Later that afternoon Nicky stood on the boardwalk outside their house, waiting for Josie and her father to come down the stairs. Uncle Cliff had said to meet him at the harbor and they’d take a skiff out to the island where smoked salmon, salmon dip, baked salmon, pickled salmon, and salmonberry pie, with salmonberries on top, awaited.
Nicky tightened the straps on the life vest her father had given her until it fit snugly around her shoulders. Nothing like the clunky orange thing her mother had made her wear when they fished from a canoe on Uncle Max’s pond, even though the shore was just a couple swim strokes away. Her mother had been so careful, sequestering herself in the opposite end of the house, using a hot plate as a kitchen, to keep them safe. Why hadn’t she done the same with herself? Nicky wondered. She was so smart—surely she must have understood that, if she got sick, then their father would be at a loss for how to take care of them. Had she decided, using her logic, that saving strangers was more important than keeping her family together? It was all too much to think about.
Clouds loomed above the mountains. The weather came in so fast. It was hard to imagine that she had woken up to a bluebird day, not a cloud in the sky, and now she couldn’t see the sun.
Clete had left just after noon, skiffing back to help his father cut wood. She couldn’t believe what he had told her, that she was some sort of “chosen one” the trees had been expecting. Maybe, she thought, after growing up in these forests, Clete could detect some mode of communication, but for him to hear that the cedars and spruce and hemlocks were waiting for her—he must have read too many fantasy books. She probably would have done the same if she had grown up on an island off yet another island in Alaska, though her mother never would have let that happen. “We don’t run away from our problems, Nicky. Problem, solution. Problem, solution. It’s just a matter of keeping calm, and searching for the answer. It’s what I do every day in the ER. We figure out what the medical problem is, and find a treatment. It’s always out there, just waiting for us to find it.”
Instead, Nicky took to reading her fantasy books during free periods at school. From Frodo to Katniss Everdeen to Edward Tulane, she loved how these characters daydreamed and had the courage to step away from the real world to meet their destinies. Even though she felt it was almost betraying her mother, she knew that this was how her mind worked.
It felt good to have discovered a family member her age who also loved the woods. Usually it was Josie who made friends quickly—and she had, with Veronica—but Nicky felt easy around Clete. Veronica intimidated her, with her generous smile and easy confidence. Still, Nicky wished Clete would stop making up stories about the trees having conversations about her beneath the soil.
She pushed these thoughts from her mind, stepped onto the gravel road, and tipped her head back so she could see the roof of their house, with its weathered gray shingles. She picked out the faded red-gabled dormer where she slept. Through the glass she could see the rafters she and Clete had painted blue, with the pink insulation stuffed between them.
The miner’s house where they now lived was just about the opposite of their royal blue Victorian off Main Street in Danville, with its wraparound porch and stained-glass windows, and white picket fence in the back separating it from the Presbyterian church where her grandfather had preached. Their parents had spent hours steaming off wallpaper, sanding the wooden floors, and polishing the curved banisters, restoring their father’s childhood home.
When Uncle Cliff and Aunt Mall came back for Grandpa’s funeral, Nicky remembered Aunt Mall marveling at all they had accomplished. While Aunt Mall packed up Grandpa’s things at the house where he had lived, just down the street from the church, Uncle Cliff helped her father build a guitar workshop in the elms, stringing the mahogany platform in front with lights. Nicky somehow knew her father had always wanted to do this, and yet hadn’t been able to while his own father lived. She recalled waking up to the sound of Aunt Mall and Uncle Cliff and her mother singing along as their father strummed “Sweet Caroline” on one of his shiny resonator guitars. Her mother seated, laughing as she threw back her head, breathed deeply, and belted out the words.
Over the years their father had taken to spending less time teaching guitar, and more time in his shop. He started selling a few guitars to people in Williamsport. There had been calls from Philadelphia, and even New York City. “No one can make a guitar that cries like your father’s,” their mother told them. “I promised you,” she said to him, quoting their song, “if you were a carpenter, I’d still have your babies.”
She only really joked like this around their father. With everyone else—even Nicky and Josie—she remained serious. When Josie threw up after a double scoop of Birthday Cake ice cream following a baseball game, their mother was the one in the bathroom wiping her lips with a damp towel, pushing a pressure point on her inner arm to stop nausea, telling her how she had to know her own limits. She was the one rubbing Nicky down with oatmeal soap when she got poison ivy at Uncle Max’s, covering her in calamine lotion. When their father got home from his administrative job at the hospital, he usually showered, slipped into his jeans, and went out to his workshop, where he turned his blues music on loud and got to what he considered his real work, the work he loved.
While Josie went on about her day to their mother, Nicky often visited her father. She couldn’t get enough of the gummy scent of freshly glued guitars, hanging in neat rows from the rafters. Out the window you could see the great oak on the lawn of the Presbyterian Church, where Grandpa said the British camped during the Revolutionary War. The oak had crooked, gnarly branches that Nicky and Josie had climbed as kids, the two of them finding their own reading spots—Nicky’s high up, Josie’s just off the ground. They’d sit in the tree, glancing up from their books in the evening, waiting for their mother’s shiny pickup to return from Geisinger Medical Center. Then they’d scamper down and dash through the tangle of bushes past the workshop, Nicky pausing to shout through the open window, “Mom’s home!” Then she’d charge across the lawn to catch up with Josie, knowing that she never would, because Josie was in a full-out sprint to meet her mother’s embrace.
