The Shell Collector

by Hugh Howey

  Two heartbeats pass before she smiles at me. She turns and brings out a handful of items that no sane person would combine: pickles, blueberries, cheese, a stick of butter.

  “Are you pregnant?” I ask, catching on to her sense of humor.

  “Twins,” Holly says, not missing a beat. “So triple portions for me.”

  “Have you ever had an egg-in-a-hole?” I ask.

  She scrunches up her face. “That sounds disgusting. Make me one.”

  “Okay. Why don’t you put on some music. I couldn’t figure out how the radio works earlier.”

  I don’t even know that there is a radio. But Holly shouts “Righto!” and trots to a wall panel. Like magic, there’s music in the room, the lilting up and down of reggae. That distracted her for all of five seconds. I arrange her ingredients by the stove and study them the way a chemist might. I can make this work, I tell myself.

  “Do you want to sit at the counter and keep me company while I cook?” I ask.

  “Yes I do,” Holly says. She pulls out one of the stools and arranges herself in it, props her elbows on the counter and rests her chin in her hands. “I hate the rain,” she says. “There’s nothing fun to do in the rain.”

  “Naps are good in the rain,” I offer. I open a few cabinets, looking for a pan.

  “To the right,” Holly says. “And naps are boring. Unless you get a good dream, and that’s like winning the lottery. Too much luck involved.”

  “What about reading?” I ask.

  “Booooring,” she says, but I suspect that’s going to be her reply no matter what I say. So I try a different tactic.

  “You got me, then. I now hate the rain as well.” Grabbing a spatula, I turn and offer my hand to her a second time. “We shall form the I-Hate-Rain Society,” I announce. “Lovers of rain need not apply.”

  “Righto!” Holly says. With a grand gesture—elbow crooked up in the air—she takes my hand and gives it an exaggerated pump.

  “We would spit on our palms to seal this pact,” I say, “but that’s too much like getting rained on.”

  Holly laughs. I get the pan hot and show her how to cut the holes out of the bread slices. She does the second piece herself. I feel like my mother all of a sudden. I see myself in this squirmy, fidgety, ornery, bright, funny little girl.

  Butter goes in the pan. I wait for it to melt, then add the bread. The eggs are cracked into the holes we cut out of the middle. After I flip them, the cheese goes on top. When I plate the concoction, I add two slices of pickle. It actually looks like a fine addition to the family recipe. Holly pours herself a chocolate milk and takes a bite. She murmurs her approval, and I cook the middles on one side of the pan and mash blueberries on the other side, add a little more butter, and put this on the toasted rounds. It’s a real improvement, I think.

  “Almost as good as peanut butter omelets,” Holly mutters around another bite.

  I wonder if that’s a real thing. And then I imagine another reporter standing right where I am, holding this spatula. A string of women, in fact, none of whom know how to cook. An endless parade of people sharing moments like this with Ness’s daughter, whipping up whatever they can, and her sitting there smiling, wiping her mouth with her sleeve, full of omnivorous delight and thinking this is the most normal thing in the world.

  “These are great,” she says, taking a bite of one of the blueberry centers. I start rinsing the pan and the utensils. More of my story writes itself in my head. And even the happy bits have a way of making themselves sad.

  “After breakfast, maybe you can show me where the laundry room is,” I suggest. “My clothes got soaked in the rain, which is why I had to borrow your dad’s robe. Be nice to get them dry.”

  “M’kay,” she says, then slurps on her milk.

  “And then maybe we can watch a movie? That’s a good thing to do in the—” I stop myself, remembering the society we just formed. “Or we can do whatever.”

  “Is the cable on?” Holly asks.

  “I don’t think so,” I say, remembering Ness’s note.

  “We can call the company and have them turn it on. I added myself to his account. I have his passcode. They call me Mrs. Wilde when I call. I lower my voice like this.”

  “I’m surprised they don’t call you Mister Wilde, talking like that.”

