization, accidental tramplings beneath a puppy paw that didn’t yet know its own force.

  This wasn’t that.

  No inadvertent demise here. Something or someone had deliberately beaten the bird into a pulpy mass, its species indicated only by color, and a single, beetle-like eye. A note written in a loose, childish scrawl served to emphasize the purposeful nature of the kill.

  the bird should’ve stayed in school and so should you

  Julie swung around on the porch, the flesh on the back of her neck prickling. The dying thrum in Depot’s throat presented proof that they were alone. The scrubby yard sat empty, the distant woods still.

  Julie was a country girl, born and raised, and country girls knew how to clean up messes. And they didn’t shrink away from redness in nature’s tooth or claw.

  They also knew when to call the police—and when not to. Small town, small island, it made no difference. Inhabitants of such places didn’t handle exigencies and emergencies like everybody else. The interconnections formed a web of closeness and protection, and also ties that shackled and bound. Although for a brief, painful second Julie wished for Tim or even one of her flawed, demoted family members, she didn’t have that option here. This would’ve been approached a certain way in Wedeskyull, by the locals at any rate, and Julie was betting that island folk would handle it without due process as well.

  She brought Depot a safe distance away from the bird—worried he would eat the poor thing, not get hurt himself—and told him to stay. Then she marched to the shed at the back of the house. There she found a shovel, and walked a few yards to dig a hole in a spot where the cliff plunged to the sea. It was as close as she could get the bird to the skies in which it once had soared. Julie returned to the front of the house and scooped the corpse up from the porch floor, keeping as many of its parts intact as she could. Making the trip for a third time, she lowered the bird into the ground and poured in a shovelful of earth.

  Depot came and stood beside her.

  Julie glanced at him. “Want to say a few words?”

  The dog barked, foghorn deep.

  “Perfect,” Julie said, and scooped the remaining dirt into the grave.

  * * *

  She sat on the top step of the porch, knees drawn up to her chest and arms wrapped around her quaking calves, unwilling to go inside. Depot waited, tail extended, snout thrust forward. He would let her know if anyone approached.

  Could Peter be responsible for something as gruesome as this? If he had succeeded in crushing Gully in his fist at school that day, the bird might’ve wound up in such a condition. And she mustn’t forget Depot’s near miss. If Julie and Callum hadn’t arrived, then the sea would’ve swallowed her dog without sign or mention.

  Committing either act had to be a cry for help, just as giving Julie the ledger had been. The only problem w
as, she had no idea what kind of help Peter needed.

  Today had been an emotional rodeo ride, from the rush of togetherness with Callum to the shock of the murdered bird. There were times only a best friend—even a new one, even one who had lied—could restore a person to sanity and strength.

  * * *

  Ellie was drunker than Julie had ever seen her when she opened the front door.

  No way could Julie ask about her place in the ledger now.

  Ellie let out a laugh that turned into a gurgle, tugging Julie urgently inside before falling against the door to close it. Julie didn’t wish for a drink herself precisely, but she envied the absolution her friend had been granted. Alcohol banished things so nicely, pressing them down beneath fathomless depths. If only they didn’t tend to rise back up to the surface. And then act really angry that they’d almost been drowned.

  Ellie peered closely at Julie, leaning in until the two of them touched.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Ellie said, all the S’s a slurry in her mouth.

  “I don’t even know where to start,” Julie said. “My dog’s starving, we were with Callum on his boat—it was great but we didn’t take time for lunch—and then when I got home, there was a warning, I guess, or a threat—”

  “Hold on,” Ellie said.

  “—on my doormat—it was a bird, a dead bird, but not just dead—”

  “Hold on!” Ellie said again, her voice teetering dangerously. “Holy shit, your life is like a movie. You’ve brought more excitement to this island than it’s ever seen.”

  “Excitement—” Julie cried.

  Ellie flapped a hand. “Sorry, sorry.” More slurring. “Tell me about Callum.”

  “The bird part didn’t stand out?”

  “Callum sounds way more interesting.” She snorted. “Come on, let’s give Depot something to eat. Let me finish off this bottle, and you can get a jump start on some coffee.” She twitched her butt, leaving the room. “Don’t judge by a number,” she trilled.