Charlotte’s dad is gone. If it weren’t for king-size candy bars, she would have realized sooner. But he disappeared while she’s eying the grocery store candy. It’s so much better here, which is why they always stop when they visit him on the god-damned island.

That’s what her mom calls it. Then Charlotte makes her put a dollar in the swear jar.

She drags her little brother Connor through the vegetable section, the bakery area, and even the beer aisle, but she doesn't see their dad’s blue jacket. She thinks she sees him near the chips, but it’s someone else. Connor starts to whine. He hates when she bosses him around, but too bad. (Older sisters get to be the boss.) Charlotte ignores him and keeps walking toward the exit.

Maybe he went to the car. Did he say he’d go to the car? She considers asking the cashiers for help, but no; she can do this on her own. She is almost a tween (according to her cousin’s magazine quiz), and she is smart (according to her report cards). She can solve this.

She can’t find the car.

Their dad owns the same sedan as all her friends’ parents, but she can’t recall the color.

Charlotte touches the quarters in her pocket for the pay phone. Their house, just forty-five minutes away by ferryboat, feels impossibly far. But she can’t call and get her dad in trouble. Her mom would get mad again, and then they wouldn’t get to see him anymore.

Charlotte doesn’t share her mom’s bitterness. Her memories of them together and after the separation are faded snapshots: TV dinners; bright-but-sad mini-golf with the other kids and their divorced dads; and visits to Blockbuster. Connor always chose Homeward Bound, the kid’s movie with the lost pets.

That movie-mini-golf era didn’t last long. Her dad moved to New York (for a job, he said) and then to Japan a month later. She still doesn’t get why he couldn’t find work in Seattle, but she’s only eleven; jobs could be more complicated than they seem on TV. It doesn’t matter now because he moved back six months ago, to be close to them. They’ve still only been to the island twice, but that’s what makes weekends like this even more special.

Now Connor is yanking on her sweatshirt because he wants to go back inside, so she buys him candy from the quarter machine by the door. Charlotte only wears sweatshirts these days. (Except for the one from horse camp, because horses are for little girls). While Connor unwraps the sweet, placated, she decides what to do.

Island Grocery occupies one corner of the island’s main intersection, across from a bank, a restaurant, and a flower shop. One of the roads leads to the ferry dock. They had come to the grocery store from their dad’s house, on the road left of the flower place (maybe).

They’ll go to the dock. The boat leaves at 2:00 p.m., and their dad could find them there, if he comes back. Being at the dock will feel better, Charlotte decides, because it’s closer to home. The visit is starting to feel sour, and she can’t stand the indecision any longer.

She pulls her brother’s hand, but he resists.

“I’m going to wait for Daddy.”

“Come on. We have to go to the ferry.” Charlotte pulls again, but he doesn’t move.

His expression is a crumpled paper ball. “I want Daddy.”

Stupid Connor. He gets to just want things, without ever having to make choices. Of course she wants their dad too, but that’s not an option. Theirs is not a father who you can just wait for.

“Fine, then I’m going without you.” She starts to walk away.

“No!” He wails. Grown-ups are staring now, and Charlotte’s annoyance increases. Connor always gets to be the cute one, the sad one, the one who gets comforted.

She stalks back until she’s standing over him and keeps her voice low.

“Dad isn’t coming back.” It feels true after she says it. “Now stop being a baby. We’re getting on the ferry back to Mom. Okay?”

Connor sniffs and agrees to follow.

One of these roads goes to the ferry. The road between the restaurant and the flower shop feels right. Holding Connor’s hand (sticky, gross), she marches them to the crosswalk.

The sidewalk disappears after one block, so they advance slowly in the tall grass. Their dad told them there were no sidewalks because the island was mostly cows, deer, and sheep, and could they imagine how silly a cow would look on a sidewalk? Then he’d moo’ed and started tickling them until they shrieked with laughter. Charlotte loves her dad’s silly jokes, his made-up words, his riddles. He has nicknames for everyone – their aunts aren’t Claudia and Mark, they are Woopsie and Goose. Charlotte is Lottie-little, and Connor is Bigman. In her dad’s world, everything is more fun and colorful. She often wonders why he doesn’t want to share the world with them more often.

