But it kinda looked like a small castle, if you didn’t pay too much attention to the white-wood siding.
There was a gate at the end of the driveway with a weathered brass plaque on the front of it that read Boucher House, but no one called it that. We just called it Old Home. Or Adam’s Old Home. Or sometimes just Home. And you couldn’t hardly read that sign, anyway. It was covered in creeping vines. So you couldn’t fault anyone for not calling it the Boucher House. They couldn’t really see the letters.
In the early years it was hard to see Nate’s bedroom window from my window because of all those old trees with creeping vines. But one summer, when we were eleven, we cleared a path through the trees with a chainsaw and then, and forever more, we had a direct line of sight to each other.
Adam was furious with us that day we came at the trees with a chainsaw. And really, it was McKay who actually did most of the work. But it was our idea and we started the project, so we took credit for it.
As long as we used a night vision scope we could see each other when we stood in front of our windows. I gave Nate one of my old scopes for his fourteenth birthday because I wanted him to look at me too, and up until that time it was just me looking at him, mostly.
A year later we had cell phones. And then we would talk on the phone and I would look through the scope and watch him through the window as he talked to me.
He knew I was doing it. I’m not a liar. Adam thought I was but McKay always said that one day my honesty would get me killed. I didn’t care what Adam thought. And Nate didn’t care that I was watching him, anyway. We were best friends and didn’t have secrets like that.
Nate and I met because I was a runaway. Less than two hours after Adam brought me to the island I had decided that I would not live in Adam Boucher’s Old Home, that I would live in his woods.
I mostly did this on principle, but also because it pissed Adam off and drove him crazy.
I really liked to drive Adam crazy back then. I feel like that was my only hobby during those first months I lived with him and McKay. Before Donovan talked me into “behaving myself”.
But those few weeks in the woods were fun for me. I caught Nate fishing in the river on day three. He was in a little motor boat and he had already caught many fish by the time I wandered onto the sandy shore. He made a fire on the beach that afternoon and cooked up those fish. So I didn’t starve while I was living in the woods. I think I might’ve gained weight, that’s how well I ate.
Nate said he knew who I was. He had been watching when Adam brought me home in the rain. He likes to hunt for gators when it rains like that, so that’s what he was doin’. And he heard me screaming as Adam dragged me into the house and locked me in the small upstairs room that would become mine.
But Nate didn’t know my name so I told him that my given name was Indie Anna Accorsi, but everyone just called me Indie.
When Adam found out he said I was “a stupid little witch” for giving my real name out to a stranger and didn’t I know any better? And what the fuck did they teach me anyway? Before he bought me in the auction? And then he said, “I should’ve let that snake eat you.”
And I replied, and I remember this clearly, “That snake was not gonna eat me, Mr. Boucher. I was about to carve it up and roast it for dinner myself before you came along and ruined my plans.”
And then McKay laughed and told me to go take a bath because I smelled like old mud on a hot day.
Which was just fine with me because the mud kept the mosquitoes away. But McKay offered up bubbles that smelled like bubble gum, and up until that very moment I had never had a bubble bath, so I got clean for him.
But the minute I saw Nate in that boat I knew we’d be best friends. And we were. We got into all kinds of trouble after that. I liked him because he was not afraid of the lake and the river and almost everyone else was.
Adam told me that. When he realized I had ripped a hole in my window screen and shimmied on down the side of the house towards my life in the woods that first afternoon, he spent two whole days yelling at me from the front porch.
He waved his fist and screamed threats at me. And McKay just sat in a rocking chair and drank bottles of beer and watched him.
McKay’s feathers are hard to ruffle.
Adam’s threats were many. He yelled out that there were gators in the water and leeches that would suck my blood. He told me there were cottonmouths too. I didn’t know what a cottonmouth was, but Nate told me they were snakes.
I’m not afraid of snakes.
I will walk through a garden so thick with snakes I’d be tripping over them and it would not bother me one bit. I will stare down the mouth of any damn snake and tell them what’s what.
But Nate did say they would kill me if I let them get too close. So from then on, when the cottonmouths came slithering by on the top of the water, I would give them space and they would stay clear of me too, and we had this kind of understanding.
The gators were another story altogether. Gators were not as smart as snakes. I know this from experience. I would not call them brave, but they were not the type to give one their space. So I had to stay clear of them without getting any reciprocal consideration.
I never did see a leech on my skin trying to suck my blood after swimming in the water. So I don’t really have an opinion on leeches.
I had a good life on Old Home Island. I really did. I don’t think I completely understood that until recently.
At first, I liked Donovan the best. Donovan is only five years older than me. He’s some kind of genius. When we met, when I was ten and he was fifteen, he was already done with college and getting ready to start medical school to become some kind of psychiatric doctor.
He was not going to be a typical therapist, he told me. I’m not really sure what a typical therapist is because I have never talked to anyone about what’s inside my head, just Donovan. But he was a Company kid, like me. And if there’s one thing I know about being a Company kid, it’s that our lives are never typical.
But Donovan was patient. And he talked in a low, calm voice. And he liked to ask me questions and something about him made me want to answer.
If Adam asked me a question back then, I would never answer. I didn’t like to answer Adam’s questions. And if McKay asked me a question I would sometimes answer. If it was a question about something I was interested in.
But it didn’t matter what kind of question Donovan asked me. I always wanted to talk to him. And he was a good listener too. He taped most of our conversations. And when he wasn’t taping them, he was writing notes. Donovan said he did that so he would remember everything I ever told him.
It made me feel good when he taped our conversations. Like someone cared.
I’m not sure Donovan really did care about me. If I had to choose just one of them to call caring, I would choose McKay. Because he was the one who soothed me after jobs went bad, and taught me how to fight and shoot, and made sure I ate all my vegetables. He even bought me braces when I was fourteen so my teeth would be pretty.
And, in the later years, when I had to leave Old Home and go to the boarding schools for a job, he would be the one to come visit me on parents’ day. Even though he was not my father, and I made sure everyone knew that he was not my father.
The girls at the schools would ask me, “Is he your brother?” And they did this because McKay was very handsome and charming. Maybe not as charming as Donovan, but he was definitely more of a looker than a brain.