Girl Sent Away

by Lynne Griffin

  Ava’s head was pounding. The word waves rang out, B-flat; back there, F-sharp and G.

  Nan leaned into Arthur, putting an arm around his shoulder. “Oh, honey. Never again. I promise.”

  “Remember that ropes challenge we did together?” Ava asked Arthur. “You told me not to look back. To pay attention to where I was going. Nan’s here. You don’t need to be scared.”

  “You were real nice to me that day,” Arthur said.

  “I should’ve been nicer to you every day. I’m sorry I wasn’t.”

  “Come on, you two, enough talk of that place,” Nan said. “Let’s go inside.” After taking a few steps, she stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Coming?”

  “No, you guys go ahead. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine,” Ava said. “I’ve got something I need to do.”

  So concerned about her nephew, Nan didn’t give Ava a second thought, leaving her alone on the path. Ava decided to ignore the advice she’d given Arthur, at least the part about not looking back.

  Skidding down the hill, her stupid shoes offered no resistance. The closer she got to the dock, the louder the waves crashed, the sharper the seaweed smelled, the faster her heart beat. It was a rhythm she’d memorized the notes to; one so familiar she’d come to despise it.

  It took forever to make it to the shoreline. Bypassing the dock, she forced her feet straight into the water. When the ocean was up to her ankles, Ava stumbled. She fell forward, pebbles and stone stabbing at her hands. Frigid water swallowed her up to her waist.

  Ava refused to end up like Arthur. She could not wait for her dad to tell her his version of what happened on Patong Beach. She knew water—this thing she feared beyond all else—would trigger her memories and bring the final pieces of the story back to her. Ava stood to move deeper into the surf.

  When she started to lose all feeling in her legs, Ava spread her arms wide and let herself fall face first into the salty sea. Water on her chest, her lips, her forehead. Jagged shells pierced her skin. Ava didn’t scramble to get her footing. She didn’t bother to anchor her feet in the sand. The enemy rushed in around her nose and cheeks, into her ears, drowning out her music. With lips closed tight, she refused to open her mouth to it. Ava had made that mistake before.

  Willing the memories to come, she wondered how much longer she could last. She should have taken in more air before the plunge. Why not take a breath right now—

  My mother has my hand and Poppy’s, her two girls, one on either side. We are marching toward a shoreline that draws away from us. I look over my shoulder and see my father standing where we left him, mesmerized by something beyond us, hypnotized by the sea.

  A gust of wind riffles the pages of my mother’s journal. “Daddy,” I shout, “My poems.”

  My father grabs the journal and breaks into a run. “Rain, no!”

  When I look forward again, I see the ocean has become a blue-black wall of water. It’s then that my mother realizes something is terribly wrong. With a jerk and a tug, she turns from it, dragging Poppy and me with her. We’re a blur, running from the wave. We are flying. It is faster. My feet leave the ground as we’re swept up in a wild rush. With only one hand frantically paddling, I struggle to keep myself above water. It’s no use. All I can do is tighten my grip on my mother. Before the three of us go under, I grab the deepest breath I can. The punishing water surrounds us, spinning us, violently returning us to shore.

  The last time I see my mother’s pretty face, it’s anything but. Creased and wrinkled, a silent scream is pasted there. My mother wrenches her hand from mine; it neither slips nor is it stolen by the wave. She turns her back on me and I watch as she pulls Poppy close. It’s as if they are hugging under water.

  I am airless and weighed down all at once. My arms and legs don’t know what to do without her touch. My mother and sister disappear before my eyes. Without my anchor, knowing she didn’t choose me, I let the ocean claim me.

  Moving so fast from where we once were, there is nothing I can do but surrender. My body is battered by errant things. A beach chair, a table. Pieces of wood, metal. Glass. I hear a girl screeching. I realize then, it’s me. When my bathing suit is ripped from my body, I think, fine, there is nothing left it can take from me.

