The Rattled Bones

by S. M. Parker

  Tomorrows always arrive lighter.

  * * *

  When we get back to Fairtide, I’m not ready to go inside or give up. I’m frustrated by the cut traps and our inability to find the flower I was sure would be on the island. My chest is too tight to pull a deep breath into my lungs. I need a swim.

  “Would you mind bringing up the cooler? I’ll be in. I just need five.”

  “Sure thing.” Sam lifts the cooler onto his shoulder and starts across Fairtide’s green. I wave to Gram to tell her everything is all right. I kick off my rubber boots and stand at the dock’s edge. It’s strange how I miss the girl; how I was so certain I’d find her today, or a clue from her at least. But my optimism was stupid, because the flower could never survive on the island without someone to care for its roots the way Gram does. Sadness rises with the feeling of failing the girl, and my family.

  The waves are dark in the early evening, their rolling motion churning oil-black seaweed in its grip, spitting up the sea with its weeds and seafoam. I inch forward, my toes gripping the edge of the dock. The waves splash against the pilings, jumping up, wetting my toes. The water sings to me, its waves a melody. Calling to me.

  Come here, come here

  My dear, my dear.

  Won’t you come here and be my dear.

  Be near, my dear.

  I’m here, I’m here.

  Won’t you come near and find me, dear?

  The song rises across the backs of the waves, its words like dolphins playing, beckoning me.

  I am the dear.

  The girl wants me near.

  Did my mother hear this same summons so long ago?

  Is that what she heard when she packed all those stones into the pockets of her long yellow skirt, its hem dark with seawater? My heart surges, remembering how much I feared my mother that night, but I don’t feel that fear now. The song brings peace.

  The song of the Water People.

  Come here, come here

  I’m here, I’m here.

  Come to the sea and find me, dear.

  It’s an invitation carried on rolling waves.

  Calling to me.

  I want to be with the Water People. The Water Girl.

  Be near, be near

  My dear, my dear.

  Be with the waves and find me here.

  I strip down to my T-shirt and hold a breath. I dive. The ocean rushes its ice all around me. I propel my body under the crashing waves, listening for the underwater song. I want the girl to be here. I want her lullaby to call me. Only me. I swim through the black world of the ocean, let the cold press into my chest.

  When I finally surface, I slick my hair back along my scalp and take a breath that expands my lungs, skin, everything.

  The sun is gone now. The fat white moon hangs directly above. Darkness floats everywhere. How long was I underwater? A boat bobs close to the shore. Approaching. So familiar. I twist toward Fairtide, the water swirling around me. Our dock is shorter somehow, made of wood now. The Rilla Brae is gone.

  The small boat rows to Fairtide’s dock. A rope is thrown from inside the boat. And then the girl. She steps onto Fairtide’s dock, her fingers fastening a quick running bowline knot. She hoists a bundle from her boat and settles it onto her back. She starts toward our deck, which is impossibly no longer there. I follow the beautiful girl in her white dress. She knocks on Gram’s door. Our back door. But it’s not Gram who answers.

  A tall, frail woman peeks out of the slit of doorway. I can only see half of her face, though I know she is Gram’s mother, so similar to her hanging portrait above our living room fireplace.

  My great-grandmother. The wood dock. The girl with her perfect black braids. The oil lamplight bouncing at my great-grandmother’s features as she holds the flame to the darkness. All signs of decades ago.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Murphy.”

  “Agnes. Good evening.”

  Agnes! My girl. A name.

  A shiver crawls over my skin.

  My gram’s mother opens the door wider. I don’t miss how she looks to the night, as if suspicious that someone could be watching. I feel heat push forth from the house, our kitchen stove warming bones even then.

  “Only one tonight,” Gram’s mother says, handing over a bundle. The girl rests it in the crook of her free arm.

  “For you, Mrs. Murphy.” Agnes passes her package through the door.

  “You always do such a nice job cleaning, Agnes. I don’t know how you get those tea stains out.”

  “The secret is the salt water, ma’am.”

  Flickers of light coat my great-grandmother’s features as she lowers her gaze. “Agnes? Is that her?”

