Here is what happens next: It stops raining. The hard, driving rain that began after the thunder rolled through has now passed, part and parcel of a Seattle spring. It’s a dewy morning, a beautiful one. A day for pardon and peace and absolution. I see that the rain has stopped but that the sun is flashing between dramatic, fast-moving clouds. I take a long shower. I get dressed. My mother is having coffee, and Abby is reading her mail on her laptop at the kitchen table. I am doing something mundane again: I am looking for a bag in which to carry those pages. I see Abby’s beloved head, tipped down in concentration. I love that head so much, and that hair, and every little bit of that girl, that young woman. It tears my heart, seeing her, loving her like that. It tears my heart to see my mother in her favorite sweat clothes, her white hair in disarray from sleep. And my sweet old Pollux, oh, yes, him, too. Beloved him. Beloveds, all of them.
Double hugs, I say silently.
I could cry, and so I get myself out of there. I take a bag from the narrow space on the side of the fridge, where we keep them. I go to my room and slide the stack of pages into the bag. There is my wrinkle cream that really does nothing for wrinkles, and my glass-beaded bedside lamp that I love, and my reading glasses. I am in the middle of a book, and my bookmark is still set between the same pages where I’d left off days ago. A life ago. Everything is feeling bittersweet, and so I need to get out of there fast, before I change my mind.
“What are you doing?” my mother asks. I am getting a jacket from the hall closet; who knows what the weather will be.
“Out” is all I can manage to say.
“Dani …” She knows; she always does. Abby says the same thing about me. Mother’s intuition. Say what you will, but I believe in it. “What are you doing?” My mother’s voice is rising in alarm. Abby looks up, questioning.
“Out,” I say again. I try to keep my voice steady.
My head is deep in the closet in the hall now. The jacket I want has slipped off its hanger and fallen on the floor behind the rain boots and other shoes. When I get up, my mother is there, staring at me hard. She grabs my arm.
“Dani, if you are thinking of doing anything foolish …” She keeps her voice low.
I say nothing. I am trying to hold it together.
“I’m begging you.”
And then, can it be? That damn boat. That goddamn boat. The hard rain and the waves have loosened the rope again. I am aware that this is where we began, that morning when he disappeared. It makes me understand that this is some kind of ending. It’s silly, maybe, but I want to take care of a problem for them, for my mother and Abby, one I can fix. Before I go, I want to tighten that cleat. It will be one less thing they will have to deal with.
I get that toolbox from the closet. It’s the one Mary gave Ian when they were married. I undo the clasps and lift the lid. The tools are lying in their molded plastic places, but the screwdriver is gone. It’s odd. I have not used anything in this box since I hung pictures when we moved in, and Ian, as particular as he is, would have always, always returned it to its proper place.
Still, no matter. I can’t concern myself with that now. There’s no time. I get a knife from the kitchen drawer. I open the doors to the deck and Pollux trots after me.
“Dani, don’t worry about it,” my mother says.
“That banging is driving me crazy,” Abby says. She needs me still. That’s what threatens to choke me up. My mother, too. No—truth is, we all need one another.
I kneel on the dock. If someone sees me here, it might look as if I am praying. I fit the tip of the knife into the screw and twist hard. I try to jiggle the cleat, but it feels firm. I wind the rope back over it so the boat is snug once again against the dock.
I get up. It’s silly, maybe. But in my heart, I say goodbye.
The stacks of notepads are in the bag, and I am holding them under my arm as I leave. My mother is standing in the doorway. She is pleading with me with her eyes, so I don’t look. I don’t want anything to dissuade me. I am hoping Detective Jackson will be there in his office when I need him. My mother doesn’t know what’s in that bag, but she knows it’s bad. If she did know, she’d likely be throwing herself down in front of me, blocking my exit. Isabel Eleanor Ross would let this happen only over her dead body.
I hear a noise out there. Oh, really, can it be? Old Joseph Grayson is playing with his electric boat? Now? I listen. Yes, there’s the unmistakable whine as he zips it over the waves. Why not, though? The sky is all morning purples and pinks when the sun comes out behind speeding clouds. The water is choppy—perfect, maybe, for a post-toke hydroplane race with your ancient hippie self.
At the end of the dock, in the parking lot finally, I unlock my car door. I set the notepads on the seat beside me. The package is almost another passenger; it seems as weighty.
I am trying to hurry. If I don’t get out of here soon, I may change my mind. I turn the key. Please, I beg. The terrible humming sound starts, and I put my car in reverse.
And that is when there is a horrendous clunk. I put the damn thing in neutral and in reverse again, and again, and again, but the old Blue Beast will not move. Blue is finished. No matter how much I want this, I am not going backward.
I put my head in my hands. I want to cry, but there’s no time for that. I need to solve this problem, quick. I will go inside and ask to use my mother’s car. It’s terrible, yes, to return there after that particular leaving, but I have no choice.
Nothing is easy, I think, not even this. I am sure it’s the worst kind of bad luck, some cruel trick of timing. What are the odds that the car dies now? Yet this is how it goes, one thing happens and then another, a piece follows a piece, things continue to break, as fate conspires, insisting on telling its own story, which (hopefully, finally) you are able to hear.
I get out. I am holding the bag in my arms like a baby, like my own child. And that’s when someone begins to shout. A single shout at first, old Joseph Grayson, and he is screaming. He is yelling, Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! He’s shrieking. He’s having a heart attack, I think. That’s my first thought, anyway. He is screaming like a girl who’s seen a snake. No, worse. Way worse.
There’s some kind of commotion going on. A door opening and slamming, and now my mother screams. My mother? I know that voice. Dear God, what? They are being attacked; are they being attacked?
No. Because now comes the thud, thud, thud of shoes running on the hard dock. And Pollux is barking and barking, and Abby is calling my name. She is running down the dock. She has her goofy Toucan Sam shirt on and a pair of cotton plaid shorts and her hair is wild, and she is shouting to me. Old Joseph Grayson is just behind her. Him, with his bushy gray beard and long hair in a ponytail and that tie-dyed Grateful Dead shirt he perpetually wears. My mother—she’s trying to run, too. She’s back there, running as best as she can.
I am still clutching that bag when Abby reaches me.
“Mom!” She is crying.
And there is old Joseph Grayson, out of breath. He is holding that stupid electric boat. And he is holding one wet and expensive Italian shoe.