August Isle

by Ali Standish

  After a few more moments, we had finished our picnic, and I could see that Inkeri’s niece was eager to get back to her search. I wished her good luck and returned to my boat.

  A few mornings later, I opened my door to find a leather strap studded with bells that had been rusted silent. Attached to it was a note.

  “Use this when you tell Inkeri’s story. It’s from the sleigh I recovered yesterday. There was no sign of Inkeri’s remains. It seems appearances can be deceiving.”

  21

  We sat in silence for a moment after Mr. Taylor finished speaking and I finished typing. Then he passed the strap to me, its bells rusted silent. I stroked the rough leather before handing it off to Sammy.

  “I knew the woman was right,” Sammy said. “I knew Inkeri ran away.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think she was right about Inkeri being very courageous,” I said.

  Mr. Taylor looked at me curiously. “Why’s that?”

  “Well, what about her family?” I asked, my hands clenching. “Her little sisters and her mom. She just left them behind. They probably really missed her. They probably relied on her for a lot.”

  “What was she supposed to do?” Caleb said. His voice was tight, like a rubber band being snapped. “Marry some guy she didn’t love? They would have been miserable together. She was better off running.”

  I had never seen Caleb get so worked up about anything. Sammy’s jaw hung open, and she looked back and forth from me to Caleb. “What’s your problem today?” she asked.

  “It’s not a problem to disagree,” Mr. Taylor said, clearing his throat. “Stories change depending on who’s listening to them. That’s the beauty of them. Now I think it’s time for Miranda to taste her first key lime pie.”

  A minute later, when Betsy bustled in from the kitchen, my hands unclenched, and I felt silly for caring so much about some old story.

  “Best key lime pie in the state of Florida,” Betsy crowed. “My grandmother’s recipe. Always wins the August Festival pie contest.”

  “Miranda’s entering that!” Sammy exclaimed.

  “Are you, now?” Betsy asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said quickly. “I’m not very good.”

  “Well you’ve certainly got humble pie down,” she replied with a wink. “I’m sure you’re better than you think.”

  Betsy’s pie was really good. Smooth, tart, and sweet. I gobbled down my first slice, then asked for another.

  “Aha!” Betsy exclaimed. “Another convert. Mama will be delighted to know.”

  “Does she live here, too?” Sammy asked.

  “Mama’s spent her whole life on this island,” Betsy said. “All ninety-nine years of it.”

  “Your mom is ninety-nine?” Caleb asked.

  “That’s right,” she said. “It’s the pie. It keeps her young.”

  When we were finished for the afternoon, Mr. Taylor walked Sammy and Caleb out, but I stole past the dining room and toward the swinging kitchen door.

  “Betsy?” I called.

  She suddenly appeared, filling the doorway, pushing me back out into the living room. “Kitchen’s a mess,” she said, blowing a curl back from her face. “I can’t allow any guest to see it that way.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s okay. I just wondered—”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Well, your pie was so good,” I said. “And I tried to make one last night, but the crust didn’t come out right. So I guess I just wondered if you had any, like, tips?”

  “Hmmm,” Betsy hummed, tapping her nail to her lip. “Well, how were you feeling last night?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Were you distracted? Upset or anxious about anything?”

  I had gotten Mom’s text right before we started baking. “Maybe a little distracted.”

  “There’s your problem,” she said. “You can’t make a piecrust when you’re upset or distracted. No matter what you do, the dough just won’t cooperate. Next time, you have to block everything else out. Treat the dough like it’s the only thing in life that matters. That’s how you make a good piecrust.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

  “No problem,” Betsy said. “I could use a little competition.”

  She winked and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  I waved goodbye to Mr. Taylor and skipped out to join Sammy and Caleb, who were waiting on the sidewalk.

  “Man, is that guy lucky,” Caleb said.

  “What do you mean?” Sammy asked.

