by Meg Donohue
I told Emma that she would have to teach me.
She nodded eagerly and sprang from her seat. “I’ll go set it up by the fire.” She hurried into the house.
The day seemed to be growing colder rather than warmer. I wondered whether Rosalie had any hot chocolate. I still held in my hand the stone from Amir. There were two lines that criss-crossed the gray surface. I traced them with my finger.
“Is that a stone from your property?” Rosalie asked.
I nodded. “It’s from our beach. Well, it’s not really our beach. We don’t own it. But we’re the only ones who are ever there because the only access is from our land. I guess you could arrive by sea, but so far no one has.”
“No other merrows?”
I smiled and shook my head.
“It seems magical,” Rosalie said, “this Horseshoe Cliff.”
Horseshoe Cliff felt as much a part of me as my own mind, so for elegant Rosalie Langford to say that it was magical . . . it felt as though she were saying that I was magical.
“I guess it is magical,” I said. “So much is hidden in plain sight.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, take the beach. It’s beautiful when the tide is high, but if you wait for the tide to retreat, you discover an entire garden—an entire secret world—exists below. The sea looks blue or green or gray, but hidden within it are sea anemone in every color of the sunset, and dark red grapestone seaweed, and pink Haliclona sea sponge, sunflower sea stars, black snails . . .” I trailed off, lost in the memories of Amir and me barefoot, crouched beside a tide pool, silently exploring small, hidden worlds.
“Can I ask you something?”
I blinked at Rosalie, working to orient myself back at the table on the patio and not on the beach at Horseshoe Cliff. The look on her face made me nervous. I was sure that she was going to ask me again about Bear. I knew that she did not believe my explanation of the screams that had sent her running to my room in the middle of the night.
“Why did you and Amir really come here?” she asked.
“Oh.” My relief was quickly displaced by embarrassment. “We weren’t going to steal anything.”
“No?”
My ears burned. “No!” My anger was unjustified, but I could not subdue it. “We were only curious.”
“You were . . . ‘curious’?”
“I’d never seen a house as big as this one, with that huge gate. I just wanted to see what it looked like. I wasn’t going to take anything.”
“So . . . you were going to look in the windows?”
I hesitated. Would she understand if I told her what Amir and I had been doing for years? How we’d entered people’s homes, wandered around, let our imaginations run, and then left without taking anything more than a nibble of something to eat? We did not cause anyone harm. We were like spirits, I thought, seeing but never seen.
Rosalie would not understand. How could she? I did not think that you could be very curious about other people’s lives when your own life was perfect.
“Yes,” I said. “I wanted to peek inside. We would never have tried if we’d realized someone was home. We didn’t want to upset anyone. It’s just something we do for fun. Something we used to do for fun. I don’t think we’ll be doing it anymore.” I gestured toward my leg.
Rosalie put her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry that Tiger attacked you. That must have been very scary.”
I felt a wave of guilt. Again, she was being kinder to me than I deserved. “Oh, I’ll survive.” I adjusted my arm below hers so that she pulled her hand away. “Anyway, how mad can I be? I only wanted to peek inside, and look what I got instead. A vacation at a luxurious resort, complete with Dutch Crunch, chocolate croissants, and a fireside picnic.”
Rosalie laughed.
A breeze traveled up the lawn toward us and I caught, at last, a hint of brine in the air. When I looked over at Rosalie, I realized that she had closed her eyes and seemed to be breathing the air in deeply, a smile lingering on her face. When she opened her eyes and looked at me, her eyes shone with emotion.
“Do you ever feel aware of being within one of the moments of your life when everything changes?” she asked. “As though you can feel the shift happening?”
I was astonished. It was just how I had felt in a few key moments of my life. I thought of my fifth birthday, when Bear had pinned me down in the woods. I thought of holding Amir’s hand on his first night at Horseshoe Cliff. I thought of standing in the bathroom the day before, hardly recognizing myself in the mirror.
