the fact that these people love him somehow makes me more alone in the world, as if their loving him has anything to do with me.
* * *
—
He drives me to Addy’s and once again walks me to my door. I say, “I hope you’re not going to get too crazy about me. I’m leaving in a few weeks and I’d hate to break your heart.”
He stares down at me, eyebrows raised. “I’m pretty sure I’m willing to risk it.”
I wait for him to kiss me. When he doesn’t, I move in close to him, so close we’re almost touching, and I can feel his breath on my cheek. The heat is coming off us as he takes my face in his hands, as he looks into my eyes. As a strange look comes over him. As he whispers, “Stay still.”
With one hand, he turns my head so that I’m staring away from him, and then I feel a sharp and terrible pinch on the side of my neck.
I jump back and my hands are checking for blood. “What the hell?”
“That was me saving your life again.” And he holds something up so I can see it in the light—a tick. “Shoe, please.”
“What?”
“Give me your shoe.”
I slip one off, hand it to him.
He sets the tick on the porch and crushes it with my sandal. “I’d check yourself all over when you get inside, just to make sure that’s it.”
And then he goes sauntering down the path, no kiss goodbye, no mention of other adventures or when he might see me again.
* * *
—
I take the world’s longest shower and scour my entire body for ticks. Even though I don’t find any others, I can feel them crawling on me.
Back in my room, I open one of the notebooks that hold my novel. I flip through, reading random passages and pages. Some of it’s good and some of it’s bad, and most of it is somewhere in between, but it all seems overwrought and overwritten, and none of it rings true. Mostly it just feels long ago, as if it was written by another person in another lifetime. Someone who thought she knew about life and love and clearly didn’t.
I slam it closed and bury the novel in a drawer where I won’t have to look at it. And then I search the house for an empty notebook. I find an old blank one in the office, on a shelf: yellowed pages, battered blue cover. I sit down at the desk and write—not about Claudine, but about Tillie Blackwood, who died too soon, and the man who loved her. How she was here, and then she wasn’t.
Sometime later, I hear the front door open and close and my mom’s voice calling me. The screen door slams behind her, and this is the island slam, and I know this because maybe I’m not feeling like such a stranger here after all.
DAY 5
The next morning, I am up earlier than usual. After my mom leaves for the museum, I do my best to style my hair so it’s more Jean Seberg than Christmas elf, and I paint my lips red. Outside, the day is blindingly bright, a few puffs of clouds hugging the horizon. I wander the sandy roads, the ruins, and then the beach, but there is no sign of Jeremiah Crew. I spend the day swimming and sunning myself and reading my book, and trying not to be disappointed.
* * *
—
After changing for dinner, I tell my mom how pretty she looks and walk with her to the inn. She glances down at our linked arms and raises an eyebrow, and then she tells me about Blackbeard Point, at the northeast tip of the island, where the notorious pirate Edward Teach—better known as Blackbeard—supposedly buried his treasure. I listen and ask questions, and as we climb the steps to the broad front porch, she says, “Thank you,” and gives my arm a squeeze.
“For what?”
“You know what. Thank you for trying.”
I bend down and pull a cactus spur off my shoe, hating that she feels the need to call attention to it because this is how self-absorbed I’ve been. “You’re welcome,” I mumble to the wood of the porch.
During cocktails, when she gets into a discussion with the Nashville photographer, I excuse myself and wander into the library, where I find an old volume on loggerhead turtles. I sit reading till dinner, doing my best to concentrate on the words