Promise Bound

by Anne Greenwood Brown

  With that, I turned my back on Pavati and sped through the water, arms pointed forward, like I was the figurehead on a ship. I powered my way to shore. Calder was gone. Mom was slowly leaving us. Everything was falling apart. I was going to have to go in the house and tell my family that I had failed. Tell them that we had no choice. That we were going to have to make a deal with the devil.

  My despairing thoughts were unnaturally loud, and my cry pierced the lake—only a hair’s width, but a long needle of sound that spiked north, never pinging back, never blocked, interrupted, or redirected.

  “Calder!” I cried out, scaring myself. The sound shattered my heart like a bullet through glass.

  28

  CALDER

  The midmorning air was May cold. I wished I’d stopped to get my car, broken window and all, because it would have been nice to run the heater for a while. But more than warmth, I needed the water to clear my thoughts and make a plan. I was just too relieved. Too happy, really, knowing I’d given this parent-search thing a valiant effort. So I’d come up empty. So what? I’d never promised Lily that I’d find them, only that I’d look. Promise fulfilled. Check.

  If Lily was skeptical, I had at least five baffled witnesses—seven, if I counted Marc and the puck bunny—who could attest to the fact that I had been here. I thought Chelsea would back me up on at least that much. The only question was: would Lily still have me?

  I tightened my fists and watched the skin split in razor-thin slits across each white knuckle. Would it have been nice to find my parents? Maybe. But I told myself I didn’t care. Not enough to matter, anyway.

  Standing with my knees pressed against the guardrail that separated the road from the lake, I watched the waves chop into silver wedges of home. With happy anticipation, I pulled off the electrician’s T-shirt and tied it in a knot around a sapling that clung to the sandy soil. I was just about to do the same with my jeans when Chelsea pulled up alongside me in her car and let it idle. She rolled down the passenger-side window.

  “You can’t get naked on the side of the highway without getting arrested,” she said. “Trust me, I’ve tried.”

  I glanced back quickly to find her frowning at me.

  “Are you going to stay and watch?” I asked. Honestly, at this point I didn’t care.

  She got out and stood on the far side of her car, her arms resting on the roof. “Maybe,” she said. “What do you think you’re doing? Where are you going?”

  “I need to clear my head,” I said, yanking down my jeans.

  “Jeez, Calder, what the hell? I didn’t think you were serious. Put your clothes back on. You must be certifiable.”

  “You think I’m crazy? Well, you might be right,” I said, smiling. I checked to make sure my cell phone and car keys were still in the pocket, then I folded up my jeans and anchored them under a rock beneath a scrub bush. I climbed over the guardrail and ran down the hill toward the lake.

  “Calder! Stop it! Are you trying to kill yourself?” Chelsea cried.

  I heard her feet run around the front of her car, and the swish of tall grass as she climbed over the guardrail. “Come on! There are a lot easier ways than drowning. Calder, come back. You’re scaring me.”

  I glanced over my shoulder, and she was right. Her aura was a gravy of colors all blending to a mustard brown.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Quit grinning at me. What is wrong with you?”

  I crawled over the large boulders at the shoreline and down to the debris-strewn sand. I waded in. “Don’t wait around. I’m not coming back.”

  “I’m calling the police!” she cried.

  “You do that.”

  Chelsea slid on the steep slope and let out a yelp as her feet slipped out from under her. She fell, sending down a tumble of gravel that raced me down the hill to the bottom. “I hate you, Calder White!” was the last thing I heard before I dove.

  I closed my eyes and reached forward through the cold, dark water. My blood fizzed like snow on a power line, then slowly burned through my muscles. The explosion in my ears raced toward my feet, and I was momentarily blinded by the bright bursts of pinwheeling light before I cracked open like an empty shell. My God, how long had it been?

  The breathtaking relief of it made me scream out loud. Fish scattered as my silver tail released and propelled me away from the wretched city.

  “I hate you!” Chelsea screamed again, making sure, wherever I was, that I would hear.

