Summer of Salt

by Katrina Leno

  “Mom, that’s not helpful at all,” I said.

  She kissed the side of my head and let herself out of the room.

  “That’s not helpful at all!” I called after her.

  She did not come back.

  Among the small number of people not avoiding Fernwehs like the plague was Peter, who gladly obliged my request to get rid of the feathers. It felt like something much more illicit than it was, handing him the overstuffed pillowcase and relaying my mother’s instructions to make it disappear.

  I’d found him in the backyard, trying his best to sweep rainwater off the porch, and he wrinkled his nose as he peeked inside the case. “Feathers?” he asked.

  “It’s sort of a long story.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll take care of it now.”

  “Only not the pillowcase,” I said. “I’d like that back.”

  “Sure thing, Georgina.”

  I watched him take the pillowcase around to the front of the house, and I was about to go inside when I heard a sharp whistle from the back door of the house. It was Harrison, but he shook his head when I went to meet him, and instead vanished and reappeared a few moments later at an open window. He made me sit in a wicker chair on the porch, and he hid himself behind the curtain.

  “It’s better like this,” he said. “More undercover. If they think I hate you, they’re more likely to talk to me. Let something slip.”

  “That sleuthing yesterday really went to your head, huh?”

  “Look what I found,” he hissed.

  He held up a feather to the window screen. I stared at it for a long time and then he scolded me for being too obvious, so I looked back across the yard.

  A feather.

  But not a white feather.

  He’d found one of Annabella’s feathers.

  “Where did you . . .”

  “Don’t be mad,” he said.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “In your sister’s room.”

  “What were you doing in my sister’s room?” I hissed.

  “I said don’t be mad! I was just looking around. For clues.” He paused. “Maybe that sleuthing did go to my head. Just a bit.”

  “And where exactly did you find it?”

  He paused again. It was a heavy sort of pause. The kind that made my stomach twist in anticipation. “In her nightstand,” he finally said.

  My stomach twisted again. “Her nightstand?”

  “Look, Georgina, I still don’t think your sister did it, but obviously she knows something. And she’s an easy target; public opinion weighs heavily here, and as far as they’re all concerned, she’s as good as tried. Which, if true, makes it very lucky that I went snooping and found this before somebody else did, so you should go ahead and forgive me for that.”

  “I’ll take it into consideration.”

  “Also . . . ,” he said, rather uncomfortably, with a little less bravado in his voice than just a moment ago.

  “What?”

  “Have you considered . . . You know. The actual legal implications here?”

  “What legal implications?”

  “Animal cruelty. Does By-the-Sea have a judge?”

  “Of course By-the-Sea has a judge.”

  Eleanora Avery.

  I was unsure whether she’d actually ever tried a case or not.

  “You don’t think they’ll take her to court, do you?” I asked.

  “This is your island,” Harrison replied. “You tell me.”

  This was my island, all right.

  Where nothing ever happened.

  Where people loved a good drama.

  “Give me that feather,” I said.

  I took the feather up to the widow’s walk, where I knew I’d be alone, where I knew no other guest would find me. I carried an umbrella and a large jar candle up to the roof and was surprised to find my sister already there, almost like she was waiting for me. She wore a long white dress that blew wildly in the breeze.

  “The island’s flooding,” Mary said, not turning around. “Have you noticed?”

  She was right. Bottle Hill rose gently above the shallow pond that surrounded it. An island on a bigger island. The rain fell in a loud roar. It sounded like static turned up high on a broken television set.

  My sister had feathers in her hair.

  Every so often one would dislodge and float away on the manic breeze, sailing rockily on the wind until it succumbed to the rain and drowned.

  “Mary, where the fuck are these coming from?” I asked, my voice frantic. I picked one off her shoulder.

  “Hmm? Oh. I’m not sure,” she said. She plucked the feather from my fingers and considered it. She smelled it, exactly like my mother had. That must be some instinct lost to me, the non-magical Fernweh. I had no desire to smell the feathers falling from my sister’s hair. I already knew they’d smell like the whole island. The salt. The magic. And now: the rain.

  “Harrison found this in your room,” I said, and held out the single feather that was unmistakable in its origin.

  “What was he doing in there?” she said sharply.

  It was hard to describe how my sister looked. Smaller. Scared. But more than that—like something was missing. Like something had been taken from her. But I had no idea what that could be. Comfort? Safety? All of the above?

  “I was going to burn it.” I showed her the candle, to demonstrate. “Mary, where did it come from? If somebody else had found this . . .”

  “They already think I did it. It’s not like having proof would change anything.”

  “So this is proof?”

  “I didn’t do it,” she snapped, and for a moment, there she was: my sister, the bitch in all her glory, long hair whipping about her face, her feet leaving the floor of the widow’s walk to hover an inch above it. I could have hugged her. And I would have, if at that moment a strong gust of wind hadn’t ripped the feather from my fingers, sending it floating in a vicious cyclone down to the backyard . . .

  In front of the waiting eyes of two of the birdheads—Hep and Lucille—who were sharing the same umbrella as they took a stroll around the yard.