  “My baby, ma’am.” Agnes shifts her arms, and it is only then I see the infant strapped to her chest.

  “Wait here, dear. I have a gift for you.” Gram’s mother disappears from the open door to expose a sliver of our kitchen, the windows just as they are now, the stove anchoring the space. She returns, a small swatch of fabric stretched over one hand. “It is a meager token, only a bonnet. I knitted it myself.”

  “It is lovely, Mrs. Murphy.” Agnes’s voice lifts, joy floating her words.

  “May I?” Gram’s mother nods toward the infant’s small head.

  “Of course.” Agnes brings the infant out from her middle, but only some, as if her heart can’t stand to feel distance from the tiny child.

  Gram’s mother settles the bonnet onto the baby’s head. “Eleanor is a fine girl, Agnes. You should be very proud.”

  Eleanor?

  Agnes nods, her eyes only on her child. The infant coos then, no different from a little bird.

  The air warps. Eleanor?

  “She looks pale, Agnes. Is she well?”

  Agnes’s back straightens. She pulls the child closer. “Pale, ma’am?”

  “Her skin, Agnes. Her skin is quite light compared to yours.”

  There’s a lift in Agnes’s shoulders. “Yes, Mrs. Brae. My husband hails from Ireland. His skin does not like the sun.” There is a laugh in this last statement. Love sewn in her words.

  “Yes, well. What a blood endowment for the youngster5 in this hateful climate.”

  Agnes looks to her child. “I don’t understand, Mrs. Brae.”

  My great-grandmother looks at Agnes with something like sorrow. “Agnes.” She wrings her hands. “I have to ask you to leave the linens at the back of the door from now on. I will be unable to answer should you knock.” She points to a spot near Agnes’s feet. “I’ll set a box there, for you to leave the clean things within.”

  Agnes nods. “Certainly, ma’am.”

  Gram’s mother hands something to Agnes. The jingle of coins. “I fear I will not see you again, dear.”

  “I will always be close,” Agnes says. “Malaga is no distance at all.”

  “Yes.” My great-grandmother’s face softens in the light. “I wish you and your family well. Be safe. You are a fine mother, Agnes.”

  “It is fine to be a mother, Mrs. Murphy. I wish the same for you one day.” Agnes lifts the new parcel into her hands, a neat cloth wrap of dirty linens. She carries her child and her work back to her boat. A tune rises, one that is so familiar now. She sings this song to the child named Eleanor at her breast. Come here, come here, my dear, my dear.

  And I call to Agnes over her song. I scream the words she has carved into my room, the words she sang in the sea: “I’m here! I’m here!”

  Agnes sings to the sea, to the child. She doesn’t hear me, can’t see me. She doesn’t break her rhythm as she pulls her oars through the heaving swells, her boat headed toward Malaga.

  My head warps with the thoughts racing too fast. The name Eleanor. My great-grandmother knowing my girl. The girl from Malaga. I dive to follow her, and the ocean rushes around me.

  The waves bring my name, no different than they’ve brought Agnes’s song. “Rilla!” The sound carries through the thick of water, stretches into a melody.

  Agne
s. I push out a breath and bubbles burst around my lips.

  “Rilla!” My name again, called from the water’s edge. “Rilla!” The sound is wonky, the syllables shimmering through to the underwater.

  I swim to the sound. My heart thunders for the chance to know Agnes, ask after her child. Ask if the baby is my grandmother.

  But when my head breaks the surface of the water, the world slips around me. “Rilla!” It is Sam’s voice.

  “Sam!” Water fills my throat, scratches with its salt. Sam is on Fairtide’s dock. Fairtide’s aluminum dock. I cough up the seawater.

  “Dinner’s ready.” Sam says it like no time has elapsed. Like I didn’t just visit the past. He boards the Rilla Brae and grabs a towel.

  I tread in the water, unable to leave the sea that’s transported me through time. I want to dive underwater, find Agnes again, swim through years. I take a breath, ready for the plunge.

  “Rilla?” Sam waves the towel for me.

  I see the worried look on his face, how his eyes plead for me to be okay.

