Page 48 of The Wild Beneath

Evan waits before replying. He unzips his coveralls, takes the top half off, then ties the arms around his waist in a knot. “Did you ever figure out who that guy was? Walker?”

“No.”

“Where is he?”

“Deckhanding for Henry.”

Evan pauses. “I can’t come this afternoon. Dad needs me to bring one more load down from camp.”

“You can make your own choices.”

Evan frowns at the sand. “My mom wouldn’t want me to leave him. Not right now.”

Ruth nods. Any resolve she’d been holding about Evan—­chastising him over his absence and his choices—­slips away. Her frustration with Isaac loosens its hold. She can only think of six-year-old Evan sitting next to Celeste’s bed, running his small hands through her hair.

Evan meets her eyes. “I’ll be over soon. A couple of days, max. Can you please give her this?” He hands her an ivory sand dollar from his shirt pocket.

Ruth walks the weedy road home, through the mud and silt. Soon, she has to sit down on a stump. Her heart pumps too quickly, punching at her ribs. She holds up the pamphlet with the relocation date: October 1.

She folds it and puts it in her pocket.

Chapter 17

Annie broods at the kitchen counter with a basket of berries beside her.

She secretly hoped Walker would hate it onGalene, that the obvious choice was to stay here with her, clam, and find rogue objects on the beach. Maybe fish from the dinghy, not too far out.

Instead, he comes home after dark, bursting with excitement. He looks like he’s grown an inch out there, or maybe she’s imagining it. He reminds her of when she loved the water so much she couldn’t peel herself away. She sees herself in the rosiness of his cheeks, his smile, his wind-blown hair. But he lacerated his shin with a fillet knife; the only part he didn’t enjoy.

Ruth is already asleep, so Annie repairs it.

“The skin is so thin... our bodies are so delicate.” He winces at the hydrogen peroxide. They have no lidocaine left; his right eyelid twitches in pain with each suture.

“We’re more resilient than we look.” Annie is struck by the sturdiness in her own voice. She sounds like her dad.

Walker goes out onGaleneevery day that week.

While he’s away, the noise finds her. Even the forest sounds off-pitch—­the screech of a breeze through branches, the cries of birds—­all building into an agonizing cacophony, the world shaking itself through her ears.

But when he’s back with his steadying sound, everything goes quiet again. She can breathe; she surfaces for air.

Stop being so dramatic, is what she tells herself, riding the pendulum, confused, feeling like she’s losing her mind, more and more antsy about Walker being there and her being here. She’s unmoored without him, trying to keep busy by collecting eggs, pumping water, foraging up the mountain, stringing laundry on the line. But around midafternoon each day, she’s done everything she can think of doing.

Ruth cleans around her, scrubbing the kitchen counters and cabinets with a rag and bucket of soapy water. Annie isn’t sure if it’s her own protracted silence or the fact she’s wearing her earplugs again that makes Ruth finally ask, mid-scrub: “What’s happening over there?”

“Nothing,” she lies, removing the orange foam from her ears. A crescendo: the fizz of bubbles in the bucket, the rasp of the rag across the countertop.

Annie’s anger-confusion-exasperation is on the cusp of boiling over.

Ruth puts down her rag and points to the earplugs. “What’s that really about?”

“My ears are ringing.”

Ruth retrieves her otoscope from the first aid kit under the sink. She flicks it on and looks into Annie’s ears. “When did that start?”

“The day before the tsunami.”

“Like tinnitus?”