  “Okay, not quite that low. But we’ll go from zero to five hundred channels just like that.” She snaps her fingers.

  “You can watch TV if you want,” I say, trying to make it sound like she has my permission but that it’s the least cool thing one could possibly do. “I’m going to figure out how to get down to the other house and retrieve my book. Ever hear of Treasure Island?”

  “My dad owns islands,” Holly says. “I think one of them is called Treasure Cay.”

  “This is different,” I say. “It’s a book about untold riches and action and survival. I read it when I was about your age. That’s what I’m going to do with my day. Because I hate the rain.”

  Holly squints her eyes and studies me. Her head tilts to one side, and I feel like she’s about to blow my cover and accuse me of manipulating her. I remember being that age and being whip-smart. As adults, we tend to forget how clever we were when we were younger, and so we underestimate youth just like we hated being underestimated when we were that age.

  “You’re gonna get soaked if you go out there,” Holly eventually says. “I got wet just getting out of the car, and I had an umbrella.”

  “I will armor myself against the rain,” I tell her. “Not a drop will touch me. That’s a rule in the I-Hate-Rain Society. You wanna come?”

  Holly shrugs and looks away. I can tell I just lost her. “Nah, I don’t like that place. I’m gonna watch TV.”

  I remember what Ness said about the first night he made her sleep down there alone, and that she has rarely been back. I shouldn’t push her; there’s no point in making her do something she doesn’t want to do. But I’m weak, and I like her, and I want her not just to like me back, but for the two of us to do something she’s never done with any of the other women who stay over. Because I’m not having sex with her father, and I need her to know I’m not the same as them.

  “Well, I guess I won’t be able to read my book then,” I say, making myself sound sad. “I’m pretty sure it would take the entire Society to get down there in this heavy rain. Maybe I’ll just go take a nap instead. If I get lucky, I’ll have a good dream.”

  I leave the dishes and head toward the breezeway that leads off toward Ness’s room. I have no idea what I’ll do in there if she lets me go. Sit in a chair and look at an empty fireplace or gaze out at the rain.

  But she doesn’t let me go. The ultimate threat for Holly is that she’ll be left alone, that I won’t beg her to play with me, which is what I suspect she’s used to.

  “Wait,” she says. And I turn back to her.

  “We can beat the rain,” she tells me in a conspiratorial whisper. “But it won’t be easy. And we’ll have to work together.”

  25

  “I’m starting to think the saran wrap isn’t a good idea,” I say.

  “Turn around one more time.” Holly has me spinning in the kitchen as she holds a spool of plastic wrap sideways. I still have the robe on, and the clear cocoon forming around me is causing me to sweat inside it.

  “I can’t move my arms,” I say. “And how exactly am I going to breathe if you wrap my head up?”

  “Good point. Reverse.” Holly makes a spinny gesture with her finger. I twirl the other way, and she gathers all the plastic in a ball. I don’t dare tell her that I’m not really interested in getting to a book I read years ago, or that I would be fine running out there in that crazy storm and just getting drenched again—because now it’s a mission for us to get from A to B without getting a single drop of water on us.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Holly says. “Better than this one.” She gives me a serious look when I raise an eyebrow at her. “My ideas just get b
etter with time. I think you should know this about me.”

  I laugh and follow her down the north breezeway. We pass the utility room, where my clothes and the two towels are drying, and go past the guest bedrooms and Holly’s room, which she showed me after we got the clothes going. At the far end of the house, we go up a flight of stairs and through a door into the garage.

  Holly hits the lights. “Yes!” she says. She dances through the empty space where Ness’s red gas-guzzler had been the other day and scoops up the bundled car cover from the ground. “It’s rain-proof. Because normal people don’t use these in their garages.”

  I almost point out that the cover keeps the dust off as well, but I agree with her: it’s a bit much for a car kept in a garage. My car sits in the New York sun and the New York snow and the New York floods and mostly gets driven only to move it from street to street so the sweepers can get through.

  “Grab the edge,” Holly says. “Meet me in the middle.”

