by Sophie Moss
She nodded.
Water poured out of the screen in the bottom as they muscled it up out of the silo and set it down on a flat portion of the dock. Impressed with her ability to keep the heavy container steady on her first try, he asked if she could handle a few more. She nodded, and they hauled up the rest.
“Nice job,” he said, when they’d finished.
She said nothing, and didn’t offer him even a hint of a smile.
This was supposed to be fun, Ryan thought. It was supposed to be interesting. Yes, it was hard, physical, repetitive work, but they were doing something important. They were doing something that mattered. And they were doing it outside.
At least they weren’t stuck in an office building, crunching data and drafting research papers that only a handful of academics would ever read.
Setting the hooks on the pier, he reached for the hose and dragged it over to the row of buckets. “We don’t have to scrub these every day like we do with the ones on the pier, but we should give them a good rinse every time we pull them up to sort them.”
He nodded toward the edge of the dock where he’d stacked a few empty bins, a plastic scooper, and a piece of mesh screen. “It’s a pretty low-tech system. You set the screen on top of one of the bins, scoop the oysters over the screen, and shake the screen so the smaller ones fall through. The bigger ones can go into a new bucket so they have more room to grow. The smaller ones that fall through can go back into the original bucket.”
“Got it,” she said, grabbing the bucket he’d just washed and dragging it over to the edge of the dock. She set up a grading station efficiently, as if she’d done it a hundred times, and without any questions, got to work.
Trying, again, not to let it bother him, Ryan started to spray down the next bucket. He was just here to offer her a distraction, he reminded himself. He was supposed to give her something to do with her hands and keep her busy. Every hour of work that she gave him—that any of these veterans gave him—brought him one step closer to achieving his goal. That was all that mattered. That was all he should be focusing on right now.
He finished washing the buckets and knelt down, picking out a few oysters that were showing signs of distress. But he kept a close eye on Izzy. And, while she appeared to be going through the paces, he couldn’t help noticing that, every few minutes, she would pause and glance down at her watch.
He could tell she was distracted, that she wasn’t really focused on the task. If she couldn’t focus one hundred percent of her attention on this, he’d have to give her a different job. The nursery job was too important.
He sat back on his heels. “I feel like you’re not that into this.”
She stopped working and looked at him. “Am I doing something wrong?”
“No,” he said. “I just feel like you’re not all here, like you’re not really into it.”
“Do I need to be into it?” she asked. “Can’t I just do the job?”
“I think it’s important that you care. That you understand why we’re doing this.”
Izzy set the screen down on the bin. The sun illuminated her face, turning her eyes an even lighter, more exotic shade of gold. “Okay,” she said, with a hint of impatience. “I get that you’re trying to save the Bay, but is this”—she gestured to the oysters—“really going to make that big of a difference?”
“Yes,” Ryan said. “Over time, it will make a very big difference. Change isn’t going to happen overnight. But we have to start somewhere. Introducing sustainable ways of harvesting seafood is a step in the right direction. Teaching people how to take better care of the Bay through our nonprofit is another.”
“What people?” Izzy asked, looking around. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. Who’s even going to come here?”
“Lots of people come here,” Ryan said, his brows drawing together. “They come on the weekends to get away from the city. They come in the summer to eat crabs and go fishing. They come for the wildlife, for the scenery. A lot of people are interested in what’s going on with the Bay right now. They want to know how they can help, so that they, and their children, can continue to enjoy it year after year.”
Izzy looked out at the water, her gaze tracking the path of an osprey. “You really think people care that much?”
“Yes, I do,” Ryan said. “And if they don’t, it’s only because they don’t know any better.”
Izzy picked the screen up, scooped another batch of oysters over it, and went back to ignoring him.
“Look,” he said, trying a different approach. “Most of the people who live on this island are watermen. The Bay is their primary source of income. Without a healthy, functioning ecosystem, they won’t be able to make a living off these waters anymore. This island won’t be able to survive.”
She said nothing, gave him no reaction at all.
Ryan took a deep breath. “I don’t think you’re grasping how dire this situation is.”
“Probably not.”
“Over the past ten years, every major species of fish in these waters has experienced a rapid decline,” Ryan said. “The wildlife that depend on those fish for food—the animals that live in these marshes and the birds that fly through here on their annual migrations—are suffering because they can’t find enough to eat. There are dead zones in the Bay now, pockets of water with little to no oxygen, where the fish literally suffocate when they swim through them. We need to find a way to filter these waters and clean them. We can’t just keep doing things the way we’ve been doing them. We have to find another way to make this work.”
Izzy looked out at the water again, and was quiet for so long, he thought she must finally be absorbing what he’d said. But when she looked back at him, her eyes were completely devoid of emotion. “Sounds like a lost cause to me.”
Ryan stared back at her. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m dead serious,” she said, reaching for an empty bin, and sliding the one that was full away from her. “Not everything—or everyone—can be saved.”
