truck, its interior already filled with containers and furniture stacked against each other in odd-shaped patterns of morphed monsters.
“Whose stuff is that?” I squinted against a spotlight, which shone into the rear of the truck.
The man wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, waved at the Sullivans’ house. “Excuse me, we’re in a major rush here. You best get out of the way before you get hurt. The missus wants to leave before sunrise.”
He pointed to the horizon, to the sliver of dawn on the marsh beyond our creek that seemed to be waiting for permission from this man before it burst forth.
I pushed past him and ran to the front door, where Mrs. Sullivan sat on the stoop, her head in her hands.
I stopped short. I had never seen her in any position but standing tall, smiling with her hand holding a dripping paintbrush or molding a wet lump of clay. She was an artist, something Aunt Martha-Lynn often said with a smirk, or an acid tone to her voice. “You know how artists are, always flighty and—”
No, I didn’t know how artists were, but if they were all like Mrs. Sullivan, I thought they must be pretty cool people. Her house was always a bit messy with interesting things, like a birds’ nest on the kitchen counter (Aunt Martha-Lynn would’ve had a heart attack), or a clay pot drying in the sun, or a half-finished oil painting on driftwood. Pieces of Mrs. Sullivan’s art were piled in corners and on tables.
Often at night she had friends over, friends who wore long beads and beards, who smoked cigarettes that were thin and simmered sweet and heady compared to Daddy’s pipe.
Daddy often forbade me from going into Jack’s house, which Aunt Martha-Lynn called a den of iniquity, whatever that was. But I had enough friends, including Charlotte on the next street, for Daddy not to know where I was all the time.
I reached down and touched the back of Mrs. Sullivan’s head. She looked up at me. A ripe bruise, like an apple tossed on the road, covered the left side of her face, distorting her features. Her eye was swollen shut.
I’d seen other bruises on Mrs. Sullivan before: her arm, cheek, calf. She always told me the marks were from horseback riding, or a fall or clumsy motion on her part.
I gasped. “A horse again?”
“No,” she whispered, “there never was a horse. It was and always will be from Mr. Sullivan.” She stood and placed her hand on the side of my face. “Precious Kara, so sweet, so innocent. I’m sorry.”
“For?” A fear rose, a fear I had never felt before, one of unexpected abandonment. It was tinged with the fear I’d felt when Mama was gone, but that had been planned for, expected.
In my experience, people you loved were not allowed to leave unannounced before dawn’s light with a bruise covering one eye. Mrs. Sullivan wrapped her arms around me, pulled me into her patchwork shawl. “We are leaving today, Kara. I am taking my boys and we are leaving with what we can before Mr. Sullivan returns.”
“No!” I screamed and pushed her away.
“Dear child, I was hoping you would not awaken, but you are here, and of course you would be. Your sensitive spirit felt Jack leaving.”
“Where are you going?” I whispered.
“I don’t know.” She looked away.
“Yes, you do,” I said, because I saw it was true, in her eyes, in her glance toward Jack.
“Please try to understand,” she said without meeting my gaze.
Jack came up next to his mother. We had danced around our growing relationship all summer, touched hands and cheeks and legs more than was necessary on the beach, in the water, on the boat. The sensations and promise they held were too enormous to talk about. We’d been approaching our growing love quietly, like coming near a scared baby osprey in the nest without its mama. Gentle now, slow now . . .
There would be no more waiting. Jack stood behind his mother and I loved him, enormously, fiercely, openly, and desperately. Of course I did—I had for my entire young life. But there had been time then, huge swaths of time, in which to discover our feelings, to let them grow. Or maybe we love so profoundly when we know love is about to leave us, empty and alone.
Now Mrs. Sullivan had ripped time away—nothing remained but mere moments.
The sun rose. Its light landed on his face, revealed an age and a weariness