The baby will be mine — mine absolutely.
33
CHARLENE CAME BACK today. That is, she came and went.
The islands had not been the same without her — no swish of red hair, no musical laugh, no warm, diffident presence at the dinner table. I had missed her. I wanted to verify with my own eyes that she was all in one piece, hale and hearty, completely recovered.
Still, my enthusiasm was somewhat tempered. In truth, I was not sure why she was bothering to return. As glad as I would be to see her, her actions did not quite add up. She had said she wanted to collect her things — but Galen had offered to ship them to her. She had said she wanted to say goodbye to everyone — but she could have done this over the phone. Or not at all. I had the distinct impression that she had some other agenda. What it might be, I could not imagine.
The others showed no excitement about her visit. Perhaps they were as baffled by her behavior as I was. Lucy had been up too late the night before, catching and tagging the storm-petrels. She stomped back and forth to the kitchen to refill her coffee cup and glowered when anyone made too much noise. Forest had concocted a new scheme for calculating the total population of the rhinoceros auklets. It was hard to keep track of the exact amount of these elusive birds, since they dug deep burrows and were secretive by nature. Forest, however, had a mathematical equation and a graph paper chart. He was far more interested in visiting the study plots and trying out his new system than he was in seeing Charlene. Even Mick was all biologist that morning, scientific and detached. He sat at the table with Galen, filling out an order form for more flea collars, which we sorely needed.
In general, Galen and I have been getting along well. He has softened toward me since our midnight heart-to-heart. Recently, he even showed me his collection of seal stones. Over the years, he has amassed a pile of them in a battered plastic tub. He did not invite me inside his private museum — his bedroom. We are not yet at that level of intimacy, it seems. Instead, he hefted the bucket out into the hallway and beckoned me over to see its contents. With a welcoming smile, he urged me to pick through the rocks, which I politely did, though they were all exactly the same, black and smooth, weathered and rounded, fitting in the palm of the hand.
By noon, the biologists were all gone. Nobody else stayed to meet the helicopter. Forest went to the rhinoceros auklets, Lucy and Mick to the murre blind. One corner had come loose in a wind-storm, and they were trying to come up with a way to fix it without making undue noise and spooking the birds. (If the murres were startled, they would rise en masse. Their eggs would be undefended, and the gulls would move in for the kill. One thoughtless act by the biologists could lead to a catastrophic event.) Galen spent a while fiddling with a little green notebook, scribbling in it furtively. Then he stumped off to observe the tufted puffins — and, presumably, to avoid an encounter with the intern who I now know reminds him of his late wife.
I must have dozed off. I do nothing but sleep lately. I had settled on the couch, with a view to the east, where the helicopter would eventually appear. But the sun was in my eyes. The air vibrated with light and heat. My head grew heavy. And then someone was shaking me awake.
I caught a glimpse of hair — a sweep of rust around a freckled face.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Charlene said.
I sat up, rubbing my eyes. The sun had moved in the sky. There was a foul taste in my mouth. Outside the window, the helicopter had appeared. Its wings were motionless. Perched on the helipad, that glass bubble glinted in the light. The pilot was visible inside, a shadowed figure hunched over a newspaper. In my sleep-addled state, this struck me as funny — like a limo driver cooling his heels in a high school parking lot, waiting for a bunch of teenagers to finish their prom.
“Come on,” Charlene said. “Help me pack.”
I followed her to the door of her little bedroom. I tried to follow her inside too, but of course there wasn’t space for me. Charlene’s room had once been a closet, and the bed — a tiny twin — allowed a gap of only a few inches on all sides. After a moment, I crawled onto the mattress. Charlene flitted around me, filling a suitcase with her pillows and teddy bear.
“You look good,” I said approvingly.
“Yup.” She flexed her elbow. “The dislocation has been healing fine. No more sling for me! My concussion wasn’t too bad, either. Sometimes my head aches in rainy weather, but that should pass.”
“Great,” I said.
She tugged a pair of jeans off a shelf and looked them over with a grimace. After holding them to her nose, she tossed them into the garbage can.
“How is it?” I asked. “Being back on the mainland?”
“Oh, fine,” she said.
“Do you miss us?”
She lobbed a sweater at me. “Do you want this? It used to be my favorite, but I can’t see wearing it out in public.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
I waited for her to reciprocate, asking questions about us, about the islands, but she did not. Instead, she kept busy, moving around the room.
“Do you have to go right back?” I asked. “Can you stay for dinner?”
“The pilot’s waiting. My parents are paying him by the hour.”
Something about her was different. She looked as though she had been varnished. After a while, I realized that she had makeup on. It was subtle, but I could tell — a darkening of the lashes, the cheeks unnaturally rosy. There was an odor in the air, too. Lavender and incense. Charlene was wearing perfume.
Finally she spoke. “Is Galen around?”
“Sure. I think he’s at Dead Sea Lion Beach. I could go—”
“No, no.” She waved a hand airily. “I wanted to ask him something, that’s all.”
“You could leave him a note.”
“It’s nothing,” she said.
But she seemed somehow defeated. I wondered whether she had come all this way just to talk to Galen. I wondered why.
She upended a heap of socks onto the bed. They all appeared to be mismatched, and many had visible holes. She sorted through them, flinging pair after pair into the garbage can, her lip curling in disgust.
“Charlene,” I said.
“Hm?” she murmured, intent on her task.
“The day you got hurt,” I said.
“These are Mick’s,” she said.
“Why was I wearing Mick’s socks?”
“Were you alone on Lighthouse Hill?”
“Alone?” she asked, now starting on a collection of underwear.
“On the hill. When you fell.”
At last, Charlene gave me her full attention. Her hands were suspended in midair, holding a black cotton bra with a rip in the right cup. She gazed at me with the look I remembered, as focused and inquisitive as a bird.
“I need to know,” I said. “Was anybody with you?”
Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated.
“I don’t remember anything about that whole day,” she said. “Nothing. My doctors said it’s not unusual with a head trauma.” She frowned. “Sometimes I get flashes. The hill, the rocks. The morning light. But when I actually fell—” She shook her head. “I don’t remember. That may never come back.”
“Right,” I said softly.
There was a silence, broken only by the chatter of the birds. I glanced toward the window in time to see a spray of feathers — a gull brushing the glass.
“That’s actually what I wanted to ask Galen about,” Charlene said. “Now that you mention it.”