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I gritted my teeth, forcing my hand not to squeeze too hard.
“In the beginning he’d apologize. Flowers were his preferred apology. Her favorites were Lily of the Valley. He knew she loved them. But he never got them for her. Always got her red roses.”
She gave a brief smile with no humor.
“The first time he hit her in front of me I called the cops. I’d wanted to do it before, but I hadn’t actually seen it happen. The boys were there by then, twins, Raylan and Calvin.”
She looked at me, the expression in her eyes haunted.
“But the police never came. They knew Adam; their brothers and uncles worked for him in the pulp mill. They were… scared of him. After that…” she swallowed again. “And then he went after me.”
I had to work not to keep my hand steady. While a moment ago it had been devastation, rage ripped through me now. I held her hand gently with one hand, but with the other I squeezed the sheet around me so tight I felt my knuckles pop.
“He didn’t get me though. He never once did, and I think that’s why he hates me so much. That and taking his boys. That night, Mama and I, we fought back. She screamed at me to run. I spent that night outside, and after, she arranged for me to stay with her brother. He never approved of her marrying Adam—he’d heard bad things up at the mill, and she didn’t listen to his warnings, so they didn’t speak anymore. But Mama… she knew he’d take me in. I couldn’t tell him what Adam was doing or Uncle Vern would kill him and end up in jail. So we just acted like we didn’t get along.”
She looked at me, suddenly worried. “Oh God, Mitchell, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—“
“No,” I said. I thought of my own father, how he’d screamed at us, humiliated us. How he’d nearly destroyed all our lives. But he’d never hit her. She’d promised me that, back when she could.
I asked her about her brothers, and she told me she’d adopted them when she turned eighteen. Her mother had died two years prior, and Adam had gone to prison for embezzlement at the mill he’d run. She’d used her own father’s American citizenship to bring them here. They were both away at college now, fourteen years later.
“I haven’t been home since the night I left with them,” she said. “I can’t, not so long as he breathes the same air.”
“Would you move back, if he were gone?” I asked, as if this had some kind of consequence to me.
“No.” She answered without hesitation. “My life is here now. I have a business, and I’m starting up a collective for women in trades. I like my life. But a visit. God, b’y what I wouldn’t do for a visit. To feel the sand in my toes and smell the ocean. To hear people who talk like me. To sing one of those sea shanties in one of those corny bars in St. John’s.”
Though her eyes were wet, she laughed. She looked so beautiful, my heart hurt. Then she looked at me with something a kin to horror. “Oh God. I’ve been blathering forever. And we didn’t finish.”
“Don’t,” I grunted. “Not for a second.”
She smiled, but it wasn’t steady.
I pulled her against me, my chest pounding; a tumult of everything. Fury at men who took what they wanted and bullied and beat anyone in their way. Pain, that she’d had to be one of them. Honor, that she’d confided in me.
And sorrow, that this beginning was only the beginning of an end.
After a moment, she whispered, “Tell me something about you, Mitchell. Something real. Something you’ve never told anyone else.”
I considered. I could tell her any number of things. I could tell her some surface fact that didn’t matter; something about the research Loupteq was doing we hadn’t released yet. I could tell her all the places I’d been and people I’d met.
But none of that was right. Not with her. She’d opened up her soul to me, and I’d only shown her my selfish pain. But tonight, she’d ignited a part of me I’d kept buried deep for so long I’d almost forgotten it was there. It was the place I used to live as a kid, a place where I loved life. Where I had fun and played games, and acted ridiculous because it felt good. Before my father snuffed it out of me.
“We had a cabin,” I said. “I guess we still do. On an island in the San Juans.” Where the water is as deep and bottomless blue as your eyes.
“It’s an unserviced island, so there are no ferries, and no power. We had to take this little dinghy with an outboard motor over there, and pack all our food with us. There were only a handful of other cabins there, so it always felt like we had the whole island to ourselves. It was the only place I remember my dad being only marginally relaxed. The only place he didn’t constantly criticize what me and my brothers were doing. It was like he could let go of that persona, just for a little bit. It wasn’t like he played with us or anything, but he just… let us be.”
I lay back against the pillow, Winona tucked into my arm. It felt like the most natural place to be in the world. She’d be leaving in a minute, but for now, I took her with me, back to Giller’s Island, with its sound and scent of the ocean and the little three room cabin where I shared a room half the size of this room’s closet with my two older brothers. I told her how we only slept in that room half the time when we were there because we liked to set a tent out into the grass outside. We’d stay up late by the fire pit telling ghost stories, and when we went to bed, we’d keep the fly off and just stare at the stars, the sounds of the surf a constant backdrop.
“There were so many stars there. Billions, and whenever I look up at the night sky today, no matter where I am, I still hear the soft sound of the ocean crashing way down on the rocks the way it did back then.”
She sighed, closing her eyes. “The stars over the sea are unparalleled.”
I squeezed her shoulder, kissing the top of her head.
“My father, he didn’t have an ounce of humor in him,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive him for how he kept us down, and how he treated our mother, but I know he didn’t speak to his own family. Mom said he never thought he’d have a family of his own, and never had anyone tell him the right way to bring up kids. But the best thing he ever did was leave us alone at that cabin.”
“What’s your favorite memory from there? Out of all of them?”
