I do, but I don’t think I should drive away and leave you alone. I want to stay with you a few days. Would that be okay?”
“I’ve lived alone almost all my life, not two months! And I didn’t think, I knew a whole town was against me.”
“Kya, don’t let this horrible thing drive you further from people. It’s been a soul-crushing ordeal, but this seems to be a chance to start over. The verdict is maybe their way of saying they will accept you.”
“Most people don’t have to be acquitted of murder to be accepted.”
“I know, and you have every reason in the world to hate people. I don’t blame you, but . . .”
“That’s what nobody understands about me.” She raised her voice, “I never hated people. They hated me. They laughed at me. They left me. They harassed me. They attacked me. Well, it’s true; I learned to live without them. Without you. Without Ma! Or anybody!”
He tried to hold her, but she jerked away.
“Jodie, maybe I’m just tired right now. In fact, I’m exhausted. Please, I need to get over all this—the trial, jail, the thought of being executed—by myself, because by myself is all I’ve ever known. I don’t know how to be consoled. I’m too tired to even have this conversation. I . . .” Her voice trailed off.
She didn’t wait for an answer but walked from the shack and into the oak forest. Knowing it was futile, he didn’t go after her. He would wait. The day before, he’d supplied the shack with groceries—just in case of acquittal—and now set about chopping vegetables for her favorite: homemade chicken pie. But as the sun set he couldn’t stand keeping her from her shack another minute, so he left the hot, bubbling pie on the stovetop and walked out the door. She had circled to the beach, and when she heard his truck driving slowly down the lane, she ran home.
Whiffs of golden pastry filled the shack to the ceiling, but Kya still wasn’t hungry. In the kitchen she took out her paints and planned her next book on marsh grasses. People rarely noticed grasses except to mow, trample, or poison them. She swept her brush madly across the canvas in a color more black than green. Dark images emerged, maybe dying meadows under storm cells. It was hard to tell.
She dropped her head and sobbed. “Why am I angry now? Why now? Why was I so mean to Jodie?” Limp, she slid to the floor like a rag doll. Curling into a ball, still crying, she wished she could snuggle with the only one who’d ever accepted her as she was. But the cat was back at the jail.
Just before dark, Kya walked back to the beach where the gulls were preening and settling in for the night. As she waded into the surf, shards of shells and chips of crabs brushed her toes as they tumbled back to the sea. She reached down and picked up two pelican feathers just like the one Tate had put in the P section of the dictionary he had given her for Christmas years ago.
She whispered a verse by Amanda Hamilton:
“You came again,
Blinding my eyes
Like the shimmer of sun upon the sea.
Just as I feel free
The moon casts your face upon the sill.
Each time I forget you
Your eyes haunt my heart and it falls still.
And so farewell
Until the next time you come,
Until at last I do not see you.”
The next morning before dawn, Kya sat up in her porch bed and breathed the rich scents of the marsh into her heart. As faint light filtered into the kitchen, she cooked herself some grits, scrambled eggs, and biscuits, as light and fluffy as Ma’s. She ate every bite. Then, as the sun rose, she rushed to her boat and chugged across the lagoon, dipping her fingers into the clear, deep water.
Churning through the channel, she spoke to the turtles and egrets and lifted her arms high above her head. Home. “I’ll collect all day, anything I want,” she said. Deeper in her mind was the thought that she might see Tate. Maybe he’d be working nearby and she’d come across him. She could invite him back to the shack to share the chicken pie Jodie had baked.
* * *
• • •
LESS THAN A MILE AWAY, Tate waded through shallow water, dipping samples in tiny vials. A wake of gentle ripples fanned out from each step, from each dip.