The dock continued to rock gently beneath them, but the feeling of buoyancy, the lightness he usually felt while working on the water, never came. Were they still talking about oysters…or her?
If they were talking about her, then they had a much bigger problem on their hands.
A man cleared his throat from the end of the pier and Ryan glanced up. He spotted Paul, the guy he’d put in charge of marketing.
“Am I interrupting something?” Paul asked, looking back and forth between them.
“No,” Ryan said. He stood and walked over to the pier and hiked himself up on the wooden planks.
Paul knelt down beside him and opened the laptop he was carrying. “Is this your website?”
Ryan glanced at the screen. “Yes.”
“It sucks, man.”
Ryan blew out a breath. “Thanks.”
Paul clicked on a few of the tabs. “Who designed it?”
“I did,” Ryan said wearily.
Paul looked back at him, a pained expression on his face. “It really sucks, man.”
“Well, why don’t you change it?” Ryan suggested.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to need some pictures,” Paul said.
“There might be some on the hard drive,” Ryan said, then glanced over his shoulder at where his father and the two veterans in the workboat were hauling cages out of the water. “Or you could take one of the kayaks out and get some shots of the guys working now.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Paul grinned and stood up. “Awesome.”
“Take a life jacket,” Ryan called after him.
Paul gave him a thumbs up before ducking into the shed.
Ryan looked at Izzy. Why couldn’t it be that easy with her? Why couldn’t he figure out what to say to get through to her? Pushing to his feet, he wiped his wet hands on the front of his pants. “I’m going to check on Ethan and Ha
iley. I’ll be back in a few minutes to help you put the rest of the buckets in the water.”
“I’ll be here,” she said, without even bothering to look up.
* * *
Izzy waited for Ryan to disappear into the environmental center, then she sat back on her heels and let out a breath. She wished she could believe him. She wished she could believe that by spending the next three months scrubbing down shellfish, she could actually make a difference.
There was a part of her—a small part, deep down—that admired his passion and idealism. And there was a time, not too long ago, when she would have thrown her whole heart into helping him bring this vision to life. But she wasn’t that person anymore.
She picked the screen up again and started to shake it, focusing on the sound of the tiny bivalves dropping into the bucket. Until her mind was completely empty. Until she felt nothing again.
As long as she felt nothing, as long as she stayed completely detached, no one could hurt her.
Three hours later, when the workboat came in, she was too hot to think about anything but getting a drink of water and a few minutes to cool off in the shade anyway. She joined the others—Jeff, Paul, Ethan, and Hailey—under the awning that covered a small portion of the dock where it connected to the shed, while Ryan helped his father secure the lines to the pier.
The guys who’d been on the boat were dirty, sweaty, and sunburned, but they were smiling as they followed Ryan’s father into the shed to wash and bag the oysters they’d harvested. Ryan grabbed a half dozen from one of the baskets and motioned for everyone else to follow him over to the picnic area. “Come on,” he said. “I want you all to try one.”
They gathered around one of the tables, watching him slip the top of a knife into a groove in the shell and pry it open. He handed the first one to Paul.
Paul looked down at it warily. “People actually eat these things raw?”
Ethan glanced over his shoulder and made a face. “They look like snot.”
“Great. Thanks,” Hailey said, elbowing him in the ribs. “Now there’s no way I can eat one.”
“Aren’t you supposed to put cocktail sauce or lemon juice on them…or something?” Ethan asked, hesitating when Ryan handed him one.
“Try one without first,” Ryan urged.
There were a few more murmured protests, but eventually, Paul, Ethan, and Hailey slurped theirs down.
Ryan grinned. “What do you think?”
“Not bad,” Hailey said, surprised. “I thought they would be gross, but they taste really clean, really fresh.”
“Good,” Ryan said, smiling as he took her shell back and tossed it in a small bucket for recycling. “That’s what I like to hear.”
“I think they taste kind of sweet,” Paul said.
Ryan nodded. “What else?”
“I don’t know,” Paul looked down at the empty shell in his hand. “Maybe kind of…buttery?”
Ethan washed his down with a long drink of water, making it clear that he wasn’t as thrilled with the prospect of becoming an oyster connoisseur as the other two. “I think they taste as gross as they look.”
Ryan laughed. “It’s an acquired taste for some people. You’ll come around.”
He shucked two more, handed one to Jeff, and one to Izzy. When she reached for hers, their fingers brushed and she felt that same calm, peaceful feeling flow through her as she had the night before, when he’d offered her his hand in the doorway at the inn.
She held his gaze for a few beats before breaking the contact and glancing down at the shell. She paused, surprised, because it looked nothing like the stringy, grayish-brown oysters that usually came from this region, which were more fit for stews and frying. This one was plump and fully formed with pale ivory-colored flesh, resting in a deep round-cupped shell—pretty enough to deserve a moment of respect.
