she told everyone she’d hit her head on a dock piling and was only able to climb up before she passed out. When she woke up, she walked home.”
I fell quiet again, and Ellie called my bluff. “That’s not the end of the story.”
“Yes, it is.”
She shook her head. “I’m young. Not dumb.”
Summer’s eyes were boring a hole through me, willing me to tell the rest. I stood, walked to the bow, and spoke out across the water. To the memory. “That night on the beach, after she’d finished shivering, she held up a single finger, touching mine with the tip of hers. She said, ‘You could’ve died out there tonight.’
“She was right. I nodded.
“‘Why’d you leave everyone to find me?’
“Maybe I was trying to impress her and maybe I was telling the truth. Whatever. I said, ‘Because the needs of the one outweigh those of the ninety-nine.’”
Ellie frowned. “Seems kind of heavy for a high schooler.”
“Looking back, maybe it was.”
“Where’d you learn that? Self-help book?”
“A friend of mine. A priest. And until that moment with Marie, I really had no idea what he was talking about.”
I continued with my story. “When I said that, her fingers spread and intertwined with mine.” I held up my hand, fingers spread. “This silly hand gesture started there. It became the fabric of us. Our thing. It was how we remembered the moment. We could be in a crowd of people, loud music, chatter, and all she had to do was touch my fingertip with hers, and immediately we were back in that water. Sitting on that beach. Her and me. Us against the world. Then it wasn’t so silly anymore.
“And that morning as the sun rose, we walked the beach. Hand in hand. Maybe the most perfect sunrise in the history of the sun rising. With the water foaming over our ankles, the sun hit the beach and shone on something at the water’s edge. I lifted it. A silver cross. Washed up by the same flood tide that had ripped her seven miles out to sea. It was hanging by a leather lace. I tied the lace in a square knot and hung it around her neck. It came to rest flat across her heart. She leaned against me, pressing her ear to my heart. Beneath the waves rolling gently next to us, she whispered, ‘If I ever find myself lost, will you come find me?’
“I nodded. ‘Always.’
“She wrapped her arms around me, kissed me—which almost made my heart stop—and said, ‘Promise?’
“‘I do.’”
When I turned around, Ellie was staring up at me. Summer sat beneath the T-top, wiping tears. Ellie tried to harden her voice, but my story had knocked the edges off of it. “Why’re you telling me this?”
“Because finding people is what I do.”
“Whatever happened to Marie?”
I was quiet a minute. Shook my head.
She pressed me. “What happened?”
“She died.”
Ellie swallowed. Summer held back a sob.
I tried to return us to the moment. “I know it’s hard and that I’m asking you to be older than you are, but I think I have some experience with Key West. I know that convent. Least I think I’ve seen it. Hang in there a few more days. I’ll take you there. We’ll go together.”
Disbelief drained down her face. “Why would you do that?”
“Whoever put that ring in this envelope is trying to send you a message—” Just then, my phone rang. Colorado. I answered, “Hey.”
“Your girl is awake. Asking for you.”
“Where’d they take her?”
“ICU. Same hospital.”
I was about to hang up when I looked at Ellie. I turned, speaking quietly. “Hey . . .”
“Yeah?”
I asked him, “Do you know something I don’t? Something about me?” He heard my question in the tone of my voice. I’d seldom used it with him.
“I know a lot you don’t.”
“I’m asking you something specific. If you knew it, it’d come to mind.”
“What I hear in my confessional stays there.”
“You’re gonna pull that with me? After all we’ve—”
“Doctors say she’s going to need a few months to recover, but she will. The Narcan you injected probably saved her life.”
Water lapped against the hull of the boat. For some reason, all I could think of in that moment was Angel. I could hear the clock ticking. “I’ll be in touch.”
I hung up and turned to Ellie. She was staring at the ring and shaking her head. “What message?”
I knew her world was crumbling and I didn’t know how to answer. “Stay. A few days. A week maybe. We’ll