Mistwalker

SIXTEEN Willa

My mother sat in the front seat, pressing her temple against the window. Her voice was glass, thrown at me. “You feel like telling us what happened to your face?”

“There was a storm,” I started. They had to know there was a storm. Daddy would have been at the shore at daybreak. He knew the Jenn-a-Lo was gone. He probably knew I was the one who lost her. I was sick in my soul with it. Like if somebody cut me open, I’d be nothing but green bile inside.

“There’s a news flash.” Ma had a gift for sarcasm when it suited her.

Making a hard left, Daddy grunted. “Leave it be.”

“I didn’t know there would be swells like that.”

Mom turned around. A faintly orange mask of makeup obscured her real features. Granny’s pearls hung from her ears, matched by the rope of them around her neck. She was a Kabuki dancer, painted to play her part. Mother of the defendant. The wine-dark lipstick made her look old and angry. “All night on the water with Seth?”

Recoiling at the sound of his name, I stared at her. “I told you we broke up.”

Her teeth were white, too white. Like bone, behind that lipstick. They chopped and snapped, making a sharp breath whistle. “Seth did that?”

“No!” She wasn’t listening. She wasn’t even trying to listen. She just wanted me to fill in the script she already wrote. “We’ve been broken up. I hit the windscreen, Ma. I was on the boat when it . . .”

“Knock it off, both of ya,” Daddy said.

With a huff, my mother turned on him. “I don’t think I will, Bill. Look at her! Going to court looking like a prizefighter. And God knows, last time she went running around all night long . . .”

“I sailed to Jackson’s Rock,” I shouted. I raised my voice to blot hers out. It was about as elegant as clapping my hands over my ears and singing, la la la, I can’t hear you. The long drive to the courthouse in Machias was bad enough.

A death watch, counting down minutes until everything was over. I wanted to explode, or to die. Something—some kind of penance for ruining everything. For Levi and for sinking the Jenn-a-Lo and for pitting my parents against each other.

Another snort punctuated the air. Daddy flicked his pale eyes to peer at me in the rearview mirror. “I told you to stay off the boat.”

“I know.” I dug my fingers into the rubbery seat, straining against my seat belt. “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry . . .”

Then he laughed. It was hollow and terrible. He wheezed when he drew the next breath, and whistled it out with laughter. Sweeping away tears, he drove with one hand, faster on the highway than Mom liked. I was baffled. I guess I could have been offended. Or hurt. Or angry, but he was laughing, and I was too confused to feel anything else.

Not so my mom. She pursed her lips and dropped back against the seat furiously. “I’m glad you’re having a good time.”

“You and me both.” Daddy said. “You shoulda seen the look on Eldrich’s face. Like somebody slapped a herring. Can’t say I blame him. His Boondocks was standing ass over end, leaning against the bait shack. Half the fleet’s upside down. Then, then . . .”

He burst out laughing again. The car veered a little, and I wondered if this was what a real nervous breakdown looked like. If all the breaking I’d been doing was just a tantrum. Daddy’s face was scarlet, and he kept coughing between his giggles. Mom took the wheel, steering us back into our lane.

“There’s the Jenn-a-Lo!” Daddy shouted, then hiccupped. “Floating all alone in the harbor. Bell missing but pretty as the day I bought her. I look at Eldrich. He goggles back at me. Then he says, ‘Guess it’s your year.’”

Daddy was the only one who found it funny. He dissolved into more laughter. And that turned into a coughing fit. It had been a long time since he coughed like that, wet and sticky. Since he quit smoking last time, as a matter of fact. It rumbled and bubbled in his chest, and made me want to cry.

I couldn’t even be relieved. It was a miracle that the Jenn-a-Lo was floating. Impossible. Magic.

Gripped by an unholy cold, I folded into myself. I wasn’t giving Grey credit for saving the boat. He didn’t get credit for pulling me out of the water, either. He had to go into a box in my head. Clamped down and locked down, because the things that happened on Jackson’s Rock couldn’t come into this world. My real world.

The one where we rolled into Machias under a perfect sky. The leaves were almost finished shifting—some still green, but most a vibrant orange against blue. Yellow and white Victorians lined one side, blue and grey Cape Cods the other. The highway turned into Court Street.

The court building was a red brick box, capped with a white bell tower. Didn’t seem right that it wasn’t all marble. Sporting columns instead of narrow windows; it should have looked like a place of judgment. Close enough, since it could have been a church, from the look of it.

