It takes a moment to orient myself, last night still whirling through my head. I push back the sheet and stretch my toes over the hardwood floor, feeling stiff and achy and like a hammer is cracking against my skull from the inside. Sunlight peeks through the daffodil-yellow curtains, reflecting off the white walls and the white dresser and the high white ceiling—blinding me.
I press my fingers to my eyes and yawn. In the full-length mirror mounted to the closet door, I catch my reflection. Dark circles rim both eyes, and my ponytail has slid partway free so that strands of coffee-brown hair drift across my face. I look horrible.
The floor is cold, but I plod to one of the massive windows overlooking the choppy sea and slide the window upward in its frame.
In the wind I can still hear it: the faint cry of a song.
*
The scent of powdered sugar and maple syrup hangs in the air like a soft winter snowfall. I find her in the kitchen standing at the stove—Mom—her dark hair tied in a braid down her back, a serpent of brown, folded and coiled. And I feel like I’m still caught in a dream, my head swirling, my body rocking side to side like it’s being pushed inland by an invisible tide.
“Are you hungry?” she asks without turning around. I absorb her movements, the sedated way she slides the spatula under a doughy pancake and flips it in the pan. She doesn’t normally make breakfast—not anymore—so this is a rare occurrence. Something’s up. For a moment I let a memory materialize in my mind: her making waffles with homemade blackberry jam, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the stove, her eyes and lips smiling, the morning sun on her face. She was happy once.
I touch my stomach, clenched and queasy. “Not really,” I answer. There’s no way I could eat right now. And keep it down. I move past her to the counter, where a row of identical silver tins sit perfectly spaced. They are unmarked, but I know the contents of each one: Lavender Chamomile, Rose Earl Grey, Cardamom Chai, Moroccan Mint, and Jasmine Dragon Pearl. I boil water then set my tea to steep—Rose Earl Grey—and lean against the counter breathing in the rustic, sweet scent.
“We have guests,” she says suddenly, sliding the lightly browned pancakes onto a white plate.
I glance around the kitchen then back at her. The house is silent. “Who?”
She looks over at me, examining the creases around my eyes from lack of sleep; the queasiness that comes in waves when I pinch my lips tightly together to keep from vomiting. She stares for a moment, eyes pinched like she doesn’t quite recognize me. Then she drops her gaze. “That boy you brought to the island last night,” she says. The memory pours back through me: the beach, Bo, and my offering him a job on the island. Again I press my palms to my eyes.
“Is he a local boy?” she asks.
“No.” I recall the moment on the dock when he said he was looking for work. “He came into town yesterday.”
“For the Swan season?” she asks, setting the skillet back on the stove and turning off the burner.
“No. He’s not a tourist.”
“Can we trust him?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly—I don’t actually know anything about him.
“Well,” she says, turning around to face me and sliding her hands down into the pockets of her thick black robe, “he’s just waking up. Take him some breakfast. I don’t want a stranger inside the house.” This is one of her gifts: She knows when people are near, when they’re coming to the island—she senses their arrival like a nagging in the pit of her stomach. And this explains why she decided to cook breakfast—what drove her from bed just after the sun rose, compelled her into the kitchen to turn on the stove and pull out her good skillet. She might not want a stranger in the house, she might not trust him, but she won’t allow him to starve. It’s just her nature. Even her grief can’t keep her from kindness.
She pours maple syrup over the stack of warm pancakes then hands me the plate. “And take him some blankets,” she adds. “Or he’ll freeze out there.” She doesn’t ask why he’s here, why I brought him to the island—for what purpose. Maybe she just doesn’t care.
I tug on the green rubber boots beside the front door and a black raincoat, then grab a set of sheets and a thick wool blanket from the hall closet. Holding a palm over the plate of pancakes to keep the rain from turning them into a soggy heap of sugar and flour, I step outside.
Pools of water collect in divots and holes beside the walkway, and sometimes the rain seems to rise up from the ground instead of from overhead—a snow globe effect, but with water. A swift wind crashes against my face as I make my way down to the cottage.
The sturdy wood door rattles when I knock, and Bo opens it almost instantly, as if he had been just about to step outside.
“Morning,” I say. He’s standing in jeans and a charcoal-gray raincoat. A fire crackles in the fireplace behind him. And he looks rested, showered, and new. Nothing like how I feel. “How’d you sleep?”
“Fine.” Yet his voice is weathered and deep, betraying perhaps a lack of sleep after all. His eyes stare unblinking, soaking me in, and my skin prickles with the intensity of it. He is not someone who looks through you, past you, like you’re not even there. His gaze is sharp, incisive, and an itch settles behind my eyes, making me want to look away.
He shuts the door behind me, and I set the plate of pancakes on the small square wood table in the kitchen then brush my palm down my jeans even though there is nothing to wipe off. The cottage feels different with him inside it, and the glow from the fireplace smooths over all the hard, rough edges so that everything feels muted and soft.
I place the sheets and wool blanket on the musty gray couch facing the fireplace, and he sits at the table. “Can you show me the lighthouse today?” he asks, taking a bite of the pancakes. In this light, in the scarlet hue of the fire, he reminds me of the boys who come into town aboard fishing boats, green and wild looking, like they’ve been cast off by the winds, set adrift.
He reminds me of someone who has left his past behind.
“Sure.” I bite the inside of my bottom lip. My eyes scan the cottage. The tall wood bookshelves beside the fireplace are crowded with books and old almanacs and tide-chart periodicals, all covered in a decade of dust. Lumps of aqua-blue sea glass, collected over the years from the island’s rocky shores, are piled into a small porcelain dish. On the top shelf sits a large wood clock that probably once lived on the deck of a ship. This cottage has served as the living quarters for a variety of staff and hired laborers, men who stayed a week and others years, but almost all left something behind. Trinkets and mementos, hints about their lives, but never the full story.