Page 25 of Letting Go

"Is Bryce around today?" I try to sound casual.

"Until five or so, then he relieves Jackson." Finn sets his mug down. Here are the tide charts for the rest of the week."

"I'll pin it on the bulletin board in the library, then I've got to get to surgery," says Claire, taking a slip of paper from his hands.

"Going to be a glorious Maine scorcher today," says Finn.

This gives me an idea.

Bryce still looks boyishly rumpled from sleeping and smells of coffee and warm sheets. We're walking down the causeway toward Rock Island.

He yawns, holding a sturdy paper cup with a plastic lid. "This is not a causeway," he says, wiping his eyes. "It's just a land bridge with a little dirt road."

"If it wasn't there, Rock Island would be an island." I am so glad to be heading out, doing what I need to do with Bryce. To show him my project.

"We used to play over in those woods, with 'summer' kids all the time." Lowering my hands after the air quotes, I continue, "I used to make fairy houses for them and we would look for elves and fairies. It was a magical place and always been a favorite of mine."

"Fairy houses?"

"Little houses made of sticks and moss, rocks, and sea glass and leaves. I like to make them against tree trunks or stumps."

He switches hands on the cup.

I watch his mouth.

"You must've been adorable. You sure you don’t want me to carry that?"

The denim pack on my back is bulky but not heavy. I ignore the question.

"There are trails all over the island too."

"Anyone live here?"

I shake my head. "Not anymore. A hundred years ago someone did. Maybe the foreman or head quarry guy. I don’t know what they were called."

"What's in the pack anyway?"

"You'll see."

Because the tide is out, I decide to skirt the trail and we walk on the hard pack of sand with wormy clam mounds dotting the beach. Flat expanses of granite lie between us and the forest. A little farther up, I lead him to the beach, over rocks, along a narrow deer trail to a clearing and the long-abandoned quarry.

It lays sparkling in the sun, a beautiful greenish-blue oval. Just over the treetops, the ocean is a darker blue span.

"They'd come here—"

"They who?"

"The quarrymen. They'd come here fill up the boats with the granite and then leave. Sometimes it was limestone but here, this was granite."

"And The Inn housed them like a dorm?"

"Exactly. That's where they lived. That's why the bathrooms are all down the hall, two for each floor."

"Finn's fixing that situation. Thus, the tiles, I guess."

I nod. "Finn's working with someone on giving half the rooms their own private bath."

Trudging up the path to the quarry I lead again, and within a few minutes, the trail opens to the large quarry framed with rocks and filled with beautiful blue-green water about fifteen feet below. It’s so clear you can see the rocks under the surface.