While living in Japan, her dad sent Charlotte emails every week. They revealed the magical and foreign life he was living, eating fish with names she couldn’t pronounce, singing “karaoke” with coworkers, and seeing so many toys he knew she’d like. Every email began with My dearest Lottie-little and ended with a lament about how much he missed her.

Charlotte sent replies, dictated to her mother. She reported on Connor’s teething, what she learned in class, and any other passing thought  – (“We got a new cat! The school play was canceled! I like tangerines now!”). Like her dad, she ended every email with professions of love and pleas for him to visit.

He did visit – once – when she was seven. He smelled different when she first hugged him, like someone else’s dad. But his laugh was the same, and he brought toys like he’d promised. Charlotte swore she’d carry the multicolored cat Beanie Baby everywhere, even after Connor tried to chew it. But that was because he was a baby and jealous. (Babies don’t get presents.)

For three precious days, they watched TV, played games, and ate sugary cereal. He came to her soccer game, and they wandered the aisles of Blockbuster. She talked so much that she gave herself hiccups.

His departure was full of tears (hers) and promises to visit again (his). Charlotte waited a week before his next email came, and then another two weeks after that for a reply. She wanted to, but never did, ask if she did something wrong when he was in Seattle. But after a few months, she forgot the thought: she had new friends, chapter books, sleepovers, and busier weekends. Japan must have gotten busier, too, because by the third grade, her dad stopped writing.

Charlotte is beginning to suspect that they’re on the wrong road.

She remembers a few landmarks between the ferry and town: a rusted pickup truck, a sign for last year’s farmers market, and the house with all the metal sculptures that their dad calls the commune.

They see none of these as they walk. The road dips downhill, then up, then down once more, past yawning empty fields and mossbacked fences. Fear itches in Charlotte’s stomach. There are farmhouses and signs of life set back from the road, but otherwise they are alone.

The first time they’d visited the island, their dad took the ferry with them from the city. He bought them popcorn and ice cream from the food court, and then they searched for whales from the boat deck. They felt like a family, standing there together, and Charlotte’s chest was filled with excitement. She imagined the moment captured in a picture frame, and when one of her friends would ask about it, she would say, Oh that’s just my dad. 

On the drive, their dad gave them a “grand island tour,” pointing out every landmark. At the house each kid got their own room. There was a new stuffed animal in Charlotte’s, which she wanted to give back. (She’s not a kid.) Now she likes lip gloss, clipped to her belt loop for easy and constant access. She loves how many words she knows in French and hates the new hair on her forearms.

The road they’re on ends and splits to the left and the right. Charlotte’s stomach drops. They stop walking. She looks up at the sky for the sun’s position, like they do in the movies, before realizing she wouldn’t know what the sun would mean. (It’s overcast anyway.)

While she struggles, sheep in the field in front of them begin to approach. Connor rushes forward and sticks his hands between the rails.

“They’re nibbling me! Charlotte, come see!”

But she is looking past the sheep that now surround her brother. A grubby-looking house sits at the end of an unpaved driveway. Broken vehicles are scattered on the lot like forgotten toys, and rusted tools lean against a shed that’s held together by moss and hope alone. Everything looks neglected, and Charlotte hears her mother: not caring for one’s possessions is irresponsible. Neglect means danger.

The sheep are nibbling Connor’s hair now, and his arms are wrapped around one’s neck. The sheep looks dangerous now, too. (Do sheep bite?) They’re advancing like he’s prey.

“Connor, it could have rabies.”

“I don’t see foam.”

Charlotte, knowing the exact same amount about rabies as Connor does, has no rebuttal except to cross her arms.

