Summer Island

Mom stopped; her hands fell uselessly to her sides. “Dont say that, honey. ” She gazed at Ruby. "There are things you dont understand. Youre so Young . . .

Ruby ignored her mothers tears. It was easy; shed cried so many of them herself theyd lost their currency. “I understand how it feels to be left behind, as if you were . . . nothing. ” Her traitorous voice broke, and the sudden rawness of her pain made it difficult to breathe. Ruby fisted her hands and drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “Go away, Mother. No one here loves you anymore. ”

Mom glanced back at Dad, whod slumped into his chair again. He was holding his head in his hands.

Ruby wanted to put her arms around him and tell him she loved him, just as shed done so often in the past few months, but she didnt have the heart for it now. It was all she could do to keep from wailing. She stepped back into her bedroom and slammed the door shut.

She didnt know how long she stood there, perfectly still, her hands balled into cold fists, but after a while, she heard footsteps crossing the kitchen, then the quiet opening and closing of the front door. Outside, a car engine started; tires crunched through gravel. And quiet fell once again, broken only by the sound of a grown man crying . . .

Ruby lurched to her feet, and found herself unsteady. She couldnt have forgotten that day. . . she must have blocked it out, buried it beneath the cold, hard stones of denial.

The world, once so firm, felt as if it had given way beneath her.

Things you dont understand.

Even then, her mother had had a story to tell . . . but no one had wanted to hear it.

Now Ruby was ready. She wanted to learn what had happened more than a decade earlier; under her own roof, within her own family.

And if her mother wouldnt answer those questions, there was always an alternative.

She would ask her father.

Part Two

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will he to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time. "

-T. S. ELIOT, FROM “LITTLE GIDDING”

Chapter Fifteen

It had been easy to get out of the house. Ruby had simply left a note-Gone to Dads-on the kitchen table.

Now she was in the minivan, driving up the tree-lined road that led away from the Lopez Island ferry dock.

She was a fourth-generation islander; and at this moment, seeing all the new houses and bed-and-breakfasts that had sprouted on Lopez, the full impact of that heritage hit her. She had roots here, a past that grew deep into the rich black island soil. Lopez had grown up, and she didnt like the changes. She couldnt help wondering if there were still places where grass grew up to a young girls knees and apple trees blossomed by the side of the road, where wild brown rabbits came out beneath a full moon and munched their way through summer gardens.

Her great-great-grandfather had come to this remote part of the world from a dreary, industrialized section of England. Hed brought his beautiful, black eyed Irish wife and seventeen dollars, and together theyd homesteaded two hundred acres on Lopez. His brother had come along a few years later and staked his own claim on Summer Island. Both had become successful apple and sheep farmers.

Now, more than one hundred years later; there were only ten acres on Lopez that belonged to her father. The house on Summer Island had been willed to Ruby and Caroline; their grandparents had feared that their son would lose this land, one acre at a time. And theyd been right.

Randall Bridge now lived on what had once been the farms highest point, a rounded thumbprint of land that stuck out high above the bay.

He was an island man, through and through. Hed grown up on this tiny, floating world and hed raised his children here. He had a closet full of plaid flannel shirts for winter and locally made tourist T-shirts for summer.

He lived on a financial shoestring, from one fishing season to the next. Money had always been tight and “next summer” was always going to change things. He made it through the lean months doing local boat repairs. Most years, it was the repairs-not the fishing that kept food on the table and paid the steadily rising property taxes.

Ruby came to the crest of the hill and had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a trio of deer. A doe and her two spotted fawns stood in the middle of the road, their ears pricked forward. Suddenly they leapt over the ditch and disappeared into the tall, golden grass.

She eased forward again, going more slowly now. Shed forgotten how it was to share the road with animals. In Los Angeles, there had been a different kind of wildlife on the freeways.

She turned off the main road. A gravel road wound through acres of apple trees, their limbs propped up by slanted, graying stats of wood.