They kept falling and falling and Callie was sure they would crash soon, but they didn’t. They landed in the water, and her mama swam them both to shore. Callie remembered then what Pappy Montgomery used to tell her about stormy nights and the cliffs: “Every once in a while, something fantastical happens on a stormy night and a horrible wrong is righted.” Callie figured that’s what happened to her papa and her new mama, that something fantastical had taken place on that first stormy night.

Callie didn’t know what made the cliffs special, but her papa had once told her that whenever he was out on one of his ships, he could see a special pattern that ran down that whole side of the rock wall. Callie told her mama about it when they were resting on the shore, what her pappy had said about fantastical things, and that must be why they were okay. And maybe also why it wasn’t storming anymore.

But then Callie saw her mama’s hand and wrist. It didn’t look so good. Papa had been holding her tight. Callie looked at her own hand and wrist then—it was reddish and hurt, but not like her mama’s. Her mama’s wrist was kind of purple and the top of her hand and one of her fingers was bleeding really bad. When they got back to the house, her papa wasn’t there. The house wasn’t Papa’s anymore, Mama explained. It was just Mama’s. Her mama got really fierce then, just like Papa would when he wanted Callie to remember something very important. She’d said, “Callesandra, no matter what happens, you are my daughter.” She made Callie repeat it. Then she said, “No one will ever, ever, take you away from me. Do you understand me?” Callie didn’t. This was her mama, of course that was true, but she didn’t tell her that, wondering instead when her papa would come, and everything would be okay. Her papa could fix her mama’s hand like he had before when it had to be stitched. He could fix everything.