Less than an hour later they got into Dad’s boat to head for Bucks Harbor. They were going to eat ice cream before chowder. Mom hopped in and started the motor. She loved to rev the engine. He buckled their life jackets and then one by one lifted Ava and Poppy into the boat.
“I want to sit on that bench,” Poppy said, pointing to the one her sister had taken nearest Dad.
“Sit near Mom for now,” he said. “You and Ava can switch on the ride back.”
“That’s fair,” Poppy said cheerfully.
Ava leaned into Dad, hugging him a little, happy to have him all to herself. Mom angled the boat out and away from Bucks Harbor. She turned her face into the wind, letting her hair fly in the breeze.
“Hey, where are we going?” Ava shouted above the noise the wind and motor made.
“I’m taking us for a spin around Scott Island, including Mr. McCloskey in our perfect day,” she said.
It was hard to see his house from the water, but the idea of circling a real author’s island seemed pretty great to Ava. Cruising in and around Bucks Landing made their story a little more like Sal’s. Ava reached into her pocket to make sure the shell was still there. Mom and Dad kept tossing happy faces back and forth across the boat, finally looking the way people should on vacation. Dad scoped out the shoreline. Mom watched where they were headed. Ava closed her eyes and invited the sun to rest its rays on her.
When the boat leaned a little, Ava’s eyes popped open but there was nothing to worry about. Mom was swinging them around, pointing the boat toward the landing. Time for ice cream. That’s when Ava saw Poppy on her feet, making a move toward the front bench. She must’ve thought it was time to switch places. Ava leaned forward to reach out to her sister. All of a sudden it was Ava being lifted from her wooden seat, raised up by the wind, tossed into the air. Seconds later her body slapped the surface hard, and the ocean sucked her down and down.
Heavy footfalls echoed up the stairs to the attic pulling Ava from her unpleasant memory. “You up here?” James asked.
She managed to choke out, “Over here.”
Before he could duck under the eaves and sit down on the floor across from her, Ava shoved the books back in the box, feeling bummed that she hadn’t had the chance to dig a little deeper for Mom’s poetry.
“Find anything?” he asked.
“Some old books.” Out of breath and sweaty, Ava brushed her hair off her forehead. “My mom’s.”
She wiped her hands on her jeans, hoping James hadn’t noticed how bad she looked.
“You okay? You look sick like your dad did last night when I found him in the boathouse.”
“Thanks,” Ava said.
“I didn’t mean to insult you.” He got up to open another window.
“Watch out for bats,” she shouted, scrambling to her feet. With the tennis racket held high, Ava backed away from him.
“Doubt there’s any up here. My uncle Charlie took pretty good care of your place.”
Ava lowered the racket, trying not to look crazy. Just call her Fringe.
“Sorry about your uncle.” Ava wished she could’ve come up with something more original to say.
All she remembered about Mr. Purcell was that his skin was leathery and that he grilled every time their family came over for dinner.
James kept his gaze out the window.
“Sure is hot up here,” she said.
“Fresh air will cool it down,” he said. “In the meantime, I could drive you to town, if you want. Your dad said you need to buy stuff.”
Ava wanted to go with James, and she told him so. It would be nice to get out of Herrick House for a while.
“I’ll meet you at my truck,” he said.
After James left, Ava reached back into the box. She pulled out Blueberries for Sal and One Morning in Maine. With Mom and Poppy gone, they were hers to keep.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Toby paced in his caretaker’s makeshift studio, rehearsing how to tell Ava they were going back to Mount Hope.
He stopped short in front of a disturbing piece. A stick-figure mother made of metal, holding a stick-figure baby, both of them parked on a remnant car seat. James had told him the sculpture commemorated the woman who died after having a random seizure and crashing into a guardrail on a road off Route 3 in Ellsworth. Her two-week-old infant had been found dead, strapped in his car seat. To be sure it was a beautifully rendered sculpture, a heartbreaking reminder of how fleeting life could be, but Toby didn’t see how it would help the father who’d commissioned it.
