Page 24 of The Wild Beneath

There are a few things Annie misses about Hale’s. Ruth, her sparkling eyes, her collection of books, picking berries in the bushes behind her cabin. Evan, his escapades, running as fast as she can, following him over the beach. She misses his trees.

But out here there’s a new space around her heart. It can expand; an elastic, untamed joy that fills her up. At the sametime, she wonders if the sea is too big, if she might shake loose without a lifeline holding her to the earth.

The following summer, they retrace their passage north.

In Hale’s Channel, finally, they radio ahead to Ruth to say: They’re coming, they’re rounding Jenny Inlet. The familiar shore and trees anchor Annie back into place.

Evan’s waiting on the dock when they arrive.

Ruth stands to his right, her arm around his shoulder. Her frame is slighter. And she seems even smaller against the height of the bluff. Her cheekbones are more pronounced. Maybe she’s lost weight? Annie can’t work out exactly what’s different.

But her worry disappears as Evan gallops toward their dinghy. He’s not wearing his usual ball cap. For a minute, as he barrels down the dock toward them, Annie worries he might be someone else. He’s finished second grade now and he’s at least three inches taller. His hair is shorter. She’s aware of the boundary between them, a length of eight months, when he was here and she was there. How to cram that time into words? Does she tell him everything or nothing at all?

But his familiar lopsided smile finds her, with the dimple in his left cheek.

Ruth has reached them, tears in her eyes. She pats them away with the sleeve of her nubby grey cardigan. It’s buttoned up to her neck; each button is embossed with a bumblebee, wings spread. Her jeans are rolled up at the ankles. Reading glasses perch on her hair.

Annie launches from the dinghy and into her arms.

“Oh, honey.” Ruth kneels and puts her hands on Annie’s face.

“Can I go on the boat?” Evan asks Ruth.

“Your dad said to let you do what you wanted to do.” She kisses Annie’s head over and over, then ruffles Evan’s curls. “Why don’t you two go play.”

Annie wants to tell him about the dozens of silver dolphins that skipped across the sea in Baja. How stars guided them down; how stars can live inside your chest and pull you along. You can listen with your whole body, just like Mara said. Does he know? She wants him to feel the warm swells in California, so big they can lift your feet off the sand and wrap you inside them.

Instead, she asks: “Want to play tag?”

It only takes a few hours to fall back into their way together. Time returns to its linear pattern. The two of them strip to their bathing suits.

“You’re it!” Annie harangues him from the foredeck.

“You have zero chance!” Evan sprints from the stern and reaches for her around the mast.

She dodges him and catapults into the cold sea.

He dives after her. She’s already too deep, so much deeper than he can go. A moment later, she launches up in a spray of salt water and dunks him under the waves.

He rises back up, hooting with laughter. “How’d you do that!”

“I’ll never tell.” She smirks. “And you’re still it.”

“Can I interest you two in some boat chores?” Aiden leans over the lifeline. “This teak won’t sand itself.”

The summer unrolls this way.

Evan smiles a lot. He eats like he has a hollow leg. For dinner he’ll have an entire fillet of salmon to himself, easily. And then he’s still hungry.

They make buttered popcorn with rainbow sprinkles and eat it inside elaborate pillow forts they construct in the aft berth. They fly through a six-book set ofChoose Your Own Adventurestories Ruth picked up from the thrift store. It becomes a daily afternoon affair: variations on popcorn toppings, forts, andChoose Your Own Adventure. They sleep head to toe, wish on stars out the porthole, draw sea animals on each other’s backs with their fingertips, trying to guess what they are, and wrestlein their pyjamas like puppies in a pile. Snorting with laughter. One of them holds the other in a headlock, before they tumble across the mattress.

“Time for bed,” Aiden says from the galley.

Evan unwraps his long legs from around Annie’s middle and scoots backward. His pyjamas have smiling penguins and snowflakes on them.

“I don’t want to hear you whispering all night, either,” Aiden says with a smile.

Every morning, when Evan wakes, the hood of his sweatshirt is gathered around his face, the strings pulled taut and tied under his chin. He’s a fuzzy bear emerging from hibernation, groggy with sleep lines folded across his cheek.