  “Mary, get down!” I yelled, and yanked her to her feet so hard that she fell to her knees.

  So when Hep and Lucille turned as one to look up at the house to see where the feather—Annabella’s feather—had come from—

  All they saw was me.

  At that point, it seemed like there was only one thing to do.

  I was used to cleaning up my sister’s messes. I was used to taking the blame.

  So I raised my hand—

  and waved.

  Blame shifted from my sister to me as easily as a feather caught on a strong breeze.

  It didn’t bother me at all.

  I considered a lifetime of living with Mary, of cleaning up after all of her messes, big and small, to be practice for this. I held my head high and looked every birdhead I passed in the eye. I walked with my shoulders back and a jaunt in my step that I hope conveyed the message: Don’t bother fucking with me. You won’t get very far.

  I tried to pretend that I thought my sister was innocent.

  I tried to pretend that I didn’t think about Clarice Fernweh and her two locked-away children almost every minute of every day.

  I tried to keep my promise to Annabella: I will find who did this.

  That promise seeped into my dreams.

  I was in the barn again, only this time it was filled with water, and this time my sister was drowning. I woke up choking, terrified, and I went to see Harrison that evening—to inform him of my renewed sense of purpose, my rekindled desire to clear not only my sister’s name but now mine as well.

  And I was genuinely surprised when Prue answered.

  With everything going on, Prudence Lowry had been mostly removed from the forefront of my mind. But now, standing before me in a simple striped cotton dress, her mouth opened in surprise, her hands holding what smelled like a cup of peppe
rmint tea, I felt a rush of affection, a rush of hope, and a rush of . . .

  Something else. Because Prue wasn’t looking like she was that happy to see me. In fact—it was kind of the exact opposite.

  I felt my heart sink to somewhere around my stomach as it occurred to me that Prue might be of the same mind-set as most of the island: that the Fernweh women had something to do with Annabella’s death.

  “I was just looking for your brother,” I said quickly, feeling my face grow hot as Prue continued to stare at me in a way I could not begin to discern. “If he’s not here, I can go.”

  “What? No, you don’t have to—he’s not here, no, but you should come in,” Prue said, shaking her head, moving aside for me.

  “I can just come back later,” I said, turning around. I felt her hand close softly around my upper arm, and I hated myself for noting how warm it was.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  I turned around again. “Do you think my sister killed Annabella?”

  Prue looked confused. She removed her hand (put it back, put it back) and took a step away from the door. “Can you come in for a second?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. But I didn’t move.

  “There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about,” Prue said quietly. She gestured into the room. Two twin beds, one made neatly and one made messily, with clothes scattered across the quilt and a straw hat on the pillow.

  I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

  Prue sat on her bed (the messy one, which made my heart soar with I didn’t even know what) and gestured to the other. Harrison’s, perfectly made with not an inch of fabric mussed. Figured.

  We sat across from each other. Prue still held that mug in her hands, so tightly that her knuckles were turning white.

  Then she laughed. “Okay, I definitely don’t think your sister had anything to do with this,” she said. “Sorry, that actually . . . I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Oh. Really?”

  “Really. Promise. The thought never crossed my mind.”

  I felt a welcome rush of relief and relaxed a little on the bed. “Okay. That’s good. That’s great.” But Prue still looked a little . . . strange. “Is there something else?”

  “There isn’t really an easy way to say this,” she said.

  “Prue? Whatever it is . . .”

  She stifled a yawn, and I noticed how tired she looked. Her mascara was smudged a little underneath her eyes; her hair hadn’t been washed in a few days. Her dress was wrinkled. She looked like she hadn’t slept either. I remembered the time, a few summers ago, when Hep Shackman had stayed up for forty-eight hours taking notes on Annabella’s nesting habits. He’d become convinced that he, too, was a bird, and Annabella’s eggs weren’t hatching because he was the one who was supposed to sit on them. My mother had given him a cup of tainted tea and he hadn’t come out of his room for a day and a night. When he finally did, he had to admit that he was not, in fact, a bird, and that sitting on eggs would do nothing more than crush them. There was something about Prue now that reminded me of that—maybe the way her eyes seemed to take a few extra seconds to focus, the way she kept gripping that mug in her hands.

  Finally she took a deep breath, set her mug on the nightstand, and said, “I think I’ve been avoiding you. Just a little bit. But not because of Annabella, it’s nothing like that. It’s just . . . you’re the first girl I’ve ever kissed. And I didn’t know how to tell you that.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Wow.”

  “I mean, I know I’m . . . I know I like girls. And guys. The girl thing is sort of newer. Harrison is the only one who knows.”

  “Oh,” I said again. And for good measure: “Wow.”

  “I know kissing you shouldn’t have thrown me as much as it did, and that’s not even the right word for it, really, it just sort of . . . it sort of made everything real. Like a confirmation of everything I thought I was feeling.” She was pulling on her fingers, bending them back. “And then with everything that happened . . . I just haven’t been getting that much sleep.”

  “You’re not alone.”

