by Edwin Hill
“From the bakery?” Annie asked.
“Yeah. Do you know them?”
“Not really. Is her husband on the island?”
“Trey? He’s here. And kids wander off all the time. There are plenty of places to get lost. Right?” Rory said, but the lines on his face betrayed his true concern.
“I bet it’s nothing,” Annie had said. “But I’m here to help.”
* * *
“Ethan!”
Annie shook away the memory. She heard someone shouting the boy’s name over the wind as, first, flashlight beams cut through the dusk, then a small group of four people turned the bend. As they approached, Annie recognized most of the faces poking out from beneath raingear, though she didn’t know their names.
“Any luck?” she asked.
“None,” one of the women said. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”
“I have to go to the house,” Annie said.
The woman glanced at one of the men in her party.
“Where he lives,” Annie added, quickly, too quickly. “Where I live.”
“Right, you’re one of them,” the woman said, already walking away.
Annie wanted to shout, to make the woman know that she was real. But she watched instead as the group disappeared into the trees. How had she become one of “them”? How had she become the other? It hadn’t started on the island, but coming here hadn’t helped either. She thought about that day again, the Fourth of July. There hadn’t been a storm then. There hadn’t been so much danger.
That day, as the search parties had mobilized, Lydia had placed herself at the very center of the action, her voice steady as she stood beside Trey outside the community center and described Oliver while holding up a photo of him on her phone. To Annie, he looked like thousands of other children who wound up on missing posters, with Lydia’s freckles and eyes.
“He has curly hair,” Lydia said, her voice strong, determined. “Much thicker than a four-year-old’s should be. He insisted on wearing red, white, and blue today. He likes bugs.”
Annie had made sure to join Lydia’s search party, and the two women had walked together for the rest of the day, shoulder to shoulder, shouting Oliver’s name. They searched for hours, plodding over sand and stone and beach grass, long enough for the tide to sweep in and fill the bay to bursting and then drain all over again. As the summer sun began to set, as they trudged over this same ragged coast, and as the desperation that came with darkness began to grow, a man in the group shouted from a rocky crag in the distance. “It’s him! I found him!”
Lydia took off, her arms pumping, her sneakers slipping on wet stone. It was all Annie could do to keep up, but by the time they’d arrived, the man had realized his terrible mistake. “I’m sorry,” he said, tossing a discarded American flag out from where it had caught on the cliff.
For a moment, Annie thought Lydia might break. She walked away from the group toward the sea. A breeze caught her hair and blew it around her face. Annie left the others and stood at her side till she dared speak. “I know,” Annie said. “I know what this is like.”
Lydia grimaced. “You don’t,” she said. “How could you?”
Annie straightened herself and turned to look over the water. A crescent of a moon hovered on the horizon. “Because I lost my daughter,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. She hadn’t meant to say it, and she tried to pull it back. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t make this about me.”
Lydia’s eyes shone in the moonlight, and Annie wondered if she’d erupt in rage at the intrusion or break into sobs as unasked questions hung between them: What happened? When? Was she found? Annie preferred to let the questions answer themselves.
Lydia took her hand, like an old friend bonding over a shared loss, her nails digging into Annie’s palm. “You’re right. You shouldn’t.”
Lydia’s phone rang.
And the moment between them ended. So did the search.
Rory called with the good news, telling Lydia that he’d discovered the boy asleep in the hull of a boat in the marina. Once awake, Oliver told a story of balloons and gorillas and being chased along the docks by an enormous spider. No matter how they probed, he couldn’t describe who, if anyone, had taken him. And later, when Lydia had probed on Annie’s story, asking what had happened to her daughter, Annie had been able to fend off the conversation. “Feel lucky,” she’d said. “Don’t ever forget that your story had a happy ending.”
* * *
A gust of wind swirled in off the ocean, nearly knocking Annie to the rocky ground. That had been weeks and weeks ago. Over and done, right?
