Chapter 36

With that depressing pronouncement,Liam leaves, and I'm not sure if I'm sorry to see him go. As the sun sinks lower, I sense the earth stir beneath me, the sinew and cords of my veins and muscles pulling taut. I feel the Earth's angry heat that I can call, but can't control.

What if Liam's right? That somehow, Randy will return? Maybe this is what he wanted all along—an angry, hurt, and unstable weapon to add to his arsenal.

Me.

Tamping down my roiling emotions, I return to the cottage beachfront, intending to treat my hands and let my father know I'm okay. A lone figure treads the shoreline—a man shuffling slowly, leaning on a stick of driftwood.

"Dad?"

"Rosalie! Where have you been?"

"It's a long story. What are you doing out here?"

"I've failed in my duties, Rosie. I'm too weak."

The wind blows chill, and I shiver, taking his arm. "Let's go inside." I tug at him, my hands smarting. But he won't budge.

My father lifts his head skyward, eyes closed. "I tried to convince your mother you needed to learn how to defend yourself, but she wouldn't hear of it. She believed she could shield you from the old legend—that someone from the Diaspora will reunite the scattered People of the Hand. Randy believed it was him."

I blink rapidly, fighting down the fury that threatens to surge into my throat. When I finally speak, my voice is breathy. "Did you and Mom know all along I'd wind up here?"

"We had no way of knowing for certain," he says, still facing the sea. "As you know, I grew up on St. Croix in an isolated family of Sephardic Jews. We were different so we kept to ourselves. I always thought we'd landed there because the Spanish Inquisition booted us out of Europe. But our real history is far more complex. All of us diaspora families are initiated when we come of age. Our survival depends on secrecy, and children can't be trusted to keep secrets."

"What an inheritance. A legacy of hiding."

When my father finally turns to look at me, sweat beads his brow. "It's a burden I had no wish to lay at your feet. But one that could no longer be denied."

"Dad," I say, panic gripping me. "Liam says you're not well." And based on the way he looks right now, I can't help but agree.

My father sways and leans on his stick. "Damn that kid. Always poking his nose where it doesn't belong." He turns his palm over and squints at it. The same faint disc that marks my own hands is vaguely visible on the flesh of his palm. "Is the mark still there?"

He sways again. I grip his arm to keep him from falling over. "I can help you if you let me."

"It's too late for that, Rosie. We tried to shrug off the old ways. Your mother and me…it was arranged that we were to be betrothed to others. This is how the Diaspora Council has maintained our bloodlines for eons. But we fell in love and did what we wanted—and it didn't work out. Now there's a price to be paid."

The notion that my parents had once truly been in love comforts me, despite the weird admission about arranged marriages among our kind. Although things ultimately fell apart, they'd found a way to be together. But I doubt they faced the odds Liam and I do. There were no threats of death. One thing is for sure: even if I can't have Liam, no one is telling me who I'm going to be with. "For getting divorced?"

Dad scoffs, then sighs. "For ignoring the old ways. The Bouchard family adheres to rules as it suits them. My family of lapsed Jews was even more lapsed about our connection to The Hand."

He brushes a wayward curl from my eyes. "Your mother and I have told you too many lies. Omitted the truth. All out of love for you. Even though our marriage failed, we'd hoped our heritage would one day bless and enrich you. We disagreed on the approach. She wanted to delay bringing you into the fold; I thought the sooner, the better. But all we wanted was to protect you…because of what happened to her sister."

My jaws clench. "Millicent."

Dad's eyes squeeze tight, as if the name pains him. "Your aunt was a true believer. She wanted the Bouchard family to settle on this island together. Millicent came back here to find a new life."

The words send a jolt through me. I watch a cluster of seals bob and dive beyond the waves. "Were you here when she was—uh, not a tree?"

