Crossing my arms, I waited until he mirrored me, leaving his plate next to mine. I ran a hand through the ends of my hair, taming fly-aways, stalling as I chose my words with care.
“My mother washed up here after being shipwrecked with nothing but her dress and a book. A lot of the island men were interested in her. She wasn’t mute, but she could only say a few words. Yes, no, hello, thank you. She might have chosen anyone, but she liked my father.” I raised a shoulder, implying I didn’t know why, and Kye’s mouth quirked. “After they married, men began to go missing.”
Kye rubbed a knuckle under his chin. “Island men? From Leihani?”
“No. Sailors, traders. Men who left their ships to go on walks around the market, then vanished without anyone knowing why.”
“How many?”
I bit my lip to avoid the question, though I knew the answer. My mother had only lived in Leihani for three years before a rogue tidal wave claimed her life, and a sailor had been lost for every year she’d spent here.
Kye’s eyes trailed from my face, across the wood floor to his bare feet. His white linen shirt, unbuttoned and open, was clean. I wondered whether Akamai washed for him or if he did it himself.
“Is it still happening now that she’s gone?”
“They stopped disappearing after she died. But six years ago, it started happening again.” When the cabin boy, Irah, disappeared.
“So, the thought is, since I’m a man, and an outsider, I’m going to disappear if I spend time with you?”
I offered him a small smile.
Something rebellious sparkled in his gaze, amusement playing at his mouth.
Across the field, my father emerged, lumbering with water-filled pitchers. I caught his eyes in the distance, searching to see if the two of us were still on the porch. He stopped to peer with sudden fascination at a banana leaf in a neighboring yard.
We watched my father meander through, slowing along the path to say hello to neighbors and friends, ducking onto stairwells and verandas to try a bite of something someone was cooking, laughing at well-intentioned insults slung over railings and through the trees, pretending not to send side-long glances at us every few minutes.
Kye took another bite of his fish. “Do you still have the book?”
“My mother’s?”
He inclined his head.
“It probably wouldn’t interest you. It’s an old romance novel.”
Kye chuckled. “My mom read them, too.” He waited. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want to show it to him.
Besides the fact that it was old and worn, its pages crinkled, the ink blotchy from seawater, and the binding likely a single finger stroke away from falling into tatters, it was the only book in my house. The only thing I had of my mother.
Someone had given it to her. An inscription had been etched onto the inner side of the cover with ink that hadn’t withstood the sea as well as the print. Only the first two words remained clear enough to read.For Alana. The rest looked like a watercolor painting, hues of gray and black, but my father had once told me she used to open it up and stare at the ruined handwriting, reading it to herself from memory.
My uncle Naheso had taught Nola and me to read with it. Few islanders could read, but Naheso’s parents had left Leihani before he was born and returned when he was a teenager. He’d learned in Calder.
Sensing my hesitation, Kye stretched, sending his gaze out towards my neighbors once again. “So. What can I do to help?”
I bit my lip, holding back a smirk. “Not sit on my porch for the world to see.”
He blinked, a slow smile carving through his mouth as he finally understood. “Ah. So, if I visited you in private, would you be less inclined to tell me to leave?”
Mihaunahelp me, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling into my fish, feeling his eyes on me as he waited for an answer. Warmth trickled into my cheeks, rippling down my spine at the thought of meeting him alone.
In secret.
But the thought quickly whisked itself from my head.
Kye wasn’t looking to make a home on the island. He was waiting for a ship to take him home. He was a spoiled boy. Kind, curious—but spoiled. Even if I might, maybe,grudginglylike him, I knew his future was forecasted in the fair weather of work without labor.Overseeing production. The blood of a pampered life.He wouldn’t stay in Leihani. He’d leave—a day, a week, a month from now. And I’d still be here, living out the consequences of a foolhardy friendship like the one I’d made with Irah.
I swallowed, the final bite suddenly flavorless in my mouth. Wiping my hands on my knees, I stood. “Low tide has been coming in after dark,” I lied, reaching for the buckets I’d already filled with clams and sold earlier that day.
