I put my finger on the page and skimmed the caption, which told the story: the girl who hanged herself on the bridge when her lover didn’t show up for their planned elopement. No evidence that this is historically accurate, Elijah’s book said. But the story was passed around, a legend.

Emily’s Bridge.

A long time ago there was a beautiful girl. The story Cole had told me on the beach. The bridge was in Lindenberg, Vermont, the caption said. Maple trees, yellow leaves, red barns. A real, tangible place. Emily’s Bridge, the place where Cole and his friends had thrown parties like the ones Lucas and I went to on the golf course. I could feel my face burning with something. Excitement. Fear. The ghost in my house grew up somewhere. And maybe this was where. Just thinking the name of the place gave me an electric surge. Lindenberg.

Learn his name, Eddie had said. That’s the only way to have any power over him.

Cole had been a child, a teenager. I imagined him riding bikes on a cul-de-sac. I imagined him eating bologna sandwiches. I already felt more powerful. Names did have power. Even the name of the bridge had power. And the name of the town was uplifting as a song. It was as if Cole were coming into focus, a Polaroid photo.

Chapter 17

17

The summer I was seventeen, when I was preparing to leave for college, I’d felt something in the air around me, in the treetops, in the waves. It was as if the island were breathing, as if the heart of the island were pumping powerfully. I felt it when the wind swayed the branches or pinned the gulls’ wings in place as they flew. I felt it when the rhythm of the waves became so loud and insistent, my own heart began to beat in time. I felt it somewhere deeper and quieter, too, in buds and blossoms, in the undulations of jellyfish, in the air molecules that shimmered with heat. I felt all around me the powerful opening and closing, filling and emptying, inhaling and exhaling of a living being.

I started to wonder if the island’s breath and heartbeat were specially aimed at pulling me firmly to earth. I became aware of my own gravity. I was afraid that I would, in the end, be unable to get off the island. At night I dreamed I was escaping in a paddleboat. I exhausted myself pedaling, then glanced back to see myself still on the sand.