Sangre Island with Pop and Gretchen and Philip and Tom-to see what was left, to begin to put our lives in order-I had spent a restless night in my own room, endlessly contemplating Pop's upcoming hearing, the dread I'd felt when Candace collapsed, the loss of my unborn child, the death I'd nearly faced, the horrible secrets that had shrouded this house so long it had warped the very wood of the building itself. I was taken with a notion to burn the house to the ground and salt the earth. I'd wandered out to the porch in my sleeplessness.
And there I saw two small figures, standing hand in hand at the house's edge-one a boy of twelve, the other a boy of younger years. They'd shimmered in the midnight moonlight, their faces in brief, stark relief. Brian, and a child I did not know, yet knew with my heart and soul. With Candace's eyes, and my nose and blond hair, and a wide, pert smile of sweetness like Pop's. They both raised hands toward me- in warmth, in love-and dissolved into the night breeze from the bay.
I wanted to follow him, into the breeze, into the night.
Instead, I went back inside the house, to the family God had given me. I went into Pop and Gretchen's room, where I listened to the soft sibilance of his snore, and sat on the floor, watching my father sleep until the dawn.
