surf, if she listens, but it’s less of a roar now. By nightfall, the wind sock will sag from its pole like a flaccid old condom. The gulls will settle in the channel like rows of net floats. The auklets will come hurtling home.
Hannah stands alone. In a month at most the winds will shift to the south. Then the gray whales will pass the island on their southward way to Mexico. The humpbacks will go off on their journey to Hawaii, and the birds will pass in the thousands. The Undertaker will come, and Hannah will be off on her way.
She can’t stand it anymore, winter on the island. Days eight hours long, endless nights crammed with Murray into a brooding, shrunken world. The storms, one after another. The rain. And worse, her fear of the snow.
It’s a secret that she’ll keep from Squid: She hasn’t spent a winter on the island for three years. Since her daughter fled, Hannah hasn’t lived on Lizzie for more than five months at a stretch. She comes and goes—like an auklet, she thinks—struggling blindly to find a home. But if this is what Murray meant by everything changing, it’s the first time he’s ever said a word about it.
chapter four
ALASTAIR’S ROOM SMELLS CLEAN AND fresh. It’s dusted and polished and perfect. His books are set precisely on the shelves, every one as straight as a soldier. The afghan, with its weird Maltese patterns that change from shapes into people and back into shapes, might be a drum skin stretched on his bed. But along one wall are cockeyed, twisted shelves, nearly the only thing in the world that he made for himself.
It isn’t a sad place, as Squid had thought it might be. Really, it feels no different than it ever did, as though Alastair—at any moment—might come suddenly up the stairs and find her here again.
“Why don’t you just give up?” he asked her, the last time.
He startled her that day. She felt her heart leap, her shoulders tighten, and she almost screamed, but didn’t. She kept her back toward him as he went to sit in the window seat, beside the closet door.
“I told you,” he said. “It’s not in the closet.”
“I didn’t look in your closet,” she said, trying to sound affronted.
“Then how did this piece of paper fall off the top of the door?”
He reached down from his chair and picked up a tiny piece of folded yellow paper. The light from the window glared on his glasses. It made them opaque, as pale as his skin, as though underneath he had no eyes at all.
“You’re nuts,” she said. “You know that, Alastair? You’re crazy as a bug.”
He laughed. It was the last time she ever heard him laugh. He said, “Now where would I put it? What a problem that is. What a knotty little problem.”
He looked like a professor, like a mad scientist, his head bulging above the glasses, the hair that he never combed all clotted into spikes and wads.
He said, “You can look as long as you want, Squid. But it will be doomsday when you find it.”
She sits on the bed and touches the things on the shelf, but so gently that they don’t even move from their places. She stares at the map that he made as a child, reading the silly names they’d invented together.
He did everything so seriously. He learned from his father the importance of work, the sense of duty above everything else. Even as children, it seems to Squid, they worked like slaves at the lightkeeping tasks, the endless chores of painting and rust chipping, of weeding and planting, that had to be finished to Murray’s exactness before he would spare a moment or two for anything like pleasure.
“Work first, play after.” That was the rule they lived by. And it made Alastair what he was; it doomed him to a lonely, frustrated life.
She takes the map in her hands. It has been folded and unfolded many times. Its edges are brittle where the salt water soaked it and dried. Some of the writing is smudged.
It was raining that day.
They stood at the edge of the water, the boat on the
Hannah stands alone. In a month at most the winds will shift to the south. Then the gray whales will pass the island on their southward way to Mexico. The humpbacks will go off on their journey to Hawaii, and the birds will pass in the thousands. The Undertaker will come, and Hannah will be off on her way.
She can’t stand it anymore, winter on the island. Days eight hours long, endless nights crammed with Murray into a brooding, shrunken world. The storms, one after another. The rain. And worse, her fear of the snow.
It’s a secret that she’ll keep from Squid: She hasn’t spent a winter on the island for three years. Since her daughter fled, Hannah hasn’t lived on Lizzie for more than five months at a stretch. She comes and goes—like an auklet, she thinks—struggling blindly to find a home. But if this is what Murray meant by everything changing, it’s the first time he’s ever said a word about it.
chapter four
ALASTAIR’S ROOM SMELLS CLEAN AND fresh. It’s dusted and polished and perfect. His books are set precisely on the shelves, every one as straight as a soldier. The afghan, with its weird Maltese patterns that change from shapes into people and back into shapes, might be a drum skin stretched on his bed. But along one wall are cockeyed, twisted shelves, nearly the only thing in the world that he made for himself.
It isn’t a sad place, as Squid had thought it might be. Really, it feels no different than it ever did, as though Alastair—at any moment—might come suddenly up the stairs and find her here again.
“Why don’t you just give up?” he asked her, the last time.
He startled her that day. She felt her heart leap, her shoulders tighten, and she almost screamed, but didn’t. She kept her back toward him as he went to sit in the window seat, beside the closet door.
“I told you,” he said. “It’s not in the closet.”
“I didn’t look in your closet,” she said, trying to sound affronted.
“Then how did this piece of paper fall off the top of the door?”
He reached down from his chair and picked up a tiny piece of folded yellow paper. The light from the window glared on his glasses. It made them opaque, as pale as his skin, as though underneath he had no eyes at all.
“You’re nuts,” she said. “You know that, Alastair? You’re crazy as a bug.”
He laughed. It was the last time she ever heard him laugh. He said, “Now where would I put it? What a problem that is. What a knotty little problem.”
He looked like a professor, like a mad scientist, his head bulging above the glasses, the hair that he never combed all clotted into spikes and wads.
He said, “You can look as long as you want, Squid. But it will be doomsday when you find it.”
She sits on the bed and touches the things on the shelf, but so gently that they don’t even move from their places. She stares at the map that he made as a child, reading the silly names they’d invented together.
He did everything so seriously. He learned from his father the importance of work, the sense of duty above everything else. Even as children, it seems to Squid, they worked like slaves at the lightkeeping tasks, the endless chores of painting and rust chipping, of weeding and planting, that had to be finished to Murray’s exactness before he would spare a moment or two for anything like pleasure.
“Work first, play after.” That was the rule they lived by. And it made Alastair what he was; it doomed him to a lonely, frustrated life.
She takes the map in her hands. It has been folded and unfolded many times. Its edges are brittle where the salt water soaked it and dried. Some of the writing is smudged.
It was raining that day.
They stood at the edge of the water, the boat on the
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