  “You good?”

  I turn to look at Malaga, so beautiful in the afternoon light. There is so much light now. And even though I can’t explain how it’s possible, I feel good. Settled. I feel the truth of it in my bones. As much as I want to follow Agnes into the past, I want to be in the present with Sam more. I climb the swim ladder and press the cotton against my face, dry my eyes. “I met her, Sam.”

  “Who?”

  “Agnes. My girl.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  After dinner, I tell Sam about Agnes’s visit to Fairtide, how she brought laundered linens and her newborn.

  “Eleanor,” I tell him.

  “Your grandmother’s name?”

  “That’s why she’s here, Sam.”

  We sit in silence for a long time, watching the moon rise above the trees on Malaga.

  My mind hums, filled with bees. Calling up the story of Agnes so that it will never be buried again.

  * * *

  When I head inside, I find Reed in my room. He rises from my rocking chair, a piece of paper in his hand.

  “Hey.” He says this small word like he didn’t say such huge things the last time he was here.

  “Hey.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you for a while.”

  “You could have joined us.” Even as I say it I know it’s not what I would have wanted.

  “I didn’t come here to see Sam. I just needed . . . wanted to say sorry. For everything I said about your mom and you. I was a shit, Rill. You didn’t deserve that.”

  “I didn’t.” No one does.

  Reed hands me the paper like a peace offering. “Thought you might like this.”

  At the top of the form is Reed’s name, computer generated.

  “It’s my GED. Only the first exam, but still, I passed.”

  Despite everything, pride surges in me. “This is great, Reed, really.”

  “It’s what you wanted, right? Education’s important to you, Rill.”

  “It is, but I want you to get your diploma for you, not me.”

  I sit on the edge of my bed and catch Malaga’s trees peeking through my window’s view. I wonder if Agnes is on the island tonight. Or closer, maybe. Could she be here now? Something about that possibility warms me.

  “I still love you, Rill.”

  “I’ll always love you, Reed.”

  He combs his fingers through his hair, lets out a shallow breath. “That doesn’t sound promising.”

  I remember Reed’s anger, how it overwhelmed him the last time he was in my room. The fisherman in me wants to ask him if he cut my traps. But the girl in me knows it doesn’t matter.

  Two years.

  So many private things.

  “You said a lot of things when you were here last, and maybe that’s enough.” Even as I know it’s time to move on, I want to go to him and hold him, the same way I’ve done so many times. But the space between us feels too distant to close. “I’ll expect a copy of your diploma, of course.” I try for light, supportive. I try to remember all the good things I love about Reed.

  “So that’s it? We’re done?”

  I search his eyes. I can’t ever forgive him for the things he said about me or my mother, and I hate the way I suspect his capacity for becoming too much like his grandfather. But mostly, I don’t have the energy to fight with Reed anymore. “I think that’s the way it has to be. I think it’s what you want too, if you’re really honest with yourself.”

  “It’s not what I want.”

  “It’s what I need.”

  Reed nods, a small one. He walks behind me to the door. Not the trellis, the door. “Will I see you around?”

  I turn. “Of course.”

  He lowers his head and steps out into the hallway. I hear his words as he walks away: “Counting the minutes.”

  Sadness rises in me. And relief, too. My thoughts wrestle somewhere between my past and future. An in-between place, Sam would say.

  I go to the window and stare out at Malaga.

  I press my hand to the carved messages Agnes left for me. I watch for any sign of her, but she doesn’t come. She lets the quiet settle around me. She lets me let go. Of Reed. Of pieces of my past. Of fear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Sam’s car arrives right at five o’clock the next morning. I dress, pull my hair into a messy ponytail. I head down the stairs, past the black-and-white photographs that hang along the stairwell. My ancestors peer at me through the sepia-toned edges of the past.

  Sinclair and Thomas Murphy in their WWII uniforms before they left for Normandy. My frail great-grandmother at the water’s edge, Malaga behind her in the middle distance. The photo of my gram, the earliest photo I’ve ever seen of her. She’s an infant, bundled near the fire, her face satisfied with sleep. There’s a small Christmas pine on the table behind infant Gram, presents wrapped with plain paper, twine bows.