  “So I was avoiding you, yes. Not because I thought your sister killed Annabella, God. No, I was avoiding you because it was easier than having to process what it means to have kissed a girl. And I’m sorry, I just couldn’t . . . I didn’t know what to do. After that night . . . I mean, we kissed, it was this huge moment for me, and then my brother totally interrupted it, and then the next morning . . .”

  “Kind of killed the vibe,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just been . . . a lot.”

  “Well, we don’t have to . . . I mean, that could be it. We could just forget it ever happened.”

  “I don’t want to do that either,” Prue said, so quietly that her words were almost blown away. I had to catch them in my hands, bring them to my ears, strain to decipher what exactly it was that she meant.

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “I like you. Like, I really like you. I’m sorry this is so hard for me.”

  “Whatever you need,” I said. “However slow or fast or whatever. Anything is fine with me.”

  And I meant it.

  It had been easy for me; I’d been born into a long family of women who didn’t give a single hoot about who you chose to love. I’d known I was gay since I was six years old, when I’d fallen in complete and all-encompassing love with my kindergarten teacher, Miss Farid. I was twelve when I told my mother I was gay, and it had been like asking her to pass the coffeepot. She’d only been so happy to lend her blessing. Mary had been equally easy; she’d rolled her eyes, said “Duh,” and remarked that it was a relief she didn’t have to compete with me for guys, even though, she was quick to point out, I wouldn’t have been much competition.

  Vira was the easiest of all. I told her I liked girls. She told me she didn’t like anyone, at least not in a sexual way. We breathed huge sighs of relief and that was that.

  So I had absolutely no idea what it might be like to contemplate your sexuality under anything less than ideal conditions. I had no idea what things were like for Prue at home, what the rest of her family and friends were like. Did her friends know? What was it like to be Prue at that moment, quiet and thoughtful, her fingers tapping out some foreign rhythm on the bed. I wanted to hold her hand, to quiet the impulses that made it impossible for her to sit still, but I didn’t want to disrespect whatever music she heard.

  I couldn’t remember whose turn it was to speak, so I finally said, “How long have you known?”

  “That I like girls too? About a year.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Prue blushed a little. “I was at a coffee shop with my friend. There was this piano player, a woman . . .” She paused. “There have been a few others since then. And you, of course. You sort of confirmed things.”

  I was very close to getting up the nerve to close the space between us and possibly kiss her again when the door to the room flew open and Harrison raced inside. He was soaking wet, and he started talking to me like it didn’t surprise him in the least that I was there, that he’d maybe even been expecting me.

  “You have to come with me. Right away. No time to waste. Put some shoes on. Quick as you can.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Your sister has climbed a very big tree, and she’s threatening to jump.”

  I was torn.

  On the one hand, Mary wasn’t in any real danger. She’d jumped and/or fallen out of plenty of trees before (the ability to float didn’t necessarily go hand in hand with the ability to keep one’s balance) and she just drifted lazily down to the ground, landing on the grass with a gentle bump that didn’t so much as bruise her skin.

  On the other hand, Harrison and Prue didn’t know about Mary’s gift. I guess I had told Harrison, more or less, that we had magic, but he didn’t know what kind, and as far as I knew, Prue was still out of the loop. And while my
mother had never sat me down to explicitly forbid me from spilling the beans, it was also sort of just known.

  People knew we had magic.

  It wasn’t spoken of.

  But this felt like a new By-the-Sea—one untethered from the rules of time and space, one floating higgledy-piggledy on an ocean that kept tossing it this way and that—and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out my best course of action. And I hadn’t even yet taken into account why my sister might have climbed the tallest tree on the island and was now threatening to jump off it. That was a mystery all on its own.

  “And you’re absolutely sure no one else saw her?” I asked Harrison, for the eighth or ninth or twentieth time.

  “She’s pretty hidden. You know. By leaves. Rain,” he said. He was out of breath due to running full speed back to the inn and now, running back. “I’d just stopped under the tree for a bit of shelter. And then she called down to me, ‘Hi, Harrison! Just wanted to warn you that I’m going to be jumping soon. Didn’t want to startle you.’”

  “That’s all she said?”

  “That’s all she said.”

  “Does your sister have a history of jumping out of trees?” Prue asked.

  “Well . . . ,” I said.

  “Well?” Prue repeated.

  “Okay.” I stopped running. Harrison and Prue stopped too, and we all huddled underneath an umbrella that wasn’t even a rain umbrella at all, but a beach umbrella that somehow belonged to Prue, because of course Prue owned an enormous yellow-and-white-striped beach umbrella and had casually packed it for summer vacation. It felt a little bit like we were inside a tent. “I have something to tell you.”

  Prue and Harrison were rapt listeners. They both seemed to have guessed that I was about to drop something important on them.

  “Right. So. All the rumors. The boil and bubble stuff,” I said, repeating the phrase I’d used in the graveyard with Harrison. “All that’s true, okay?”

  I tried to gauge Prue’s reaction without being too obvious about it. She was nodding her head, and when I looked at her she said, “Harrison told me.”

  “I hope that’s okay,” Harrison said quickly. “We don’t have many secrets.”

  “I know what it’s like having a sibling. I’m glad you told her,” I replied. “So, going along with that whole thing . . . Mary can float.”