Page 15 of The Wild Beneath

“What people care about is keeping their jobs, Ev.” Isaac searches his pants pocket for a lighter. “Coast guard will be here within the week.”

“I better go over to Annie. There’s no word from her parents yet.” Evan swallows. Swallows the fact he’s here standing with Isaac, as if he’s handcuffed to him, instead of holding Annie’s hand.

“They knew the ocean was risky,” Isaac says.

Evan lovedAmphitrite. He’d snuck out from under Isaac’s thumb to spend hours on her bow every summer. He knew that boat inside out. His own pencilled notes lived in the margins of Aiden’s ledger, detailing tides, coordinates, weather. The hundreds of hours he’d spent repairing things with Aiden were some of the happiest of his life. A weathered photo of the four of them was clipped to the desk light onAmphitrite’s charting table: Aiden, Mara, Annie, and Evan, on a deserted beach, a fire blazing beside them, arms slung around each other. They’d balanced Aiden’s old camera on a piece of driftwood, held their pose until the shutter clicked. Evan’s smile had never been bigger.

It’s certainly the only thing that got him through losing his mom.

But sailing is risky, like Isaac said. Especially the way they’d sailed, so far out every year, so dependent on the weather and the ocean’s whims. When it came to cash, Aiden and Mara were scraping by.Amphitritealways needed this or that, with money they didn’t have. The constant fraying and replacing of the lines. A new jib. Engine parts. It wasn’t that Evan thought they were irresponsible parents. But when Annie needed the dentist, Aiden and Mara had trouble paying the bill. The dentist did it for free as a professional courtesy to Aiden, but Evan still doesn’t understand why you’d work so long and hard for a medical degree just to give it all up.

It wasn’t a choice Isaac understood, either.

Four years ago, the sweltering afternoon Evan turned sixteen, he tried for the first time to tell his dad how he felt: “I want to invite Annie to my party tonight,” he said.

“Not her.” Wearing chinos and a starched dress shirt, Isaac was stacking liquor on the bottom shelf of the pantry. “It’s one thing for you to go out on their boat. Fine. But leave it at that.”

“Why not the party?”

“Mara’s a little nuts, that’s why.”

“What’s that got to do with Annie?” Not that he agreed Mara was nuts; she didn’t seem that way. But there were rumours about how she’d been locked up in some kind of psych ward.

“Families repeat themselves.”

“Annie’s not crazy.”

“You can have some fun with her, but end it there.” Isaac unscrewed a bottle of Perrier and took a drink. “It’s for your own good.”

Evan held off inviting Annie to the party that year. He tried to talk himself out of being in love with her. In the following years, he dated other girls, ones his father approved of. He pretended to like them, even.

But he knew at sixteen, and long before, that Annie was the one for him—­even if his dad forbade it.

There are so many things he loves about her. She never needs to try to be beautiful; she doesn’t wear makeup or fancy clothes. He’s always loved watching her swim. She’s sentimental about the paired-up seashells she keeps on Ruth’s windowsill. When he left the cabin after the tsunami, he didn’t check to see if they were still lined up there, or if they’d been washed away.

And Annie sees him in a way no one ever has. It’s the way he wants to be seen: for his inner goodness, for the fact that he’s not automatically following in his father’s footsteps. He can’t stand what his family’s company does to the trees. It makes his blood boil. Sometimes he thinks he could transform Hale Timber, be different from the men who came before him. He believes this, even if he doesn’t know how to do it. Annie could show him.

In that photo clipped toAmphitrite’s charting table, Annie is not looking at the camera. She’s looking at Evan.

With her attention, he feels less lost.

He hasn’t worked up the guts to go against Isaac and tell Annie how much he feels for her—­the depth of it. It’s not just some teenage fling, some superficial attraction.

On the beach right now, his resolve strengthens. Mara and Aiden haven’t returned. Aside from Ruth and Henry, Annie is all alone. He wishes he could speed up this part for her, the hurting part, the scary part. But he also has to figure out a way through this mess, for Hale Timber, so they can have a life on the other side of it.

“I’m going to check on her,” Evan says. From his throne on the vending machine, Isaac sighs, then signals the excavator to start back up.

Annie divides her attention between Walker—his time-altering slowness, the seagulls descending en masse toward thefish he’s focused upon—and Evan, climbing toward her over a pile of sheet metal.

“Are you okay?” Evan asks once he gets down to the sand. He reaches out and holds her by the shoulder. With his touch, the world winds up to its usual speed.

Annie isn’t sure how to answer. As if on cue, Walker stands up from behind the chest freezer. He’s taller than Evan by at least a few inches, and lankier. His uncommonly pale skin seems almost Nordic next to Evan’s deep tan. His translucent eyes are more blue than grey in this light.

They look at one another.

“Oh. I didn’t see you there,” Evan says, blinking. He releases Annie’s shoulder, and it aches once he’s let go.

“We found him on the beach yesterday,” Ruth says.