“Yes,” I said. “I know just what you mean.”
Rosalie nodded as though she’d known this was how I would answer. “I didn’t always have a happy family,” she said. “My father did things to me that no father should do to his daughter, that no adult should do to a child. My mother pretended these things did not happen. She chose him over me. I have not spoken to either of them in thirty-seven years.”
I listened, startled, with no idea how to respond.
“When I was your age, I could never have guessed how my life would turn out,” she continued in a clear, steady voice. “That I would marry a kind man—Will’s father—who would die at too young an age. That as a widow I would fall in love again and marry a wonderful, equally kind man and that we would have a daughter, completing our family. There were years when I could not imagine the turns my journey would take. There were times in my life that I didn’t believe in myself and I couldn’t see a way forward. I was lucky in those moments to have other people step in and do the believing for me.
“You see, I carry my past with me, but it no longer defines me. This”—she waved her hand toward the house—“is me: the love that I feel for my husband and children. It turns out that the past can fit into a very small box.”
She pressed her lips together, thinking. Then she leaned toward me and said quickly, “Merrow, whatever you think is keeping you here in Osha isn’t. You can be whoever you wish to be. You have your GED, and I could—”
The door to the patio was thrown open. “Mom!” came Emma’s high, happy voice. “Dad’s home!”
Rosalie offered me an apologetic smile. “Well, more on this later,” she said, standing. “Let’s go tell Wayne that you showed up on our doorstep, claiming to be his daughter from some long-forgotten tryst.”
I stared at her. “What? No!”
She laughed. “The look on your face! I’m only kidding.” She offered her hand, and, without hesitation, I took it. “Stay for dinner,” she said. “Monopoly with Emma will last at least that long.”
I nodded, leaning on her as I limped inside, feeling confused and exhilarated. No one had ever spoken to me as Rosalie had—and yet, what exactly had she been trying to tell me? Her words were a gift that I could hold but not yet unwrap.
AFTER DINNER WITH Rosalie, Will, Emma, and Wayne Langford—a cheerful man bursting with self-deprecating stories of his attempts at salmon fishing—Rosalie offered to drive me home. She gave me a cotton grocery bag to pack my things in, telling me to keep all the clothes she had given to me over my stay, including the white pajamas I’d worn to bed and the rubber boots I’d been wearing all day. When I returned from gathering together my old and new clothes, I felt a thrill to see Will standing in the hall beside his mother.
“All packed?” he asked, taking my bag from me. “I’ll drive you home.”
“Apparently I’m a terrible night driver,” Rosalie said. “Which was news to me.” There was an edge to her voice that I did not understand.
I waited for her to say more, to continue her line of thought from earlier in the day, but Emma and Wayne appeared from the kitchen to wish me goodbye, and then Rosalie put her hands on my elbows and kissed my cheek and told me that she would not forget me. I looked around the grand hallway, sure that I would never see the house again.
In the car, I gave Will directions to Horseshoe Cliff. Once I spoke, I could not seem to stop. When we passed a field of grazing horses,
I told him the story of how Bear had sold our horses without my permission, and when we passed Little Earth I told him how Teacher Julie had given me the first notebook I’d ever owned and encouraged me to write down my stories. Will kept his eyes on the darkening road the entire time. It was only as we neared Horseshoe Cliff that I grew quiet. Will had not said more than a few words during the drive. I felt a flood of embarrassment for how long I had rambled without any encouragement from him, for how silly my stories must have seemed to someone like him, for what he would think when he saw where and how I lived. I wished I had kept my mouth shut. I wished I had left him with the memory of me dressed in a fancy sweater and boots, with my hair brushed, my face set in a thoughtful, intelligent, mature expression as I gazed at the passing countryside.
Will slowed the car to a crawl as he maneuvered it over the bumps and ruts of our long dirt driveway. I watched him from the corner of my eye, but he hid his thoughts well and I was grateful for it. I wasn’t sure I could have taken it if he had flinched at the sight of our rotting clapboard and broken kitchen window.
