Judith
August 1971
The pink shell was by far the prettiest in Judith’s collection. Once she’d washed away the salt water and dried all the little nooks, it sparkled. It so outshone the rest of her shells on the window ledge that she made a special place for it on her bedside table, where it could be close to her while she slept.
Dinner that night was quieter than usual. Dad pushed the mashed potatoes around his plate even though Judith knew they were his favorite, with the cheese and green onions all mixed in. Mom sipped from her wineglass between soft, subtle sighs. Judith wanted to ask her about the dead man. About the war. But every time she got up the nerve to open her mouth, Mom’s eyes glistened and she hid a tear behind the rim of her glass. Judith hadn’t seen Mom this sad since David left.
Judith couldn’t stand to be around all this sadness, so she shoveled the last forkfuls of food into her mouth and swallowed most of it whole before excusing herself. Mom barely acknowledged Judith’s empty plate.
When her feet hit the stairs, she heard Mom start to cry, like a dam had broken.
“What if he doesn’t come back?” Mom asked between gut-wrenching sobs.
“He’ll come back,” Dad said, but even Judith could tell he wasn’t sure.
She sprinted up the stairs and locked herself in her room, where she’d hidden one of her brother’s shirts underneath her pillow. She pulled it over her head and the hem fell all the way to her knees. Though she wasn’t that tired, she climbed into bed and under the covers, tucking her nose beneath the collar of her brother’s shirt. It still smelled like him, but barely. Boy sweat and cigarettes and musky cologne.
She wondered if he was thinking about her. She wondered if he was scared. If that man today had jumped off the bluff rather than go to war, what did he know that Judith didn’t? More importantly, did David know? Would it help him? Or would it just make him afraid?
Tears soaked the pillow, cooling her cheek.
She hated crying. Hated how pressure built up in her cheeks and nose and forehead and how it became impossible to speak or think. For as long as she could remember, when the corners of her eyes prickled and her nose got all stuffy, she’d immediately start thinking of something else. Anything else. But once the tears started, she couldn’t stop them.
Judith wept silently as the sun started to set, casting a bright orange-and-pink glow over her walls. She wept until it grew dark and the moon stood vigil above her house. She wept until her eyes fluttered closed and her mouth fell open and she slept.
***
It was still dark when the voice woke her. She rubbed the crust out of her eyes and wiped a slick of drool off her chin as she sat up, listening. She was still in that place between sleep and awake, where she couldn’t be sure if it was a dream, so she pinched the soft spot inside her arm, wincing at the pain. She blinked until the room came into focus, the light from the streetlamp illuminating her desk and chair and the mess of clothes on the floor. Her mattress and box spring sat directly on the floor; there was no one under her bed. She slid carefully, slowly, off the bed and went to the closet. After a deep breath, she flung open the door. No one there either. She was alone.
So where had the voice come from?
Easing the door open, she peered into the dark hallway. The rumble of the furnace and the usual creaking of the walls were the only sounds. Judith tiptoed across the hall to her parents’ room. The door was shut, but she pressed her ear to the wood and listened to Dad’s gentle snores for a moment before pulling away. Next, she looked in David’s room. Her breath caught at the shape she saw curled up on his bed. David? But when she got closer, she realized it was her mother, snuggled deep beneath David’s checkered blanket. The pillow was damp, and her hair was matted against her face. Judith leaned down to kiss Mom’s forehead, like Mom always did for Judith when she was sad, when she heard the voice again.
She couldn’t make out the words—they were garbled and watery—but the lilt was soft. Feminine. It came from her room.
“Hello?” she whispered, inching out of David’s room and back into the hall. She carefully shut the door to make sure she didn’t wake Mom.
The voice answered, a little louder this time but no clearer.
Driven by curiosity and a little fear, Judith inched back to her bedroom and flipped on the light. The room looked exactly as she’d left it. There was no one there.
Her gaze moved to the pink shell, unable to look away once it was there. She remembered the sound she’d heard the first time she’d held it up to her ear but not since. There were stories about the cape, about the lighthouse, Judith wasn’t supposed to know. About the danger of the water. About drowning girls. It wasn’t magic—Judith felt sure she would know—but she’d spent enough time down by the tide pools to recognize something other. Growing up with the waves as her lullaby, her body was more seawater than blood. “There’s something special about girls who grow up by the sea,” Uncle Thomas used to say. She knew when a shell was just a shell—and when it wasn’t.
She sat on her bed, feet over the side, still looking at it, as though waiting for it to tremble or dance or light up. But she’d lived on the coast her whole life. She knew, if the voice really came from the shell, there was only one way to hear it properly. With a shaky hand, she picked up the shell and pressed the opening against her ear.
At first, she only heard the whooshing sound of the ocean. Art’s voice invaded her thoughts—it’s not the ocean; it’s all the little sounds outside it resonating through—but she pushed that thought away. This shell was special. It came to her for a reason, which made her special, and she was determined to find out what that reason was.
She listened for another minute—still nothing—when she got an idea.
She moved the shell from her ear to her lips and whispered, “Hello.”
When the shell touched her ear, the soft, feminine voice echoed back, “Hello.”