do we have to move to a different state to give my dad the room he needs, but we apparently have to put an ocean between us.
“Look,” Mom says, coming up next to me, and there is another island rising up to the right of us. We stand side by side as the ferry follows the shoreline, cruising through dark blue water, cutting through the marsh. There is something grand about this island, which makes it seem more important than the others. For one thing, it’s bigger than I expected. According to Mom, it’s twenty miles long and three miles wide, a third larger than Manhattan. It has a full-time population of thirty-one. The only vehicles allowed are those belonging to residents or the Parks Department. There is a general store that supposedly has Wi-Fi. There are no paved roads. There is no cell service.
My immediate impression is that it’s very green. Uninterrupted green from one end to the other. This is more nature than I have ever seen in my entire life, and it’s hard to take it all in. The island looks wild and untouched. I don’t see a single house or structure.
“It’s beautiful,” Mom says, and I can hear the surprise. She’s been here before, growing up, so the surprise is for something else—maybe the fact that she can feel something like awe after all that’s happened. “You can’t see it from the shore, but through there is what remains of Rosecroft, the Blackwood family home. It was the gathering place, not just for the family but for everyone who lived on the island. It’s where your aunt Claudine lived. Two months before she died, the mansion burned down, and all that’s left is ruins.”
She knows my love for ruins and ghosts and haunted places, for finding the story in everything. Not a love she had to teach me, but one I was apparently born with, inherited from her. And even though I want to ask her all the questions that are now buzzing around in my head—How did the fire start? Is this the same house where Claudine’s mother shot herself? Why did Claudine stay here on the island?—I don’t take the bait. After all, my mom is in this too. It wasn’t just my dad saying, Don’t talk about it. She’s also been keeping secrets. So I stand there, mute, hands on the railing, staring blankly at all that green.
Mom is still talking when one of the other passengers lets out a yell, and everyone comes flocking to the rail to take pictures of the lone gray horse that is galloping on the beach. She has already told me about the wild horses that live here, descendants of the Spanish and English horses that were brought over centuries ago, but seeing one for myself makes my heart—so recently laid to rest—jump. The horse is running, paying no attention to us, just doing what horses are meant to do, and suddenly I think, You can be anyone here.
I feel the butterflies stir somewhere deep and distant.
I imagine myself as free as that horse, and for a minute I’m nowhere and everywhere. Floating. I imagine an entire summer of becoming the person I want to be, whoever that is. Doing the things I want to do, whatever those are. Not thinking about anyone else because no one is thinking of me. I see flashes of myself as the girl I think I used to be—happy, secure, a floor beneath my feet. Fuck everyone, I think. Fuck them all.
Then, just like that, the butterflies go still and my mouth goes dry. And this is what happens when someone takes away your voice. Don’t say a word. Don’t talk about it. Don’t let your feelings out. Keep quiet. Keep it inside. Silence. You just smile and smile until your mouth goes dry.
All at once the sky is too bright. The water too choppy. The forest too dense. The trees feel like they are gathering, ready to march toward the ferry, toward me. What sort of world is this? I look down at my arm and I have goose bumps. I look at my mom’s arm and she has them too.
There is a dock ahead and the boat slows and a smiling boy wearing glasses and a bright yellow shirt stands waiting for us. He is slight and wiry, tan skin, light brown hair, and looks all of sixteen. I feel this relief and surprise that there’s