The Book of Speculation: A Novel

I walk toward him.

“She did love this house,” he says when I approach, as though it’s his life spilling down the cliff, not mine. Creaking gives way to a sharp snap and Frank shoves me back. Enola’s bed scrapes down the broken boards, coming to rest on a partially collapsed wall. “It’s all my fault.”

“I need to know about the cards you gave my sister. Did my mother tell you anything about them?”

“Your dad was going to move you. I told her it would kill me if she left. I couldn’t help it. Then she gave me her cards and told me to hang on to them. They were her mother’s and grandmother’s. I figured if she gave me something like that she’d be back.” He looks away from the rubble, back to me. Eyes bloodshot like beets, like my father’s dead eyes. “They passed those things down like they were jewelry.”

My skin feels too tight, like I might rupture. My mother must have read the end, the cards Enola keeps reading, the same thing Verona Bonn read, all the way back to Ryzhkova. They passed the cards to each other creating history, fingers touching paper, imbuing it with hope and fears, fear like a curse. Of course they wouldn’t clear their cards, they were talking to their mothers, and isn’t that part of why I’ve stayed here? The book noted a falling out between Ryzhkova and her apprentice, a falling out over the mermaid. Enola said that cards build history—what a perfect way to wound someone. The cards were hers, Ryzhkova’s, then Amos and Evangeline’s on down the line, each leaving themselves in the ink, each pulling from the deck, pulling in fears that work like poison.

The wind blows a sheet of paper across a split board. The only paper of consequence was never in my possession—it was in Enola’s.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He waits for me to answer.

“I’m sorry about the house,” I tell him. I’m not.

I leave him at the bluff, grieving the house. I hear him shuffling through bits and pieces, looking for her in the rubble. He’s lost her twice now. I only lost her once.

I see Enola dig her hand deep into her pocket, each shuffle working a hex into her skin. Doyle watches me, craning over the top of Enola’s head. He asks after Frank and looks at me with wariness, too alert. He’s touched the cards, Doyle who my sister lies to because she’s scared, because she loves him.

Alice emerges from the McAvoy house and trudges toward her father. It hurts to watch her put a hand on his shoulder when she’d rather do anything but. But that’s who she is—a daughter, a practical woman, the responsible kind. It hurts to see her pull him away from what was my house, toward the place I once wished I’d lived.

I ask Enola if she’ll talk to Frank. “Alice shouldn’t be alone with him and Leah won’t kill him as long as you’re there.” The look she gives me is dark.

“Thought you’d be happy to see him dead.”

“Alice wouldn’t be. She’s mad now, but she won’t be forever.”

Enola glances at the tattooed man beside her, then back at me. “What the hell am I supposed to say to him?”

Doyle rubs her hair, possessive, comforting. She chews her lower lip.

“Please,” I say. “For me.”

“Fine.”

When Doyle starts to go with her, I ask him to hang around. He shrugs. We both watch her head toward Frank. With each step I whisper a refrain: Be good. Be good. Please be good.

“You put a lot on her, you know,” Doyle says beside me.

“Maybe.” I start for the bluff, a slow limp. He follows. Again the wary look. “They’ll be fine. She’ll be all right.”

We walk to where the sand sharply dips, where Dad’s nightstand emptied its contents: pill bottles, magazines, keys to locks that don’t exist anymore. Off to the west a quiet horn signals the ferry’s slow trek. I ask, “Where did you say your family’s from?”

“Mom is out in Ohio.”

Ohio is good. It sounds like somewhere I would never go. It sounds dry, like there might be dry places.

“Why did you come here? What did she tell you?”

He shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his cargo pants. They bulge out. He breathes in, then lets out a prolonged hiss. “She told me you’re sick; she thinks you’re going to do something, something maybe like your mom did. I thought she shouldn’t be alone. Man, I don’t know. I heard about the mermaids and I saw you hold your breath, but I don’t know.”

“She lied.”

He turns quiet. Thoughtful maybe. “Enola doesn’t lie to me.”

“Yes, she does. I taught Enola how to hold her breath. She’s better than I am, or she was. Tell me, what’s worse than her brother being sick? Worse to you. Something she would lie about.”

His answer is pure reflex. “If she was sick.”

I say nothing.