  We lift the car cover over us and paw at the ceiling as we work our way into the middle. Neither of us can see a thing. I think about the lazy summer days when my sister and I would make forts out of furniture, sheets, and sofa cushions. Holly is giggling. I can feel her breathing on my arm. We jostle and spin and laugh in the darkness together.

  “We’ll stay dry,” I say, my words swallowed by the fabric and the deep shadows. “But we’ll never see how to get there.”

  “We’ll feel along the rails. But through the tarp.”

  “Won’t we get lost?” I ask.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “I can get around that boardwalk with my eyes closed.”

  I remember Ness’s story. But his daughter sounds so much braver than he made her out to be. I wonder how many years ago that was. Five? Six? Probably feels like ages to her.

  “What about our feet?” I ask. “Won’t they get wet?”

  “I’ve got just the thing.”

  Holly extricates herself from the folds, leaving me in there alone. I work myself free as well. She has disappeared back into the house, returns with a pair of pink galoshes, then rummages around one of the other garage bays and brings out a pair of rubber hip waders that fishermen use.

  “No rain shall touch us,” she says.

  “Let’s just hope it hasn’t stopped raining by the time we put this to the test.”

  We haul the gear to the living room, which gives us the shortest run down to the guest house, and I become quite possibly the first person in history to don rubber hip waders over a terrycloth bathrobe. My reflection in the living room door is of someone you would commit to an institution. Holly, meanwhile, looks downright adorable with her pink galoshes pulled over her blue jeans.

  “No fair that you get to look normal,” I tell her.

  “You look like you sleep with fishes,” Holly says.

  “Let’s hope not. You ready?”

  She nods, and the two of us crawl under the car cover. Rain hisses across the glass door and windows, and it thunders against the roof. “I’ve got the doorknob,” Holly says. “Hard to turn it through the fabric. It keeps slipping.”

  “I’ll close it behind us when we get out,” I tell her. “But we have to make sure the cover doesn’t get caught.”

  What I don’t tell her is that this is going to be an unmitigated disaster. No way we come out of this anything other than soaked and tangled in knots, but probably laughing hysterically. A gust of wind passes, and Holly yells “Now!” I hear the door open, the first of the rain spitting against the cover, popping it like a thunderstorm hitting a camping tent, and then we are outside, shuffling our feet, the wind whipping the car cover all around us.

  The cover clings to our ankles, presses against our bodies. I nearly topple from the force of a gust, and it takes some fumbling and both of us working together to get the door pulled shut against the storm.

  Holly is already laughing. It isn’t quite pitch black under the cover now that we’re outside—just a dismal, deep shade of gray. “This way,” she says, full of confidence. We stay huddled together, hands fumbling through the fabric to stay in communion with the wooden rail, the cold of the wind and rain penetrating through our shroud, but so far, no moisture getting through to us. I take up a fold of fabric in front of me to keep from tripping, leaving our boots exposed to the driving rain and the wet deck.

  “Steps!” Holly cries. “Twelve of them!”

  Halfway down the flight of steps, buffeted by the storm, this begins to feel like a very bad idea. Our legs could get tangled; we could have a nasty fall; and suddenly I see myself driving Ness’s daughter to the hospital with a broken arm, her crying hysterically in the passenger seat, me in the emergency room in hip waders and a robe trying to explain to Ness what in the hell I was thinking.

  We reach the bottom of the flight of stairs, but there are two more to go. And long lengths of boardwalk between.

  “Maybe we should ditch the cover and just make a run for it,” I suggest, my voice muffled.

  “Not a drop shall touch us!” Holly cries. She has one arm around my waist, and I have an arm draped over her shoulder. We shuffle as one, like we’re running a three-legged race where our feet don’t go in the same sack, our entire bodies do.

  The fabric no longer whips around as angrily as before, thank goodness. The rain is soaking it and weighing it down. It trails behind us like a leaden wedding dress. We lean into the wind and stagger down the second flight of stairs, Holly seeming to know where she is going, then we tackle the last flight.

