Page 52 of Bonetide

His face changes again, becomes softer somehow, and he sets the whisky down. He looks at the fire for a long second, and when he speaks, his voice has gone quieter.

“The women on your aunt’s list. If she meant the drowned wives, they were taken. Over a very long period of time.”

“By what?”

“By something in these parts.”

“Something…a person? An animal?”

He doesn’t answer, just raises a shoulder in a light shrug.

I let out a long, frustrated sigh. So helpful.

“The village has known about them and not spoken of them for as long as there have been villages on this coast,” he eventually says. “Your aunt was one of those who kept what she knew. She kept it well.”

“That literally doesn’t answer my question.”

“I suppose it doesn’t. I’m sorry I don’t have any answers to give you.”

I fight the urge to roll my eyes.

“Did you know any of them? The women on the list.”

A pause. The pause goes on a long time.

“I don’t know of this list without seeing it. But, aye, I knew of the drowned wives. I made a point of knowing of them. They were women on this coast. They didn’t deserve to die. They deserved to be known.”

He says it with a reverence I was not prepared for, like the way a priest says the names of the dead.

For all our talking, I feel like I’m at an impasse again, with even more questions than answers. I’m still wet yet warm at the same time, and the whisky is going to my head, and the man across the fire is talking about dead women like he cared for them, and nothing makes any sense at all.

I should be afraid. I have been afraid, off and on, for weeks.

Yet I’m not afraid now and I can’t explain it.

I take another sip of the whisky.

Hmmm. Maybe it’s the booze.

“You haven’t asked me why I came…” I trail off, running my fingers over the blanket’s faded embroidery.

“What does it matter? I’m just grateful that you did. I don’t want to interrogate the grace.”

“That’s a hell of a sentence,” I reply, biting back a smile.

“Aye.”

A log pops loudly on the fire, the sound filling the room. I’m starting to feel like time is standing still in this place, holding me in place by a current I have to fight against in order to keep talking.

“I came to ask you to be honest with me⁠—”

“—And I’ve been as honest as I can be tonight.”

“That’s not the same as actually being honest, though.”

“No. But it’s what I can give, foxglove.”

Despite myself, I can’t help but smile. “You know my name is Iris. Foxglove is just another flower.”