Ava would be up soon, which meant he needed to stop wasting time trying to make sense of the boy’s hodgepodge art work and start thinking of a good way to explain what he planned to do.
He took a seat in front of the work bench. Back-to-back sheets of sticky adhesive trapped shards of pottery inside. The smashed-up mess hadn’t been there last night when he’d come in to use James’s landline to get in touch with Detective Reilly and return Nan’s call.
After leaving a message for Reilly, telling him about the note and asking about Mallory’s condition, Toby dialed Nan.
He couldn’t believe her impeccable timing, tracking him down at the exact moment Ava had found the haunting note. Strange how after knowing Nan only two days, Toby missed her pluck and spunk.
Right from the start, she’d been someone he could talk to. As ineffectual as he was with Ava, Nan didn’t judge him. Looking back on things before Mount Hope, Toby had been going through the motions, working at the Foundation, raising his daughter the best he could. The night the police brought Ava home from the train tracks, something in him broke apart. When he enrolled her at the camp, Toby truly believed he was doing the right thing. But after those parent sessions, and watching Nan go to battle for her nephew Arthur—a boy not even her own child—well, it knocked sense into him. He’d finally found the courage to go up against Pax, to follow his gut and take Ava out.
She picked up on the first ring.
“I found a note,” Nan said, her voice cracking. “Under the wiper blade on my car. It says: Get Arthur out, he needs a hospital.”
Toby slid the name tag he’d been given out of his wallet. What the hell was going on? How many warnings did the girl give before having her accident?
“You’ve got to help me,” Nan said. “Between my selfish brother, that arrogant director, and a detective who claims his hands are tied, no one will let me take Arthur home. He’s still there.”
The injustice of Nan’s predicament drew him in. He couldn’t refuse her. As tough as the whole thing would be on Ava, he wasn’t about to leave Herrick House without her. If he explained things right, Ava would see the good they’d be doing. Father and daughter banding together for a good cause. To get Arthur out. Ava knew the ins and outs of Mount Hope and which counselors could be counted on to help them. He had the means and the money. So while listening to Nan, Toby snapped into action. With a confidence he rarely felt when dealing with Ava, he told her, “Yes, let’s meet at Bar Harbor Airport.”
He heard a truck start up. By the time he maneuvered through the cluttered space to look out the window, James was backing out of the driveway. There was someone in the passenger seat, but from this distance, Toby couldn’t be sure it was Ava. Plus she would never be up this early.
Out of the boathouse, down the path, across the side lawn to the sunroom. “Ava, you home?” He took the stairs to her room.
The door was partially closed or halfway open, depending on how he chose to see things.
Resigned to the idea that, ready or not, he would have to come clean, Toby knocked lightly. “Ava?”
She wasn’t there. Her hiking boots were crammed into her wastebasket. A tennis racket leaned against the bureau. The clothes he’d bought her at Target were all over the floor. Things were starting to look like home.
Then he noticed her bed, perfectly made, not the usual tangled mass of sheets. Her blueberry-covered spread was tucked in severely where pillow meets
headboard; everything about it was neat and tidy.
He undid the spread. As if the edges of those books were knives, he pulled Lorraine’s childhood favorites—his daughters’ too—from their secret place beneath her pillow.
Years ago, one book had started an argument between husband and wife, while the other, because of his stupid idea to enact it, put Ava in harm’s way.
Thinking about how much his girl had been through filled Toby with fresh guilt. Eight years after she fell from that boat, after she’d lost her mother and sister—all thanks to him—what did her so-called protector do? Made everything worse.
An expert at helping other people, Toby had the ability to set this right. And that’s what he intended to do. He’d tell Ava they were leaving Maine to make a difference. For Nan. For Arthur. Toby placed the treasured books back under her pillow, tucking in the spread, making it look as close to the way Ava had arranged it as he could. His daughter would see her father’s plan was noble. She’d want to help too.