  “Come on. Sailing around the globe? Just going wherever the wind blows you, not a problem in the world? Sounds like a pretty good life to me.”

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly, thinking about what Mr. Taylor had told me about needing to get away from August Isle. “When he was talking to me, it kind of sounded like he didn’t really want to leave, but he had to.”

  “What do you mean?” Sammy asked, looking up into the sun and squinting.

  “I’m not really sure.”

  “Well, he’s got a story all right,” Sammy said. “One that he won’t tell us. The question is . . . why?”

  22

  By the next day, Caleb was back to normal again. I think he might have even felt kind of bad for snapping at me at Mr. Taylor’s. During our sailing lesson, Jason had us take turns using the tiller and sail to steer our boats through a little obstacle course he’d made with buoys (still where the water was shallow enough that I knew I would be able to touch the sandy bottom if I fell out).

  “Hey, nice job,” Caleb said once I had finished. He leaned over the side of his boat to give me a high five as I skimmed by.

  “Thanks,” I replied, cheeks flushing with pride.

  And after our lesson, he stuck around, tagging along as we went to check on the sea turtle’s nest (still there, still kind of boring) and get ice cream (goat cheese for Caleb, pineapple for me, and chili chocolate for Sammy) to eat under the August Oak.

  I got the feeling that Sammy and Caleb mostly liked sitting there because it was in the shade, and because all the rustling leaves made a little breeze that kept the heat from being so bad. But I loved it because being inside the bell of its branches somehow made me feel safe and cozy, kind of the way I felt back in Illinois when it was snowing outside and I was curled up on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate.

  When it was time to go to Mr. Taylor’s, Caleb showed us a shortcut. His dad was a vacation rental agent, he told us, which meant he had memorized pretty much every street on the Isle.

  I was still thinking about the high five Caleb had given me that morning when my toes caught on something and suddenly I felt myself lunge forward. Before I could fall, though, hands gripped me on either side.

  “Thanks,” I muttered as Caleb and Sammy steadied me.

  “No biggie,” Caleb said. “Everyone trips there.”

  I looked down to see that a square of sidewalk had been pushed up by one of the August Oak’s reaching roots.

  Sammy linked her arm through mine. “Here,” she said. “Now it’s impossible for you to trip.”

  Still, I kept my eyes on my feet as we left Oak Street behind. Anyone could have tripped on that bit of sidewalk—Caleb had said so himself. But only a true klutz would trip twice in ten minutes.

  It had started to rain, and as I watched, the sidewalk began to freckle with little droplets. Then I noticed something else up ahead.

  Words that had been written into the concrete when it was still wet.

  Names. Three of them, each written in a different handwriting, stacked one on top of another.

  Clare

  Beth

  Ben

  A nearby peal of thunder shook my stomach. It had begun to rain harder. Sammy pulled her arm away and began to run, but I didn’t move. I had to squat down to get a better look. I traced my mother’s name with my own finger. She still wrote her B’s with the same big swoops.

  I had pretty much given up on my investigation
after Aunt Clare showed me those photos of Mom. I wasn’t sure I could handle finding out anything more about her past.

  But now I was staring at a clue. I was standing on it.

  “Miranda!” Sammy was calling. “Come on! We’re getting wet.”

  When I didn’t come, Sammy jogged back to me. “What’s up?”

  I pointed at the sidewalk.

  “‘Clare, Beth, Ben,’” she read. “Hey, that’s cool! But who’s Ben?”

  “You don’t know?”

  Sammy shook her head. “All I know is we’re going to get soaked if we stay here. Let’s go!”

  I took one last look at the names, a weird feeling stirring in my chest that I didn’t have a name for. Then I tore my gaze away and ran after Sammy and Caleb.

  Once we got to Mr. Taylor’s, I didn’t have much time to think about the names, because he put us straight to work. Our first crate that day was from Sweden, and the first thing I pulled out of it was a small black box.

