At some point in the night I heard a sound above me, a creaking, a slow tapping. I sat up in bed, straining to hear. It was Cole, I felt sure, looking through files in the attic. I crept out of bed and into the hallway, but the trapdoor to the attic was closed, the ladder hidden away behind the door. Cole’s bedroom door was closed and quiet. I went back to bed, but all night long I heard noises. I told myself they were the sounds of the house, the small adjustments and settling of a house a hundred years old. But so often in the night the noises sounded like small footsteps, like tiny fists knocking against a closed door.

Chapter 21

21

On my first trip back to Carson Cove, Tuck met me at the boat.

“Hey,” he said, grinning.

We walked to the coffee shop on the corner and sat so I could see the ferry and the expanse of water leading back home. That was as far as I was willing to go. Tuck picked up a pack of sugar and ripped the corner off, then shook the sugar into his coffee, leisurely, like he had all the time in the world.

“Well, I’m impressed,” Tuck said. “Half a block from the ferry, and you’re cool as a cucumber. I guess you’ve been working hard at this.”

“Please,” I said. “I’m shaking, I’m sweating. My knees almost buckled when I walked off the boat. I’m a mess.”

“You’re perfect,” he said.

Later we sat on the shore, our coats buttoned up against the wind. In the sound of the waves, I heard the funeral march of Annabel Lee, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell Tuck about that. I would tell him later, when I could explain the whole story, all of it, when the nightmare had faded. Instead I told him what I’d found in the attic.

“The crazy thing is that they told us this detailed story about his death, how he had pneumonia, how he was struggling to breathe. They told us the same story a dozen times. And it wasn’t true.”

“That’s wild,” he said.

“I don’t even know who to ask about it. It’s embarrassing to admit I didn’t know my mother at all. I didn’t know anything about either of them. What else were they lying about?”

“People will remember drowning. That’s not just sad, that’s news,” Tuck said.

We looked out at the water. It was funny to think that water was the thing that grounded me, but I was immediately calmed being near it, soothed by the movement of waves, its intricate systems for filling up space. And I liked the idea that in the midst of the rise and fall there was me, solid and still, the one who didn’t go anywhere.