Innis Harbor

by Patricia Evans Cox

  “No,” she said, holding her husband’s gaze. “They wouldn’t come near the car because it was on fire. I was just trapped there, watching them back farther and farther away.”

  “I never knew that,” Amir said, looking from one to the other, her voice soft. “I remember you recovering after the wreck, but you never told us what really happened.”

  “What happened,” she said, turning to Loch, “is that I was losing consciousness when your aunt threw the door open, cut me out of the seat belt with her knife, and carried me across the road about five seconds before the fire hit the gas tank.”

  Hamid set his glass slowly onto the table, which was suddenly the only sound in the room. “Did you stay in touch after that?”

  Mrs. Farzaneh caught a tear on her cheek and wiped it away before she answered. “We were friends until the day she died.”

  After the dishes were done and Amir had helped clean up, they said their goodbyes as Mr. Farzaneh disappeared upstairs. Hamid watched and shook his head, his jaw tense with unspoken words.

  Mrs. Farzaneh pulled Loch into a warm hug as she said goodbye. “I forgot to thank you for the cookies, dear, they’re beautiful. Where did you get them?”

  Loch hesitated, but Amir stepped in.

  “She went to the restaurant in Bar Harbor to get the ingredients from your sisters, but she made them herself.”

  She looked at Loch with soft eyes and squeezed her hand. “You’re so much like Samia.” She looked up the staircase. “And you’re welcome in our home anytime.”

  As they walked to the truck, Loch took Amir’s hand. “I can’t drive just yet, but I have somewhere I want to take you.”

  “Sure,” Amir said, her voice tense. “Anywhere but here.”

  Loch stopped in her tracks, then smacked Amir lightly on the arm. “Well, great. I was going to suggest we go back into the house for a game of Trivial Pursuit.” She hesitated again. “So, that’s totally out of the question?”

  Amir laughed as she opened the passenger’s side door for Loch, then walked around the truck and got in. “All right, boss, where are we going?”

  “That,” Loch said, as Amir started up the truck with a jolt and headed down the driveway, “is up to me, so you just pipe down over there and head for the water. I’ll tell you when you need to know.”

  Amir smiled and looked out the window. She was quiet as she drove out of town and onto the winding seaside roads leading to Acadia National Park. Loch finally glanced over and picked the question out of the air, turning it over a couple of times before she asked it.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “God, no.”

  Amir’s gaze was on the road, and she didn’t look over as she answered, just drove the wide curve of road around the edge of the sea as night fell in sheer navy sheets around them. Amir hit the lights and placed her hand on Loch’s thigh as she lowered her window and let the wind rush past her face, drying the tears Loch had already seen. After a few minutes, Loch had her pull off onto a dark side road and up to the edge of a remote sixty-foot cliff. The granite drop-off was raw, with a jagged edge that looked as if it had been torn off centuries before and tossed into the sea. The tires rolled slowly to a stop a few feet from the edge, crushing the gravel beneath them.

  “I’m impressed,” Amir said, her gaze tracking a hawk it was almost too dark to see as it glided past the drop-off toward the rising moon. “Most people don’t even know where this is.”

  “You keep forgetting I’m not a tourist.”

  Amir reached out in the darkness and slowly traced Loch’s lower lip with her thumb. Loch touched it with her tongue, drawing it into the warmth of her mouth.

  “Fuck, baby.” Amir leaned back against the headrest, her eyes closed. It was forever before she opened them and shifted the truck silently into park.

  Loch wanted to ask her a thousand things, pull her into her arms, tell her how sorry she was about what happened, how much it didn’t matter. But it did matter, so there was nothing to say.

  Amir got out of the truck, walked around front, and opened Loch’s door. She pulled Loch’s body against her hips in one smooth motion, her words low and hot against Loch’s neck.

  “Kill the lights.”

