I stop in front of the library and gaze toward the ferry landing, and I see myself as I was that day, rolling my suitcase toward the waiting boat. Jacob strode after me. Don’t go, don’t leave. This isn’t right.
I can’t stay, I said, turning toward him. He looked bereft, his hair lit by the midday sun. I planned to take the last ferry. Was I planning to leave him for Aiden? I’m sorry, Jacob. Part of me didn’t want to leave. A ghost of me stayed behind. The decision to leave was not easy, the truth was not clear. I hesitated. I almost turned back. The summer waned around us. The days were still warm, but the nights were growing cool. Our idyllic summer of rediscovery on the island—it hadn’t worked. The wounds had not healed.
I hoped if I brought you here . . ., he said.
I hoped so, too, I said.
You shouldn’t leave. You’re making a mistake. It’s not what you want, to go back to him. We can have a family, you and I . . . I know that we can.
My hands tighten on the handlebars. What happened between us? If Jacob is reading my email, perhaps censoring what I see, is he trying to protect me from the truth? Does Linny know what really happened?
The door to the library swings open. “Kyra!” the librarian, Frances, says. “You’re down here early. I’ve been meaning to contact you, but I got busy with orders for the school. You’re going to want to see what I found. Took me a while. I had to do some digging.”
I park my bike and take the stairs up two at a time. In the warmth of the library, I follow her to her desk. The smells of old wood and dust waft up to me. She rummages through the drawers. “I knew I had it here. I had to talk to the old librarian. Something nagged at me about the paintings. Here it is!” She opens a manila file folder and shows me a photocopy of an old newspaper clipping.
“What is it?” I say, my heart thumping.
“It’s from 1977. The Bugle of the San Juan Islands.” She points at a man and woman. The man, dressed in a T-shirt and coveralls, is helping a woman step from a yacht onto the dock. In contrast to his rough appearance, she’s a breath of brightness in a floral summer dress, her dark hair fashionably tousled by the wind. The caption at the bottom reads, Tourist Season Heats Up on Mystic Island.
“That’s Douglas Ingram,” I say. “And the woman . . .”
“Yes, the woman,” she says. “Shocked me, too. There was no story to go with the picture. Just the caption.”
There is something terribly familiar about her, in the shape of her face, the arch of her eyebrows, her cheekbones. The eyes, too—the pensive, guarded expression. Her wild, dark hair tumbles past her shoulders. She’s smiling, her face turned up to the sun.
“She’s the woman from the painting,” I say.
Frances nods.
“She definitely looks like me.” The resemblance is not exact. But the similarities between this woman and me are so striking; I could be looking at a version of myself. She appears to be in her early twenties.
“She does look a lot like you,” the librarian says. “You must be related to her.”
“But I’m not. Who was she?”
“I wasn’t here back then, but you might want to ask Doug.”
I fold the photograph into my pocket and ride my bicycle up the main road, eventually turning left at the gnarled Western red cedar. A soft rain has begun to fall. The bumpy, overgrown driveway gently slopes downhill, winding through a meadow and a copse of trees. A log house appears in a clearing, a plume of smoke rising from the chimney. I park my bike and take the stone footpath to the front porch. I climb the steps with a pounding heart. Before I raise my hand to knock, the door swings open. Doug Ingram peers at me through sleepy eyes. He’s wearing a loose-knit sweater, jeans, and slippers. His white hair flies wild, as if he last brushed it a decade ago.
“I thought I was dreaming,” he says. “But I wasn’t, was I? You look so much like Malinda.”
“I’m Kyra Winthrop. Remember?”
He looks confused. “What are you doing here?”
I show him the picture. “The librarian found this in the archives.”
His gnarled fingers tremble, and his eyes soften with sadness. He looks up at me. “Why don’t you come in?”
I enter a bright room full of rustic wood furniture, the walls adorned with watercolor paintings of the island—the ocean views through the mist, the cedar forest, deer, and seashells. The smell of pine. The coffee table, made of a sliced stump, is neatly stacked with magazines. A fire crackles in a woodstove in the corner.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” he says, shuffling to his left, through an open doorway to a small kitchen. I hear pots and pans clanking, and he comes back out looking at me and shaking his head. “Remarkable.”
“When did you know her? Malinda? This photo was taken nearly forty years ago.”