She pulled up the hood on her oilskins and left the lighthouse behind. Around the next bend, she came to an overgrown gravel path that led into the trees. The Victorian, her home—if she could use that word—for the past three months, sat a hundred yards from the path, nestled among overgrown rhododendrons. Most of the windows had been boarded up with plywood. A few chips of pink paint remained on the shingled exterior, and the outlines of gardens filled in what must have once been a lush lawn. She edged up the front steps, keeping to the sides to avoid crashing through the rotten planks. The wraparound porch groaned under her weight. She heaved open the heavy oak door and stepped into the shadow of the foyer. “Hello?” she shouted into the silence.
Inside the front parlor, with its ten-foot ceilings, stone fireplace, and trash-strewn floors, rain dripped from ceilings onto wide-planked floorboards and brought out the house’s secrets. Damp air smelled of ash from the chimney and mildew and dogs long gone. Wallpaper lining the parlor—someone had once loved this house enough to choose those pink and gold flowers—lifted a bit more from the horsehair plaster, where oil lamps, long burned dry, hung. The house had rooms running into rooms, and wardrobes with rusted keys, and toilets that once flushed with the pull of a chain. Now the inhabitants carried buckets of water from the old well in the yard.
Annie passed through the dining room and into the kitchen. She’d taken a few steps across the black-and-white tiled floor when she sensed someone in the room with her. She swallowed and turned. A man sat in the fading light at the long kitchen table, a box of Nutter Butters open, the cookies strewn across the dark maple.
Annie could have panicked at the sight of him, but at this house, people came and people went. They did what they wanted, with one another or on their own. So even if Annie wanted to heed every instinct life had taught her and run, she played it cool. Even if the man had lank hair that fell to his shoulders and tattoos running up each arm. Even if he shoved the cookies into his mouth and chewed like a wild animal.
“Hey,” she said, as though they’d met a thousand times.
She kept moving, though, hoping to get through the kitchen to the backstairs. To escape.
“Red!” the man said, standing, half-chewed cookies spewing from his mouth. And he moved quickly, more quickly than she’d have guessed he could. “How’d you wind up here?” he asked, blocking her way.
He was tall and thin and wore an old concert t-shirt. In the dim light, she couldn’t tell if his hair was gray or blond.
“Portland,” he said, close enough for her to smell the peanut butter on his breath. “I remember you. You hung with Emily!”
Emily was from another lifetime. Before Annie came to the island, she’d lived in Portland for a few months. Existed would be a better word. Emily dealt and used, and eventually Annie had needed to get away. So she’d come here. Now she remembered this man too. She’d seen him loitering on street corners and crawling out of abandoned houses on the outskirts of town. She’d watched him lug a microwave across an intersection on his way to return it to Walmart. She’d heard things about him—he sold guns or ran a prostitution ring or dealt drugs—and she’d stayed away from him. She’d heard similar stories about other people, and God knew what they’d heard about her. A lot could take on the strength of truth in a world without power or trust. Here, on the island, in this house, your tru
th was what you wanted it to be.
“Small world,” Annie said. “The cops’ll be here soon. You know that, right? They’ll be all over this house and anyone here.”
“Right-o,” the man said, saluting with two fingers. “Thanks for the warning. Gotta find my nephew. I’m Frankie’s brother, Seth. I came in on the ferry this afternoon. Must have thrown up ten times.”
“Where is she?” Annie asked.
“In the storm,” Seth said. “Freaking out. Like, really freaking out.”
“Wouldn’t you be? If it was your kid?”
“I am,” Seth said. “I’ll go out too once I finish my dinner. Now that you mention the cops, maybe sooner rather than later.” He stacked three cookies and ate them in two bites. “Hungry?” he asked.
Annie shook her head.
“I have other stuff, too, if you need it.”
“Not my thing,” Annie said. “And good luck tonight,” she added, heading up the back staircase to her room, a narrow closet with a single window, where she slammed the door and stood with her back against it, trying to slow her breathing. She dug her heels into the floorboards, bracing herself against the solid wood, as the last light of the day faded. No matter what his reasons for being here, no matter how much power Annie had ceded to life, that man—Seth or whatever his name was—was not someone she wanted to be alone with.
Ever.
