I stand up fully, trying to see his eyes, but there is a shadow cutting over the top half of his face. “Why are you looking for her?” I ask, not entirely certain I want to tell him that I am Penny Talbot just yet.
“I found this up at the diner . . . the Chowder,” he says with an edge of uncertainty, like he’s not sure he’s remembered the name right. The Chowder is a small diner at the end of Shipley Pier that extends out over the water, and has been voted Sparrow’s “Best Diner” for the last ten years in the local Catch newspaper—a small print paper that employs a total of two people, one of which is Thor Grantson because his father owns the paper. Thor is in the same class as me. During the school year, local kids overtake the Chowder, but in the summer months we have to share the worn stools along the bar and the tables on the outdoor deck with the horde of tourists. “I’m looking for work,” he adds, holding out the limp piece of paper for me to see, and then I realize what it is. I posted a note on the cork bulletin board inside the Chowder nearly a year ago, asking for help maintaining the lighthouse out on Lumiere Island, since my mom had become nearly incapable of doing anything and I couldn’t manage on my own. I had forgotten about posting it, and when no one ever came looking to fill the position, and the scribbled, handwritten note was eventually buried beneath other flyers and business cards, I made do.
But now, somehow this outsider has found it among the clutter of papers tacked to the bulletin board. “I don’t need the help anymore,” I say flatly, tossing the bowline into the boat—and also inadvertently revealing that I am indeed Penny Talbot. I don’t want an outsider working on the island—someone who I know nothing about. Who I can’t trust. When I had posted the listing, I had hoped a laid-off fisherman or maybe someone from my school might have responded. But no one did.
“You found someone else?” he asks.
“No. I just don’t need anyone now.”
He scrubs a hand over his head, pushing back the hood that had shrouded his face, revealing stark, deep green eyes the color of the forest after it rains. He doesn’t look like a drifter: grimy or like he’s been showering in gas station bathrooms. He’s my age, maybe a year or two older. But he still has the distinct look of an outsider: guarded and wary of his surroundings. He clenches his jaw and bites his lower lip, looking back over his shoulder to the shoreline, the town twinkling beneath the afternoon sun like it’s been sprinkled with glitter.
“Are you here for the Swan season?” I ask, flattening my gaze on him.
“The what?” He looks back at me, a measure of hardness in every move he makes: the twitch of an eyelash, the shifting of his lips before he speaks.
“Then why are you here?” He obviously has no idea what the Swan season is.
“It was the last town on the bus line.” This is true. Sparrow is the final stop on a bus route that meanders up the coast of Oregon, stopping in several quaint seaside villages until it meets a dead end in Sparrow. The rocky ridgeline blocks any roads from continuing up the shore, so traffic has to be diverted inland for several miles.
“You picked a bad time to end up in Sparrow,” I say, unhooking the last rope but holding on to it to keep the skiff from drifting back from the dock.
He pushes his hands into his jean pockets. “Why’s that?”
“Tomorrow is June first.”
By his stiff, unaltered expression, I can tell he really has no idea what he’s just stumbled into.
“Sorry I can’t help you,” I say, instead of trying to explain all the reasons why he’d be better off just catching tomorrow’s bus back out of here. “You can look for work at the cannery or on one of the fishing boats, but they usually don’t hire outsiders.”
He nods, biting his lip again and looking past me to the ocean, to the island in the distance. “What about a place to stay?”
“You can try one of the bed-and-breakfasts, but they’re usually booked this time of year. Tourist season starts tomorrow.”
“June first?” he echoes, as if clarifying this mysterious date that obviously means something to me but nothing to him.
“Yeah.” I step inside the boat and pull the engine cord. “Good luck.” And I leave him standing on the dock as I motor across the bay toward the island. I look back several times and he’s still there, watching the water as if unsure what to do next, until the final time I glance back and he’s gone.
THREE
The bonfire throws sparks up into the silvery night sky. Rose and I scramble down the uneven trail to Coppers Beach, the only stretch of shore in Sparrow that isn’t bound in by rocks and steep cliffs. It’s a narrow length of speckled white and black sand that ends at an underwater cave that only a few of the bravest—and stupidest—boys have ever attempted to swim into and then back out of.
“Did you give her the forgetful cake?” Rose asks, like a doctor who’s prescribed medication and wants to know if there were any ill side effects or positive results.
After returning to Lumiere Island, after showering in the drafty bathroom across the hall from my bedroom then staring at my small, rectangular closet, trying to decide what to wear to tonight’s event—finally settling on white jeans and a thick black sweater that will keep out the night’s chill—I went into the kitchen and presented my mom with Mrs. Alba’s forgetful cake. She had been sitting at the table staring into a cup of tea.
“Another one?” she asked drearily when I slid the cake in front of her. In Sparrow, superstition holds as much weight as the law of gravity or the predictability of the tide charts, and for most locals Mrs. Alba’s cakes have the same likelihood of helping Mom as would a doctor’s bottle of pills. So she obediently took small bites of the lavender and lemon petit four, careful to not spill a crumb onto her oversized tan sweater, the sleeves rolled halfway up her pale, bony forearms.
I don’t think she even realized today is the last day of school, that I just finished my junior year of high school, and that tomorrow is June first. It’s not like she’s completely lost all sense of reality, but the edges of her world have dulled. Like hitting mute on the remote control. You can still see the picture buzzing on the TV; the colors are all there, but there’s no sound.
“I thought I saw him today,” she muttered. “Standing on the shore below the cliff, looking up at me.” Her lips quivered slightly, her fingers dropping a few crumbs of cake onto the plate in front of her. “But it was just a shadow. A trick of the light,” she amended.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, touching her arm softly. I can still hear the sound of the screen door slamming shut the night my father left the house, recall the way he looked walking down the path toward the dock, his shoulders bent away from the spray of the sea, his gait weary. I watched him leave on that stormy night three years earlier, and he never came back.
He simply vanished from the island.
His sailboat was still at the dock, his wallet on the side table by the front door of the house. No trace. No note. No clues. “Sometimes I think I see him too,” I tried to console her, but she stared at the cake in front of her, the features of her face soft and distant as she silently finished the last few bites.