  Then I hear my father’s voice above the roar. “Hold on.” Hearing him triggers something fierce in me. There’s a tree branch dangerously close to my face, and like a reflex, I reach for it. My grasp is weak and the water strong. As I cling to it, I picture my mother’s face. I consider letting go of it. Like she let go of me. I open my mouth—to breathe or swallow, I’m not sure which. That’s when from behind, someone yanks me up. His grip is tight, a crushing hold. Inside my chest is a flame, burning, burning. I gasp and wheeze, barely able to hear, but there he is again. “Hold on.”

  My father has one arm around my waist, and with the other he pulls us both, branch by branch over to a palm tree. The water is thick and brown now, muddy as it slaps us, urgent as it tries to tow us back to sea. Suddenly we are climbing. In between urging me to hold on to its trunk, telling me to go higher, my father cries out. “Rain. Poppy.”

  As swiftly as the wave overtook us, the sea releases its grip. No longer is it spiteful. When it recedes in swirling pools, my father coaxes me down. First he swims toward land hauling me, then he picks me up and runs. He never stops sobbing into my hair. I say nothing. All my energy goes to holding on.

  My arms are locked behind his neck, my legs around his waist. When we are almost to the hotel, he shouts to a man standing on a balcony, staring wide eyed at our nakedness. I hear my dad yell to him, “Wing. Wing.”

  The tone and echo of the word “run” in any language is the same.

  Inside my head, I beg my father not to do this. Do not leave me. Do not put me in the arms of this stranger. But my father peels me from his body. As I cry and cry, he says, “I know, I know.”

  And then the connection between us is broken, final.

  I hear a splash as he heads back through the water. At first he is screaming, “Rain. Poppy.” Their names are loud, clear. As the man with a camera that digs into my ragged flesh takes me from the hotel, away from my family, my father’s voice gets softer, softer still, and then it’s gone.

  The man wraps me in his shirt and carries me like a baby. He covers my eyes and we are moving through town. I tell myself Mom and Dad and Poppy are right behind me. Soon we will all be going home.

  One step inside a building, a whiff, and I know it’s a hospital. A woman takes me from the man. They speak, but I can’t understand what they are saying. She brings me to a room filled with people, so many people. Some of them are bleeding. Some of them are staring. All of them crying.

  But I do not cry or scream or speak. I curl up on my cot and pull the cool white sheet over my head. I am alive and I am dying.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The sunroom was empty and Herrick House quiet by the time Toby made it back from Biddie’s. He’d driven faster than he should have over twisting, turning roads, in an effort to beat Ava home before she gathered her things and took off. Though once he explained the unexplainable, there would be no stopping her.

  To say he regretted arguing with Lorraine that morning was an understatement, a paltry way to account for the guilt he would always carry. He’d wasted precious seconds reaching for the poetry journal, placing him too far away to save his entire family but close enough to watch his wife choose between their daughters.

  Despite the surety that words would prove inadequate, Toby planned to beg for Ava’s forgiveness. For handing her over to a stranger. For leaving her alone in a hospital for a single second, never mind an endless day. Without revealing the horror of his task, Toby needed Ava to know, he did everything he could to find them.

  Toby ran his hand over the indentation on the old sofa in the sunroom, a place he’d spent countless evenings with Lorraine after their girls had gone to sleep. He thought it remarkable, amidst everything happening now,
that the ghost of his wife had begun to fade from that space. In the last few days, he imagined confessing his wrongdoings not just to Ava but to Nan. Yet Toby was prepared to sacrifice all that might be with Nan for a shred of forgiveness from Ava, the hint of a chance that they could put the horror of that day behind them.

  He looked out the window. No sign of Ava. Drawing on Nan’s confident example, he readied himself. When Ava hauled up from the woods and opened that sunroom door, he would sit her down and they would talk it out.

  Back at the swing, Toby had every intention of telling Ava that Nan and Arthur, worn out and exhausted from their ordeal at Mount Hope, needed a place to stay before they went back to Boston for the boy’s evaluation at McLean. He just couldn’t come up with the words fast enough.

  Now as he willed his daughter to walk through the back door, he rehearsed what he would say.