Only once she heard the back door open and Seth head into the storm did she let her guard down. She slid to the floor and crawled toward her mattress. In June, when the house had been packed, this room, filled with chests of drawers, had been the only empty space to claim. Annie had formed a wall with the tallest of the chests and dragged a water-stained mattress from the attic to sleep on. Now she took a black knapsack from one of the drawers, stuffed the money Vaughn had given her into one of the pockets, and took out a burner phone. She sat on the mattress, knees pressed into her chest and her back to the wall. The phone was nearly dead, but she typed a text to the one number she still had memorized.
It’s me. I’m on Finisterre Island in Maine. Come find me.
She nearly hit Send, as she had so many other times, hoping that the person on the other end might be the one person on earth missing her. And as she had every other time, she deleted the message. It was for the best. She wasn’t ready. Not yet. And she didn’t know if she ever would be.
The bedroom door opened.
In the darkness, Annie gasped. She hadn’t heard anyone coming, but she fumbled for a stick that she’d left on the floor beside the mattress. When she peered around the wall of bureaus, the dim light from the burner phone showed Frankie edging through the door.
“You scared me to death,” Annie said.
Frankie took another tentative step into the room, sniffled, and flicked on a flashlight. She must have been in her midtwenties, and was short and fleshy, like the girls from college who partied all night. She wore the same pair of jeans she’d worn since the day she moved into the house. Her hair, the color of dishwater, dripped from the rain, and she smelled damp and unbathed. “Your brother’s here,” Annie said.
“My brother?” Frankie said, her voice raw.
“Seth.”
“Oh,” Frankie said. “I saw him already.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” Annie said. Even though she barely knew Frankie, even though they’d hardly spoken a word to each other in the time they’d lived together, the “sweetie” felt like something Annie would say. “I bet this will all work out.”
Frankie wiped her nose with the back of her fist. Annie would have offered a tissue if the best thing they had wasn’t already a sleeve.
“He’s an asshole sometimes,” Frankie said. “Ethan is. He probably wandered off. Or he’s hiding and thought this would be funny. I checked the well. . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she dug in her pocket for something, crushing two pills with a spoon, dividing the powder into lines, and snorting one of them up. “It’s Oxy,” she said with the hint of an offer, the sadness in her eyes already dulled.
When Annie shook her head, Frankie hoovered up the second line. She slid onto the mattress next to Annie without asking. “That cop told me to stay here and wait.”
“Trey?” Annie asked.
“Trey,” Frankie said softly, smiling at the sound of the name.
“Do you know him?”
“We all know Trey.”
“Was he here?”
“Not him. The other one.”
“You mean Rory.”
“He was kind,” Frankie said, though Annie couldn’t imagine Rory being kind. Rory had harassed her since the day she’d come to the island, and she suspected he wished that everyone who lived in the Victorian would leave. She’d have wished it too in his position.
“He told me that he used to wander all over the island,” Frankie continued, “and come home long after dark. He made it sound like I shouldn’t worry. But he doesn’t understand.”
“Well, there’s a whole search started in town,” Annie said, suddenly feeling terrible and seeing Frankie as the mother she was. “If he didn’t understand then, I think he does now.”
Outside, the storm had grown in intensity, swirling around the house, rain pounding at the roof. Downstairs, over it all, Annie heard something fall over. She ran a hand through Frankie’s dirty hair. “I bet that’s the cops now,” she said. “Stay here. I’ll go see. And get rid of anything you don’t want them to find. But whatever you do, tell them anything you know. Secrets only hurt.”
“I don’t have secrets,” Frankie mumbled.
“We all have secrets. And they find them out anyway.”
Annie took the stick with her. Downstairs, she walked through the darkened house. “Who’s here?” she shouted into the silence.
In the front parlor, a bright light shined in her face. She held up a hand to shield her eyes, refusing to betray her own fear. “Who is it?” she asked before recognizing Trey’s familiar silhouette.
She nearly swore at him. She hadn’t seen him, not since he’d come in from the mainland. He flicked off his headlamp and plunged them into complete darkness. “You’re in a rush,” he whispered, his voice closer than she’d expected it to be. “You going somewhere?”
