Chapter Twenty-three

Staring at the spot where Rooftop had been long after she had disappeared into a tiny speck, Alex wondered where the baby whale could be. Was he hurt? Was he lost?

What if Daredevil never came back?

“What’s the matter?” Rachel said. “You look weird.”

“Nothing,” Alex muttered.

“You keep looking where that whale was,” she said. “Are you sad about the baby?”

“He’ll be okay.”

“Not likely,” Rachel said sadly. “I read about it before.”

“What did you read?”

“That the babies can’t live without their mothers.” She pointed to the table with the reference books. “They need milk. If he’s not with her, he’s probably…” Rachel’s voice trailed off.

“What?”

“Dead.”

“No,” Alex choked. Images flooded her head. The hospital, Adam’s pale white face, the closed eyes Alex would have given anything to see open again.

“Sorry.”

“He’s fine. He has to be.”

“Sorry.” Rachel’s face crumpled.

Alex’s hands trembled and her legs started to shake. “Adam can’t be dead.”

“What did you say?” her mother asked from her seat on the opposite side of the deck.

“Nothing.” Alex curled up on the bench, shivering, and gazed out to sea. It was Adam’s face, rather than the image of Daredevil, that hovered in front of her blurred vision like a ghost.

Rachel sat down and clasped Alex’s hand. Her heat felt good on Alex’s icy skin—the one warm spot on her shivering frame. Neither one of them said a word all the way back to port.

At Eva’s, Alex sat at the table with everyone else. Eva put a glass of milk in front of her—she drank it. Rachel buttered a scone and passed it to her—she ate it. She said please and thank you in the right places.

But it felt strange—as if she was there, but at the same time she wasn’t.

No one seemed to notice but Rachel. It was kind of funny, since Rachel knew her the least of anyone. Gus was making googly eyes at Eva. Eva was batting her eyelashes at Gus and giggling like a girl. Her parents were concentrating so much on ignoring each other that Alex was sure the building could have fallen down around them and they wouldn’t have noticed.

So, that left Alex…and Rachel. After they’d eaten, Rachel grabbed her by the hand and tugged her down the aisle to the back of the store, away from the adults.

“My parents are divorced too,” Rachel whispered in her ear. “It’s not so bad.”

“What?” Alex was startled. “My parents aren’t divorced.”

“They’re not?”

“No!”

“Really?” Rachel looked puzzled. “They act just like my parents.”

“They do?” Divorced? The word echoed inside of her head. Well, wasn’t this what she’d been scared of ever since they’d started arguing all the time? It wasn’t really a surprise, was it?

“My parents aren’t very nice to each other either,” Rachel murmured. “They fight all the time and they stopped holding hands and kissing a long time before they got divorced.”

That was exactly how Alex’s parents were, at least since Adam’s accident. Before that, they used to hug and laugh all the time. It was her fault, she knew. Her fault that Adam was dead, and her fault that her parents hated each other. And now divorce! She’d have no family at all.

Rachel lagged behind with Alex as they all headed back up the hill to Aunt Sophie’s after lunch. Her mom and Aunt Sophie walked far in front. Her dad was walking behind the two sisters, talking on his cell phone again. Rachel and Alex walked even slower, getting farther and farther behind.

“Why did your parents get divorced?” Alex asked.

Rachel shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“There was no reason?”

“Mom always yelled at Dad that he worked too much.”

“Oh.”

“After they got divorced, Dad married his secretary, Renée.”

Alex sighed with relief. Her dad didn’t have a secretary.

“Let’s go to the lighthouse,” Rachel said, pulling Alex by the hand. They passed Aunt Sophie’s and continued on the dirt road for several minutes. “It’ll take your mind off things—it’s really cool.”

“I’ve seen lighthouses before.”

“Yeah, but this one’s different.”

As they rounded another curve in the dirt road, the lighthouse appeared. They walked through the wildflowers and were suddenly surrounded by small rock piles.

“Where did these come from?” Alex asked, amazed. Each one was an inukshuk. She recognized the shape. Her mom had a sculpture of one.

“Tourists make them” Rachel said. “It’s the basalt rocks. See how they’re broken in kind of rectangles? They make great building pieces—they don’t fall over!”

“How do you know about basalt?” The rocky shoreline looked like it had been made of rectangular columns with tall, narrow bricks loosely fitted together.

“I read about it in a book about the island that Gus sent me for Christmas.”

“Really?”

“Do you want to make one? An inukshuk, I mean?” Rachel picked up a loose piece of the basalt rock and offered it to Alex.

“Inukshuk means something like ‘we were here,’ doesn’t it?” Alex said. She remembered that part from an old ad on television.

“I think so.”

That was kind of neat—leaving a sign that they had been there. “Okay,” she said. Alex picked up more of the loose basalt.

They followed the pattern of the many other inuksuit scattered around them. Alex watched Rachel first before she tried making her own. Alex placed two rocks vertically to form the base for her inukshuk and thought about Adam. Then she placed two long pieces sideways on top of the base, ones for her mom and dad, and a smaller one on top for herself.

She stood back and surveyed her finished work. Maybe this could be some kind of sign—something to show that her family wasn’t falling apart after all.

“Ours are the best!” Rachel danced in a circle around their creations. “Don’t you think so?”

“Yeah, they’re kind of neat, I guess,” Alex said. She dug through her bag and pulled out Aunt Sophie’s extra camera. Rachel posed by hers and Alex took a picture. Then she took a few of her own inukshuk. She looked at it on the screen—a sculpture of her family.

Rachel chattered all the way back to Aunt Sophie’s. They cut across the lawn, passing under Alex’s bedroom window.

Rachel stopped suddenly. “What are those?”

“Huh?”

“They look like the flowers I picked for you.” Rachel held up a handful of the Eastern Mountain Avens.

“Um…” Alex stared at the blooms. What could she say?

“You threw them away?” Rachel said in a hurt voice. “It took me all afternoon to find them.”

“Sorry…I have this thing about dead flowers.”

“But they’re still green, and the petals—”

“Once you pick them, they’re dead.”

“Oh,” Rachel said in a small voice.

Alex looked at Rachel’s sad face. She was about to say something when she heard angry voices coming from inside. Her parents were fighting again.