walk out of the guest room. I’m wishing I’d never gone in there at all when I hear, “Hey, Claude?”
“Yeah?” I move back to the doorway, half expecting to be yelled at.
Wednesday flips a braid over her shoulder and picks up the laundry basket, balancing it on one hip. “Thanks. It was nice of you to ask.”
DAY 10
Another care package arrives from Neil Henry, 720 Capri Lane, Mary Grove, Ohio. In this one: a stack of my books, some photos of Bradbury and Dandelion and of me as a kid, my red Converse, two pairs of earrings, and my Miss Piggy shirt. I pull on the shirt, which suddenly seems too small, as if it belongs to someone much younger. I take it off and drop it in the trash.
His note reads:
Dear Clew,
Some more treasures from the depths of your room. Let me know if there’s anything else you want or need. Bradbury and I miss you, and your things miss you too, which is why I thought I’d send more of them. Hope you’re taking care of yourself, kiddo. Looking forward to August.
Love,
Dad
All these years my dad stopped setting foot in my room, and suddenly—now that I’m gone—he’s in there all the time.
I pick up my phone and write him a text: Please stop sending me things. I’ll be home in August and this is just more for me to pack up and carry back there. Unless you don’t want my stuff around because it reminds you of me, in which case DON’T GO IN MY ROOM.
Every angry thought pours out of me. How dare he go into my room and take it apart, removing my things like he’s conducting surgery, separating my things from each other, invading my home.
I leave the text unsent, undeleted. Mom says sometimes you need to write out your feelings but you don’t necessarily need to share them—like maybe the person you’re mad at just won’t get it or won’t care, so sending them a big long text or email will only make it worse. As long as you get the feelings out of you.
I add: In case you were wondering, Mom and I are doing fine. She’s busy with work, and I’ve met someone and slept with him, which means—according to Dr. Alex Comfort—that I’m a woman now. No more Clew. I’m not your little girl anymore.
And what I mean is, I’m still your daughter but it’s different now. That’s not because of Jeremiah, though. That’s because of you.
And then I sit there, the words out of me and on the screen. I let them stay there for a good long while before I delete them.
* * *
—
I almost don’t go to the beach but something leads me there. A sense of obligation, maybe, to the turtles and to myself. There’s something about the routine of it that I need. Seven-thirty p.m.: cocktails. Eight-thirty p.m.: dinner. Ten p.m.: ocean. There’s this comfort in knowing what I’m doing when.
I walk to Little Blackwood Beach, the air buzzing, the heat settling into my skin. There is this moment that makes me catch my breath—when I emerge from the canopy of trees onto the sand, and the moon is in the sky and also in the water, and it’s all I see, this enormous red moon that looks like it’s on fire.
I go past the dunes, searching for the turtle nest I marked with the flashlight and covered with my sweater. The flashlight has been replaced with a wooden stake, and netting covers the sand. There’s no sign of my sweater.
I walk a little farther and then sink onto the ground, and suddenly I’m not alone on the beach. It’s funny here, on this island—how you can really feel the history sometimes. Maybe it’s the color of the sky or the volume of the cicadas or something about dusk settling over the marsh. Or maybe it’s just my own changing mood. Tonight, under the red moon, the ghosts of Blackwoods are everywhere, riding the turtles into the sea and dancing in their finest clothes and trying to fight the flames as Rosecroft burns.
According to my mom, on March 11, 1993, Aunt Claudine woke up knowing she would die that day. No floor dropping out from under her. No surprises. She was living at the inn then—or the house that became the inn—which she’d inherited after her father’s death, and which she’d willed to the Park Service. She asked her mother’s friend Clovis