Uncle Dalton was made of paper. His hair and lips and skin were all the same dusty shade of pale. His eyes were just barely blue; only enough color to keep them from being eerie. But he smiled when he saw Cait, and patted his knee like he expected her to sit in his lap. Apparently, that was a joke, because they both laughed.
“Maybe next time,” Cait said.
Undeterred, he asked, “What about you, Bailey?”
Bailey sank to sit on the floor by his chair instead. Holding up a hand, she said, “Next time, for sure.”
Cait put her arm around her uncle’s shoulders and nodded toward me. “I hope it’s okay, we brought a friend.”
“Is she pretty?” Uncle Dalton asked. Slowly, he trained his gaze on me, then offered his hand. “I guess you are. Dalton Bowker.”
It made me nervous, but I shook his hand anyway. I was afraid I’d break him, but he still had strength left in his grip. He held my gaze when I replied, “Willa Dixon. It’s nice to meet you.”
“She lives in Broken Tooth like Bailey,” Cait said.
Reclaiming his hand, Uncle Dalton leaned back in his chair. “Haven’t been there for years. Zeke Pomroy still fishing out that way?”
I shook my head. Mr. Pomroy died a couple summers back, and he hadn’t been out for years. It was probably tacky to tell a man as old as Uncle Dalton that somebody he remembered as living was dead, so I didn’t. “His granddaughter has the boat now. Zoe. Everybody says she looks just like him.”
Uncle Dalton nodded. “Better him than the wife. That woman fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.”
Fussing even though there was nothing to fuss over, Cait kept touching his chair. The armrests, the back of it. It was like she wanted to do something to make him more comfortable, but he was fine. Sitting finally, she settled for patting his hand. “So, Uncle Dalton. I told Bailey and Willa about how you saw the Grey Lady once.”
“Not me,” Uncle Dalton said. “My cousin Roy. The Grey Lady was gone by the time I was born.”
Tightening on myself, I curled my toes in my sneakers. Grey had said he had a predecessor. A woman. Uneasy, I folded my hands in my lap and said nothing. Since I kept my tongue, Bailey helpfully filled in for me. “Gone how?”
“Replaced.” Uncle Dalton stretched, then leaned his head against the back of the chair. He looked up, not at anything. Past it. There was a sharpening in his eyes, but not for us.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Cait said.
Brushing her off, Uncle Dalton went on. “The Grey Lady, she used to stand on the cliff and let her hair down. That’s what Roy said, anyway. Nobody else saw her. Girlies, that place was abandoned even then. Gives me a headache just thinking about it.”
Cold drifted over me. The divide I had, between real and Grey, wasn’t so clear anymore. Not so sharp. More and more of his world slipped into mine, and it frightened me. As if I could change a story that was written before I was born, I offered, “Maybe he was just seeing things?”
Uncle Dalton wagged a finger. “My pa said Roy was a bubble off plumb. But I believed him. He meant every bit of that story, down to his blood and marrow. Cait!”
She leaned forward, attentive.
Talking right to Cait, Uncle Dalton said, “He got drunk as a skunk at my thirteenth birthday party and sat me down. Said he’d been in love with a girl named Susannah once, but he had to give her up. That she was poison, and some women were.”
Maybe aware he was telling this story to three girls, Uncle Dalton looked apologetic. “He was just warning me to keep my eyes open. ’Course, I wasn’t concerned about women, even then.”
Cait smiled, and poked him gently. “I’m not seeing how these stories go together.”
“Aren’t you listening, Toots?”
Strangling a laugh, Bailey traded a look with Cait. For a second, they forgot everything was tense. They were there, again, looking into each other like nobody else existed.
Since they wouldn’t, I said, “We’re listening.”
“She called him out to the island,” Uncle Dalton said impatiently. “She asked him if he loved her, and he said yes. Then she asked if he would die for her, and he said not ripping likely, lady. Hightailed it right back to the mainland and never stepped foot in a boat again.”
The first rational thing about the island or the Grey Lady I’d ever heard. With I smile, I pointed out, “Not much of a romance.”
“Nothing romantic about dying. Romeo and Juliet were idiots, if you ask me.”
Her coconspirator again, Bailey murmured to Cait, “I want that on a T-shirt.”
Uncle Dalton shifted, his expression softening. Coming back from whatever place he’d just been in, he sighed. “The next summer, a fella from Boston came through on an ice cutter. Then, one day, he disappeared, and up on the Rock there’s a Grey Man instead of a Grey Lady.”
My smile died a little. “What?”
“You heard me,” Uncle Dalton said. “Don’t you know the story? You get the Grey Lady on your side, and you’ll have anything you wish for. But you have to trade everything you have to get it. Guess he took that deal, didn’t he?”
That wasn’t the story I knew. Ours was bits and pieces. Only the superstition. There were no trades in our version. No exchanges. It was just good fishing, and a faery ally in a lighthouse . . . that no one could think about for long. The wind outside whispered through the trees, but inside my skin, it howled.
Unfolding myself, I asked, “So he took her place? What happened to her?”
“Roy says he saw Susannah in town, one more time. At least, he thought it was her. The opposite of a ghost, because she had black hair and a yellow dress. She looked at Roy like she knew him, then ran out of the store. All gone, never heard from again.”
Bailey leaned her head against Cait’s knee. Her brows knit, she changed the subject gently. “Roy found somebody else, though, right?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, yes. Married Charlotte the day she graduated from high school. Happily ever after, nobody dying.” Shaking his head a little, Uncle Dalton looked at me. “Who are you, again?”
I thawed myself enough to answer. “Willa Dixon. Bill Dixon’s daughter.”
Studying my face, he took a minute. Then finally he asked, “Any relation to Albert?”
In 1929, William Albert Dixon carved his initials into the back staircase at Vandenbrook. WADII, William Albert, the second. His son was William Eugene; Bill Gene’s son, William Jack. That was my granddad, the captain of the boat when my dad still worked the stern. I was the firstborn, so I got the name. The legacy. The one that had just slipped away.
Not that Uncle Dalton cared. And not that I could explain it. So I just nodded and said. “Yessir, that’s my grandfather.”
Sensing I was off, Bailey nudged me with her foot. “You okay?”
“I’m gonna get some air,” I said. I claimed that I would be right back. But instead, I walked into the night; into the cold. And I headed for the shore.
EIGHTEEN
Grey
I wasn’t sure before, how Willa came to the island. I was aware when she landed. Even now, I feel her approach. The facts of it have, until now, been entirely obscured to me. This time, I watch and see a dark marvel.
The mist comes, just a fine haze. It’s a veil drawn, but a thin one—admitting light and detail, making shadows of shapes in the distance. Then at once, the haze swirls, the veil parted by unseen hands.
Introduced by an ornate prow, a boat appears. Skimming across the water, it’s all but silent in its approach. There are no oars, no motor. The prow barely cuts the water. Ripples roll away from it, then melt back into the black sea.