  “Ava, this is where you live. We’re going to counseling—together—you and me. I’ll talk to you about everything. What I did and didn’t do. The devastating choice your mother felt she had to make. I was wrong to send you to Mount Hope, but I won’t let you go now.”

  Toby glanced at the lighthouse-shaped wall clock, a silly, inexpensive thing Poppy had insisted he buy at a souvenir shop on a day trip to Bar Harbor. The sweet memory was interrupted when he registered the time. Even if Ava had strolled home, wasting time on the path, it was taking too long for her to get from Biddie’s to Herrick House.

  Toby took the side door out, making his way toward the boathouse. It jarred him to see Nan and Arthur walking arm-in-arm up the walkway. If Ava saw them sashaying around the grounds, it might well push her over the edge.

  “Have you seen Ava?” he asked. “She’s coming for her things. She wants to move to Biddie’s.”

  “Ava’s sorry,” Arthur said, looking over his shoulder. The boy was rattled. Not the calmer, stronger kid he’d been at breakfast. Twenty-four hours out of that hellhole and Arthur had seemed a little bit better. Now something was off about him.

  “I hope we didn’t have anything to do with that,” Nan said.

  “Things got so heated I didn’t even have a chance to tell her you’re here with Arthur.”

  “She knows. We met her coming out of the boathouse. Arthur went for a walk and got lost. She brought him to me. I asked her to come inside with us, but she said not to worry. There was something she needed to do. Last I saw her, she was headed to the dock.”

  As if Toby had guzzled a pot of Biddie’s bitter blend, his heart began skipping beats. Ava would never willingly go close to the shoreline. And hadn’t Mallory said the same thing right before she’d hurt herself?

  Toby wanted to fly down the embankment, but his feet were glued to the walkway. Move, he told himself. Why couldn’t his mind and body ever get this fight or flight thing right? So what if he showed up down there and everything was fine. Embarrassment Toby could handle. Ava ticked at him he could live with.

  “Get Arthur to the house. See if you can track James down. One of you meet me back at the dock. Please, hurry.”

  Taking the trail that led to Biddie’s, Toby nearly slid down the hill. His lack of agility wasn’t suited to the rugged terrain or the steep drop to the shore. A banging in his head matched the beat of his heart. His blood pressure had to be through the roof. His out-of-shape body slowed him down. Minutes in, his legs began to cramp. The heaviness that traveled down both elbows to the tips of his fingers was nothing compared to the knife that got him right between his shoulder blades.

  Then he saw her.

  Ava was moving toward the thin line where water meets sky. Toby needed to go faster, much faster.

  Looking on, he watched her fall to her knees. Not letting one stumble slow her resolve, she popped right back up. She swayed to and fro like she had at the airport.

  He tried to call to her, but the words wouldn’t come. His throat was closing tighter by the second, as if someone’s hands were wrapped around his neck.

  The scent of lavender perfume overcame him. Every sound became sharper: his feet pounding ground, a mix of voices in his head, his and Ava’s. He could swear he heard Lorraine.

  “Hurry, Toby. Hurry.”

  Disoriented yet determined, Toby wouldn’t take his eyes off his daughter. It was like looking at Ava through a keyhole; the girl on one side of a door and him on the other.

  Ava thrashed and beat the water as she moved further from him. When the ocean was up to her waist, she stretched her arms out by her sides and fell forward. Then her body went still, her arms limp, her hair a fan on the surface of the sea.

  No matter how fierce Toby’s will to get to her was—to drag Ava from the surf, up the incline by the dock—his legs wouldn’t move. Before he made it anywhere near her, Toby collapsed under the crushing weight of everything he had ever failed to do for her.

  The agony of wanting his family back filled his chest. It became unbearable, a vise around his heart.

  As his field of vision narrowed, Toby struggled to speak. “Come back,” he whispered. But there was no one there to hear him. With his daughter lying face down in the Atlantic, Toby was drawn back to the Andaman Sea.

  I’m looking out to the horizon. Ahead of me, Poppy is there, skipping across the beach with Ava, one of my daughters nearer the water than the other. Lorraine and I trail our girls, side by side, hand in hand.

