Page 25 of The Wild Beneath

They eat boxed cereal in the cockpit in the early morning breeze, close, like books tucked together on a library shelf. Annie calculates the number of days until Evan is due back at school.

Come September, Mara feels the pull to sail south again, and Evan starts third grade.

Annie feels like she’s about to lose a limb. A phantom longing spreads out, thin and everywhere.

“Let’s do it,” Aiden says. He’s talking about pulling anchor, sailing out the channel, following their pathway south. He puts a pencil between his teeth and lines up extra batteries in the drawer under the helm, double and triple A’s.

“I don’t want to leave,” Annie says.

“You love it down there.” He removes the pencil and ticks a box on his checklist.

“Maybe shorter this time?” she asks. “Can we come back sooner?”

“Grab that box of D’s. I need those ones,” he says.

This pattern will repeat itself: out and back, here and there, north and south.

Over years, the time Annie spends in Hale’s Landing gets shorter: a couple of months in the summer to sell fish and replenish the bank account, do boat repairs and renovations. They soak up time with Ruth. The year Annie turns eleven, Ruth is diagnosed with leukemia.

Ruth explains it to them: “It’s a chronic thing.” She waves it off with her hand. “I’m doing fine. Might need some extra blood sometimes.”

“She’ll be okay,” Aiden says, but bites his lip the way he does when he’s uncertain. “She’s tough.”

“It’s minor, honey,” Ruth reassures.

But Annie feels only partially relieved.

Evan still sees Annie when he can, but less as they become teenagers. On rare summer weekends, he comes out onAmphitrite. They sleep under the stars, and he talks about things Annie doesn’t understand: his soccer team, high school gossip, underage drinking. How excited his friends are about the new cell phone tower.

The summer they’re fifteen, they pass a waxy sleeve of saltines back and forth between them, along with a jar of rhubarb jam and a butter knife. The night is silent except for the waves and the crunch of the crackers. Annie doesn’t know what time it is, but she knows it’s late. She doesn’t want the night to end. Her mom and dad are asleep below, after strictly instructing Evan to stay on the settee instead of Annie’s berth this time. The lights are out in Ruth’s cabin on the bluff.

Evan has his first real job running the side winder for Hale Timber, pushing logs around the booming ground.

“Dad expects it,” Evan says. “I mean, he hasn’t said it to me directly.”

“He doesn’t need to.”

“By the way, did I leave my T-shirt here, the Wolfpack one?”

“It must be somewhere,” she says, knowing it’s tucked under her pillow. It smells of him, mulch, and the underbelly of the forest.

“Dad won’t let me do anything else,” he goes on. “It might kill him if I did.”

“Doesn’t he want you to be happy?”

Evan frowns and changes the subject. “Maybe the T-shirt’s in the laundry bag.”

“Let me just check below,” she says.

Annie ducks down the companionway and stalls long enough to make it seem as if she’s looking, before she comes topside with the T-shirt in her hand.

Evan tries to lure her to shore. The summer they turn sixteen, he’s more persistent. In June, he invites her to every one of his soccer games. She does not go. In July, he pulls her aside while they drop off fish at Rosie’s.

“Jack’s having a party at his parents’ cabin tonight.” He keeps his voice low. “Up the mountain.”

“How far?”

“I’ll take us in my dad’s truck. We can sleep over and I’ll have you back in the morning.”