Every once in a while, I silently freak out. This isn’t real, she isn’t real, this can’t be real, holy hell, what is going on. And then I try not to hyperventilate and remember that she’s here, and I’m wasting my time doing reality checks.
We lie there for a long while, not speaking. Just watching the light pulsing inside our eyelids when they’re closed, letting it bleach the insides of our eyeballs when they’re open. Finally, after a long time, I ask.
“So what did it say? The lighthouse?”
Anda’s eyes are closed right now. I run my fingertip across her dark lashes, and she allows it. “It told me that November was not the only answer.”
“Huh? To what question?”
“I don’t know. I have to think on it. But then it…it asked me for an apology.”
“And?”
“It showed me exactly what I’ve done. So I apologized. And I showed it what men have done to the lake. And it apologized.”
“Are you friends now?”
She shakes her head. “But we understand each other a little better.”
I trace my finger down her cheek, then over the swell of her lips. I want to kiss her so badly, but I now have the distinct feeling that we’re not alone. I pull my hand back, and she catches it.
“Don’t worry about the lighthouse. It doesn’t care about such things,” she says, and puts my hand lower, against her collarbone.
“What things?”
“These things.” Anda slips her hand under my shirt, her fingers touching the ripples of my rib cage and then down, drawing a line across my belly where the waistband of my pants is. My body flashes with heat, and I swallow, shutting my eyes.
“Anda.” It’s a million questions at once.
“Yes, Hector.”
And that’s the last thing we say for the rest of the night.
Chapter Forty-Eight
ANDA
The lighthouse does not speak again that evening, and neither does anything else. I’m glad of it. There is no room for any voices in my head.
Hector fell asleep when the cloud-draped moon was only four fingers from dipping below the horizon. I watch him by the light of the flashes until moonset. He will be angry when he wakes up, to feel like he’s wasted time on sleeping. But his body has different needs than mine.
Well, except for last night.
Last night was so many things. Painful and clumsy. Instinctual and tender. And easy, far too easy, to succumb to a facet of myself I’d owned but banished until Hector was there to wake it up.
The eastern sky warms with lemon and peach hues as Hector stirs. His eyes blink sleepily, and his hand finds mine, still resting on his shoulder where I haven’t moved it for four hours.
“Oh no,” he groans. “I fell asleep.”
“You did. You sleep beautifully.”
He rubs his eyes. “Your father is going to be back soon.”
“Yes. We should have some tea waiting for him. That would be easier for him to digest than seeing this.”
I point to the area between us. Which is to say, the nonexistent area between us.
We spend a few more precious minutes just lying together. Hector’s eyes are open and seeing, memorizing me in a quiet, frantic way. Neither of us wants the fairy tale to end. Every minute is a desperate last one, until finally Hector plucks my hands off his body.
“C’mon. It’s time,” he says, with as much regret in his voice as I feel in my belly.
The lighthouse pretends to sleep as we dress hurriedly and gather the sleeping bags. As we descend the staircase, it creaks. I swear it says something like:
See. You’re more human than you think.
“I thought you weren’t watching,” I whisper back.
November is not the only answer, you know.
I furrow my brow. “I don’t understand.”
Hector turns around, arms full of sleeping bag. “Did you say something?”
“Oh, nothing.”
He’d be upset if he knew the truth—that the lighthouse was probably laughing at us all night long.
We get ourselves into a semblance of dressed and normal, with reconstituted oatmeal cooking and three mugs of tea, when we hear Father’s motorboat purring nearby. We go out to meet him as he throws the anchor onto the shore.
“Well?” Anda asks.
“All cleaned up. I couldn’t hike the trail, of course. Not enough time. But I trust that nothing too bad was left behind there. I fixed the broken door on the camp store in Windigo and left an IOU for the missing items.”
Hector nods respectfully. “Thank you, Mr. Selkirk. I’ll pay you back.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says brightly. Too brightly.
Ah. He’s joyful that Hector is leaving.
“Do you have time for breakfast?” Hector offers, but Father shakes his head.
“I’m afraid not. The fellows will be at the harbor in two hours to bring you back, and I’m already behind. I’m going to fill the tank with gas. Only be a minute. I’ve got a few granola bars you can have on the way.”
I go with Hector back to the house to gather his pack. Inside, he captures me in a hug so fierce, I can’t draw a breath.
“It feels like a dream,” he says. “Like it’s all been a dream.”
“Good,” I whisper. “Keep it close. Don’t forget me.”
“Never,” he tells me.
I can’t believe he’s going. And I can’t believe I’m letting him leave.
It is the right thing to do. The other way would have been in a coffin.
Mother’s voice oozes contentment. She acts as if this is the only way, as if she has forgotten it all. That once, she allowed a human’s love in her life. That she allowed me to be conceived, just as I consciously chose not to kindle a new life last night.
The air around us grows humid, and spots of moisture begin to plink down on our faces as we grip each other hard. The door opens and we spring apart, wiping our faces. Father sees the pack on the floor and grabs it. “Time to go.”
I follow them to the boat, and Hector climbs in, his lips in a grim, straight line. When Father starts the boat and pulls up the anchor, he doesn’t say good-bye. I know he’ll be back again to check on me. He always comes back.
Hector turns away from me and hunches over. He can’t even stand to look at me.
I can’t hold back anymore. I cry in earnest, feeling the loss of him. It twists and gnaws inside, and instinct tells me that I could take him back—piece by bloody piece, if I wanted. I could have him forever. But I can’t.
I won’t.
The sky above roils with low pressure, and the clouds descend closer to earth, trying to enshroud me with a mantle of comfort. Drops begin to fall with intention. In the distance, neither Father nor Hector does anything to shield himself from the downpour.
In the end, I can’t stop anything. I’ll go back to being Anda, only half of a whole that can’t live with any peace, not without destroying something precious or losing something I can’t afford to lose.
As the sound of the boat recedes and the noise of the rain slaps on the water in a rising discord, I lift my hand to my cheeks. My fingertips touch the mix of rain and tears there. I bring it to my lips. It’s salty and the tiniest bit sweet. The beautiful and the broken, woven together.
It tastes like us.
Chapter Forty-Nine
HECTOR