Page 26 of The Wild Beneath

“Good one.”

“I’m serious.”

“You’re losing it, Ev. You know I can’t.”

“But you can.”

“Mom would never let me.”

“Is that the real reason?” Evan takes hold of her hand. His hands weren’t that large before, were they?

“You know her.”

“But what doyouwant?” he asks. His question makes her skin flush. He’s suddenly very close.

Annie wants him to go back to being the kid he used to be, climbing trees and amassing shell collections and sand dollar colonies, swimming in every bay they came across.

But time is spinning and funnelling out too fast. He’s floating away from her and she doesn’t know how to follow him.

“Annie! Let’s go,” Mara calls from the dinghy. Aiden has already started the outboard.

“I have to get back,” she says, releasing his hand.

Evan visits less as the summer unfolds. On the last day of August,Amphitriteis moored in the channel. Annie presses a pair of binoculars up to her eyes because Evan is on the wharf beside Rosie’s.

He’s not alone.

He’s holding hands with a girl. Their hands are touching, skin against skin. She has a blunt bob and a graceful swan neck. She’s pretty. They step closer to one another, until their faces are only inches apart. Annie watches them kiss.

She cannot look away. She needs to see how their lips move. Evan’s tongue slides into the girl’s mouth. The sight stabs into a soft place between Annie’s ribs. She can’t breathe, can’t swallow.

She drops the binoculars and sags over the lifelines. Mara is beside her. How long has she been there?

“Something’s stuck in my throat.” Annie stands back up, her hand clenched around her neck.

“You miss him,” Mara says.

Annie cannot explain. “I need some water.”

“He’s not ours, sweetheart.”

“But he is.”

“He belongs to himself.”

They migrate south and leave Evan behind.

Back on ocean time, Annie sails, fishes, reads her books. Mara has her memorize the rising and setting positions of dozens of stars. Aiden teaches her calculus.She stands on the prow, hooting asAmphitriteruns wild through the waves. She tracksmoon phases, repairs boat parts, rotates watches, swims with sea creatures all day long.

Life surges, undeniable, through the middle of her body.

But when she thinks of Evan, her heart sinks. She misses him so much it’s unreasonable. Often, she pulls Aiden’s ledger out and checks the calendar in the back, estimating how long until they return to Hale’s. As she ticks the long line of days off in her head, it pulls her away from ocean time, into a persistent and intoxicating countdown that lives quietly in the back of her mind.

Chapter 11

Now

“Fishing,” Ruth says to Walker in the kitchen, two days later.