"I'm not sure." Dad lowers his head. "It's dementia, Rosie. The reason I…I was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's and decided to end it before I lost everything. I couldn't face watching what I'd achieved turn to dust. It was punishment, I believed, for embracing the Outsider world. When I first came to Salttain, I was badly burned. Confused. I had no idea what was going on. Your mother never spoke about your aunt—how she'd tried and failed to subdue a madman—or that Randy was that madman. He and the islanders nursed me back to health and somehow, Randy gave me my mind back…but reminded me each day that he could undo every bit of my mental capacity and plunge me back into decline."

"Oh, Dad." Tears press at the backs of my eyes.

My father pauses, his gaze distant. "These past five years," he says, "I've been his captive. My blood is diluted, Rosalie. That's why your mother's family disapproved of me. And now, this island is finishing me off, the way it corrodes other Landsiders who won't leave—like Charles Bailey and Evan, only slower. It's only Randy who's been keeping me well."

The notion of the island making people ill feels wrong. I hear its voice. There's nothing malevolent there—only a wish to protect itself and its secrets. Everything evil can be traced back to Randy. And yet, I've only been here a week. I'm deluding myself if I think I fully understand this place.

I clasp his hand in mine, determined to help this shell of a man who was once my vibrant and brilliant father. Maybe I do have the power to get that man back. I know I have to try. "I've raised the salttain plant. Have you heard what it can do?"

"There've been whispers about you and your healings."

"Let me help you, then."

My father wrenches free of my grasp. "This is my lot and I must bear it. I wish Randy had left me for dead in that farmhouse."

He turns away and begins to shuffle up the path to the cottage. I watch him go, sorrow pressing down on me—until the anger rolls in. Everything he's done suddenly makes sense. His glorious mind has always been his pride and joy, and for the promise of keeping it, I have no doubt he would have sold his soul. And me. Now, in the space of a week, my father is devolving, his mind slipping, and he won't allow me to do a thing about it.

The wet clothes itch against my stinging skin, and I'm too exhausted to plead with him. Instead, I watch the seals frolic, vigilant for signs that Randy's returned from the dead. And I wonder: did he rescue my father from certain death, or did he somehow cause the condition that drove him to despair in the first place?

I finally head up to the cottage. I'm too bone-tired to appreciate the splendor of the Lady Skirts that blaze to life as I pass, bright as Sunset Strip at midnight. I don't even startle at the growl of the motorbike, or the sight of Liam as he strides toward me.

"These flowers smell like—like good memories."

I pull in a breath. With his hair tied neatly back, Liam is barefoot, in torn denim jeans and a white tee, the hard muscles of his tanned arms exposed. Just a typical island boy.

I can't help but smile back, though I'm tempted to ask if he misses the ground beneath his bare feet when he's at sea, or the feel of his motorbike as he rumbles across the dunes. If he's aware of time passing—or if he even knows who he is when he's in seal form. It's not hard to understand why he would spend his precious summers making things grow.

"Randy's getting stronger," he whispers.

"I know." I've felt it, too, in the pulses of energy that wash in with the waves, the strange stinging feel of the breeze. "How long do we have?"

"Days. Weeks. Minutes? It's not safe for you on this island. I'd swim you back to the coast myself if you'd allow me the honor."

My heart sinks. Even though he's convinced we can't be together, I still search for loopholes—for some sign that he's willing to defy centuries of tradition and a binding curse to be with me. But I can hope all I want. Liam's not my disobedient parents. He's been too steeped in rules and the pain that breaking them causes. There's nothing in that gaze besides concern and the ferocity of his will.

Disappointment hardens into defiance. "So I should leave my father in the state he's in and spend my life looking over my shoulder, expecting the bogeyman to leap out from the shadows? Not a chance."

Liam looks me squarely in the eye. "Your aunt turned herself into a tree to keep Randy from stealing her secrets. Our secrets. Because even she couldn't defeat him."

