Eleanor (33 page)

Her shadow returns to her, cautiously, but she welcomes it, beckoning it to rejoin her. It glides to its place at her side, and attaches itself to her, and she takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. She feels almost whole again.
 

“My valley,” she breathes.
 

She has worked for months on the wreckage, moving only a few pieces per day. There is still so much to do, she knows. The holes must be filled, the grass must be healed. The trees will need to be regrown. She could have done it all in a day, she thinks, when she was younger, but she is not that young anymore. Her brain aches inside her skull.
 

“We’ve earned a break,” she says to her shadow. She scoots backward on the black soil until she encounters a tree, and rests her body against it. Her shadow curls around her like a puppy, warm and agreeable.
 

“Yes,” she says. “We take back what is ours.”

She tilts her head back and stares up through scorched branches at the clouds. The rain grows fat and plentiful as she watches, and her clothes, already soaked, become saturated as the drizzle becomes a downpour. She closes her eyes and listens to the dull roar of the storm.
 

The rain, she thinks, might heal the valley’s wounds on its own. She would not have to trouble herself with the repairs. The grave opened in the earth would fill with water, and the water would soften the exposed walls of earth, and the dirt would slide into the water and become mud, and the entire thing would churn dark and rich in the rain. And when the rain ceased, the mud would dry and become firm, and the hole would be almost erased. Grass would grow again without her direction. She could sleep for a few years, rest her weary bones, and allow her valley to take care of itself for a time.

Her thoughts grow foggy as the clouds roil above her, and as the earth grows soft beneath her feet. Spent, weary, the keeper’s eyes close, and she falls asleep.

The top of Huffnagle is almost perfectly flat. The rocks are beaten smooth, the dirt planed away, as if some god or another had taken a wide saw to the cap of a mountain, shearing it away.
 

The sun has come out, and warms the rocks, and warms Eleanor’s skin, and the rain stops. The mist far below boils away, just as Jack had said it would, and color seems to rush back into the world. The island is no longer gray and threatening, but a warm, chocolatey color. The sea is as blue as crushed pigment. The sun is golden, the clouds tinged with pink.
 

Jack takes off his sweatshirt and waders and jeans and stretches out on the ground, his legs dangling over the edge of the cliff. Eleanor sits down beside him on crossed legs.
 

“You took your pants off,” she says.
 

“It’s warm,” Jack says. “Too warm for jeans now.”

“It’s weird.”

“It’s not weird. You can hang your feet over,” he says. “It’s nice.”

“No, thank you,” Eleanor says.
 

Jack closes his eyes and is still.

“You look like a turtle,” she says.

He opens one eye. “A turtle?”

“Sunning itself,” she says.
 

“Ah. What sound does a turtle make?”

“No sound, I think,” Eleanor answers.

Jack opens his mouth and closes it again, and nothing comes out.
 

“It would have been funnier if turtles made sounds,” he says.

“It wouldn’t have been funny either way.”

She tugs her feet closer, rocking back and forth on her butt until they are wedged tightly beneath her.
 

“It’s nice,” she says.

“I knew you’d like it. Aren’t you glad you came?”

“I am,” she says. “I feel guilty.”

“She’s going to be okay,” Jack says. “My grandpa was in the hospital once. For, like, three weeks. We were there all the time, and then he told us to go home. Dad didn’t want to, but Grandpa made us. We went home to eat and sleep, and came back to see him every night. It was very—I don’t know. Balanced.”

“Was he okay?”
 

“My grandpa?” Jack asks. “He died.”

“Were you there?”
 

“My dad was,” Jack says. “I was at school.”

“Don’t you wish you were there?” Eleanor asks.
 

Jack is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “No. I wouldn’t want to remember that moment.”

“But what if he had things to tell you? What if he wanted to say goodbye?”

“Grandpa had told me everything already,” Jack says. “We said goodbye every night, just in case.”

Eleanor looks down at the sea. “My mom hasn’t told me anything. I haven’t said goodbye.”

Jack leans up on his elbows. “Yeah,” he says. “But your mom isn’t dying. It’s different.”

“She almost did,” Eleanor says. “She still could.”

“But she didn’t. And she isn’t going to. At least not today, and probably not for a long time.”

“She’s still in the woods,” Eleanor says. “That’s what the specialist told Dad. ‘She might come out of the woods, if we find the right donor. Or she might go deeper into them, if we don’t.’ That’s what she said.”

“Doctors have to say those things to cover their asses,” Jack says. “Just in case.”

“I don’t know. It sounded—true.”

They’re both quiet for a few minutes. Eleanor watches seagulls, little specks against the peach-colored sky. Jack stands up suddenly, startling her.

“Want to see something cool?” he asks.

