“A few.” He glances at me, his jade-green eyes spearing a hole straight through my center.
“Did you play sports?” I’m trying to piece together the person he was, the person he is, and I find it hard to imagine him anywhere else but here in Sparrow, on this island with me.
He shakes his head, smiling a little, like he finds it funny that I would even ask this. “I worked for my parents every day after school, so I didn’t have much time for friends or group sports.”
“Your parents’ farm?”
“It’s actually a vineyard.”
I pause near the end of a row. “A vineyard?” I repeat. “Like grapes?”
“Yeah. It’s just a small family winery, but it does pretty well.” It’s not exactly the farm where I imagined him toiling: hands-in-the-earth, greasy, cow-manure type of farming. But I’m sure it was still hard work.
“It’s not what I pictured,” I tell him.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” I examine him, eyeing his faded gray sweatshirt and jeans. “Do your parents know where you are?”
“No. They didn’t want me to come here. They said I just needed to let Kyle go. That’s how they coped with his death, by ignoring it. But I knew I had to come. So when I graduated this year, I hitchhiked down the coast. I never told them I was leaving.”
“Have you talked to them since you left?”
He shakes his head, pushing his hands into his jean pockets.
“They’re probably worried about you,” I say.
“I can’t call them. I don’t know what I’d say.” He looks at me. “How do I explain what’s going on here? That Kyle didn’t kill himself but was drowned by one of three sisters who died two centuries ago?”
“Maybe you don’t tell them that,” I offer. “But you should probably let them know you’re okay... tell them something. Even a lie.”
“Yeah.” His voice dips low. “Maybe.”
We reach the end of the orchard, where one of the dead apple trees is now gone, torched down to its roots.
“When this is all over,” I say, “after the summer solstice, will you go home?”
“No.” He pauses to look back down the rows of perfectly spaced fruit trees. A small gray bird bursts out from the limbs of one tree and lands on the branch of another. “I won’t go back there. Not now. Before Kyle died, I always thought I’d stay and work for my parents after high school. Take over the family business. It was what they expected of me. My brother would be the one to move away and live a different life, to escape. And I was okay with that. But after he died...” He draws in his lips and looks up through the limbs of an apple tree, buds pushing out from the green stalks. “I knew I wanted something different. Something that was mine. I had always been the one who would stay behind while Kyle saw the world. But not anymore.”
“So now what do you want?” I ask, my voice soft, not wanting to crack apart his thoughts.
“I want to be out there.” He nods to the western edge of the island. “On the water.” He looks back at me like he’s not sure I’ll understand. “When my dad taught me to sail, I knew I loved it, but I didn’t think I’d ever have the chance to really do it. Maybe now I can. I could buy a sailboat, leave—maybe I won’t ever come back.”
“Sounds like an escape plan. Like you want to start a whole new life.”
His eyes flicker, and he squares his shoulders to face me. “I do. I have money; I’ve been saving most of my life.” His stare turns cool and serious. “You could come with me.”
I draw in both my lips, holding back a betraying smile.
“You don’t have to stay in this town—you could escape too, leave this place behind if it’s what you want.”
“I have school.”
“I’ll wait for you.” And he says it like he actually means it.
“But my mom,” I say.... Just another excuse.
His mouth hardens in place.