Now that he had to slow to park, Daddy’s laughter died. Mom sat stiffly, shaking her purse like she was panning for gold instead of her lipstick. In the back seat, I kept my split-lipped mouth shut. After midnight in the Great South Channel wasn’t so cold, or so almost-quiet, as it was in that car.

I wanted to run. Just fling open the door and tear off. Past the perfect little park across the way. Through the blazing trees, down the asphalt streets. If I kept going, if I ran long enough, I’d find the ocean again. I could throw myself into it. Drown like I was supposed to the night before.

Instead, I folded my coat over my arm and followed my parents inside.

Two seconds before I stepped up in front of the judge, I met Mr. Farnham, a lawyer I didn’t know I had. Mom gave me a hug and pushed me in the lawyer’s direction. I wavered. Hanging like dew on a line, suspended.

Even though the courtroom was claustrophobic—I could hear two ladies in the back row whispering—I felt so alone. I think Mom knew; she looked like she was sorry, but she slipped her arm through Daddy’s and led him to the back of the gallery anyway.

I sat in the front row with Mr. Farnham and stared at the empty jury box. Everything was planned, I was given up to it. But there was telling my head what was going to happen, and then there was convincing my bones.

Sometimes, people walked into the ocean on purpose, weighted themselves down, even. But I guarantee, their flesh fought it in the end. All of a sudden, my life was a case number. The things I’d agreed to do tasted like poison. I longed to spit them out. Raise my voice. Change my mind.

“One-twelve dash CV dash twelve dash WLF,” the bailiff read. She looked like she’d had to put a book down just when she’d gotten to a good part.

Mr. Farnham stood and hustled me to my feet too.

Bored and wanting to be elsewhere, it was written on the bailiff’s face. It dripped through her voice when she read the complaint against me. Not charges, because it wasn’t a crime anymore, gear molestation. The complaint. The bailiff’s gun belt hung low, jingling a little when she handed the file over to the judge.

Over the folder, the judge raised a brow at me. My black-and-blue face didn’t match the navy blue dress my mother had picked out for court.

It didn’t match me, either. It felt like a straitjacket, rough and binding. My dress shoes pinched. I wasn’t handcuffed, but I kept my arms folded behind my back. Was I supposed to try to look sorry? Penitent? I probably wasn’t supposed to grimace when the judge talked at my lawyer.

Mr. Farnham, all shave bumps and ghostly green eyes, nudged me. He smelled expensive, like the country club Bailey waited at last summer. Just one scent, and my head was full of old men and silk ties. Of places Bailey and I had seen together. Of Levi pressing his crooked teeth into an apple to make a jack-o’-lantern smile in red flesh.

Memories stirred and twisted: kissing Seth Archambault in my mama’s kitchen, stories about the October storm that Mom and Dad missed because of their wedding. The first time I earned a hundred-dollar bill; learning to plot strings into the GPS.

Dixon names carved into the newel post at school, a hundred years ago. Eighty, sixty, forty, twenty—and mine, fresh and new.

“Willa,” the lawyer said. He turned to whisper behind my ear. “The judge asked if you’re entering a plea. Now you say, ‘Yes, your honor.’ Then she’ll ask what you plead.”

I stepped off a ledge. “Guilty,” I said.

It was hard to tell if the judge cared that I went out of order. Flipping papers, she barely looked up at me. “Am I to take it to mean that you would like to admit liability?”

Voices exploded behind me. I recognized my father’s baritone in them, and turned. His face was red, and he whispered furiously to my mother. A few people around them murmured. I saw their lips moving, but couldn’t make out a word.

The judge didn’t shush them. She talked over them. “Mr. Farnham, Miss Dixon?”

Rattled, my lawyer looked back to my parents before addressing the judge again. “Yes, ma’am, that is, we are . . .”

“You understand that by admitting liability, you’ll forfeit your right to an appeal. That your fishing license will be suspended for three years. That you will be responsible for all fines levied against you.”

Daddy dropped an F-bomb, standing up and raising his voice. I don’t know what he was going to say. The judge cut him off, regal and unruffled. “You can wait outside, sir.”

“Your honor,” Daddy said between gritted teeth.

“Escort yourself or be escorted,” the judge replied.

My mother stood with him and put a hand on his elbow. It shocked me when he wrenched away from her touch. They’d raised their voices over the years. One memorable Thanksgiving, Daddy even threw his baseball hat. But I’d never seen him pull away from her, not once. Stalking outside, Daddy threw a last, ugly look back. I didn’t know who it was for exactly.

All I knew was that it wasn’t for me.