TWENTY-EIGHT
James didn’t talk much, but when he did, not a word was wasted.
“What was the camp like?” he asked.
Ava stopped in front of a bronze Native American sculpture parked in the middle of the sidewalk on Main Street in Blue Hill.
“My dad hired guys to drag me out of my bed, shove me in a car, and take me away. They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. For hours neither one of them said anything. I still don’t get why he did it.”
And Ava didn’t know why she spilled the things she did to James either. Except he radiated the kind of calm she hadn’t known in a friend in a long time. During those last months she’d spent in Wellesley, the kids she’d hung out with weren’t peaceful. They were empty inside. And at Mount Hope, one kid after another was even more messed up than she was.
James listened to the stories Ava told about Mount Hope, about spending more time with loneliness and desperation than she had since she was little. As they went in and out of those shops collecting clothes, Ava using the credit card her father left on the sunroom table along with a note that said, use as you please, she told James she didn’t want to be mad at her dad. Things were better now that they were in Maine, but still there were times when Ava couldn’t help resenting what he’d done.
She told him about Mallory. A kid so hopeless, she smashed her head in to get herself out on a medical.
James didn’t rush to say stupid things or nod like mad, acting like he knew what Ava had been through. He just kept his pace in line with hers. He walked steady, the rhythm of his steps slow as a ballad. The creases on his forehead were proof he was paying attention. Ava could tell by the collection of contours and curves that showed up on his face as she spoke, lines deep and at the ready, that James had some practice listening to sad stories.
Once, out of the blue, his hand flecked with copper paint touched hers, sending streaks of heat up Ava’s arm.
While she hit the fourth store, James waited for her on a street bench. When Ava came out, wearing funky striped cargo capris and a V-neck T-shirt that said folk the war, a peace sign where an O should be, a guitar for the L, he looked up from texting.
“Way more you,” he said.
The soft fabrics tingled where they were tight against her skin. The clothes felt nice on her body. The new canvas flats felt good on her feet too, not at all like the Mount Hope hiking boots or the Herrick House flip-flops.
“Hungry?” James pointed to a vegan café on the corner of Cross Street. The measured way he spoke didn’t bother Ava in the same way her dad’s clipped version did. She got the sense that she could ask James anything, and that he’d answer—honestly and completely—even if things came out in short sentences or single words.
His truck was parked in the opposite direction. Ava was about to ask for the keys, so she could run back and throw her stuff in, when he reached out, offering to take the bags off her hands. Waiting at the crosswalk, Ava decided to test her theory about him.
“Are you ever going back to school?” She punched the signal button, once, twice. On the third time, he covered her hand.
“Won’t change any faster ’cause you keep pushing.”
She didn’t want him to let go, but he did.
“Probably not,” he said. “I found the kind of sculpture I love to do and I’m getting paid to do it. Sweet deal, don’t you think? Caretaking in exchange for an oceanside studio.”
“What do you call what you do?”
Ava had taken more music than art classes at Wellesley High, but she’d seen enough paintings with melted clocks and broken faces to know that what James did had a name.
He didn’t cross, even though the light flashed walk. All he did was turn toward her. “Some people call it trash art or junk art. Think it’s not really sculpture.”
As James talked about his work, his whole body woke up. It was like her question flipped a switch and suddenly he was animated. The bags started swinging as he waved and formed things in midair. Ava could almost see the things he made back at the boathouse—all metal, wood, and glass.
“It’s been around for centuries. Gained notoriety in France during the early nineteen hundreds. They called it objet trouvé—found art. Beautiful, huh?”
Ava could’ve listened to James talk about twisted pipes and broken plates all day. The café they stepped into was full of people—not one table free. She jumped when a phone rang even though it was in his pocket not hers. James put one finger out in front of him, telling Ava to hold on, then stepped outside to take the call.