The ocean breeze kicks up to a scalding wind, tearing at my hair and throwing it in my eyes. "And Randy hasn't been able to find her in your basement?" I huff. "Come on."

"He knows exactly where she is. But her destruction is not what he seeks."

Riddles again. "I know you're looking for every excuse to get rid of me," I say. "But if I don't square off with Randy, he'll follow me wherever I go."

Rage simmers beneath Liam's quiet words. "Then you can plant yourself right beside your aunt. We have room to spare. I promise to water and tend to you whenever I'm landbound."

"And you're fine with swimming your life away? Playing Marco Polo with the bad man?"

Liam wilts, the anger draining away. "There's no point in hoping for what can never be. I just want the people I care about to be safe. To keep Randy off our backs for the brief months we're on land. That will be enough."

I breathe in the fragrance of the Lady Skirts and try to understand him. Liam's lived submerged in pain for so long, he can't imagine how it feels to be free of it.

"Look," he says. "We can argue all night. Your hands are a mess. And there's a miracle or two waiting for you at my place. We'll bring your da."

"Good luck convincing him to come."

"Lila can be very, very persuasive. But Mrs. Bailey even more so."

"Mrs. Bailey is here in Dad's cottage?"

"Like I said, there are miracles waiting for you. People are geared up to celebrate."

I glance down at my stiff and torn clothes, my burned hands and scratched-up legs and arms. "I'm in the market for a few miracles. But what exactly are we celebrating?"

"It doesn't take much of an excuse for a party on Salttain. Plus, the Council will be arriving tomorrow for their triannual expedition. It's unclear what they'll say or do about your healings. Lila is convinced she can talk them into leniency for me, and a special dispensation for you."

"Are you?"

"For you, of course. As for me?" he says without a hint of a smile. "Not on your life."

We return to my father's cottage in silence and there's Mrs. Bailey sitting primly on the living room sofa. She rushes over to embrace me. "We have so much to be grateful for, Rosalie. All because of you."

Dad looks around, baffled. "Clarice says there's going to be a party? Rosie? Someone will have to drive the buggy. I-I—I don't think I'm up for that."

"We've got that covered," Liam says, grinning, as if we hadn't had an ominous conversation just moments before. As if we hadn't discussed the possibility of his eternal damnation. I guess that's his real superpower—the ability to shrug off despair and seize little moments of happiness wherever he can.

After I shower off the grime, change, and bandage my raw palms, we pile into Dad's buggy. Hugging the coastline, Liam takes us on a torturous joyride that feels like it may go on for half the night. By the time we reach the grassy meadow that fronts the ramshackle O'Donnell cottage, my bones feel like they've been shaken loose from their joints.

The buggy shudders to a stop, and we're met by the improbable sight of two figures chasing each other across the moonlit field. Evan's wispy brown hair has grown, his long limbs improbably wiry with muscle. He's almost unrecognizable as the boy who nearly died just the other day. Aurora runs around him in playful circles, coltlike, dark hair flowing.

"How did they get here?" I ask, stunned.

"It was strange. There was an explosion and we were thrown outside of the Garden walls. When I tried to go back inside to find you, it had vanished," Liam says, brow furrowed. "It's attuned to you now, I guess."

I gape at him, confused at the implications—if he's angry or just baffled. But Evan and Aurora race toward us across the grass and knock me to the ground, interrupting my train of thought. Laughing and hooting, they spin me in a circle, twirling until we're all dizzy.

"You see?" Liam says.

It truly is a miracle. Both of them are healed and in perfect health. Because of me.

But what is this so-called Council going to do about it?

Liam breaks into our circle and joins hands with us. Ignoring the pain in my burned palms, I imagine all of us, one happy family, living together on this island. We dance until we finally collapse on the grass like puppies, the island's soft voice purring up from the ground.

I think I'm finally beginning to understand the people here. They have to grab at scraps of joy whenever they can—because they never know when it's going to be snatched from their hands.