  Inside was a dainty necklace. After I booted up the old laptop, Mr. Taylor flipped to a new page in his notebook and began to read.

  Stockholm in the winter was like a great swan resting on the edge of the sea, with feathers so white, they sparkled. One snowy evening there, I was eating a late supper in a restaurant and watching the passersby, huddled in their parkas and wool scarves, when a man came out from the kitchen.

  He greeted me and asked me how my food was, and I soon realized that he was the owner. His accent was not Swedish, and he walked with a slight limp. Flecks of gold swam in the deep shadows of his eyes. Too deep for a man so young. I asked if he might sit a moment with a stranger and tell me his story.

  “My story is the story of my country,” he said, “and what happened when it fell apart. It starts when I was only a boy, and trouble had been brewing for many months. Later, people would call it the Bosnian War, but back then it was simply a storm darkening the ridge of the mountains that guarded our village. My family had lived there all our lives, in a cottage where I shared a room with my three sisters.

  “We had greater things to worry about than war. My father owned a small shop, and we never seemed to have enough food or fuel. Sometimes I would become angry at the way we lived, especially when I went with my mother to the nearest town to sell the plums and sloeberries she grew in the summer. There, everyone seemed to own a TV, and shoes that had no holes. My anger hurt my parents deeply, because they believed there was honor in working hard and being honest people.

  “One spring day, when the whispers of war had grown too loud to ignore, my mother and I went to town. People kept their heads down, and everyone seemed to be in a hurry. As we walked, I saw a man beside me drop something, and when I bent down to pick it up, I saw that it was a large bill.

  “I nearly called out to the man, but my voice caught in my throat. I thought of the things I could buy with such money. A good soccer ball, or all the candy I could carry, or maybe even a new pair of shoes. I quickly shoved the bill into my pocket. It weighed almost nothing, yet it felt heavy in my coat. Almost immediately, I wished I could give it back, but the man who had dropped it had already disappeared.

  “I decided I could not spend the money on myself but would instead buy something beautiful for my mother. I settled on a delicate copper necklace with a tiny turquoise pendant. But when I gave the necklace to her that night—telling her I had found it on the street—she began to cry. She pushed the gift back into my hands, telling me to return it. She knew I could not have come by it honestly. I had never felt a guilt so great, like a whale in my belly.

  “Only a week later, war came to our village and my father was killed trying to defend his shop. The rest of us fled through the woods. We settled for a while in a new town, but then the shelling started, and our flat caught fire. My mother and one of my sisters did not make it out. My eldest sister took my little sister and me onward. She made us keep going, even when we had no food, even when the cold bit our fingers. Eventually we made it to safety and were resettled here, in Sweden.

  “All the time, I carried the necklace in my pocket. I began to believe that it was cursed. Perhaps if I had been content in my life, if I had not stolen the money and bought the necklace, war would have missed our village. Perhaps my mother and father and sister would be alive, and we would be together always.”

  Then he dug into his pocket and pulled out the little necklace. It dangled from his palm.

  “Surely you didn’t actually believe that,” I said. “Stealing that money didn’t cause any of those things.”

  “I know that now,” said the man, “but back then, I felt that at least if I caused these terrible things to happen, it meant I had some power over what had been done to me. Better to be guilty than powerless, yes?”

  He dropped the necklace into my palm and closed my fingers around it. “You take it,” he said. “I have held it for far too long. Now tell me, friend, what weight do you carry in your pocket?”

  23

  Between spending our mornings at sailing lessons and our afternoons at Mr. Taylor’s house, the days began to feel like the roller coaster that Sammy, Caleb, and I rode the next time we went to the park.

  At first, summer had passed so slowly, like our car inching up the tracks while I gripped Sammy’s hand tight with fear. But then suddenly the days were zooming by, faster and faster, until one afternoon I realized that my month on August Isle was halfway over.

  And somewhere along the way, I had come to love it there.

  I loved the way my skin always smelled like sunscreen and my hair tasted like salt.