  “We’ll move to Maine for good,” I say.

  “Everything will be better there,” Rain says.

  Then it all goes black. I am cold and wet, and all I can hear is crying, my sobs mixed with Ava’s.

  A woman shouts. “Ava needs you. Go.”

  I cannot tell who’s speaking.

  “Open your eyes. Hold on to our girl.”

  Slumped on the ground, Toby could barely lift his head, but lift his head he did. Dizzy shapes and shifting patterns distracted him, and still Ava came into focus. Watching her swim toward a boulder lodged in the ocean floor, near the dock, Toby experienced a faraway sense of gratitude. With her arms wrapped tightly around her chest, she rocked against the boulder. Toby could almost feel the stone against his own back, the waves lapping his face. Ava was safe.

  Toby had never been so tired. Like smoke swirling around his head, the smell of the sea became so intense, so overwhelming, he no longer cared to breathe. In that brief moment, split off from himself, it occurred to him that there was one more place he might look for Rain and sweet little Poppy. What a fortuitous way to learn what he’d longed to know.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Four weeks after her father had a heart attack because she went searching for what the sea held in wait for her, Ava knelt on the side lawn next to James, putting the final touches on her tribute to the people she loved. Honoring them with blue flowers and found art.

  The memorial garden outside Herrick House had been her idea. She’d planned every inch of it, plotting exactly where each perennial would go. James helped her dig the earth and turn the soil. Biddie drove her all over town to find the right seedlings.

  “Where do you want the sign to go?” James asked.

  He’d been keeping the last piece of the garden art a surprise for her. Ava loved the one James had made for Amelia and Liam, to accompany the mother and baby sculpture she had helped him deliver. That sign, with its silver and gold metallic splashes of paint, their names etched in black, was haunting. And though it fit the piece he’d designed to commemorate them, it wasn’t right for Ava’s cheery, full-of-color garden patch. Secretly she hoped James knew what she’d envisioned, the pretty thing Ava forced her mind to rest on these days.

  “You decide,” she said. “But let’s do that last, okay?”

  “The whole thing is perfect,” James said wrapping his arms around her.

  Like she had in countless dreams, Ava stroked his cheek, letting her fingers rest on his lips, on the scar left by surgeries he’d had as a baby. Another touch of the cruelty of nature.

  “You want us to come back when y
ou’re done?” Toby asked.

  Ava hopped up, brushing bits of dirt and grass from her jeans. When she saw her father coming down the hill with Nan, she didn’t react quickly because the pair had scared her. Though Ava still had panic attacks, they were shorter and more controllable since she’d been meeting with Sarah a couple times a week. Ava didn’t leave her boyfriend’s side in a rush because she had anything to hide either. Ava hurried to her dad and Nan, guiding them to her creation, because it was as much for her father as it was for her. And it was all about the presentation. With Nan on one side and Ava on the other, they linked arms.

  “It’s not that I don’t love the attention, but you both know I can walk by myself, right?”

  Her dad had been forceful and brave since he’d been home from the hospital. Whenever he felt the urge, he talked about the surgery, about being in ICU. Ava understood how almost dying could flood a person with so much fear it was hard to find the words to describe it.

  Maybe he was stronger because she was.

  “Ready?” Ava asked.

  James stood up and backed away from the garden so Ava could explain things. She pointed to the clusters of salvia, the purple flowers Poppy’s someday husband might have been named for. Ava was the only one who knew that little story, and right then she decided to keep it for herself.

  “That’s Mom,” Ava said, though there was no real need to explain the sculpture next to the salvia patch either.

  Ava watched her dad take in the likeness of woman holding a book, a circle of zinnias planted about her feet. Of course it was Mom.

  “Absolutely gorgeous,” Nan said, taking Ava’s hand and squeezing it. “You guys are so talented.”

  Ava didn’t let go of Nan’s hand for what seemed like a long time. She wanted her to know how much she loved her being there, how grateful she was for what she’d done for them, rushing to the dock, saving her dad’s life. Nan had given them their chance to start over, to set things right.