Page 41 of The Wild Beneath

Mara’s hand tightens around Aiden’s torso.

A gust of wind picks up her braid and spills it over his arm. Aiden runs his fingertips over the greying ends of her hair, coarse from salt water.

“Something’s not right,” she repeats.

Aiden agrees. He closes the ledger and massages the salt-and-pepper stubble along his jaw. He thinks about the way Annie has been isolated for so long. Is it right? Mara always thought so.

When they talked about Annie leaving the boat in the past, Mara always said: Not yet, not until she’s older, it will all make more sense when she’s older. What kind of sense? Mara could never articulate that part.

Should he have been frustrated by her oblique explanations? Aiden has always tolerated this kind of blurriness with Mara.Toleratesisn’t the right word; maybeembracesis more accurate. He embraces the strange line between what he knows and doesn’t know about Mara, and embraces the sensation that she lives only partially inside his world—­and partially somewhere else.

But, occasionally, like now, Aiden does wonder about a normal life for Annie: a house, maybe a job that earns her some regular money. Just because he hadn’t wanted that kind of life in the end doesn’t mean Annie shouldn’t make her own choices. Aiden puts his hands back on the helm. Mara startles, her fingers tightening around him.

The sea is calm. The sun is out.

But Mara is more and more unsettled. She has goosebumps, the white-blond hair of her arms standing up in the sunlight. Aiden turns and rubs his hands over her forearms. A chill races up his spine.

She kisses him urgently, pulls at his shirt.

The sea level plummets as a wall of water rises from the west.Aiden is transported away into some sapphire escape, a dark warmth. He can’t—does not want to—open his eyes.

A roar builds that Aiden cannot hear, inside a merging daydream he never wants to leave.

Within minutes, the forty-foot wave overtakesAmphitrite. Aiden’s ledger flies into the water and the sea receives it back, the stories of herself. The ledger drifts into the dark as the boat capsizes and the mast snaps.

Aiden and Mara are catapulted overboard into the sea’s waiting arms.

Ruth pulls Evan and Annie along, toward the cabin, up the mountain behind, past the squawking chickens in the coop.

“What’s happening?” Annie yells.

“It’s a tsunami!” Ruth yells back. Annie knows what a tsunami is, but only from what Aiden taught her about earthquakes onAmphitrite. Ruth drags them faster, through the forest and its loamy smell. The eagles screech overhead. Annie’s legs throb. She falls and puts a deep scrape in her right knee. Blood runs down her shin. Evan takes her hand and helps her up.

She’s unsteady, but Evan keeps hold of her.

They climb to the top of the outcrop.

“Okay.” Ruth is out of breath. They can see Hale’s Landing in the distance. “This should be okay.”

They’re all panting. The rumble in Annie’s legs has stopped, but it’s replaced with a deeper reverberation.

The three of them are paralyzed as they watch the surging water ingest most of Hale’s Landing in galloping waves. A tube of water consumes the channel. The wharf is sheared off in a single gulp. All the boats are hurtled and pulled under. The waves pulse, houses collapse, roofs tear off and slide into the white swells.

“People need help.” Evan is ashen and clammy. “I’m going down there.”

Ruth won’t let him. “You sit down. Right this minute.”

They all sit, then stand and sit and pace and sit down again. Repeated surges—­tugging, blue-green ropes of seawater—­keep everything submerged for what feels like hours. When the ocean finally retreats, she leaves with a growl in her throat.

Annie can’t speak.

She has no idea how much time has passed. She stays in a sweaty ball, her arms around her knees. Every image in her mind is of her parents: the way her dad’s beard is going white before the hair on his head; the way her mom still always wants to hold her hand. The way they’ve never been apart. What’s happening to her parents out there?

Evan’s face is still pale. He looks like he might pass out.

Ruth is resolute. “It’s time to move.” She looks into their eyes, puts hands onto their shoulders. “We aren’t going to like what we see. But we’ll make it through this, okay? And don’t get too far apart.”

The eventual hike down reveals the usual things: pendants of lichen hanging off branches, roots punching up in the dirt, insects buzzing in Annie’s ears. But also wreckage that appears with unnerving frequency, dripping in angry seawater. The driveway they expected at the edge of Ruth’s property isn’t there. In its place is a stew of garbage, glass, pulverized wood, rammed and overlapping rubble.