As hard as Mom worked in the ER, when she pulled into the driveway and shut down her pickup, her mind was devoted completely to her girls—listening to Josie’s report on which teachers she did and didn’t like, and to Nicky’s adventures with Sonya or her stories about baling hay on Uncle Max’s farm.
What struck Nicky as funny was that their father kept repeating to them as they crossed the country to take no chances. Sterilize everything. What was he thinking, bringing them to a remote island in Alaska where he didn’t even have a job? From that cozy house they knew so well to this rickety old building, built by some gold miner desperate to make his fortune. None of it made sense.
A gravelly voice broke her from her thoughts. “Hey, sailor. You expecting a flood to pass through?”
Nicky looked up to see Sven leaning against his truck, one foot propped on a tire. His camel brown boots were folded over at the ankles, covered in nicks. He ran a hand across Rooster, who stretched out along his wrist.
“That must be a gift you have, just to disappear into your thoughts like that.” Before Nicky could reply, he said, “You catch any shut-eye on that ferry? Rooster, she don’t sleep much on boats. Neither do I, really. Never could.” The cat purred lazily, watching Nicky with golden eyes.
Nicky squinted at him. “My aunt said you’re a fisherman.”
“Oh sure. That’s why we don’t sleep. Too busy catching fish.”
“Do you catch a lot?”
He smiled down at her. “That’s why they call it fishing and not catching. Never know what’ll happen when you head out onto the water.”
She heard footsteps, and watched as her father and Josie emerged from the apartment. Josie’s green ponytail flopped out of the back of her purple Ironmen mesh cap. Her father wore his favorite pair of jeans.
“What are you doing standing in the street?” her father asked, resting a hand on her shoulder and turning to Sven. “Evening.”
Sven broke into a smile. “Evening, guy. Senorita,” he said, bowing to Josie, who shrank back. “Guy, I been wanting to ask since we played on the ferry. Where’d you buy your instrument?”
“I built it,” their father said, glancing down the road.
“Is that right? Well. Those notes, I couldn’t get them from my head. Haunting, like you could call up the dead with that music.”
“I’m sorry,” their father said, stepping back. “We’re supposed to meet someone on the docks.”
“Oh, I don’t mean to hold you up.” He stopped petting the cat and reached out his hand. “We played music, but I don’t think we met. Sven Ruger.”
Their father didn’t move. “I don’t mean to be unfriendly, Sven, but as you know, we just came up on the ferry.”
“Of course. Take no chances, right?” the man said, winking at him and retrieving his hand. Nicky felt her father’s hand tighten on her shoulder. “Me and your daughter had a nice powwow about trees up on the top deck. She knows more than she thinks she does. I better git. Good evening to y’all.”
Her father watched the man walk away. He looked down at Nicky. “Did he say anything to you?”
“No,” Nicky said, annoyed. “We were just talking.”
“He looks scary,” Josie said. “That tomcat’s creepy.”
“Rooster’s a she,” Nicky corrected.
“Well, then, maybe she’s a witch. Those golden eyes give me the willies.”
“C’mon. We’ll miss Uncle Cliff,” their father said, starting down the hill toward the harbor.
Josie held a notebook in her hand. It astonished Nicky that her sister got frightened by talking to one old man, and yet had the courage to get up in front of people she didn’t know and make a speech.
Rigging in the boats banged and clanked in the wind. Tree-covered mountains rose at steep angles behind the masts. Nicky stared across the water, imagining two thousand grizzly bears parading beneath the tree canopies, like whales below the ocean surface. Huge, quiet, and unseen. Nicky was surprised when she felt Josie’s hand take her own as they reached the sidewalk.
“So who’s ready for SalmonFest 2020?” their father said, oblivious to the girls holding hands, and obviously trying to lift the gloom that had set over them.
“Me,” Nicky said, wanting him to just stop talking so this moment with her sister could last.
The evening felt like one in Danville, when they’d all be walking along the Susquehanna, holding purple banners, turning up Main Street to the Forge for a burger before watching the Ironmen play Bloomsburg at the diamond along the water. One of her mother’s favorite things to do. She’d stand in the bleachers and scream at the thwack of the bat, cupping her hands over her mouth to yell the hitter’s name. She knew the entire high school team’s roster. Nicky and her father would exchange embarrassed glances, while Josie would get up and scream beside her mother.
People in town joked about that. No team had a fan like Dr. Hall. After baseball games they’d go out for Turkey Hill ice cream. Dad would get Graham Central Station, his favorite, Mom a single scoop of Moose Tracks with chocolate sprinkles, and Josie and Nicky Birthday Cake with rainbow sprinkles. “I swear I can hear all that sugar rushing through your veins,” their mother would say.
