When I saw it, I felt only numb. I studied the angles of her face. Surely I should remember the sound of her voice. At least one thing she’d said to me. Perhaps the texture of her hands—had they been cool and soft?
The color of her eyes remained clear in my memory, but time had shaved away the rest of her details. After the description of her good works, the obituary said she was survived by a son, missing since 1913.
Until the end, she had hope. Until the last of her, she refused to believe in the last of me.
All the while, I sat on this hellish island. A century past, and I am no better, no greater, no more finished, than I was then. Here I sit, staring at an unfinished music box, suffering an existential crisis.
I’m a frigid, prisoned Hamlet—I have no choice but to be. But I am haunted by the awareness that I cannot be. There’s but one in the world that could acknowledge me. The same one that would make me real again.
Longing breaks through my ice; it’s painful and bloody. I press my hands to it. Though I know it will mean nothing at my plate in the morning, I wish for the impossible. I wish for Willa. I wish for her to come.
Another voice in this tomb is sometimes enough.
FOURTEEN
Willa
I went to school. Not because I cared, but because I had nowhere else to go.
My mother had the day off. I’d missed the low tide. Somebody had bought the boat in Milbridge, and Daddy left before dawn. Landlocked, it was easier for me to avoid looking to the lighthouse. I could bury myself in make-up work.
The air was molasses, thick and hard for me to walk through. Usually, the halls at Vandenbrook echoed like crazy. If you turned the right way in the English room, you could hear math lessons drifting up from the first story. Since it was a mansion once, it only seemed right. Couldn’t have a gothic mystery in a house that was soundtight and echoproof.
But on the day before my court date, the halls sounded hollow. Voices wound around me, sounding like they’d been shouted down a pipe, miles and miles away.
“Where have you been?” Ashley Jewett asked. She peeled off the wall to walk with me.
With a shrug, I said, “Around.”
Eyes darting, Ashley leaned in close. “Have you talked to Seth lately? You know me. You know I don’t like to start drama. But . . .”
Though it wasn’t a lie in the standard way, it wasn’t true, either. Ashley loved drama. She got all the tabloids online, she had Oh No They Didn’t on permanent scroll. You could tell when it was a bad signal day for cells if Ashley was leaning out a window with her phone.
For twelve seconds in ninth grade, she tried to get a gossip site about Broken Tooth going. Everybody knew it was her, and it wasn’t like we didn’t catch most news as it happened. She shut it down and rededicated herself to going person-to-person instead. It was tradition, and it worked. Mostly. She seemed to have skipped a link on my personal chain.
“We broke up,” I told her.
Visibly deflating, Ashley pursed her lips. She was going to salvage something out of this. “For real, or just on a break?”
As if it was that neat. He still had my DVDs. I still had a bunch of his shirts. We hadn’t signed a contract. We hadn’t even really said it was over. I just knew it was, and so did he.
Rather than scent the water with blood, I caught Ashley’s hand and squeezed it gently. “If you saw him with somebody else, it’s all right.”
It wasn’t. My stomach soured; not that I wanted to go back, but I didn’t want to see him dating Denny. If he wanted to get his flirt on, he could go to Bangor. Hang out in front of a movie theatre, show off by throwing popcorn in the air to catch in his mouth. He got plenty of attention doing it when I was there. Without me, it would be a silver bullet.
Didn’t matter, though. Ashley shook her head. “No! Is he seeing someone else?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“So weird. Because I was just wondering why he got into it with your dad at the co-op. Do you know?”
Veering toward a wall, I backed against it, out of the way of traffic. The wall held me up as I pushed a hand through my hair. Twisting it tight, I suffered a strange, cold roll in my belly. It took me a minute to get my words together.
Seth didn’t have words with people, let alone my father. Daddy got mouthy when he needed to, but what would he need to go at Seth for? Mismatched emotions competed for my attention, confusion winning out.
“As a matter of fact,” I told Ashley, “I do not.”
Ashley flumped next to me. It was obvious she was disappointed. “Ohh. I thought you would.”
It made sense, didn’t it? My ex-boyfriend, my father—I should have known. Just another gap in my life. Another silence where sound would have served me better. Holding up my hands, I tried to set Ashley free. The best way to do that was to put her on another subject entirely.
“Sorry. I heard Nick was getting his student license, though. Maybe that’s got something to do with it?”
Brightening, Ashley nodded. “It might. That’s a good . . . I bet you’re right.”
“Glad to be of service.”
Before she pushed off the wall, she leaned her head on my shoulder. We knew each other; it was a small town and a small school. But we’d never been close, so it was kinda weird.
Then she made it a little less weird by patting me as she pulled away. “Sorry about you and Seth. I thought you guys were getting married for sure.”
I felt a twinge. “It happens. You know.”
As soon as she headed down the hall, I started for the far end of the building. First half hour, before school started, Seth used to hang out with me. My best guess was that now he was trying to get as much space between the two of us as he could. I wound through the halls, down to the servant’s entrance and the porch out back.
Fully expecting to find him on the other side of the door, I threw it open. But it revealed nothing but empty forest. The leaves were falling in earnest now. Bright gold and copper lights flickered down. When I held my breath, I heard them land. Little whispers that went on, deep into the shadows, and beyond my sight.
Summer was over. Now autumn. Winter loomed, and I couldn’t imagine spring. I thought there might be a murder trial then. Bailey’d get early admission somewhere. I wouldn’t be running new rope or knitting bait bags or scrubbing barnacles from traps—or if I was, it wasn’t because I’d be heading out to fish.
Come spring, unfathomable spring, the rest of my life in Broken Tooth would drift away.
Sitting on the porch, I bowed my head and just listened.
When Daddy banged into the kitchen, right after sunset, I sprang to my feet.
“What’s going on with you and Seth?”
With rolled eyes, he brushed past me. He was dirty and wearing new bandages. I could tell all he wanted to do was heat a can of soup and watch some football. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to me.
Still, I followed him. “Must have been some blowout. Ashley Jewett knew all about it.”
“Then why’re you asking me?”
It was the perfect question. Not to please or defuse me; to drive me rabid instead. There was logic, and then there was Daddy logic. The kind with teeth and sarcasm, and just enough reason to it that it made me feel stupid and furious at the same time.
Cutting in front of him, I leaned against the pantry. “Because I want to hear it from you.”