Page 35 of The Wild Beneath

Maybe it’s the beginning, and not the ending, like Walker said. He was so sure of it.

Annie kicks off her shoes and steps tentatively toward the water, until the sea touches her toes. She blinks and sees the tsunami behind her eyelids—­galloping grey water consuming the wharf and suctioning out houses. She exhales as hard as possible, taking a few more steps.

The cool water encircles her feet.

The sea wants you, too.

The almost imperceptible words enter the cavern of herbody. It sounds like Walker’s voice, coming from nowhere and everywhere. Before she can catch hold of the words, they vanish.

She shakes her head and blinks again. She must be imagining things.

Tears run down her cheeks. Not from missing her parents or the fragile hope they’re alive. These tears are for how badly she wants the water. On land, things close in around her, rigid and demanding and right-now. In the water everything moves. Everything sings with an effortlessness.

In the way something so good can hurt, standing in the water feels painful. Annie wipes her cheeks. She only gets ankle-deep in the tide before she turns around.

She goes back to the shore and puts her shoes on.

Chapter 14

Before

After that night together on the outcrop, Annie and Evan are apart, separated by two-thousand kilometres of the Pacific Coast and ten full months. To Annie, it feels like years.

It’s windy when they sail back into Hale’s Landing, finally, on a sunny afternoon in early July. Annie’s on the lookout. She hugs the mast with one arm as they buck through the waves toward Rosie’s. Closer, they cross the Hale Timber lot, and she spots Evan through the binoculars.

He’s on the beach, smiling broadly as he peels off his work coveralls, a deep tan line peeking around his shirt collar. He’s not alone. Three other teenage boys kick a soccer ball around in the sand, and two girls perch over a cooler of drinks. A speaker blasts heavy bass through the earth. That same girl is there, the one Evan kissed when he was sixteen. The brunette bob, the swan neck.

Someone shouts. A burst of laughter. Then Evan’s picking her up—­swan neck—­by the legs, over his shoulder. He launches himself toward the water. She pounds him on his bare back as he runs into the surf.

Annie’s lungs feel like cement. A gust of wind hits her, but she can’t breathe.

Mara’s gutting another Chinook on the foredeck, her knife pointed at the gills. “How does it feel to be back?” she asks, her eyes on the shore. A cello solo on the radio picks up in tempo.

“I don’t know.” Annie looks away from Evan and the girl, toward the salmon and its black gums. “We haven’t moored yet.”

Mara cuts into the fish’s silvery side and says, “I never like mooring, either.”

“It’s been forever!” Evan calls from the back of his skiff, early the following morning.

Annie has just woken and come topside. Her sleep was fitful and dreamless. A mist hovers over the water, fogging everything.

Evan ties off and hops aboard. In the cockpit he pulls her into a close embrace, too fast for her to resist him, too fast to stop, to push him away, to ask what he was doing with that other girl. His voice is in her ear: “Why didn’t you come and find me yesterday?”

“Annie, want some oatmeal?” Mara interrupts, climbing up the companionway.

“Mara,” Evan says. He takes a step back from Annie. “Welcome back.”

“I thought you’d be at work again,” Mara says.

“Again?”

“We saw you at the timber lot when we sailed in, yesterday.” Mara’s words aren’t as sharp as Annie wants them to be.

“I start in fifteen minutes,” he says.

“I’m not hungry, Mom.”

“Alright. I’ll make us some tea.” The boat rocks as Mara climbs back below.