The car headlights moved over the porch as we pulled up to the house. Bear sat on my father’s old chair. He took a long swig from a can of beer, squinting, but otherwise he didn’t move. I could not see Amir, but I knew that he would not be anywhere near Bear.
Will stopped the car and turned off its lights. He lifted his hand in a wave and nodded in Bear’s direction. Bear took another swig of his beer.
“That’s Bear’s version of a greeting,” I said. “It’s efficient—he says hello and quenches his thirst at the same time.”
Will didn’t smile. He turned off the car’s engine.
“Don’t get out,” I said sharply. Then I tried to laugh. “If you think Tiger was rough on my leg, you don’t want to see what our chickens do to strangers.”
Will looked at me. My face burned when I saw the pity in his eyes. He reached for something on the car’s backseat. “This is for you,” he said, handing me the copy of A Moveable Feast that I’d borrowed earlier. “You should finish it.”
I took the book and pressed it to my chest. “Thank you.”
“At least let me help you up the stairs. I can carry your bag.”
“This little thing?” I patted the bag on my lap. “I’m fine. Really. Thank you for the ride, Will. And the book. Thank you for . . . everything.” And then, before I could lose my nerve, I leaned over and kissed his cheek. When I opened the car door and stepped out, the air smelled of the sea, of home. The sound of the waves crashing against the cliffs filled the air. As I limped up the steps to the porch, I heard the car engine spring to life behind me. Lights slid over the boarded-up kitchen window. Wheels crunched against the dirt.
I stopped at the top of the stairs and closed my eyes. I waited until I couldn’t hear the car anymore. Goodbye, I thought when the sound of the ocean again filled the night. With Will gone, my connection to the Langfords was officially severed. In a moment, the experience moved from the present to the past, and something within me ached at the change.
“Fancy car,” Bear slurred. He muttered something else, but I could not understand him.
I opened my eyes. Bear had a spectrum of drunkenness and I could pinpoint his place on it the moment I heard him speak. When he fumbled to enunciate his words, he was drunk but aware. This was when his tongue was sharpest—it was when he referred to us as “the cunt and the runt” or spat at me and told me I smelled like chickenshit. When he stopped even attempting to speak clearly, and his words whooshed and churned like boiling water, I knew he was very drunk. When he was very drunk, he focused his attacks on Amir.
Right now, he was very drunk.
I dropped the bag I was holding. “Where is he?”
Bear shrugged.
“Where is he?” I shouted.
His bloodshot eyes roamed my face but could not settle in one place. “In his room.” I didn’t like the smirk that flickered across his lips.
I threw open the door to the cottage, calling Amir’s name. It was quiet. His room was empty. His pillow still held the indentation from his head. I put my hand on it. Amir, I thought, where are you?
Where is he?
In his room . . . in his room . . . in his room . . .
The shed.
Chapter Thirteen
A shovel was wedged through the door handles of the shed. I pulled it out and opened the doors. From the darkness inside, Amir blinked up at me.
I rushed to him as he stood and brushed the dirt from his jeans. “I’m fine,” he said. He sounded hoarse but didn’t appear injured.
I hugged him. If Will smelled like nothing, Amir smelled of everything—the earth, the sea, everything I loved.
“I’m so sorry.” I whispered the words into his neck. I felt acutely aware of how my body fit against his, the soft movement of his breath at my temple. All I had to do was lift my chin and my lips would find his. His hand moved over my hair. When his thumb grazed my earlobe a thousand sparks of light danced across my closed eyes.
Disgusting. Bear’s voice tore through my thoughts. I shifted away from Amir, shame burning in my chest.
There was a crashing sound and then a jumbled shout from the direction of the cottage. My body went stiff with fear, but a moment later the unmistakable sound of the screen door slamming told me that Bear had gone into the cottage for the night.