  I loved how it felt to stand in the surf and let my ankles sink into the sand, and to sit in the dappled light under the August Oak as Sammy, Caleb, and I licked our way through every flavor at Sundae’s.

  I loved how every morning, my heart beat hard as Jason and I sailed a little farther from shore than we had the day before. And how, when the lesson was over and we were sailing back to shore again, a lantern of pride would burn bright in my heart.

  I even loved the feeling of sand at the foot of my bed every night, like a little bit of the beach had followed me home.

  More than anything, though, I loved going to Mr. Taylor’s house.

  The rest of the Isle—the beach, the harbor, even the August Oak—was for everyone. But Mr. Taylor’s house seemed to exist just for him and Betsy and us. No one else ever came to or went from it, although once or twice we did see the round face of the lady next door peering through her window as we arrived.

  And then there were the stories.

  The stories were what made my heart start to flutter as we set out for Mr. Taylor’s house every day, and what always made us run the last few blocks to reach it.

  You could almost hear them as the house came into view, buzzing inside like a colony of bees. We heard the hum of them in our bones, even if we didn’t always understand exactly what they meant.

  There was the Bosnian refugee who had blamed himself for his family’s tragedy, and the hermit who lived up in the Ethiopian highlands, whittling exquisite birdhouses that no one had ever seen. There was the lonely Chinese woman who received a message in a bottle from her dead husband, sixty-three years after it was sent, and the Siberian boy who really had spent a year being raised by wolves.

  We always discussed the stories afterward, either with Mr. Taylor or on our own once we’d left his house. Had the Bosnian man ever forgiven himself for a war that was not his fault? What was the point of carving beautiful houses if only birds could see them?

  Every time we passed the sea turtle’s nest, I would think of what Sammy had said about how most of the hatchlings would die, and then I’d remember the words of the Dutch tulip farmer: Often the most exquisite things are the first to fade away. And life is the most exquisite thing of all.

  I thought I at least understood what that story meant—that life was fragile and short, but maybe knowing this helped us appreciate it more.

  Every aft
ernoon, we pleaded with Mr. Taylor to tell us his story. But each time, he shook his head and said, “Not today.” Then he called for Betsy to bring out whatever she had baked for us.

  Not every object we unpacked from the boxes came with a story. Some of their stories had already been forgotten. There was the blue South African butterfly pinned behind a sheet of glass that Mr. Taylor thought might be the last specimen of its species. The Swiss music box he’d found in an antique shop that played a haunting melody none of us had ever heard. There were maps of countries that no longer existed, books of legends no one had told for centuries, and portraits of people whose names no one could remember.

  At least they wouldn’t disappear completely now.

  Mr. Taylor started letting Safira out of her cage when we came. She would stand on a perch by the window, looking out and cawing in Portuguese at passersby, or hop over to the arm of the couch to settle by Mr. Taylor as we worked. He stroked her downy head and fed her macadamia nuts from a bowl on the table that was always full.

  Once, Sammy brought a bit of rope we’d found on the beach. She tried to tempt Slug into playing tug-of-war, but he merely glared at it for a moment before falling asleep again.

  “Try Safira,” Mr. Taylor said.

  “Really?” Sammy asked, looking worriedly at the parrot’s beak, nearly as big as my hand.

  Before he could answer, Safira had descended from her perch and begun to pull at the rope, first with her talons and then with her beak, twisting her head and sticking out her black tongue. I decided Mr. Taylor must have been teasing Caleb on our first day when he told him to be careful of his fingers, because Safira was very gentle.

  Sometimes, when Caleb went to take an armload of books to the library, he would take her, too, and we would hear him trying to teach her to say something in English, but she stuck stubbornly with her few words of Portuguese. And even though she still screeched “Ladrão!” every time we came—which Mr. Taylor said meant robber—I didn’t think she really meant it. It was just her way of saying hello.