A Way Through the Sea by Robert Elmer Page A

clearing plates. It wasn’t because Peter was trying to disobey, at least not in a sticking your tongue out kind of way. It was just so easy to forget sometimes, and then when he remembered, it was too late. Only that wasn’t much of an excuse anymore, and Peter knew it. He finished his cold meal, piled the dishes by the sink, where Elise was doing them, and started shuffling down the hall. He sighed.
    “And what’s that funny color all over your hair?” his mother asked.
    “Um, nothing,” he replied, closing his bedroom door behind him. Please, not more trouble. “Just some Dead Lily,” he said through the door. His room was at the end of the hall, and it was not much more than a closet, really: big enough for his bed and a small dresser. If he stood on his bed, he could have seen the harbor through his window—that is, if all the other buildings weren’t in the way. Elise had a room just like it, one door down. Their parents shared a slightly larger bedroom. Though their rooms were small, they knew they were lucky. A lot of their friends at school didn’t have their own rooms.
    Even during the long summer evenings, like that night, it never seemed to get too hot in their apartment. Mrs. Andersen would open up the large double windows in the living room, and the smell of her flowers floated all through the apartment. She was especially proud of her purple flowers; Peter forgot what they were called.
    He lay on top of his bed with his clothes on, smelling the late summer. Elise was still washing the last dishes in the kitchen. Outside, past the flowers, he could smell a little salt air from the Sound, a little bit of fish—maybe from his uncle’s boat, maybe from his hands. Sometimes he pretended that he could even smell all the way to Sweden, that smudge of land across the water.
    Peter and Elise had never been there before, but Uncle Morten had said it was full of woods and lakes, even a few mountains. Just across the Sound. Peter listened hard for anything that sounded like the ocean—the chug cough of a fishing boat, or the squeal of a gull. But all he heard were voices in the next room, his parents discussing something, and then a shuffling sound coming under his door.
    Elise. It has to be. He looked down and saw the note she had stuck under his door. He rolled over onto his stomach and reached for it.
    “Peter, Dead Lily looks lovely on you. Just your color. P.S. I think I’ve figured out what Uncle Morten was doing in the woods.”
    She had? He wadded up the note, yanked open the door, and charged down the hall after her. Just then, Mr. Andersen stepped out into the hallway from the living room, and they nearly collided.
    “Going somewhere?” he asked.
    “No... yeah, I mean,” Peter stuffed the note into his pocket. Talking with his father about Uncle Morten was one of the last things he wanted to do. “Um, I better go to the bathroom before I go to bed,” he mumbled. “Clean up a little.”
    “It’s back the other way, Peter,” his dad said. “But we’ll say good night to you here. You know we love you, even when you’re in trouble.”
    “I know, Dad,” he said as he disappeared into the bathroom. “I love you, too.”
    As he lay in bed a few minutes later, Peter couldn’t keep his mind on the history book he was reading. He kept thinking about Uncle Morten. Uncle Morten the pirate. Uncle Morten the gambler. Uncle Morten the Resistance fighter. Which one was he? Then he caught himself. Don’t think about it. It’s none of your business, anyway.
    What didn’t make any sense to Peter was that his Uncle Morten was supposed to be the one who was the most religious in the family, the one who sometimes talked about prayer meetings, that kind of thing. Once, a couple of years ago, Peter and Elise had even gone with him to a Thursday night meeting at a small house church on Belvedere Way, on the edge of town. Just out of curiosity.
A soft knock interrupted his thoughts. He stuck a