  I prayed she was the only one and that Lily wasn’t out there, somewhere, thinking the very same thing. At the thought of Lily, my imagination took over. I could swear I heard her voice in the waves, distorted but piercing the spindrift: “Calder!”

  But she was too many miles away for that to be true.

  The strength of my stroke was now tenfold. I reveled in the speed. My mind filled with the new sounds and unidentifiable vibrations of this part of the lake: the buzzing, whirring sound from manufacturing plants, the low groan of ore boats loaded with taconite.

  Time passed quickly.

  Above me, ferries and shipping vessels pockmarked the surface, but I whipped my tail, obliterating them all in the blur of my wake and sending me deeper into the increasingly darker depths. I swam in the direction of Isle Royale, the largest of all the islands, while three sturgeon followed close behind.

  As the hours passed, the sun became too weak to reach me, and my body temperature dropped uncomfortably. I climbed toward the light and followed the contours of Washington Harbor and the archipelago’s shore. I circled the craggy satellite islands, the black rocks scattered across the water like beads from a broken necklace.

  Five times I circled the big island, sometimes stopping to harass disinterested wood ducks that bobbed along the reefs in Siskiwit Bay.

  My head hadn’t felt this clear in days. I could suddenly see my mistakes, the miscues, the misunderstandings. Lily did want me, or at least she had still wanted me when she sent me away. She did it out of love, and I slapped her in the face for it. I recoiled at the memory of my angry words, how they’d pushed her away.

  I saw the blond girl on the beach, wrung nearly empty but still gasping for air. I prayed she had recovered. I prayed she’d forgive me, though I’d never deserve it. I hoped Jason would let me back into his home, his family.…

  But most of all, I hoped—despite everything—that Lily would forgive me for not believing her when she told me about Nadia. Lily had been confused and hurting, and I had told her I didn’t want to hear about it.

  As soon as I got back to land, I’d call. I’d beg her forgiveness. I’d tell her I was coming home. I’d tell her that I didn’t belong in Thunder Bay. I didn’t belong to scruffy ponytail man, or the early-rising Chinese, or drug lords, or church ladies. I didn’t belong to anyone here. I’d tell her that, if she’d still have me, I wanted her forever. That would never change. But I would.

  I would be a better man. I would be the man she deserved.

  The sun set, then rose again. It crawled across the sky until it hovered, pink, swollen, and sated, over the western horizon once more.

  On the third day, I surfaced alongside the rocky shoreline and came face to face with a moose, who watched me from the conifers that lined the shore. It laid its ears flat and licked its muscled upper lip.

  You don’t belong here, it said, stomping to assert its territory. So now I was getting it from a moose. It had to be true.

  29

  LILY

  My body trembled in response to the morbid silence that filled our house. We’d spent all night together as a family. Dad built a fire. He made Mom’s favorite meal: beef Stroganoff and Caesar salad. Her “last meal,” I couldn’t help but think. And it wasn’t a stretch. She’d been imprisoned by her disease, and now she was heading off to die. Even if things went the way we all hoped, she’d have to die first. That part was unavoidable.

  We had forced conversation through dinner, with meaningless talk about weather and Girl
Scouts and groceries. After the dishes were cleared, we played the world’s most somber game of Monopoly. Mom was the horseman. It was the easiest piece to grab, but even then Dad had to move it around the board for her. She didn’t seem to mind.

  To look at her complacent expression, you wouldn’t know what was coming. I didn’t know if that was because Mom didn’t truly appreciate the danger, or if she simply was not afraid to die.

  We made eye contact across the game board. She smiled that Mom smile—content and proud and full of love—and I realized it was none of those things. She was keeping up a good front just for us, because she didn’t want us to be afraid. She was protecting us even now. I wished I hadn’t seen that in her eyes. It made it worse.

  Sometime after midnight, we all fell asleep downstairs: Mom and Dad on the couches, Sophie and me on the floor. None of us wanted to break away from the family group. We would stay together to the end, and hope that we’d have more time after that.

  When morning came, Dad and I were the first ones up. We busied ourselves in the kitchen, quietly making coffee and pulling together the essentials Dad thought we would need at water’s edge: a warm blanket, a thermos for the coffee, a wool hat—things that, should Mom transform, we would be able to warm her with afterward. Dad worried aloud about shock. If he was also thinking about a bigger threat, he never let on.

