Page 50 of The Wild Beneath

Ruth bites her lower lip like she’s holding something back.

“Maybe they wouldn’t be dead if I had been with them,” Annie says. “I should have been with them.” Her throat is closing up.

“That wouldn’t have changed anything, and you know it.”

“Or if Mom hadn’t insisted on the boat.”

“Annie, listen.” Ruth sits down before launching in: “Your mom... Aiden didn’t meet her at the hospital. He found her after a boating accident.”

“Where? When?”

“Out the channel toward Bella Bella, about four years before you were born.”

Annie hugs her arms around herself. “I thought she was from the Aleutians.”

“We never found her family. They had to hospitalize her for a long time.”

“Because she was injured?”

Ruth hesitates. “No... not physically.”

“Tell me, please.”

“For a while, she wasn’t making sense. She would talk about... sea creatures.” Ruth waves her hands. “Water gods. Things like that.”

“Water gods?”

“She had a mental health disorder.”

Annie lowers her voice. “She had... psychosis or something? My mother was psychotic?”

“Things straightened themselves out once they moved toAmphitrite.”

“Oh my god.” Annie covers her eyes.

“You’ve always been the most important thing for them. Having you was healing.”

“He found her on the beach?” Stories collide into one another. Annie tries in vain to connect them.

Ruth scratches at a chip in the countertop. “You couldn’t have kept your mom ashore, that’s my point. Even if you tried. I won’t have you torturing yourself.”

“Is this going to happen to me, too? Am I going crazy?”

“No, honey. You’re fine.”

“Am I, though?” The story about Mara’s psychosis feels wrong. The boating accident feels made-up, too. Somewhere in the basin of Annie’s heart a voice says neither is true.

Ruth stands and retrieves a pamphlet from her jacket pocket. She hands it to Annie. “And no one is saying you have to choose the life they did.”

Annie unfolds the pamphlet.

“The coast guard was here this morning. They’re planning to relocate everyone,” Ruth says.

In Annie’s peripheral vision, a large soap bubble in the bucket pops. “Leave Hale’s?”

“They won’t have space until October.”

Annie reads the letter, paralyzed.