Chapter 11

11

For my first few days at Morning House, I followed a routine. I woke up, got beaten up by the shower, had breakfast, and then followed tours over and over, until the script stuck to my neural pathways and I could spit it back out again.

From April, I learned which places were the best for taking pictures, what parts people liked to hear. From Van, I learned how to keep the group moving. (The trick: randomly throwing in "You're going to love what we're going to see next!" It's genuinely that easy as long as you sell it.) I began to think of Morning House as my house. Well, not my house that I lived in, but a place I was part of. I got to know which boards creaked when you stepped on them, which way to turn to keep from being blinded by the light streaming in. I knew the musty smell of the basement differed from the musty smell of the upper floors. I got used to people oohing and aahing over the domed ceiling.

Tom gave me a terrifying lesson on the Jet Ski, which I resolved never to use. Imagine riding a horse on a wild, powerful river. It's like that. This was going to be an issue, maybe, because Jet Skis were the major mode of transport around the islands and the shore.

The dinners were cordial. I got a spot on the roster and helped warm up our trays and leftover hot dogs. We always got vegan butternut mac and cheese, which I ended up loving. Liani swam every morning and night in the lagoon. Tom often went with her, and it became clear that while they were not yet a couple, that was going to happen at any moment. Van puffed his vape and made enigmatic jokes. April would chat with me nonstop in an onslaught of friendship.

Riki was almost invisible back in the gift shop. She was like a cat that you know is in the house but never comes out from under the bed. Dr. Henson would walk through the house sometimes, usually on the phone, always in her pristine yoga gear and a pair of green Hokas with yellow soles. I assume they ate, but I saw no concrete evidence of this.

I still had a sucking hole inside, a place where Akilah had been and was not. The routine of the place helped, but generally I just wanted to get through the day and be on my own so I could think repetitive thoughts about the texts I wanted to send to Akilah. I wrote them in my head all the time. I wanted to tell her everything that was going on and make it seem like I was interesting and fun and not just someone who set fires and ran out of town. I could win her over with some stories, I thought. But each time I even thought about typing something out, I ran completely cold and clenched in on myself.

This was how it went, more or less unchanging, for a few days. A constant carousel of tours and obsessive thoughts, punctuated by the warning squawk of a black swan. At night, in bed, I made mental movies about what it would be like to get back with Akilah. I had so many scenarios planned out. I imagined her coming to the island by surprise. She would arrive on a tour boat. I would turn, and there she would be.

"I guess I can't stay away from you," she would say.

Or sometimes she said, "I was passing by."

Or sometimes she ran to me across the lawn.

I kissed her everywhere. On the front porch. In the ballroom. In various bedrooms. Most often, I took her to the magnificent balcony where Dr. Henson did yoga and the line between the United States and Canada was blurred. Up there, well, that was the scene of my most detailed imaginings. They carried me to sleep, and the next day I woke up in the fairy-tale house again and followed more tours.

The next real event in this story occurred about four days in, after the tourists left for the day. I was showing the last ones where they could stand for a good picture, when Tom came past, striding his purposeful stride.

"Liani and I are going to town after this, if you want to come," he said. "We're going to pick up food for the next few days."

The idea of town sounded like an exciting change from my new routine of playhouse to Morning House and back again; the same thirty feet.

"Sure."

"Twenty minutes at the dock," he said.

Twenty minutes later, I was at the dock with my bag. Liani was sitting in a tiny motorboat bobbing in the water, her eyes hidden behind massive sunglasses.

"Hop in," Tom said.

I inelegantly clambered down into the little boat, which teetered in a way I actively hated. This was truly the Smart Car of the water, except that as soon as Tom pulled it away from the dock, it took off at speed, nose coming out of the river, water spitting in the sides. It was too loud to talk, and my hair was whipping in my face. I gripped the seat with clawed hands. Five minutes later, we pulled up to one of the piers right in the middle of town. I got out with quivering legs, and Liani bounded out after me.