He prodded her coat with his fingers, finding pockets, patting her down. He was the type who got off on power, on having it and wielding it.
“I heard someone in the house,” Annie said. “I came to see who it was.”
“Where’s the mother?” Trey asked.
“Upstairs. You should give her some time,” Annie said, thinking of the pill Frankie had snorted and wanting to offer the woman the smallest of kindnesses. “She’s in no state to talk to anyone. Not now.”
“While her son’s missing?”
“You have no idea what it’s like to lose a child,” Annie said, and even in the darkness, she could feel Trey stare her down. He did know. Oliver was his too.
“I’ll tell you this much,” he said. “Taking a hit and passing out isn’t how most parents react to this type of situation.” He flipped the headlamp back on, sweeping the beam around the trash-strewn room. “Honestly, I don’t know how you live like this.”
Annie let the silence hang between them. She wouldn’t let him shame her into agreeing.
“Fine,” he said a moment later. “Tell me, do you know Frankie? From before, in Portland?”
“I may have seen her around, but we didn’t know each other.”
“How did she find this house then?”
“Same way I did. Someone in town told her about it. It’s not like it’s a mystery.”
“I guess not,” Trey said. He leaned his back against a wall and slid to the floor, patting the ground beside him.
Annie understood the invitation, and here, in this house, maybe she’d have been smart to give in to it. But it wasn’t right. Not now. “We’re not alone,” she said.
“Hasn’t she passed out?”
Trey reached toward
her. Even his near touch was electric. Annie forced herself to move, to go up the stairs. “I’ll get her,” she said over her shoulder.
She ran through the hallway and down the back stairs to the kitchen, where she edged open the waterlogged back door. She slipped through the narrow opening and into the night. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark enough for her to find her way through the trees. Behind her, Trey called her name, his voice swept up in the wind. And she ran. Down the path. Toward the beach. Toward the lighthouse. She might still have time.
The coast opened in front of her. Rocky crags and a sharp cliff. The water in the bay churned as waves crashed against the jagged granite that dropped steeply into the sea. The lamp from the lighthouse burned into the storm. She was too late. The jetty had disappeared beneath the dark water. Behind her, Annie heard the engine of Trey’s truck roar to life. His headlights swept the landscape. She dashed forward, onto the rocks. Rain soaked beneath her oilskins. She heard the truck skid to a stop and the door slam closed.
A blast of wind nearly knocked her over.
A small light flashed from shore, and Annie could see Trey running, his headlamp bouncing with every step. She turned and fled. She leapt from one barnacle-covered boulder to the next till she reached a beach. Here, five-and six-foot waves crashed on the shore. Surf stretched across the sand and pulled at Annie’s feet, trying to suck her out to sea. She could sense Trey somewhere in the darkness.
She knew this place. She’d come here on nights when her empty stomach had kept her awake, searching tidal pools for mussels and clams. Now, she leapt from stone to stone. She imagined Frankie here with Ethan, on a sunny day, building sandcastles while the tide crept higher.
A wave knocked her over. Water pounded around her as she dug her fists into cold sand that melted away like caramel. Seawater flooded under her slicker. She struggled forward, forcing herself to stand and retreat right as Trey appeared.
“Annie!” he shouted, and she could almost smell him—sandalwood, tobacco, a touch of cinnamon.
They shouldn’t be here. Not together. Not now.
When he passed by her hiding place, she ran up the path. She scrambled to the edge of the cliff, lowering herself halfway, and finding a foothold. Frigid water roared into a chasm beneath her. She clung to the stone, barnacles cutting at her fingertips. When the surge subsided, she found another foothold and lowered herself a few feet farther. Another wave struck. The frigid Atlantic engulfed her till her lungs nearly burst. She inhaled, sucking in saltwater. The lighthouse flashed behind her. Images of letting go, of being swept to sea or smashed against rocks, flooded through her. Would a world of silence finally bring relief? She imagined a day without regret. But she’d never given up a fight. Through despair, she’d clung to hope.
