Page 118 of The Wild Beneath

The crane halts abruptly, finished its unloading. Voices and shuffling on deck. Greg starts the engine and it whirs to life. The empty barge slowly motors off the pilings as it begins to rain.

It’s not long before they find the open water.

It’s happening. There’s no way to turn around now.

She’d forgotten how much space there is, and the way the waves can seem menacing. They seem to clamour for her. As if at any moment, whatever is below could reach up and take hold of her.

But her mind clears. The tangle in her stomach starts to unknot.

The engine rumbles onward while she tries to formulate a plan: Get up to Hale’s and figure out if Walker’s there. Hemustbe somewhere. When she finds him, will she keep a distance? Kiss him immediately? What lines is she willing to cross? Could she truly leave Evan when she’s loved him as long as she can remember?

Or is all of this made-up, is she having a psychotic break?

On the barge, it takes the night and the following day to get to the rocky bends of Hale’s Channel. Annie wades between longing and daydreams and full-blown panic attacks.

By the time the barge docks with a thud, they’re cloaked in darkness again. She slings her backpack onto her shoulders. Greg lowers the gangway for her.

“Back home tonight?” he asks.

She does not know where she’ll go tonight. Greg waits for an answer, but all that comes to her mind is the nonsensical image ofPolarison the open sea. She tightens the straps of her backpack. “I’ll figure something out,” she says.

The gangway touches down and Greg locks it in place with metal brackets. Thanking him, she disembarks. The scent of pine needles fills the familiar, clarified air. Dim lights emit from the houses and fishing boats.

Walker is nowhere to be seen. Is that what she really expected? Him to be waiting? Of course not.

But his sound: It’s not a single tone anymore. There’s a choral quality, highs and lows. Multiple voices? Dense and expansive, leaving harmony in the air around her.

Annie does not stop. Her legs have decided on their own accord what’s next, off the wharf, climbing up the main road, past the post office and Hale’s General Store advertising lotto tickets. Past the darkened pub and its patio furniture wrapped up for the winter season.

When she reaches the boggy uphill path toward the shipyard, she has an instinct to kneel and place her palm on the earth. When she does, it feels strangely warm. Even the February wind doesn’t feel cold on her cheeks.

Her legs feel stronger—­a welcome burn in her thighs—­as she climbs the path. She allows herself to picture Walker standing there when she arrives. His lanky body, cheeks ruddy from the cold, a sweat-stained T-shirt, next toPolaris, a sanding paddle in his hand. The heady scent of wind and salt.

Fern and devil’s club flank the tarped boats in the shipyard. A single overhead lamp buzzes. She’s directly in front of the warehouse. The door handle clicks and gives way.

There’s no one inside. It is dark, but not enough to hide the fact thatPolarisis gone.

Chapter 47

Before

When Dr. Aiden MacLeod stops at that familiar bend in Hale’s Channel again, time has pulled him along like an undertow.

It is not that he’s forgotten the way this liminal place made him feel at age eighteen.

But he’s a decade older now.

He rarely reaches back to himself, that teenager in a fishing boat, motoring alone in the morning haze.

He’s lost some of the wonder he had back then, and he’s not sure if it was legitimate in the first place. Years of schooling have passed by in a blur. Student loan paperwork was signed with a ballpoint pen in a bank cubicle, cafeterias served him overcooked pasta in bland tomato sauce. He wrote dozens of exams in gymnasiums. Then, he hung his degree on a wall of a shoebox apartment in the city. So many nights out in dank bars with friends. He got into medical school unexpectedly. There it was in black and white, a letter of acceptance that would definitely make Ruth proud. Aiden went all in, too: all-nighters in city hospitals, life-and-death decisions at 4:00 a.m. Now it feels like his life might amount to something useful, after all.

He’s been close to the ocean all this time, but he rarely sees it.

“Your work is paying off,” Ruth says across a curly beige phone line when he talks to her at 6:00 a.m. before a shift.

He cranks out the years in medical school and residency until he’s an attending physician.

“I got my new badge. And my own parking spot,” Aiden says. As he talks about his new staff job at the hospital down the coast from Hale’s, he feels as if he can see Ruth beaming on the other end of the telephone.