"Okay, so we'll meet you in an hour at the Blue Anchor," he said. "It's at the end of the street on the river side."

I guess I'd thought that Liani and Tom had asked me to come to town with them so that we could do stuff together, or just to do this one thing. Liani was already walking off, and Tom followed. I was in Clement Bay alone.

I had seen a little of Clement Bay when I came in with my parents, but we hadn't spent any time there. It was your classic river rat town, very small, focused on things to use in and around the water. Like any self-respecting vacation town, it had more than the required number of fudge and ice cream places. I stood in front of one that had a large plastic ice cream cone in front, along with a hilarious large chair for people to take pictures in and tag the shop.

I decided to get ice cream because I am not a complete fool.

The girl behind the counter had pink hair and was cute. I considered trying to tell her about the hot bottom and maybe breaking the ice a little, but it was too soon. I wasn't ready to share a hot bottom joke with anyone yet. They didn't have Moose Tracks, so I got one scoop of butter pecan and one scoop of honeycomb and tried to numb the crushing loneliness.

This was the kind of thing I was supposed to be doing with Akilah this summer—ice cream at sunset as the summer day cooled off and the smell of grass swelled in the air. I could vividly imagine her in this white romper she often wore with a black tank underneath, maybe with a bit of gold shadow frosting her eyelids. I sat for a minute in a small park facing the water and got out my phone and took a picture of Morning House in the distance, the sun behind it, giving it an otherworldly glow. I kept going back and forth about sending it to her.

This is where I work now! Different from Guffy's! Not on fire, just looks it, lol

The ice cream dripped down my hand, sticking my fingers together. God, it hurt. It felt like there was a hole in my chest, slightly to the right, under the breast, right there in the ribs, a sucking hole made of anxiety about the extreme amount of nothing in my future, because my future had been filled with her, and nothing and no one was like her.

I started to tear up, but then a man came by with a ridiculous black Labrador who sensed trauma and bounced up to save me. She licked the ice cream from my hand and thumped me with her tail, and for a minute, everything was okay again. I pushed myself up and walked down the street. I passed a small Victorian house, painted green with red trim, that housed an organization called River Rescue. There was a Pride flag hanging in the window, along with several posters, the largest of which read STOP THE KEETING FISHING AND BOATING EMPIRE FROM DESTROYING THE BEAVERS' HABITAT.

Keeting caught my eye, because that was Tom's name and this was a small town. There probably weren't two Keeting families with large fishing businesses. I stepped closer and looked at a photoshopped picture of an older version of Tom clubbing a beaver. Apparently, his family was trying to build a new marina on top of a valuable wetland.

Next to the River Rescue house was an identically structured one, this one painted gray with purple trim. Gold lettering in the window read THE BOOK GARDEN. In a window display along with an assortment of popular mysteries was a copy of The Daughter of Time . That was the book Riki had been reading.

I stood there, eating my ice cream, wondering if this was a hugely popular book that I had simply never heard of. I finished off the cone in a few bites and went inside. My arrival was heralded by the small tinkle of a chime. I found four copies of the book right by the front, in a small display marked STAFF PICKS. Nearby, there was a rack full of socks—the gifting kind that cost more than socks normally do but they're funny so you pay double. Prominently displayed, right in front, was a blue-and-black pair that said I LIKE SPOOKY SHIT.

The girl behind the counter was reading a graphic novel called The Chuckling Whatsit . She had it propped up in front of her and everything about her posture and expression said that she didn't want to be disturbed while reading. I apologetically set the book I wanted to buy down on the counter. She looked at the copy of The Daughter of Time , then up at me. Her hair was longer, but it was the same deep brown, almost black, just without the dark blue streaks.

While I had been making those connections, she had been evaluating me.

"Are you at Morning House?" she asked.

I had changed out of my maroon polo shirt, so I didn't have any visible markers of Morning House on me.

"This is the only copy of this we've ever sold," she explained. "And you look like the person Riki described. The one with the fire."

