Page 84 of The Wild Beneath

“Honey.” She holds Annie’s face.

Henry’s shirt is rumpled and he has bags under his eyes. For days, he has been camping out on a reclining chair next to her bed. He pats Evan’s shoulder.

Annie can’t help it. She climbs right into Ruth’s bed beside her and underneath the covers.

The days unravel, each a papery replica of the next. Annie cannot keep them in order. It’s late October already. Downed leaves plaster the pavement, releasing their saccharine scent. A pervasive, damp coldness that will not leave.

Evan and Annie are not sure what to do with themselves. Most days, they visit Ruth.

“There are these interest-free loans for university tuition,” Evan says, in front of a computer in the hospital visitors’ lounge. His feet tap out a staccato rhythm. Ruth is having another chest X-ray.

Annie watches Evan’s eyes move across the screen. Tiny clicks of the mouse.

“I’m applying to a new coast guard training program, Annie. They’ve come up with entry exams if you’ve been displaced from the coast.”

“That’s great,” she responds absently.

“What are you thinking about? You’re someplace else.” Because he can tell with her, of course he can.

“Sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry.” He touches her shoulder and leaves his hand there. “I don’t know how to make this better for you.”

“That’s not your job.”

“I need to get you back.”

“I’m here.”

“Do you want to go back up north?”

“There’s nothing left for me, Evan.”

“I feel like I’ve lost you.” His voice is soft.

He is not wrong.

Ruth and Henry encourage her to make a plan for herself.

Their enthusiasm carries Annie along like a current. It’s a blessing; she does not need to think or decide on her own. Without any school records, she takes entrance exams. In November, she sits at a desk in a university office and flips througha stapled package of multiple-choice questions. Math problems, basic science, essays to interpret. Then long-answer questions about her interests, her life, and family.Tell us what’s unique about your personal background, it asks.

She’s caught up for a moment on how fine the pen tip is, the way it narrows to a point. Her pen stutters across the page in black ink.

I grew up on a sailboat, she writes.I almost never went ashore.

How can you put it into words? The push and pull of the tides, the way they never falter. Sails that fill up in the wind. Tracking the sky to stay on course. The massive wave and everything that was taken away.

My dad was a doctor, but my mom loved to sail. Wefished,we migrated the coast with stars as a map. Then I lost nearly everything I knew to the sea.

The words she writes are a dried-out skeleton.

“I’ll never get in,” she says afterward.

“You will,” Evan replies.

And he’s right. The standard-issue landline on the wall of Annie’s temporary housing room rings two weeks later, mid-December. She startles at the trilling sound.

“Hello?” she answers.