  “I don’t like this,” I whispered, my voice breaking.

  “None of us do,” Dad replied as he screwed the cover on the thermos. He held his hand over the top for a few seconds before packing the thermos in the bag.

  “Maybe Maris won’t come,” I said.

  There was a beat of silence before Dad said, “She’ll come.”

  I rolled the blanket tighter and made a second attempt at getting it to fit in the bag. It didn’t seem to want to go either.

  “You’re sure about your promise to Maris?” I asked. “You know you can’t go back on it.”

  “I know that,” he said woodenly. “I can already feel it.”

  I got the blanket in the bag and pulled the straining zipper closed. “I’m glad Calder’s not here to see this.”

  Dad turned from the counter and stared at the floor. “Because he’d stop it?”

  I shook my head miserably. “Because he’d feel so betrayed. Maris …” Jeez, I still couldn’t believe it. “How did we get to this?”

  “Jason,” Mom called from the couch.

  “Coming, sweetheart.” Dad left me and went to help Mom. I followed him into the living room. He picked Mom up and set her gently in her chair.

  Mom’s pale yellow fleece reminded me of a dandelion held under the chin—sweet cream butter. I leaned down to hug her, inhaling the familiar scent of her lotion and the warm smell of sleep.

  “Mom,” I whispered.

  She tapped my back in a light rhythm. “It’s going to be okay, baby.”

  Sophie took longer to wake. I wondered if she was faking sleep so as to prolong the sounds of Mom moving around the house. Was it possible the seriousness of what we were attempting was finally sinking in? If only there were enough time to turn back. But now that the plan was set in motion, it felt like an enormous stone rolling down a hill.

  “Are we ready?” Dad asked. He stood at the door, duffel bag in hand, the hint of tears in the corners of his eyes. He swallowed hard, and I watched his Adam’s apple drop, then rise like a fishing bobber in water.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” Mom said in an eerily cheerful voice.

  Sophie slipped her hand in mine and squeezed hard.

  We moved slowly, as a group, down to the water’s edge. Dad pushed Mom’s chair over the uneven ground. It felt like a clumsy funeral march. It was a funeral march.

  When we got to the water, Dad lifted Mom from her chair and laid her in the shallows where she could sit. The water broke gently over the tops of her legs.

  She cringed. “It’s so cold.”

  “Go ahead,” Dad said, nodding at me. “Call Maris.”

  Trembling, I walked to the end of the dock and stared out at the lake for a long, hard time. I glanced back at Mom, and she nodded encouragingly. When I could feel Dad just about to say something, I sat down on the dock’s edge and lowered myself in. I hoped Pavati was too far away to hear. Then I closed my eyes.

  “Maris,” I thought. “It’s time.”

  I didn’t hear any reply. Neither did I feel any rush of movement within a mile’s radius from the dock. Maybe I’d get lucky and she wouldn’t hear me. I could buy another day.

  “Maris,” I called again, this time stronger, but with a desperate sob in my voice.

  There was a rush of current, and when I opened my eyes, Maris was mere inches in front of my face. Our noses nearly touched.

  “Oh my,” she said, her voice like honey. I almost heard her say the word. Honey. Lily, honey. “You are a mess, now, aren’t you?” It wasn’t a question. She tsk-tsked me mentally, like a scolding mother hen.

  I stared right through her without a response.

  “I can see how much you’re suffering, Lily. You are more fully mer than you know, than perhaps I’ve even realized. The pain … I can help with that. I can show you how.” Then she cocked her head to one side. “Are you tempted? Let me help you.”

  My heart twinged at her words, which confirmed everything I knew but had been trying so hard to ignore. “My mother,” I said.

  “I saw her,” she said. “Jason, too. He knows I can make no guarantee?”

  I swallowed. “He does.”

  “And he will side with me against Pavati? No matter what?”

  “He will.”

  “I need to hear it from him.”