She lifted it slowly to her lips, inhaled the earthy scent of the Bay, and let it slide into her mouth. The texture was perfect—soft and silky, but with enough meat to sink her teeth into. The taste was mildly salty, buttery, and sweet. The fact that it had been pulled out of the water a few hundred feet from where she stood made her feel suddenly energized, awake, alive.
She thought about the elaborate system of pumps, tanks, and piping, how much effort went into caring for the baby oysters each day, how much time it took, even after they moved out to the lease, for them to grow to full size, and how hard the men on the boat had worked—and were still working—to get them ready to ship out.
She looked at Ryan again, thinking about what he’d said earlier, that all he was trying to do was introduce a new method of harvesting a dying resource that blended modern science with the centuries-old traditions of this island. She felt a faint stirring, deep inside her, as another memory fought to resurface. There was a time when she had wanted to do something similar. Her dream had been to bring the traditional recipes of her grandmother’s village in Mexico to Baltimore, but with a fresh, innovative twist all her own.
The dream reformed, slowly taking shape inside her. She grasped onto a thread of it, wanting, needing, just for a moment, to remember who she had been before—a woman who’d been filled with joy, with passion, with a dream. A woman who’d known, without a shred of doubt, what she’d wanted. A woman who’d been willing to do anything to succeed.
“So?” Ryan asked, still smiling from everyone else’s reactions. “What do you think?”
“It’s an oyster,” she said, tossing the shell into the bucket for recycling and stuffing the dream back down, where it belonged. “They all taste the same.”
Four
Hey,” Grace Callahan said, walking up the steps to Ryan’s house later that afternoon.
Ryan glanced up from a report he’d been reading about a local oyster restoration project, surprised to see that his twin sister was still on the island. “I thought you were heading back to D.C. today.”
“I was.” Grace paused to pet Zoey, who thumped her tail appreciatively against the floorboards. “I was halfway to the bridge when I got a call from Senator Crawford’s office. He finally agreed to let me interview him about his decision not to run next term.”
Ryan raised a brow, impressed. “You’ve been working on that one for weeks.”
“I know,” she said, smiling. “He wants me to meet him at his summer house in St. Michaels tomorrow. I figured I’d crash here tonight and head back to the city afterwards.”
“Fine by me,” Ryan said, always happy to have his twin sister nearby. Born only a few minutes apart, they were about as close as two siblings could be.
“Do you have any more of those in the fridge?” she asked, pointing to the cold beer in his hand.
He nodded. “Help yourself.”
Grace walked inside, grabbed a beer, and came out again, settling into the wooden rocking chair beside him. Propping her feet up on the porch rail, as comfortable here as she was in her own apartment in Capitol Hill, she twisted the cap off her bottle. “So…how was your first day?”
Closing the report he’d been reading, Ryan shut his laptop and set it on the table between them. “Rough.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, surprised. “What happened?”
“I think I bit off more than I can chew.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “Did Dad say something?”
“No. Dad was fine.”
Grace studied her brother more closely, concern knitting her brows. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Ryan said, lifting his hand to wave to a neighbor who was just getting home from work. “You should have seen the two guys I sent out on the boat with him today. They’re already half in love with him.”
“Of course they are,” Grace said, rolling her eyes. “And I bet he worked them to death, too.”
Ryan nodded. “They’re going to be in so much pain tonight.”
Grace shook her head, because they both knew that their father’s style of motivation, though frustrating, netted imp
ressive results. As a single father, Coop Callahan had raised two extremely successful children—both of whom would have happily traded every bit of that success for even an ounce of the unconditional love and affection that other children got from their parents. “If it wasn’t Dad, then who was it?”
Ryan leaned back in his chair. “Remember that veteran I was telling you about—the one who’s here on probation?”
Grace nodded.
“I don’t think she’s too happy about the situation.”
“What do you mean?” Grace asked.
“I was at the inn when she drove up last night,” Ryan said. “She only brought one bag, like she was planning to stay for a week, not three months. She barely said two words to any of the other veterans and she made it clear today that she only sees this program as some kind of penance she has to pay to stay out of jail, not an opportunity to get her life back on track.”
“Huh,” Grace said.
“I didn’t have a chance to study her résumé like I did with the others, so I wasn’t sure which job to give her. I decided to put her in the nursery with me, thinking I could keep an eye on her. I mean, I’m all over the place, making sure everyone’s settling in and explaining how everything works, but it’s like she’s just…checked out. Like she doesn’t care about anything anymore.”
“Do you know what she was arrested for?”
“Assault.”
Grace’s brows shot up. “Assault?”
“Apparently, she shot someone.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan said. “Colin was pretty vague on the details.”
“Want me to find out?”
It was a tempting offer, Ryan thought. If anyone could dig up the truth about someone, it was his sister. As one of the top political reporters for The Washington Tribune, Grace had access to resources that went way beyond a simple Google search. But he wasn’t sure he was ready to make Izzy the target of one of his sister’s investigations. At least, not yet, anyway. “No,” he said, “but if I change my mind, I’ll let you know.”
