After all that work, all that time on his projects, I didn’t measure up. When I let go of my own work, my own priorities, I lost the qualities he had been attracted to in the first place. That’s how he put it. He loved the woman I was before I was in love with him.
Since the breakup, I had worked for two papers and been laid off by both. Freelancing and adjunct teaching were not paying the bills. I couldn’t afford my apartment anymore.
I tore the article into long strips, visualizing my dad’s method, twisting handfuls into long bunches with flares at each end. I shoved Matt’s smug face to the back of the stove with a stick, piled other sticks around it. For a full minute, the fire scuttled through the paper, licking at the wood. The kindling crackled but didn’t catch. Smoke swallowed the log. I could almost hear my dad sucking air through his teeth the way he did whenever I insisted on doing something without his help, even if I didn’t really know how.
A fire needs three things: a dry bed, fuel, and room to breathe. Maybe I hadn’t given it enough room to breathe.
Everything in the cottage seemed closer than it ought to be. I pulled too hard on drawers; I ran into the corner of the cutting board with my hip. I opened a sticky cupboard door straight into my forehead. It felt like it would bruise. I sat in a kitchen chair and laid my head on the table, cheek on the cold Formica. Beside me, my workbag held my computer, notes for articles I had pitched or was thinking of pitching. Since Mom had handed over the deed to the cottage, I only had one story on my mind. It was a more personal story than I was used to writing: this trip back to Orwell and Marrow; how the two islands had changed since the disaster. I had pitched it to an editor at the Pacific Standard who wanted more — visuals and an arc.
There was an envelope sticking out of the front pocket of my bag, a letter from my only childhood friend from the islands, Katie. We met at Orwell Village School when we were eight, when my parents moved back into Dad’s childhood home and he took a job at the ArPac Refinery on Marrow Island. I was an only child; Katie was, too. They lived a mile away through the woods, and over the years we wore a path through the trees between our yards. She became a kind of sister I would find and lose and find again over the years, after Mom and I moved away, through high school, when we went off to college. I had thought I lost her for good a decade ago. But then this.
I pulled the letter from its pocket. There were other papers behind it, in a manila envelope: the deed to the cottage I was sitting in. I dragged everything out, spread it out on the table.
Mom had given me the deed and Katie’s letter at the same time, in a little bundle tied with string. We were sitting in the atrium of Café Flora, drinking mimosas at our monthly brunch. I had opened the envelopes, confused: the deed, with my mother’s signature and the stamp of a notary, the address and a description of the cottage on Orwell Island; then the beat-up letter with the return address simply Kathryn Paley, Marrow Island, WA 98297. The postmark on the letter was three weeks old.
Orwell and Marrow were two separate islands, but they were often mentioned together because they were so remote from the other islands in the San Juans — right up against Boundary Pass and Canadian waters — and they relied so much on each other. Before the earthquake, the only ferry service to and from Marrow had been from Orwell. After the quake, there had been no reason to go to Marrow at all, only reasons to avoid it.
Unless you were someone like Katie.
“I guess she’s still living out there on the commune?” Mom had nodded at the letter, tipping back the rest of her mimosa. Mom had never trusted Katie and had once told me she reminded her of a feral cat. “I guess she finally settled down.”
“You’re giving me the cottage,” I had answered.
“It was always yours, Lucie.”
“We both know that’s not true,” I’d said.
We had looked at each other for a long time, and the bright expression she was wearing faded. There were so many lines on her face. There had been times over the years when I knew she wanted to be rid of the cottage, when it was a burden to her. And to her new husband, who worked for a developer and saw the “potential” in tearing the place down and building something modern.
“You can always sell it.” She had leaned toward me, put her hand on mine. “I know you could use the money.”
I had thought about texting her before I left for Orwell, letting her know I was going to check on the cottage. But I didn’t. I had written to Katie, though. A postcard, mailed a few days before the trip, telling her I was coming.
I pulled on my boots and one of Dad’s old coats from the closet, took my coffee and Katie’s letter out to the porch. I sat on the steps and reread the letter, looked over Katie’s tight cursive — tall, compressed letters strung together and tilting across the unlined paper so that I tipped my head to the right as I read.
Dear Lucie,
I’ve tried your old address & the e-mail at the newspaper. No luck. I’m assuming your mom & stepdad haven’t sold their house on the lake, so hopefully they’ll get this to you. I’ll keep this short, just in case. I’ve written a few long letters that came back to me.
I’ve read your articles and I’m so proud of you. You always knew what you wanted to do, and you went for it. I always admired that about you. I think I was jealous, even. I never knew what I wanted to do, so I tried everything
.
Things changed for me at the Colony. It was supposed to be a three-month externship, but I knew I belonged here. There’s too much to explain, but you would be interested in the work we’ve done here. Your interest in the state of the planet, your sense of justice. You always needed to see things put right. I want you to come see what we’ve done on Marrow. It hasn’t always been easy, but the work we’ve done here is unprecedented. We’ve transformed the island, Lucie. The island everyone abandoned. Have you even been back to Orwell in the last twenty years? You should come home, Lu.
I’ve been here for almost ten years & I’ve thought of you every day. How could I not? How could I have thought I was putting distance between us? Sometimes I even think I see you, down at the end of the table at meals, like at summer camp, or wandering the shore with your head down, looking for agates. Then I blink, and you’re gone. I know how it sounds — but there it is. I’m saying it because you probably won’t even read this.
I miss you, Lu.
Katie
Squinting into the fog, I could make out a faint light still shining from the window at Rookwood, but the mist and trees obscured most of the house. It had been the summer home of Maura Swenson, an artist and heiress of a lumber and mining fortune. The Swensons were lumber millionaires, maritime industrialists. Maura built Rookwood in 1918, in the Arts and Crafts style, as a showcase of Pacific Northwest materials. Great fir beams and limestone flagging from her father’s mills and quarries, stones from the Skagit and Snohomish riverbeds, hardwood carvings of ravens and pine boughs in the eaves. All handcrafted. Every inch. Grandpa Whit and Grandma Lucia had been the caretakers. Maura willed them the cottage and the land it was on when she passed away.
Maura’s daughter Julia had been like a grandmother to me after my own passed away. I could still remember the timbre of her voice and the waft of her eau de toilette. I ran in and out of Rookwood all summer long, chasing Julia’s cocker spaniel, Daisy, in the yard. Katie and I had played hide-and-seek in the immense house. For weeks after the earthquake, Mom and I stayed with Julia at Rookwood, not sure if our own cottage was safe. We ate strange meals from the well-stocked but ancient pantry. Julia taught me to wedge clay and crochet lacy coasters, telling me the stories of her favorite saints, the patrons and patronesses of the sea, of boatmen, of laborers, of children. We would pray together for my dad’s safe return every night.