Riki had mentioned me. More than that, Riki had described me.

"Does Riki work here too?"

"Well, yeah. We own it. I mean, our parents own it. I'm Juhi. I'm her sister."

Things clicked into place. Riki was an independent contractor—she was the only one who worked in the gift shop.

"Yeah," she went on. "It was her idea to ask the committee if we could be in charge of the store, since we're a local business and we have all the stuff. She's smart like that. It makes way more money than this place. What's it like up there? Is everyone being weird?"

"Kind of," I said. "I heard about Chris."

"Oh yeah," she said. "Chris Nelson. That was a lot. For a minute it looked like they might not open the house for tourists because all the people working there were friends of his, but everyone needs that money, you know? Eleven seventy-five. Tap or swipe."

I tapped, and Juhi forged on.

"They seemed to be doing okay, but they brought you in, so I guess they needed someone else. I don't know why they didn't bring someone from town. I would have done it. You're not from here. Why do you think they brought you in?"

Like Van, Juhi had been direct with her questions. I was about to say that it was because my teacher knew Dr. Henson and all that, but the truth was, I had no idea why the hell I'd been brought here, really.

"What happened with your fire?" Juhi asked. "You burned some house down? On purpose?"

"No! No."

"Did you get arrested?"

"No."

"I thought they arrested people for starting fires."

"It was an accident," I explained, feeling my face flush. "A candle."

"Oh." Juhi seemed disappointed and switched topics again. "So, is Riki talking to everyone now?"

"Not really," I said.

Juhi leaned back, nodded, and took a long sip out of a heavily stickered water bottle. I had confirmed some suspicion of hers, clearly.

"I told her it would be bad," she said. "But there was no way she wasn't going to go. She's obsessed with that house and the story—she loves true crime. Even if it completely sucked, she was going to go."

Since I was here, and since Juhi seemed to love gossip, it was worth trying to get some.

"What happened?" I asked. "Something about her being the reason Chris and Liani broke up?"

Juhi continued sipping and shook her head once.

"It wasn't Riki's fault," she said. "Well, it was, but..."

With that, she turned her gaze down, like she'd said too much.

"Hope you're having a good time," she added. "Tell Riki to bring back my silver sandals. I know she took them."

The Blue Anchor was a small café on the river side of the street. It was inside an old building with a large front display window filled with a few dusty model boats and a partially rusted anchor. The inside had a similar vibe, with an array of mismatched tables and chairs that may have been a design choice or from a clearance sale or both. In a nod to the nautical theme, the floor leaned to the right like a ship in a storm. The walls were covered in framed sayings like, "I don't need a river to be lazy" and "Did someone say rosé?"

Liani and Tom were sitting at a table on the back deck, huddled in conversation. I watched them for a moment from the screen door. It didn't seem romantic. Tom kept running his hand over his short hair, like he was making sure it hadn't crawled off his head. Liani was tapping a finger on the table insistently. Tom nodded and then cast his gaze over and saw me watching. I immediately moved, like I had just gotten to the door and hadn't been standing there watching them, but I don't think I fooled him.

"You see some of the town?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Looked around. Got some ice cream. Bought a book."

Liani raised an eyebrow when I mentioned a book. I understood that this had to be about the people who worked at the store, not the concept of books. I'd seen Liani reading a lot—at breakfast, when no one was at the lagoon, on the porch after dinner. She pounded books.

"Then let's get the food and go," Liani said, sucking down the last sips of her iced tea.

At the counter we were handed several sheet pans covered in tin foil. I helped carry these to the boat, and soon we were on our way back, my jacket pulled tight to avoid the spray coming up and over the side of the boat as we sped along. Tom steered us past Mulligan Island as we went—I don't think intentionally. It was just another one of the 1,800 islands, but a close one, with a high edge of rock on the side facing Ralston Island, dropping to that glassy green water studded with stone.

A bad place to take a fall.