  “Almost there,” she tells me. And I feel like a climber who can see the crown of some inhospitable peak just a few steps away. One great push. So close—

  We bang into the glass like birds. My forehead cracks against a window, and it sounds like Holly strikes her knee. The rain is no longer pelting us. We are pressed against the side of the guest house. I can’t believe we made it this far. And suddenly, this is an adventure the way simple challenges with made-up rules are life-or-death scenarios for kids with their active imaginations. Suddenly, this is important. And fun.

  Holly whoops when she finds the doorknob. It’s a struggle to get it turned, but then the door flies inward, and we tumble along after it. The car cover finally claims us, tangling our feet, and I brace for impact, one arm around Holly and twisting her so she lands on top of me.

  There’s an oomph and a grunt from both of us. The wind is knocked out of me, and we have to fight to dig our way out from the wet fabric. Rain courses down the folds in rivulets, getting all over the floor and soaking us as we scramble for the open door.

  We slam it shut. Holly is panting and giggling. I fight with Ness’s robe to stay decent. The guest house is now a base camp, a temporary shelter against the storm, a small island at sea.

  “I think we’re stuck here,” I tell Holly.

  She pushes her hair off her face. We both got doused crawling out from under the car cover. She wipes her face and looks at her wet palms. “So close,” she says.

  “I don’t think it qualifies as rain if it’s indoors,” I tell her. “Just tossing that out there.”

  “I second the motion,” Holly says. And then: “Victory!” She dances around the room in her galoshes, leaving wet bootprints everywhere, while I gather the drenched cover and dump it in the bathtub.

  After I change into dry clothes, and after Holly has explored the guest house—her house—I show her the book that was the subject of all our troubles.

  “Read me a page,” she says.

  And so we arrange ourselves on the big bed in the middle of the downstairs loft, a pile of cushions behind us, and I start to read the adventures of Long John Silver, a sea cook turned treasure hunter, and of pirates and sea chests and treasure maps. And I don’t stop reading aloud, even as Holly drifts off to sleep. I just lower my voice and keep reading, and the storm outside does not abate, but Holly mumbles something, snuggles closer, and I have to set the book aside for a moment. It strikes me that my daughter
would be nine right now if I’d carried her to term, if my body hadn’t betrayed us both. She would be nine, and I would read to her like this.

  I cover my mouth as the tears come hard and fast. The noise of the rain masks my sobs. Holly throws an arm across me and rests her head against my shoulder, and I fear she’ll wake up and ask me what’s the matter, and I’ll have to make something up. Something a bright girl like her will know is a lie.

  But she mumbles these words instead, a soft admission: “I don’t really hate the rain,” she tells me.

  And then she falls back asleep, there in my arms, and I wish for her to have happy dreams.

  26

  I drift in and out. Dreams mix with the wild scene outside—pirate ships plying the coast; men in slickers with treasure maps digging greedily at the wet sand; thunder transmuting into cannon-fire as my imagination melds the real and the unreal.

  At one point, a man appears at the window in a yellow raincoat and yellow rain cap. He looks nothing like a pirate. He looks like Ness. It is much later that I realize it was him, that he came back home to find the note from his ex, the house empty, and checked on us here before deciding to leave us sleeping.

  Even though I’m wide awake now, I let Holly doze with her head on my arm. I’m struck again by how quickly she took to me, and I hope it’s a healthy thing. It could be that she’s perfectly well adjusted, that she’s bright and courageous and comfortable in her own skin. Or it could be that she is desperately seeking something that’s missing from her life. I’m no expert in child psychology, so I have no way of knowing which is more likely.

  And maybe I’m looking too far for the culprit. Maybe the one desperate to connect is me. I push this question aside, not caring to examine it. When Holly stirs, I wiggle my arm free and get up to use the bathroom. She’s outside the door when I get out, rubbing her eyes and yawning. We trade places without a word between us.