Chapter 5

My fatherand I are silent for most of the bone-jarring ride in the buggy to his cottage. He drives fast, hitting the dunes and narrow paths like we're in a getaway car.

The sandy excuse for a road called Bailey's Way winds through the island's interior. Overhanging vines with hand-sized leaves create a green tunnel that occasionally opens to sweeping vistas of grassy dunes and the sea. Finally, my insides pureed, we putter to a stop in front of a sagging wooden house, its front porch smothered by a vine of pale pink roses. My tension uncoils as I step out of the buggy and tread across the unkempt front yard onto the old porch, drinking in the scents of the flowers, salt, and sea.

My heart taps out a message: a greeting and a warning inside the same beats. My fingers tingle, and it's not unpleasant. Is it really possible to hear the earth speak through my blood? To feel it in my fingertips? Thinking this way is crazy—but hasn't my canyon garden always spoken to me? Here, on this island, the voice is louder. More insistent. And harder to ignore.

"I hoped you'd love it," Dad says, padding up behind me.

The perfume of the rose bushes encircles me, making it hard to remember what I was so upset about earlier. At one end of the porch, there's a rickety staircase. Encouraged by Dad, I climb up to discover a balcony with a clear view of the main house and the ocean vista beyond.

Up top, there's a scarred wooden table with two chairs. My heart pinches at the thought of Dad eating his solitary meals up here. I picture us having breakfast together, laughing and watching the sunrise. Maybe if all those empty years, all those lies hadn't jammed a wedge between us, this would've been my reality.

The sun's risen to a blazing orange-yellow ball. Molten gold waves batter the beach below. I lean against the wood rail and gaze down at the small backyard of mowed sawgrass, bordered by bushes drooping with tightly closed white buds. Dad is down there poking around the grounds, pulling up stray weeds as if a reunion with his absent daughter is an everyday thing. He smiles up at me, and I manage to smile back.

But my mood sours, the spell withering like dead vines. How has he lived with himself, tinkering in his garden, missing my adolescence? Or has he been following my life from afar? Maybe Mom's kept him in the loop, all while keeping him away from me. Protecting me, she insisted. And he played dead and allowed it to happen. Even worse, what if Tyler was the one filling him in?

I grip the rail until my knuckles go white. The old wood staircase creaks and groans. Dad steps onto the balcony and approaches gingerly, as if I'm a feral cat. It reminds me of the way my mom crept into my room after Tyler died, when she tried to convince me to study rather than mourn my only friend. Apparently, my parents have something in common after all.

"You must be tired," he says. "Let me show you to your room. You can relax until the dinner party."

I want to protest that no matter how much rest I get, I'm not going to be up for it. But the pleading look in his eyes stops me. "I know it's a lot to ask," he says, still maintaining a safe distance. "But Mrs. Bailey will be very disappointed if you don't at least show your face. Just for a little while."

When I don't say anything, Dad glances at his watch. "Well, looks like I should head over to the main house soon. She asked if I could help get some things ready for tonight."

I nod, a knot forming in my stomach. He's so eager to help Mrs. Bailey, his employer here, yet for all those years he could barely be bothered to reach out to me, his own daughter. I want to demand what exactly he'll be doing to set up this party and why it's more important than spending time with me after years apart, but the dejected look on his face stops me short. Going to a dinner party is the last thing I feel like doing tonight. But it will give me a chance to meet the people here and learn about the island. I bite my tongue and force a smile. "Well, I guess I"ll see you at the party then."

Dad's smile lights up his face as we descend the rickety stairs to a landing. I follow him through a screen door to a large airy bedroom, rustic in a way Mom would have had fumigated, repainted, and varnished—or possibly condemned.

He leaves me. I scan the sparse room for signs of what he'd imagined I'd need or want once we'd been reunited. The thought of him waiting for me, not knowing if I'd ever arrive, puts a lump in my throat. Maybe our separation was as hard for him as it was for me.

Except he knew I was alive.

A book titled The Indispensable Field Guide to Rare Plants and Strange Species rests on the bedside table. It's old, and most likely outdated, but my age-old fascination with plants sits up at attention. This is so obviously strategic on his part, I almost laugh out loud. I try not to let the slow burn of anger remind me of how he left me to Mom's devices.

Instead, I settle onto the wrought-iron bed and open the guide. It could be useful, no doubt. I flip through the pages, careful not to damage the fragile, yellowed paper. The margins are crowded with notes in tiny, formal handwriting about plants native to Salttain, punctuated by detailed ink renderings. The writings are more poetry than information, the plants bizarre and improbable. A fruit in the shape of a bleeding heart. Ghost-berries that disappear, then reappear when they want to be seen.

It's the incoherent ramblings of a quack, I conclude—or an imaginative person with too much time on their hands. I guess this wacky book is the best my father can do, under the circumstances.

I'm about to lay the book down when I realize there's something oddly familiar about the cramped penmanship. I'm so exhausted from my travels, I nearly forgot about Aunt Millie's messy parcel.

Unzipping my duffel bag, I pull out the package—Miss R. Gatell, c/o Mr. E. Gatell, 1 Bailey Way, Salttain Island, ME, 04003—and compare it to the scribblings inside the book.

They are a match.

How is it that Dad claims he doesn"t know this woman, yet owns a book that she's had her paws all over?

More secrets. More lies.

My jaw tight, I strip away the musty brown paper of the parcel. Inside is a wooden box, the lid carved with an intricate open hand, fingers sprouting branches that wrap around it in a circle of interwoven vines. Its wrist ends in a graceful three-way knot.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I finger Tyler's charm.

Removing the pendant from around my neck, I lay it on the quilt beside the box. I'm no art expert, but even an amateur can see the similarities. Though the fingers on each hand form a different gesture, both are elongated and abstracted in the same style, the digits exaggerated and curved.

After repeated attempts to pry open the heavy old lock with a hairpin, I give up and collapse onto the soft bed. Images of Tyler, my supposedly dead father and his weird role here, the mysterious package, and the island's strange pull all swirl in my head in a dizzying ballet. It's too much to process, even for a science girl like me. Overwhelmed, I drift off into an uneasy sleep.