He’s almost reached the island and Luther is two or three stones behind him.
“He’ll be safe once he gets to the island,” Kevin shouts. “We can wait for the next low tide. They’re not going anywhere.”
That’s six hours. It was only half an hour that Rudy sat in the prow of the lifeboat while I rowed us to shore, and only a few feet between us, but that distance grew to a gulf. If I don’t bridge this gap between us now, I may never get my son back. “I have to go,” I yell, pulling away from him.
He doesn’t loosen his grip. “Then I’m going with you. Stay right next to me.”
Where else would I go? I wonder as we make our way across the rocks. The ocean and sky have turned the same green-gray and ice water flows from each. Rain needles down like ice spears thrown by an angry god. The ocean crashes against our legs, each wave a little higher. I can barely feel my feet. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees in the last hour. Even if we make it to the island we might all die of hypothermia by the next low tide. I try to keep my eyes on Rudy, but he’s swallowed by the gusts of rain and banks of fog. I can’t see farther than a few feet ahead of us. I don’t even know if we’re still heading in the right direction.
But Kevin does. He keeps us moving forward, navigating the stones as if their map is imprinted in his DNA—and maybe it is. He’s a local boy, the son of fishermen. In a fairy tale he’d be the child of Selkies, shape-shifting from seal to human form, protected by the spirits of the sea.
“There!” he shouts in a very un-seal-like command. “They’re at the Maiden.”
He points and I catch a glimpse of the tall standing stone. It’s surrounded by water on all sides now, cut off from the island by a gap of six feet. Rudy is clinging to the stone, balanced on the narrow base around it that locals call the Maiden’s Skirt. Luther is below him, standing on the last Sister Stone, up to his waist in water.
The next wave that comes in reaches my ribs and lifts me off my feet. It’s almost a relief not to have to struggle against the surf. Maybe I can ride this current straight to Rudy—
But Kevin Bantree yanks me back. We’re on the second to last Sister Stone now, just behind Luther, who I can hear above the roar of the waves.
“No one thinks you hurt Lila,” he’s shouting. “Just come back and we’ll work it all out.”
“He can’t come back,” Kevin mutters in my ear. “We all have to get to the island.”
“Why not?” Rudy wails into the wind. “I almost killed you when I was only five. I thought I had killed you.”
My heart breaks at the admission. So he did remember. All these years he’s carried that with him. I let him carry that with him. I struggle out of Kevin’s grip and wade toward Luther. “That wasn’t your fault, Rudy. You did that to save me,” I shout.
Luther turns and looks at me. I can see him struggling with something. His eyes are as dark and shifting as the sea boiling around us. Then he turns back to Rudy. “Your mother’s right,” he shouts. “I wasn’t . . . right then. I was sick. I didn’t know what I was doing. Thank God you stopped me, Rudy. If I had hurt you or your mother, I’d never have been able to live with myself.”
I’m so stunned by Luther’s words I wonder if the wind and surf are playing tricks on me. Never in all my nightmares of Luther have I imagined him regretting what he did.
Rudy is staring at Luther with something like hope on his face, but then he shakes his head. “Maybe I’m sick in the same way,” he cries. “When I get angry everything goes black. It did that night with Lila. I knew she was hiding something from me. She said she couldn’t tell me, that it would destroy too many people. I was so angry that I . . . I threw a bottle. I didn’t mean to hit her, but it cut her hand. I tried to grab her but she pulled away—”
He holds out his hand, palm up, as if he’s seeing her blood there, loosening his