The summer before, when life was normal, their mom had coached their softball team, leaving the hospital early to meet the girls at the batting cages. Taking them all on a trip to the Little League World Series in Williamsport. Throwing endless pop flies and grounders until it got too dark to see the ball. Even then, Josie would want more.
“Hey, Dad. Seems like a night for a baseball game, doesn’t it?” Josie said in a small voice, and she gave Nicky’s hand a squeeze. Their father, lost in thought, peered out over the water. He didn’t seem to hear her. Without thinking, Nicky squeezed her sister’s hand back.
Maybe Estelle Parisi Hall wouldn’t have liked sleeping on the deck of the ferry, or even sleeping in an RV. But Nicky could see her mother by the harbor, closing her eyes and breathing this air deep into her lungs. She’d like the adventure of setting off on a skiff for a salmon dinner on an island. She had always said she admired Aunt Mall, even if she thought she was a bit wild. If she were here tonight, they would have all been holding hands as they walked down to the harbor. She wished her father would agree with Josie, and tell them this.
Her mother had been so difficult to predict. She either wanted to be at the hospital, in the frenzy of the emergency room, tending to farmers who had had their arms chewed while reaching into a combine to free a cornstalk, or at home, tending to her rhododendrons with her clippers, and keeping her kitchen clean of grease. Or she wanted to go to baseball games, and eat ice cream with the family, folding her napkin neatly around her cone so her fingers wouldn’t get sticky.
That was the most difficult part, Nicky decided as she walked. The emergency room gave her mother adventure, but also the ability to stitch things up and make them whole again. Her mother always found a solution. Even after Estelle got sick, and left the house for the hospital, Josie insisted that her mother would cure herself—and also the rest of the world, by finding some magic cure for Covid-19, and all the variants that might pop up.
Their father stopped walking, and crouched to look them in the eyes. He smelled of spiced aftershave and soap, rather than the usual comforting, tired odor of his pressed shirts and khakis that he wore to the hospital. “Girls, I want you to know —”
Josie pulled her hand away from Nicky. “Dad. We know. You love us.”
He stared at her. “I do. I also wanted to tell you—you’re getting old enough to hear these things—that Aunt Mall and Grandpa didn’t always get along. But she’s a great woman. You should have seen her on the basketball court—there are still pictures of her at Danville High. She was a power forward, long and strong. She could have played in college if she hadn’t come out here to work for a summer, and ended up staying. In fact, I think you girls have some of her in you. I know she’s not your mother, but a loving aunt is good for both of you.”
“Whoa!” Josie said, interrupting her father. “You’re already wanting to replace Mom with your sister?”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Josie.”
A bird flew overhead, its broad wings making a whooshing sound as they beat the air. “That’s an actual bald eagle!” Nicky yelled.
“It is,” their father said, watching as the bird flew out over the ocean.
“Probably shouldn’t take Watermelon for a walk,” Nicky said.
“Not funny,” Josie snapped. “Plus, I don’t think an eagle would eat an iguana.”
“Why not?” Nicky countered. Josie talked so much about nature and the environment, and yet she hardly ever stepped outside. “Eagles eat fish. Salmon. Watermelon’s just like a big green fish, except with four stubby legs. Ask Veronica. I bet she’ll tell you the same thing.”
“Veronica doesn’t waste her time wandering around the woods. She knows every symbol on the totem poles in the park. She’s focused on getting straight As, and wants to go to an Ivy League college. I bet Clete doesn’t even like to read.”
“What does Clete have to do with it?” Nicky asked. The hand that had held Josie’s burned. “He’s your cousin too.”
“Enough. Just—enough from both you,” their father said. “Each time I try to treat you like adults…Can you just help me find Uncle Cliff’s skiff? He said to look for a blue canopy. I think I see it.”
They were turning toward the ramp when a car slowed beside them. A middle-aged woman with wisps of gray hair pushing out of her blue handkerchief jammed her palm on the horn.
“Hey! Aren’t you the family from back East?” she said from beneath her mask, which showed a big red salmon.
Their father stopped walking. “Pennsylvania,” he said, lifting his own mask over his mouth.
“Well, you’re supposed to be in your house, do you know that? Not walking around spreading the virus.” She turned to the girls. “You two don’t even have masks.”
He stepped forward. “We got tested before coming here. We are in quarantine, but taking a walk.”
“I’m the mayor of this town,” the woman said, picking up her phone. “If you were in quarantine, you’d be back in that house of yours on top of the hill.”
Their father stepped forward. When he spoke, his tone surprised Nicky. “Go on. Throw us off the island. You think I care?”
Nicky heard footsteps coming up the ramp.
“Alice, it’s fine,” a man said, hustling toward them. “Danny, please. Alice is just doing her job. Alice, I was taking my brother-in-law and my nieces out for a bite of salmon on the island. Go on, now. They tested before arrival, just like the regulations say. No need to worry. Everything’s safe.”
They hadn’t found Uncle Cliff—Uncle Cliff had found them.