  I surfaced and pushed my wet hair back from my face. Maris surfaced as well, but she had swum away from the dock and was facing the shore, where my parents sat with the waves breaking over their legs. I tried to ignore the panic that was clearly evident on Mom’s face. She moved out deeper, still sitting, but now the water broke around her chest.

  “She needs to hear you promise, Dad.”

  Dad stood up and looked directly into his sister’s eyes. “I promise to give my allegiance to you,” he said, “as head of the family.”

  I watched a flicker of memory flash across Maris’s face. Did she wonder if he was good for his promise? Did she wonder if he was more like his father than their mother? Was Maris also afraid?

  Maris dove, and a second later we all watched in horror as two pale hands grabbed Mom by the ankles and slowly pulled her deeper.

  I put one hand on the dock to steady myself. This was wrong. Dad needed to stop this now. It wasn’t going to work.

  Her arms drifting out to her sides, my mother formed a cross as she floated on her back. I could feel the vibration in the water of my mother’s heart thudding inside her chest, racing to a point where I hoped it might stop of its own accord.

  Mom closed her eyes as Maris continued to pull her out deeper. Then Mom’s ankles dipped below the surface, followed by her knees, her body arcing slowing downward until … she was gone.

  Only now did Dad react. He took two quick steps into the water.

  I pulled myself up onto the dock and scanned the water in a panic. There was no struggle. Was Mom so willing to die that she could override the instinct to fight drowning? Or was she simply that weak?

  I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t see Maris. I could hear nothing. The absence of sound was more frightening to me than anything that had come before. How could they have both just disappeared? I looked back at Dad in terror. Sophie stood beside him, clinging to his arm.

  Before any of us could speak, a sizzling sound broke the silence, followed by a bright flash of light. A second later, Mom’s body floated to the surface, facedown in the surf.

  Maris came up and pushed my mother’s lifeless body away from her as if it were nothing more than passing driftwood. “Now you are free,” she said to Dad. “Come with me.”

  Dad ran into the waves and pulled Mom�
�s body to shore. “What have you done?” he howled.

  “She was holding you back,” Maris said.

  “You were supposed to reinvigorate her!” Dad cried.

  “It’s too late for that. I told you it might not work.”

  “You bitch!” I cried, dispatching birds from the willow tree with my scream. “You didn’t even try!” The dock shook like an earthquake under my feet.

  Dad dragged Mom up on shore. He flipped her over and blew air into her lungs. “Come on, honey,” he whispered, filling her lungs again. “Carolyn, come on, baby. Breathe.”

  Sophie stood—paralyzed—looking at me in horror, her eyes huge with fright. Her mouth hung open in disbelief.

  I drew my fingers to my forehead. The light hurt my eyes; there was a grinding sound, like metal on metal, in my ears. I couldn’t think straight. I needed to get away. My mind fell dark with grief and rage and shame, like a black velvet curtain drawn over a window. I crumpled to my knees, then fell forward. My head struck the iron boat cleat on the dock.

  And Nadia was back.

  30

  NADIA

  MAY 8, 1945

  I stop outside a record store on Ashland’s main street. A taxidermist’s eagle is featured prominently in the window below a banner that reads VICTORY in red, white, and blue letters.

  Not for the eagle, I think, but nonetheless, a celebratory flag waves from every doorway. Men in hats talk animatedly on the street corner, and women with rolled hair hurry arm in arm to buy their newspaper. A few cry. But not prettily like they do in the movies. Theirs is an ugly, soul-wrenching sound that sickens me. Victory came too late for some.

  My reflection in a storefront window catches me off guard. I cradle my pregnant belly and try to make my way up the crowded sidewalk, before stopping again, three doors down. The humans around me are loud. Their emotions are a whirl of high excitement and jubilation. Their war is over. My head spins. I stagger down the sidewalk, toward a pay phone.

  I had no intention of doing this today. I had planned a private spot, not here, so far from the lake. But I can never get anything to go according to plan. I stop at a boarding-house and knock. It takes the woman in the faded housecoat a long time to answer. She is putting on lipstick. I can hear a radio blaring “God Bless America” from the kitchen.