  Amir wrapped Loch’s legs around her waist, hands strong against her back, and kicked the door shut with her foot as she carried her to the front of the truck. Loch sat on the hood and leaned back until she felt the cold metal against her back and looked up at the sky dusted with stars so close they left a sheer haze of light across her body. The air was soft, as warm as bare skin, and the wind shifted the treetops gently across the night sky.

  Amir slid Loch’s jeans off and tossed them on the hood, then ran her tongue up the inside of Loch’s thigh, lifting it to rest on her shoulder. She held Loch’s gaze as she laid her palm against the center of her chest, slow and strong, holding her between the truck and the stars. Loch felt the heat of Amir’s mouth slide across her clit and arched her back as Amir slid her fingers inside. Amir flicked her tongue against it, then pulled it lightly into her mouth, swirling around it with just enough pressure to make Loch arch and tangle her fingers into Amir’s hair. Loch’s thigh tensed against her shoulder as Amir slicked her tongue around her clit until it was taut and aching and Loch was whispering for her to let her come.

  “Amir,” she said, barely moving but breathless. “More.”

  Amir slid a third finger inside and fucked her strong and slow, stroking her clit with her tongue until she felt Loch’s thigh start to tremble against her face. She pulled Loch down the hood of the truck until she had both of Loch’s thighs over her shoulders and rocked back and forth against her hips, her fingers deep inside. She kept her tongue on Loch’s clit, reaching up to run her palm across her nipples or biting her thigh hard into her mouth when she got too close, until Loch was begging her for it, breathless and wanting.

  “Baby,” Loch said, back arched, every muscle in her body tensed against the cold steel of the truck hood. “Make me come for you.”

  That was all Amir needed to hear. She drew Loch’s clit into her mouth and rocked into her, holding her strong at the small of her back as she came. She cried out into the darkness, the sound echoing off the undulating sea below, but Amir didn’t stop fucking her, just slowed until she felt Loch’s body start to move with her again and she heard her cry out again a few seconds later, the sound repeating as it bounced off the cliff faces below, finally sinking into the dark seawater.

  Loch sat up when her breath slowed and pulled Amir to her, kissing away the tears she found on her cheeks. Loch held her as she cried, then tighter as she listened to Amir’s body tell her what she wasn’t willing to hear herself say.

  They drove home that night, the silence dense and intimate, with the moonroof open to bring the stars closer. Loch never asked, just held her hand over Amir’s heart as she fell asleep.

  The next few days sped by in a blur. The women’s shelter came in and retrieved Samia’s furniture, quickly and sensitively, but Loch decided five minutes into the process that she’d be better off down at the café reading what was left of the newspaper.

  When she returned a few hours later, the house was empty, silence hanging in the air with the dust as if looking for a place to settle. Loch walked into the kitchen, looking around with fresh eyes. The house was suddenly expansive, with wide beams of sunlight falling in from the tall windows like a watercolor wash of pale gold, highlighting the faded spaces where photos and paintings had been on the walls for decades. She traced a wide square of faded wallpaper with her fingertip where a picture of Samia and her father had always hung. It had been taken at the diner in town sometime in the fifties, and it was Samia’s favorite. Loch had packed it up carefully before the shelter came for the furniture and put it in the attic with the others she’d saved for Skye and their mother.

  She ran a hand through her hair and turned where she stood, feeling the burn of tears behind her eyelids. Memories swi
rled around her as if she’d somehow sunk beneath the cold surface of the ocean, and she held her breath as they played out against the backdrop of the murky water around her. Samia walking into the kitchen through a path of white sunlight from the skylight in her studio with a paintbrush tangled into the center of a bun on top of her head. Her hair changed over the years from a silver shock of wild curls to a thick white drift, but it was always wound around a random paintbrush piercing the center. Loch had watched her pick up a paintbrush more than once that was still dripping paint and wedge it into her hair, her eyes intense and focused on the canvas in front of her. Loch’s favorite was blue. Somehow, the blue tints never really washed out, and Samia was left with swirls of pale azure tint in her hair, like wispy white clouds swirled with blue summer sky.

