Chapter Eleven

’Sconset was a picture-perfect village on the far side of the island, all tiny cedar-shingled cottages and pink roses climbing up trellises. A gentle haze softened the line where the cerulean water met the almost cloudless sky. Only wisps of cirrus clouds marred the blue, like an artistic afterthought.

We followed a public cliff walk along the bluff, through the backyards of mansions. Sometimes the path wound beneath brambling, shady hedges, while other times we could see sweeping vistas of bent sea trees, gray-purple flowers, and scraggly grass. Wooden staircases stretched several stories down to the shore, worn out by decades of hard weather. The day was hot but not unbearable, and the breeze off the water kept me cool.

Dad and I had always loved hikes, even if he said his creaky old bones couldn’t keep up with me. (Admittedly, I often teased him about this same thing.) He loved nature and history, so historical walks were basically his favorite thing. “?’Sconset started as a seventeenth-century fishing village,” he told me when I asked. “It became a resort town during the whaling heyday, and later an artist colony.” He gestured down the bluff. “There was a neighborhood called Codfish Park, where a lot of working-class African Americans and immigrants lived, Cape Verdeans and Irish, with their own shops and bakeries. Many of them worked as domestic help or at the old casino in the early nineteen hundreds. Oh! And ’Sconset is where the first distress call from the Titanic was heard.”

When the path ended—erosion had cut it off, Dad said—we traipsed through a public alley between two mansions to a main road, which led to the lighthouse. Sankaty Head had been inscribed on a boulder at the entrance. Dad took a few pictures of me—with my head in them, thank god—and I took a selfie of both of us to send to Aunt Lou and Grandma and Grandpa.

A yellowing informational sign read Sankaty Head Lighthouse, Established 1850, with a photo of the lighthouse next to houses that no longer existed. The first bullet point announced the beginning of the US Lighthouse Establishment under Alexander Hamilton in 1789.

“You liked Hamilton so much when you were little,” Dad said. “I don’t know if you still do, but I thought you might be interested.”

“Dad, everyone liked Hamilton. It was a cultural phenomenon.” When the concern on his face didn’t lessen, I softened. “I still like it. This is very cool. Oh, look!” I pointed at another bullet. 1842–1845: Nantucket Astronomer William Mitchell Observes That Nearly 45,000 Ships of All Designs Have Passed Near the Nantucket Shoals. “This is Maria Mitchell’s dad, right?”

“Right. Probably work they were doing for the Coast Survey. He drew a really good map of the island, too.”

I laughed. Dad probably hadn’t meant to be funny—it probably had been a really good map—but I liked that someone could be remembered for a map.

Also, I thought it was very sweet Maria and her dad worked together. “You could do another whole book on fathers and daughters who worked together.”

An expression of delight crossed Dad’s face. “I could! Hm…Monet’s stepdaughter, Blanche, was also a painter. And Rashi’s daughters might have taken dictation from him.”

“Rashi—the scholar?” I recognized him as a Talmudic scholar but couldn’t recall much more.

“Yes, from eleventh-century France. His daughters married his students, and were more involved in scholarship and rituals than women usually were at the time…”

We walked around the squat lighthouse, admiring the sunshine washing over the land, before returning the way we’d come. In the village center, we ordered ice cream and ate our cones at small tables out back.

“Can I see your apartment?” I asked when we’d finished. “It’s on the way back to town, right? It’s been a couple weeks and I still haven’t seen it.”

He looked abashed. “There’s really nothing to see…”

“Dad.”

So we hopped off the local bus, the Wave, halfway back to town, in what Dad said was the Tom Nevers neighborhood. The trees here were tall and dense, moss carpeting their trunks. It reminded me of the forests at home, where I’d spent countless hours wandering through oceans of ferns, clambering up pines, and balancing on fallen logs. The speckled sunlight made the forest feel magical, and fleeting nostalgia stabbed at me as we walked down a bike path.

Dad rented a room in a townhouse complex, a real suburban-development vibe—a shared pool and lots of parking. Dad pointed out a nearby Salvadoran store where he got his coffee and lunches, and where I was sure he used his schoolboy Spanish, then led me to his front door. It wasn’t locked, and Dad laughed at my scandalized reaction.

At least none of his prized possessions were in the downstairs common area, which consisted of a shared galley kitchen for the four boarders. Enough space to scramble eggs, but not for involved cooking projects. Too bad—Dad loved cooking.

