Sea Change by Diane Tullson Page A

actually.”
    I have to set down my coffee, my hands are shaking so badly. “What about her foot?”
    â€œThey were taking her into the operating room when I left her last night.” He adds cream and a stream of sugar to his coffee. “What I want to know is how you managed to get her here.”
    I really don’t have an answer. I say, “She seemed to know the way.”
    The guy from the dock grins, and something about him makes me wonder just how well he knows her.
    I say, “I guess she comes here a lot.”
    â€œDon’t worry,” Dylan says, and he eyes the guy from the dock. “Sumi doesn’t come to see Leo. She brings us her limit, trades us fresh salmon for provisions. Somehow she resists Leo’s stunning looks and table manners.”
    The medic laughs and gets up. He offers me his hand. “You must have inherited your father’s internal gps. He can find his way along this coastline blindfolded.”
    â€œI think it was luck.”
    â€œWell then, it was lucky for Sumi.” He shakes my hand. “She’s at Vancouver General Hospital, probably will be for a while.” Then he leaves.
    Leo offers to take a boat with me back to the lodge so I don’t get lost, but I want to go on my own. The sea is flat calm and there’s no fog, so it should be an easy trip. And it is. In the bright clear light of morning, the inlet looks completely different from yesterday, but strangely the same. It’s like the landscape has soaked into me. At the rock pillars I slow down. The seals bark at me from the shoal. No porpoises today. Past the shallows I open it up again, standing in the boat to steer.
    When I get close to the lodge, I see the deer on the grass, feeding. It’s weird, arriving back here alone. I’m trying not to think about Sumi, how she’s doing— and what they’re doing at the hospital.
    I tidy up the fishing boat and then transfer into the dinghy. On the oars I feel stronger, although I’m sure Sumi would still have something to say about my steering. I pull the dinghy high up on the beach and tie it to a driftwood log. When I walk toward the lodge, the deer lift their heads and watch me, but they don’t run off.
    In Sumi’s cabin I wash and dry the dishes. I wipe up dark blood from the floor. I straighten her bed. I bag the trash, including the last of the bread, so that nothing attracts mice, or the bear.
    This makes me think of Sumi’s deer. Her grandmother is going to need that deer. I retrieve the wheelbarrow from down at the beach and then head back to the generator hut. The deer is still there and doesn’t look too beat up by the bear. I lower it into the wheelbarrow. Sumi’s rifle is still on the ground. Carefully, I pick it up and put it in the wheelbarrow with the deer. Then I head back out to the front of the lodge. I see Dad’s boat on the mooring. He’s in the inflatable, motoring in to shore. I take a deep breath and head down to the water.

Chapter Fifteen
    He looks tired. He throws me the rope and I pull the boat in while he lifts the prop out of the water. I feel like a little kid again. I have to tell him what happened, but I just want it all to go away. He steps out of the boat and we each take a side and haul it up the beach. He ties it beside the other dinghy. He goes over to the dinghy and checks my knot but he doesn’t retie it.
    My throat feels like it could stick closed. “Dad,” I say, but nothing else will come out.
    He says, “I heard.”
    Just then a helicopter flies in over the ridge, the same one we came in on.
    He says, “The pilot let me know.”
    As the helicopter lands, we walk up to the lodge. I’m grateful for the noise of the chopper because I don’t have to speak. But then the pilot shuts down the engine.
    I just have to tell him. I have to tell him I screwed up, badly, and that it’s all my fault.
    The pilot is