  Loch shook her head, but the memories seemed to press in around her, stealing the air. Somehow, the empty house was harder to take than when it had been full of Samia’s things. She could still look around then and see her aunt all around her, but now, Samia was gone, and it seemed the house had exhaled, then never took another breath. It was time to make it her own, whether she decided to keep it or sell it, and she felt like a traitor. She turned in slow circles, trying to imagine the walls a different color, with furniture that reflected her more urban style, but everything was too different already. She should have prepared better or known by now what she wanted to do. She closed her eyes and fought the urge to slide down the wall and do nothing.

  A hard knock at the door jerked her back to reality. She considered not answering it, but by the time the thought crossed her mind, whoever it was had found the doorbell. She pulled on her hoodie and shoved her hands in her pockets, pausing before she opened the door, hoping whomever it was would just give up. No such luck.

  She opened the door to find a burly man in white overalls, holding a toolbox and a paint-splattered bucket of brushes.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” he said in a thick Southern accent. “Where do you want us?”

  Loch paused. “I think you might have the wrong house. Are you sure you’re looking for 333 White Street?”

  He nodded, then looked over his shoulder as two more trucks pulled up and more guys piled out, reaching into the truck beds for ladders and paint cans. The logo on the truck doors caught her eye, just as yet another pulled up to the curb and parked.

  Lock Up Your Daughters.

  “Ma’am?” The guy in the white overalls still standing on her porch pulled off his cap and looked at his watch, which was also splattered with paint. “If you just want to tell us where to set up, we can get started.”

  “I’m sorry,” Loch said, smiling as she saw Amir get out of the truck and start toward the house. “Please, come in.”

  He gestured to the rest of the crew and stepped past Loch, leaving her on the porch as Amir climbed the steps and pulled Loch into her arms.

  “I’m sorry, babe,” she said, whispering into her hair as she held her close. “I meant to be here to explain before my guys took over your house, but her plane was late.”

  “Explain what?” Loch pulled back just enough to see Amir’s face. “What is all this?”

  Then something caught her eye over Amir’s shoulder, and Loch peered down at the truck as the passenger door opened, the glare of the sun glinting off the window in a blinding arc as someone stepped out. Loch took a breath, then took off running, throwing her arms around her sister before she’d even had a chance to drop her bags.

  “Skye!” Loch said breathless, her cheeks wet with sudden tears, letting her go only to hug her again. “Where the hell did you come from?”

  “Your girlfriend thought you might need some help picking out paint colors, so I told my coach I had mono.” Skye winked at Amir as she walked up behind Loch. “And not that I really care, but I think he bought it.”

  Amir smiled and squeezed Loch’s hand. “I knew the shelter was coming today to help clear out, and I thought you might need some company.”

  “How did you even know how to contact her?”

  Amir smiled, picking up Skye’s bags and dropping them into the back of her truck. “It took me three seconds to find her on Facebook. She did the rest.”

  “Well, that’s complete B.S.” Skye gave Amir’s shoulder a playful punch. “She set everything up, all I did was get my ass on the plane this morning.”

  “All right, girls.” Amir smiled as she held out the keys to her truck. “Which one of you wants to drive?”

  Loch and Skye looked at each other and laughed as they watched the reality of the situation dawn on Amir.

  “Seriously?” she said. “Skye, you can’t drive, either?” She dropped her keys back into her pocket and nodded down the hill toward town. “Okay, New Yorkers,” she said, smiling. “Walter is waiting for you at the hardware store, he’s the owner. Get down there and bring me back some paint chips in whatever colors you decide on for the house. I gave him a layout of the house this morning, so all you have to do is pick your colors and tell us where they go.”

  “So, that’s what this is?” Loch looked back into the house where ladders were quickly going up and strips of tape were being laid down. “You sent your crew to paint my house for me?”

  “Yep,” Amir said. “I know how overwhelming it can feel to have to do something like this. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to do it alone.”

  Loch caught a tear on her cheek with the heel of her hand and leaned into Amir.