Dad’s room was on the third floor, and he led me up carpeted stairs, past a shared bathroom and laundry room. He unlocked the door. “It’s not much…”

The room was neat as a pin, and not much larger. It was shaped like an L; the short leg contained a bed tucked beneath the eaves, while the long side had a window overlooking the road and the woods beyond. Cozied up to the foot of the bed was a desk, piled high with books, papers, and my dad’s laptop. The rest of the room had a mini-fridge, microwave, and two armchairs facing each other over a round end table.

“It’s nice,” I said. It felt more like an Airbnb than a place to live: not bad, but impersonal. And sharing a bathroom with strangers seemed highly unpleasant, but then again, Dad usually shared with me, and I spent a large (and unfairly maligned) amount of time on my hair in the mornings.

“Have you seen the new British movie, with the blimp?” Dad asked. “It has that young actress you like, the redheaded one, and the man who looks like a string bean…”

I laughed. “He doesn’t look like a string bean. He’s hot.”

Dad gave a mock-beleaguered sigh. “I never thought my progeny would find string beans attractive.”

I shook my head, still grinning. “Do you have popcorn? And mini chocolate chips?”

“What do you take me for, a monster? Of course I do.”

We made stovetop popcorn and sprinkled in chocolate chips alongside the salt, letting them melt and stick the popcorn together in delicious globs. I loved hanging out with Dad like this, laughing and joking though the movie, ordering Thai food for dinner. It felt like being home.

If Dad sold the house, would anything ever feel like home again?

“Where would you want to go if we sold our house?” I asked tentatively, after the movie ended and we’d cleaned our plates. “You mentioned Boston?”

Dad had always been easy to read; now he looked surprised, like he hadn’t expected this conversation. Then he braced himself, ready to make his best effort. “I’d like to live closer to the city, yes. Though it would mean less space. It’d be nice to feel not so…isolated.”

“We don’t feel isolated,” I said automatically, before realizing, you know, Dad was a different human being than me and might have different feelings.

“Jordan,” he said, leaning forward. “I know this is hard. I know how much you love the house.”

I shrugged and looked out the window. A bird flew by, small and dark, a splash of red on its wing. “I thought we both loved it.”

“We do,” he said. “I do. However, sometimes change is good.”

“Yeah, but I’m already going to college in two months. Do we really need more change?”

He looked away, then back at me, determinedly. “I think it might be good to live somewhere where we can make new memories.”

“What do you mean?” He meant something, and I could feel it in my stomach, in the way the bottom was trying to detach and fall away.

“I love our house. More importantly, I love you. And we will always have each other. But I think it might be time to live somewhere where not all the memories are about Mom.”

Oh.

Of course the house had memories of Mom for Dad. Of course he wanted somewhere new and fresh. That was good, and healthy, and right.

Only the thing was—I didn’t have my own memories of Mom.

I had the house. I had the town. I had Dad, and Aunt Lou and Uncle Jerry, and anyone else who could unearth a few memories for me. I kept them in a little box in my mind, Stories About Mom, and I pulled them out when I needed them. I pulled them out most easily in places where I’d seen photos of us together, or where a faint ghost of a memory lingered. The rocking chair, where she’d cuddled me. The kitchen, where she’d made mac and cheese and convinced me to eat mushy carrots. The window nook in the den, where she’d read me Spot the Dog.

Dad had real memories of Mom. They’d had a life together. He didn’t need the house to keep them safe or bring them to life.

Okay. I wanted Dad to be happy, didn’t I? So time for me to grow the fuck up. “What would it be like?” I asked, staring at my plate. “An apartment? Would I have a room?”

Dad sounded horrified. “Of course you would have a room.”

I blinked rapidly, relief suffusing me. “Okay.”

“Jordan, you will always have a place, wherever we are.”

“Cool,” I said, trying to sound cool. “Just don’t want you to turn the spare room into an office as soon as I’m off at college.”

“You’ll have a room,” Dad said again. “Always.”

I borrowed Dad’s bike to get home, wind in my face as I sped along the path paralleling Milestone Road, past forests and moors. I felt itchy to do something, like the summer dusk was a drug leaving me aching for experiences. Worse, a storm was coming, clouds rolling in from across the sea, the balmy day now foreboding.