A waitress a few years older than Ava, with a bird’s nest for hair and flour stains all over her shirt, took her name and eyed James through the storefront glass. “Table for two?” she asked.
“Ava?” James walked back in, coming up behind her. “It was your dad. He wants us to meet him for lunch. You up for that?”
She wanted to say no. With James, Ava was having the first real conversation in weeks, maybe months. Why couldn’t things stay the way they were? She liked the sound of table for two.
Then the tiny dent in his cheek caved in when he smiled.
No questions asked, she climbed into James’s truck and let him drive her to her father. Ava didn’t think anything was wrong until after James turned off Route 3 into the Bar Harbor
Airport parking lot and the terminal building came into view. When Ava and Poppy were little, Dad used to bring them there to watch the planes take off and land. There wasn’t any place to eat inside.
“What’s going on?” Ava looked at James, trying to gauge how much he knew about why they were there. It never crossed her mind that this was a trick, that it wasn’t about lunch.
“Just said to meet him here.” James looked toward the terminal entrance. He was as calm as could be.
“Is he leaving?” Ava asked, banging her hand against the passenger door. “To go back to work?”
“Don’t know,” James said. “He didn’t say.”
Ava wasn’t going into that airport. She wouldn’t give her father the satisfaction of saying goodbye, giving him permission to leave.
Suddenly she didn’t want to stay with James either. He’d given her no real reason not to trust him, but now she was wary. Not knowing what to do, Ava gripped the door handle. She felt stranded. Then she heard a sighing noise as James slid his hand across the vinyl seat. When he took hold of hers, he whispered, “Sometimes you gotta ask.”
James and Ava walked to the airport entrance. Her dad was sitting in one of those bucket seats, deep in conversation with a woman, the two of them yammering back and forth. The waiting area was filled with more staff than frequent flyers—they were the only two in their row.
“Ava.” When her dad stood up, he knocked over a paper bag that had been parked on top of his suitcase. “This is Nan. We were in the same parent session at Mount Hope.”
As soon as her dad said where he’d met her, Ava placed her. She was the angry one yelling at Justice in the lod
ge lobby, and then later at Pax.
Ava’s body responded to the recollection. Her skin prickled head to toe. Her chest hurt from not being able to catch her breath. Geared up to run, her feet refused to cooperate. The new canvas flats were stuck to the floor as if she’d landed on a wad of gum in the high school cafeteria.
“Sit here. Come now.” Her dad picked up the brown paper bag and pulled a few deli sandwiches from it. “You too, James.” He placed them on a table. “Take what you like. That one there’s vegetarian.”
“Can we stop with this?” Ava didn’t care about meeting his friend or eating his lunch. “What are we doing here? Why did you make me come?”
“I need your help,” Nan said, toggling her thumb back and forth, aiming first at Ava and then at her dad. “Something’s not right at Mount Hope. I want to fly you and your father back to upstate New York to help me get my nephew out.”
“You’re his aunt,” Ava said. When Fringe kept repeating the phrase Nan can fly over and over on the Ledges, she’d thought he was just stuck on one more crazy-ass thing. Except right there, through the plate glass window, sitting lonely on the tarmac, was a plane not much bigger than James’s truck. “Is that yours?”
“I know this is asking a lot,” her dad said. “But we need to get Arthur out and you know the place better than we do.”
Ava couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“The police need to hear things straight from you. It’s the right thing to do.” He kept on talking. When he got close enough to Ava to take hold of her elbow she remembered Justice’s threat. He’d warned her that eventually her dad would find a way to send her back.
“You’re right, you’re asking too much.” Ava didn’t know where to go or what to do. It was getting harder to stand.
Nan marched over, shaking a piece of paper at her, raising her voice so loud that the few people scattered through the terminal turned to look. They probably figured Ava was a brat and Nan her self-sacrificing mother. “Someone left me a note,” she said.
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