  I stare at her photo now as I did last night, knowing she’s the connection to Agnes. Did my great-grandmother name my gram after the child from Malaga? Did something so terrible happen to Agnes’s infant that my great-grandmother wanted to honor her memory? Or could Agnes have given birth to my grandmother?

  I squint to the photograph, notice a carving on the button set at the bonnet’s neck. Only three lines are visible, the horizontal lines of the E.

  For Eleanor.

  The black-and-white photo is too deteriorated to know for sure if my grandmother wears the same bonnet my great-grandmother gifted the child Agnes held in her arms.

  I go to the kitchen, where Sam waits with Gram. The room is a fog of steamed oats.

  “How ya feeling this morning?” It’s a question Gram can’t stop asking, and I really can’t blame her, considering.

  “Right as rain.” I kiss Gram on the cheek and feel the warmth of her soft skin. Her skin. What was it that her mother said about the infant Eleanor’s skin? A blood endowment for the youngster in this hateful climate. Gram’s mother knew about the racial tension building toward Malaga residents. The awfulness of everything that happened to the islanders swarms me. It’s why my great-grandmother wouldn’t open the door to Agnes. Because of the color of her skin. And the growing intolerance toward the people of Malaga.

  There’s so much I want to tell Gram, ask Gram. But how? How do I tell her anything when I only have questions? And how would she feel about the possibility that our family—the Brae and Murphy lines that she’s so proud of—might not be our blood family at all? Our ancestors—Sinclair and Thomas Murphy, everyone who came before—what if we aren’t blood kin? Because that’s our story if my gram was the infant tucked so close to Agnes’s heart.

  And if Gram was the infant in Agnes’s arms, who brought her to Fairtide? And why?

  “Be safe out on the water today,” Gram says.

  Be safe. They are the same words my great-grandmother told Agnes.

  They’re the words every fishing family extends
like a prayer.

  I grab the keys to the Rilla Brae, and Sam follows me to the dock. The mist is low on the water today. Its haze creeps in front of us, summoning us toward the island, the same way fog brought the Water People to my mother. Called her to the Water People.

  My grip tightens on the wheel of the Rilla Brae, prepared now for the unexpected. I scan the sea around me, a gray and unyielding mass. There is so much more underneath, not just the ecosystem I’ve studied my entire life, but the otherworldliness that lurks just below the surface.

  The just-waking sun guides us to the shores of Malaga. The dawn, a time of the in-between. The tide is low and our boots get pulled by tidal mud, each step suctioned by the grabbing, wet earth. The air is layered with the smell of clams and salt. I pull it into my lungs, my blood, letting it wake all my senses.

  Sam and I walk the beach and then the granite rise of the island.

  Today the king’s shack is here, the unmistakably large two-room house. I don’t know how its structure greets me in the morning light, but I can see racks of salted cod hanging and drying in the sea air, vegetable gardens throwing out vining crops, creeping tomatoes. The door opens, and a child steps outside. He’s a young boy with high boots and standing-up hair. His shirt is too big for his small body, and the open neck exposes his collarbone. I recognize him from the photos of unidentified children at the schoolhouse. My heart reaches for him.

  The boy runs to the back of the house, calling for Aggie. My breath stills, waiting for her to come.

  “What is it?” Sam asks.

  “Don’t you see?”

  “See what?”

  “The king’s house.” My words are a whisper. “The little boy.”

  I draw in the smell of smoke. It rises from the chimney, curling into a twist as it reaches for the dull morning sky. The smoke makes the scent of boiling fish rise, and something else, too. Something as thick and starchy as the clouds crowding the sky. Potatoes, I think. Fish and potato stew. The little boy darts out from behind the house and runs off in the direction of the boatbuilder’s house.

  I point in the eager boy’s direction, but only with a small flick of my finger, oddly afraid someone will think me rude for pointing at this boy who doesn’t see we’re here. “There.” My fingers fumble for the side of Sam’s shirt and tug at it so that his eyes can follow the boy.