  “God,” Skye said, looking Amir up and down. “Please tell me you have a single brother.”

  “Just missed him, I’m afraid,” Amir said. “He’s all kinds of married.”

  “Just my luck.” Skye slipped on her sunglasses and looked toward town. “Let’s get going so I can pick out all my favorite colors for the house.” She paused, looking back at Loch over her shoulder and sliding the sunglasses down her nose. “I mean your favorites.”

  Amir pulled Loch into a quick hug. “We’ll sand and prime while you’re gone, so take your time. Just let him know what colors, and I’ll get with Walter later as far as how much paint we need.”

  After Loch and Skye had spent the better part of the afternoon comparing dozens of colors with names like Tart Hibiscus and Wild Bluebell, they finally narrowed it down to their favorites and brought samples back to the house to tape onto the walls. Loch also brought back a box of handmade sandwiches from the market and a case of beer for the crew, which seemed to make her some sort of instant rock star. They all settled onto the back deck and soaked up the sun while Loch and Skye walked around the house and tried to decide which colors went where. Amir taped the color samples up on each wall as they decided.

  “By the way.” Skye peeked through the empty rooms. “Where are we sleeping tonight? They already have tape and drop cloths all over the room you’re staying in.”

  “You’re both staying at my house,” Amir said, ripping the painter’s tape off the roll with her teeth. “Well, kind of, anyway. My family has a short-term rental at the lake that’s empty at the moment. It will keep you out of the fumes while we get everything painted.”

  The doorbell sounded again, and Skye went to answer it. She was back a few seconds later. “It’s the police.” She glanced back toward the open door and lowered her voice. “And they want to speak to Amir.”

  Loch took a paint color strip out of her mouth and looked at Amir. “How did they even know to look for you here?”

  “It’s a small damn town.” Amir wiped a white haze of primer off her hands with a rag. “I’m sure it’s nothing. I’ll be right back.”

  Loch and Skye peered around the corner and watched her step out onto the porch and shut the door behind her.

  Skye looked at Loch. “What the hell was that about? There’s like three of them out there.”

  “I have absolutely no idea.” Loch returned the tape roll to the top of the ladder. “But I guess we’ll find out.”

  It was a few minutes before Amir returned, but when she
did, it was clear that whatever the police wanted to talk to her about, it was not nothing.

  “I need to go down to the station for a few minutes.” Amir pulled on her sweatshirt and ran a hand through her hair. “I spoke to Chris, my foreman, and he’s going to drive you out to the house when you let him know you’re ready. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

  Loch watched a vein in Amir’s neck tense as she spoke and saw that the hand that wasn’t holding her keys was clenched into a fist.

  “What is all this about?” Loch kept her voice steady and light, but she felt knocked a bit off her feet, as if a wave had suddenly hit her from behind.

  “I’ll tell you what I know tonight. I’ll bring dinner out to the house after I’m done.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Skye said as she looked at her watch. “I’m making dinner tonight. Just bring yourself when you’re done, and we’ll put a beer in your hand before you even make it through the door.”

  Amir looked at her with a sudden flash of gratitude and whispered to Loch as she leaned in to kiss her. “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll explain everything tonight.”

  And then she was gone. The house felt suddenly emptier, cold, as if all the promise had been sucked out of it. Chris, the burly redhead who Loch had met at the door, popped his head in an hour later and asked if they’d decided on colors, so they handed him the three-page list of directions they’d just finished, which didn’t seem to faze him in the least. Loch packed an overnight bag and gave it to Chris. He promised to lock up the house when the crew was done for the day, then offered to take them out to the lake house if they were ready. He had a deep Southern accent, a red beard that made him look like he should be wearing a kilt, and a gun rack in his truck that was bigger than Skye.

  “Are all those guns yours?” Skye asked as he took out the guns and carefully stacked them in a stainless steel box bolted to the back of the truck so there was room for her to sit.

  “Nope,” he said, clamping the locks shut with the heel of his hand. “This is my wife’s pickup. I have the big ones in my truck at home.”