“And now?”
I think of the ocean, the darkness—feeling her there with me. The bubbles as large as my mom’s head, the coral scratching my knees. The shadows of my bedroom when I’ve told myself I don’t matter enough to be in this world. Rocks digging through my shoes as I run through wind and rain, black chasing me through the storm. Sitting patiently on my father’s boat, moon eyes gazing at me, like she’s always been there, and always will be. A memory I did not know I had comes to me. Beneath the waves, sucked beneath, the feel of her warm grasp. She pulled me from the sea. She’s always been with me. She’s always protected me.
“You believe in spirits,” Miss Joe says, “but do you believe in guardian angels?” She smiles at the look on my face. “I think there’s always something out there watching over us—making sure we’re safe and loved. You’re very lucky, Caroline.”
This is the first time Miss Joe has ever said my given name, and that makes me nice and surprised—but even after the lunch bell rings, and well through class, and back on the speedboat with Mister Lochana, listening to him speak about the days when he was a little boy and working on his father’s farm, I can’t stop thinking about the woman in black. My own spirit, watching over me. I stare beneath the waves, half expecting to see her now, though I don’t.
When I get home, my father is sitting on the sofa. He’s been home much more since I almost drowned in his boat. He is holding a photo of Bernadette and a letter with large cursive handwriting from the little girl. My father says that when she came here to meet him, he was too afraid to introduce us but that Bernadette will now come to Water Island every summer so I can get to know my half sister even more. I’m surprised, because I realize that I would like this very much, and I realize that I would like something else very much too.
“Daddy,” I say, and when I say this word, it really is with love this time.
“Yes, Caroline?”
“I’m ready to see my mother again.”
He doesn’t hesitate to pick up the phone.
The door opens, and there she is. My mother walks into the house that had once been her home, wearing a blue dress, with her hair brown and curled. She looks like she might as well have never left.
The first time I saw her, I didn’t want to look at her, but I do now. She looks even older than I remember her, and that makes me sad, and she has laugh lines and wrinkles around her eyes, which makes me happy too.
She smiles at my dad and asks him how he is, and they have a boring conversation about work and the weather, in the way that adults feel like they always must, and then my dad looks at me to make sure I’m all right before he decides to leave us alone. He walks outside to stand in the road. I sit on the chair opposite my mother, who sits on the sofa. I feel like I’m the parent, about to reprimand her. She sits with her hands pressed together.
She tells me that she works in the post office, and that her mother, my grandmother, passed away of breast cancer seven months before, and that Katie won’t stop asking about me, keeps on asking to see me. “She’s really a sweet girl.”
I clench my hands together. “I’m not sweet at all.”
“No,” she says. “You’re not. But that’s what I love about you. I’m not sweet either. I think you got that from me.”
“I’m not like you. I would never leave my own daughter.”
“That’s the problem with growing up, Caroline. You’re not sure what you will and won’t do anymore.”
I’m so angry I could cry. I am crying a little, but it’s embarrassing to cry in front of her, and it makes me even angrier, because she’s the reason I’m crying in the first place, and I don’t want her to know how much she’s hurt me—that she’s cut right into me, and that even after this past year, even when she’s gone on to love a new daughter and have another family, I’ve just been cut and bleeding and trying not to cry.
“I love you. You have to know that.”
And what frustrates me most is that I do know that.
She gets a little quiet, then says, “I spoke to Richard, and we—Caroline, we’d love it if we could be in your life. I know that isn’t fair to ask, since we decided we wouldn’t be, but if you can forgive us—that’s more than I deserve, but I hope you can forgive us. Katie would love it too. I know this isn’t the family most people have, but we love you, and I love you so much, and that’s all that a family needs, really. I’d love to be in your life, if you’ll let me.”
She’s watching me, and I’m sure her heart has stopped dead in her chest. She waits for me to speak.
“Why do you love the song ‘Blackbird’?” I ask.
She watches me. “What?”
“The song. ‘Blackbird,’ by Nina Simone. Why do you love it so much? When you were home, you would sing it all the time. You never stopped singing it.”
She wipes her cheeks. “Oh, I—I don’t know.” She pauses to think. “It captured how I felt at one time in my life, perfectly. It was the song for one era of my life. But that era has passed now. I can look at that time and listen to that song and appreciate that this is what I’ve come from—but I can also recognize how I’ve changed. Does that make any sense?”
It’s scary, because it makes more sense than I ever thought it would. I nod. “Yes.”
She doesn’t understand at first, so I say, “Yes, I’d like