My heartbeat steadied. “You sent the stone with Doctor Clark,” I said, looking up at Amir. “I thought it meant you were okay.”
“Bear locked me in here after the doctor left.” His eyes darkened and skidded away from mine. For a moment, fury transformed his face. At his temple, his pulse skittered. I ached for him, for the fear and isolation and sense of powerlessness he must have experienced while I was gone. A violent storm spun behind his eyes.
“Amir.” Worry choked my voice.
He looked down at the hand I’d placed on his arm and released a long, ragged breath. When his eyes found mine again, his gaze had softened. He shook his head as though clearing away whatever vengeful thoughts had run through his mind.
“It’s you I’ve been worried about,” he said. “How’s your leg? The doctor said it was infected.”
“It’s better now. I should have come earlier. You must be hungry.” I thought about the meals I’d had with the Langfords. Why hadn’t I thought to bring something home for Amir?
He gave me a sideways smile and sunk a hand into the pocket of his sweatshirt, pulling out the end of a Dutch Crunch roll.
I laughed. “You took it from the Langfords’?”
His eyes glinted with mischief. He bit into the roll and shrugged. “I did what was expected of me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You saw how they looked at me. They thought I was a thief.”
“They thought we were both thieves. Their dog had just attacked me for jumping over the wall.”
“Yes, but they forgave you almost immediately.”
I understood what he meant. He thought the Langfords were racist. The possibility had occurred to me, too, while we’d sat together in their den. I’d wondered how differently they would have treated Amir if he had been the one whom Tiger had bitten instead of me. Would Will have insisted he come inside? Would Rosalie have bandaged his leg?
“They ended up being nice,” I said quietly. “Rosalie surprised me. She was generous.”
Amir reached out and rubbed the cuff of my new, soft sweater between his fingers. “I think,” he said, “that her generosity extends to smart blond orphans and ends there.”
I had no basis to disagree, but still the urge to defend Rosalie sprang within me. She’d told me that I reminded her of herself. Was it so awful to feel a connection to the familiar?
“Maybe,” I said, “it’s easier for some people to have sympathy for people who look like them, whose lives they can imagine more easily.”
“Why would she be able to imagine your life any better than mine? Because you have
the same skin color?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe because I’m a girl. I think I make her think of her own childhood.” I thought for a moment. “If she’d had time to get to know you, it would have been different. With a little time, I think you would have felt differently about each other.”
“You want me to forgive her for looking at me the way she did.” I felt Amir’s gaze travel through me, below my skin, through my veins, quickening the pace of my heart. “You think I should have empathy for her . . . because it’s too much work for her to feel sympathy for a boy with brown skin.” He shook his head. “That’s bullshit, Merrow. People like that need to try harder. It’s on them. Not me.”
Amir was angry, but I had always seen his anger as the way he expressed feeling hurt. He had been treated as though he were less than whole by so many people—by the head of the orphanage, by his adoptive mother’s father, by Bear, and now by Rosalie Langford. I felt sick with remorse. Why hadn’t I understood how insulted he had been by the Langfords? I had meant to always be there for him, to stand up for him in the way that he had always stood up for me, and I had failed him.
“You’re right.” I put my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”
He nodded. The clouds in his expression slowly parted.
When we left the shed, we instinctively walked toward the ocean. The peace sign my mother had painted on the lean-to in the paddock glowed in the moonlight. Amir glanced at my leg.
“Can you make it up?”
I nodded. We climbed to the top of the split-rail fence and pulled ourselves onto the lean-to’s slanted roof. My calf throbbed, but I tried to ignore it, happy just to be near Amir. We sat huddled together on the roof, his arm around my shoulders, mine around his waist. The line where the bluff fell to the sea glinted like silver filament in the dark. Beyond, the ocean seemed still, but the sounds of its waves tumbling against the sand told the true story. My heart swelled with the beauty of this vast, wild place, my home, and the connection I felt to the boy who sat beside me.