She looks up at him, shielding her eyes from the sun. “What?”

“Keep looking out there,” he says, pointing at the horizon. “See those boats?”

“What boats?” She squints into the distance, scanning the water, but sees nothing. “Jack, I don’t see—”

She hears the slap of his feet and turns and Jack is right there, running toward the edge. He is a blur of legs and elbows and then he has passed her, and Eleanor whips her head around to watch him sail over the edge. He falls away from her horrifyingly fast, shouting something, and Eleanor screams. He tucks his knees to his chest and hits the water like a stone, with a wide and mighty splash.

“Jack!” she shouts.
 

He surfaces a moment later, slicks his hair back with his hand.
 

“
You are an asshole!
” she yells.
 

He just laughs. “That was
awesome
!” he shouts back.
 

“You could have killed yourself!” she shouts.
 

“What?”

“You could have killed yourself!”

“
What?
”

“
You are an asshole!
”

He laughs. “Come down!”

Eleanor turns away from the edge and folds her arms.

“It’s only a little cold!” he yells. “And look, no dangerous rocks back here!”

She looks back down at him, watches as he treads water. “I am not jumping off a cliff!” she yells.

His voice is small, but insistent. “Ellie, you’ll do great! It is
awesome!
”

She should be with her mother. Her mother, tiny under the beige hospital blanket. Eleanor should be in the hard plastic chair beside the bed, listening to carts wheeling by in the hallway, listening to the faint beeps from other rooms. She should be under fluorescent lights instead of the sun, reading hospital pamphlets for the hundredth time, waiting for her mother to wake up and ignore her, waiting for the nurse to shoo Eleanor from the room for her mother’s daily checks and tests and sponge bath. She should be there, amid the smell of Lysol and sweat; there, where it is hard to breathe, where there are no windows, where strangers sometimes pop into the room and say, “Oops, wrong room,” and then get to walk away, leaving Eleanor’s reality behind in favor of their own, which she always imagines is far, far better.

She should be there when her mother needs someone to blame, to
accuse
. She should be an ear for her father to bend about the medical bills, about the divorce, about hospital red tape and medical insurance and legal obligations. Lately, about his threat of litigation.
We aren’t even married
, he would insist, the words falling on his daughter’s ears like broken glass.
She isn’t my responsibility.

Eleanor looks down at Jack, bobbing in the sea. His wide smile and wet hair and shining eyes. So small, so far below.
 

“Does it hurt?” she yells.

He shakes his head.

Eleanor takes a deep breath, and gets to her feet.

Night has fallen when the keeper wakes. Rain falls slowly, trickles down the trunk of the tree. She has sunk, a little, into the soft soil.
 

“Was I asleep long?” she asks her shadow.

Her voice is grainy, as if she had screamed herself hoarse. She barely notices. Her entire body aches from the weeks of cleanup. She sincerely hopes that any future intruders in the valley arrive in considerably smaller vehicles.
 

She gets to her feet, the tree’s rough trunk pleasant against her back. She leans against it, shifting this way and that, scratching a deep itch. She decides in that moment to let the valley take care of itself, to let the rain and passage of time care for the rest of the damage. She is suddenly very, very tired, as if she hadn’t slept at all.
 

She coughs. Her tongue feels strange in her mouth—gritty. She pushes it against her teeth. If feels sludgy, as though she ate sand before she fell asleep. She coughs again, and even in the dark can see a fine mist of black dust appear in the air before her face.
 

The keeper blinks at it, not understanding.
 

She looks down at her shadow, then waves her hand in front of her face, and inspects her skin. There are dozens of tiny black dots on her hand. They disappear quickly in the rain, but the keeper is suddenly very worried.
 

She opens her mouth and touches her tongue with one cautious finger, then holds her finger up in the dim light.
 

Her heart almost stops.
 

Her finger is stained with damp black dust.
 

She swipes her finger across her tongue again, from back to front, and almost gags. She holds her finger up again, and her heart drops into her belly. Her finger is caked with the black stuff. She rubs her fingertip and thumb together. The black dust is wet, and burrows into the tiny valleys in her fingerprints.
 

“What is this?” she croaks.
 

Her shadow has no answer.

She cups her palm and spits into her hand. Her saliva is a murky sludge, viscous and oily.
 

“No, no,” she moans. “What is this? What is this?”

She slings the spit from her hand, and wipes her palm on her wet clothes. She thinks quickly, and wills the rain to fall with greater power, to storm down and purge her of this alien thing, whatever it is. But her head pounds horribly, and she cannot do it.
 

“We must go home,” she says. “Back to the cabin.”

But with her first step, a horrible fire erupts in her gut, and the keeper falls to her knees in the mud, gasping and spitting, burning from within.