The first weekend in November, I make the two-hour drive to the beach house on Volkov Bay. It’s a weather-beaten wooden cottage on a deserted stretch of coastline. A narrow deck leads to grass-covered sand dunes sloping toward the shore.
No one else lives in Volkov Bay, and few people visit. The broken, jagged coastline encircles the white-capped water and a half-moon beach dusted with coarse sand and broken shells. The ocean is dark, cold, and choked with seaweed that hides violent undercurrents. Rock formations stretch out into the bay, punctured with holes where the hardiest of sea life live—crabs, anemones, starfish.
The sky is steel-gray, and the wind pushes heavy waves relentlessly against the rocks and sand. Deep, narrow caves perforate the granite cliffs. At low tide, the dark caves are fascinating and relatively safe to explore, but rogue waves and riptides pose a constant threat.
Everything in the house is the way I’d left it, just covered with dust now. Sagging bookshelves, worn furniture, the dusty old ship-in-a-bottle. Shoebox kitchen, two small bedrooms and an attic accessible by a folding ladder, my desk still littered with papers.
I even find the display box of Nell’s beach collection—spiral shells, clams, limpets, sand dollars, and driftwood. One of the slots contains the piece of gray sea glass she’d once found—her “cloud on earth.” I leave the box open on a table by the window to let the sun warm the little treasures.
I spend a couple of hours cleaning the house, checking the utilities, and making a list of things that need to be done. The window trim is starting to rot, and railing on the back deck should be replaced. The roof probably needs new shingles too. But as much as I’d like to start the physical work of repairs right away, I’ve been avoiding the work I need to do on my book.
After returning to Henry’s around seven, I check my phone, answer a few student questions, and open a text that lists the location of another underground fight. This time, it’s somewhere in San Francisco.
I delete the message and take my laptop into the living room. I sit beside the big picture window overlooking the expansive backyard. I’ve cleared out the weeds along the fence, but the rest of the garden is littered with fallen leaves and overgrown grass.
A blank document stares at me from my laptop.
Start with you, Nell had suggested.
I am Darius Hawke.
It was the first thing I said to my captors after they took my blindfold off and I found myself in a concrete room surrounded by five armed guards.
I’d said it to myself countless times too. When the isolation and uncertainty pushed in on me from all sides, I’d repeated it over and over in my head like a mantra to remember who the fuck I was.
I am Darius Hawke. I’m thirty-eight years old. I was born in Los Angeles. My father is Conrad Hawke. My mother was Victoria Hawke. When I was ten, I pitched in Little League. I had a pet turtle named Bolt. My first girlfriend was Lucy Caldwell.
I type the first sentence. I am Darius Hawke.
I’m thirty-eight…no. Two years were stolen from me.
I’m forty years old. This is not a story I ever thought I would tell. But I never considered I’d have a story at all, much less one significant enough for a book.
Not that my story is significant. It was shitty and it fucked me up for a while, but it’s over and I survived. If writing the damned book raises both awareness and money for the foundation, then I have to do it.
A soft knock sounds. Nell hovers at the entrance to the living room.
“Can I talk to you for a sec?” she asks.
“Sure.” I put my laptop on a nearby table. “What’s going on?”
She approaches me. “Are you working on your book?”
“Trying to.”
“I found the book we used for the memoir-writing unit I told you about.” She hands me a worn paperback. “I thought it might help.”
“Great, thank you.” I leaf through the how-to book. “I need all the help I can get.”
“Also, this is a photo I took with the macro lens.” She extends a black-and-white print and sits in the chair across from me. “I just developed it after school with different exposures. I was going to show it to you, but you’d already left.”
It’s a photo of the newel cap at the bottom of the stairs. “This is good, Nell.”
She smiles. “I thought so too.”
“I like how the light shines on the wood, and you’ve got a good depth of field. Nice composition with the round cap and the vertical stair railing.”
“I remembered what you said about using macrophotography to reveal details of the world that are important to you.”
“The newel post is important to you.”
“Sort of.” She shrugs, a slight flush rising to her cheeks. “I have a habit of twisting it when I come downstairs. That’s why I was annoyed when you fixed it. Twisting the post is a little silly, but it’s kind of a ritual.”
“I get it. Rituals and discipline kept me sane when I was a hostage.”
She glances up at me, her eyes clouding over. “What kind of rituals?”
“Anything I could control.” I hesitate, waiting for the inevitable darkness to encroach, but it doesn’t. I dislike talking about my captivity because most people are intrigued by the salacious exoticism of being taken hostage. Hearing about it satisfies their intense curiosity about the unimaginable.
It’s not “exotic” for Nell, though. She knows what it’s like to be in a place you can’t escape.
“I woke in the morning when the sky turned a specific shade of blue,” I tell her. “It reminded me of the color of the Mediterranean. My captors gave me a bucket of water and an old bar of soap, and I had a ritual of washing in a specific order. When they gave me food, I sat with the metal plate in the southwest corner of the room, which I’d designated as my dining area. I ate the food in a clockwise rotation around the plate and chewed each bite ten times slowly. I had a daily workout routine. When I was allowed to walk in the courtyard, I took forty steps on the long side and twenty-two on each short side, planting my feet directly in the middle of each flagstone. I never stepped on a crack.”
“What did you think about?”
“I did a lot of math problems in my head. Never stopped trying to come up with a way to escape. I relived a lot of moments in my life. Reviewed favorite movies, thought about my favorite novels. I remembered a lot.”
I rise and walk to the liquor cabinet. I pour a club soda for Nell and hand it to her, then pour myself a scotch.
“Did my father tell you I was in an institution?” she asks. “I mean, a youth psychiatric facility.”
Anger crawls up my chest. I take a swallow of scotch and sit back down. “Yes.”
“I had a lot of rituals there too.” She looks down at her glass and sets it on the table. “I counted my steps to the dining room and the bathroom. Folded my clothes a certain way. I was in room 303, and the room number was painted on the wall beside the door. I’d trace the first number three right before I went back inside. So I know what you mean. I read that it’s not uncommon for people with dangerous careers like yours to feel like their luck is connected to a ritual.”
“I know people who feel that way. I never did, at least not consciously. I figured luck was just luck.” I stare out the window at the oak tree. “I used to have a good-luck charm, though. A friend of mine, a fellow photographer, once gave me a Chinese coin he’d said brought him luck. I kept it for years.”