I made it back to Golden Doors around nine, as raindrops started to splash against my skin. In the cousins’ room, I found several Barbanels cozied up with their partners, watching a movie, with several more cousins spread about. Too tame for how I felt, so I headed to my room and called Grace. Talking soothed some of my strange agitation, but when we hung up around ten thirty, I still felt jittery.

At eleven, the thunderstorm started in earnest.

The pitter-patter of rain against the roof intensified, and I tore my gaze away from my phone to look out the window. It was mostly a black square of night, beaten over and over with translucent streams of water. Then the low rumble of thunder began. Water droplets clung to the windowpanes, and bright white lightning cracked the night. The thunder grew louder, crashing booms I felt in my chest.

It got to me, the deep roaring going on and on. I sat up in bed, staring out the window. I felt odd and strange, like something had slithered under my skin and wrapped around my heart and bones—this house, this island. This storm. It made me feel like something was supposed to happen. If I’d been a little kid, if I believed in fairies and dragons and quests, I would have said it was magic sparking in the air.

Rolling out of bed, I swapped my oversized T-shirt for a tank top—the less fabric the better when it came to rain on my skin. Two minutes later, I pushed open the door to the roof walk and stepped into the downpour. In seconds, the rain soaked me through—slashing, drenching rain, plastering my shirt to my skin and my hair to my head. Water dashing over my cheeks like tears. My lashes were spiky, and a boom of thunder made me gasp.

And I could see a light in the east wing. A silhouette, a boy. Then the light went out.

I lifted my face to the sky, half drowning in the endless deluge. There was no moon tonight, no stars, only darkness, except for when those white lines illuminated the world—the wrecking sea, the tossing waves, the whipping trees. I drank it in, this wild world, this island that people had tried to tame. People always wanted to tame things, to bend the strongest forces to their will, make them soft and palatable. But how did you tame a feeling bottled up inside you so tightly you thought it might burst? And if you did tame something—if you covered an island in roads and houses and cars—didn’t you regret it in the end?

“What are you doing?”

I spun, almost slipping on the soaked boards. Ethan stood in the entryway. “Come inside!” he shouted. “You’re soaked.”

“Come outside!” I shouted back, because why not, because here we were in this wild world. “Or are you going to tell me it’s dangerous?”

I won the standoff; he stepped outside. “Be careful, okay?” he said, still yelling slightly to be heard over the rain, which soaked him as immediately as it had me.

“You be careful! I don’t want to be careful.” My gaze slid over him, over the cotton of his T-shirt, now molded to his arms and chest.

He took a step closer and slipped. I grabbed for him, catching his arm. His left hand landed on my shoulder with a firm grip. “Careful,” I said, breathless, raising my face to his. “The larger they are, the harder they fall.”

“I’m not falling.” The rain poured over us, streaming down our faces, sticking our clothes to our bodies.

“Good.” I wasn’t falling either; I wouldn’t. But I did take a last little step forward, the heat in me so strong I couldn’t even consider ignoring it, so strong I half expected steam to come off our bodies. I reached my hands up and placed them on his shoulders, and when he didn’t pull away, I pressed my lips to his.

I felt his intake of breath, and for a moment his hand curved around my hip and he pulled me closer—and then he paused, frowning. “Are you okay? Are you drunk?”

Offended, I pushed at him—not enough to disengage but enough to let him know he’d annoyed me. “I’m fine. I just wanted to kiss you. Silly me. Sorry.”

“Don’t go.” He didn’t let me pull away. “I just wanted to make sure you wanted this.”

“Yes,” I said. “I want this.”

He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me flush against him, and my hands slid around his neck and we were kissing. The tight, hot heat inside me finally found grip on something, on him, as I pressed myself closer and deepened the kiss. I tried to drink him in, this boy. I pulled at his shirt, trying to peel the sodden fabric away from his skin, and we were laughing, wrestling the T-shirt over his head.

The rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

I froze. The rain had felt like a cover, keeping everything safe and secret. Without it, my sodden clothes felt heavier and more uncomfortable, and I felt like a silly, desperate fool, throwing myself at Ethan when he clearly thought I was a mess. He’d thought I was drunk. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

He reached for me, but I stepped back.

“Jordan. Are you okay?”

“Yes.” I took another step toward the door, the water from my hair and clothes pooling on the deck. “I was in a mood. I should go. Shower and sleep.”

“Jordan—”

“Sorry,” I said again, interrupting. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that. Um—sleep tight.”

I didn’t sleep at all for the rest of the night.