A dog barks, and she looks up to see a man approaching them from behind the house. He’s big in all directions, wearing stained overalls over a threadbare shirt, rough-looking like a villain. As he nears, she can see his dirt-caked hands and the tears in his boots. There’s nowhere to run. She grabs the back of Connor’s shirt and tries to pull him back from the fence. The man scowls.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

*

The list of things Edgar John Whittaker hates is long and written on the back of a hardware store receipt. He hates paying for good soil and buying fruit at full price. He hates cell phones, suits, banks, guns, dogs bred too small to do anything, and nutmeg. God, he hates nutmeg.

Lisa once observed that he hated with more relish than anyone she’d ever met. That was before she left, even, before they really got cruel with each other. All that ugliness was decades ago, and while he barely recalls her face now, he remembers the words.

Besides, Edgar – Eddy, as his old buddies call him – likes plenty of things. There are the vegetables he grows from seed every summer, and the dahlias that bloom as fall approaches. He likes when lambs arrive in the spring, and he loves that he can barter sheep for a gorgeous slab of maple. He built his dining room table from it, and he gets a rare trill of pride when he runs his hand across it.

He can make anything with his hands. It is only when he starts to work with words that he gets stuck. Heaven forbid if those words are about feelings, or people.

Case in point: these kids are standing like scared deer in the road after he barked at them. Must not be island kids. Those kids are feral, more likely to dirt bike up his driveway and steal car parts. Must be city kids, probably vacationing in one of the fancy beach properties.

Eddy tries again.

“Where do you live?”

The boy begins to answer, but his sister shushes him, making big meaningful eyes.

Fine. Not his problem to solve, he just wanted to know why the flock was gathered. He turns to leave when the boy squeals.

“It bit me!”

City kids for sure. The kid is in front of Eddy’s oldest and sweetest ewe, Daisy. He approaches the pair.

“She’s just trying to see if you have treats. Here.” Eddy pulls a sticky bun from his pocket and hands it to the boy. He holds the treat out, eyes wide, but when Daisy’s lips snuffle across the boy’s fingers, this time, he giggles.

“We live in Seattle.” The girl is still standing a few feet back, arms crossed. “We’re visiting our dad, but we don’t know where he is.”

“Which way’s his house?” Both kids shake their heads. They don’t know.

Eddy bids his peaceful productive morning goodbye – strong coffee and fresh sticky buns from Mo at the bakery – because he recognizes the fear in their eyes. He lets out a gravelly sigh.

“Come on, you can use my phone.”

He thinks the girl might refuse, but the boy trots to his side, and after a beat, she does the same, arms still crossed. They follow him up the driveway, onto his stairs, and into his home. Eddy walks toward the kitchen, but the kids don’t move from the doorway. He looks back, irritated, and realizes they’re staring.

Eddy lives alone, which means it’s nobody’s business what he does in his own house. A foyer without guests can evolve into a mailroom, with bills, coupons, and records piled on every surface. The living room has become his workshop: a broken dining chair is propped upside down, exposed, waiting for furniture glue and new feet, next to an ancient lounger covered in a shag of dog hair. Ruddy work boots are scattered on the floor, praying for polish, and his farm cart’s alternator anchors the coffee table where he’d begun oiling it last week.

“Come on already.” He barks, and they jump. “I don’t have all day.”

The girl – Charlotte, he learns – takes command of the landline and folds herself into the corner. Connor is just standing at the kitchen island, looking at Eddy. He says he’s hungry. And thirsty. Eddy gets him a glass of water and begins to rummage in his cupboards for food. When he turns around with a granola bar, the boy is already deep into a sticky bun.

Charlotte has dialed and hung up the phone three times. She’s leaving a voicemail now, her voice low and sharp. He confirms that they are from the city, that they’re children of divorce, and that they’ll be leaving on the afternoon boat. The girl hangs up, and he notices how small she appears wrapped in on herself. Then suddenly she stands and storms out the back door.

Eddy’s not sure what to do next. The offer of help had seemed like the right thing to do, but he’s ill-equipped for comforting, rescuing, or even talking with the children who have taken over his day.

He wants to call Julie, because he’s sure she’d know what to do. But he doesn’t know if she’d answer.

Julie works at the garden center. Eddy first noticed the top of her head as she was looking down into the begonia that she was repotting and a long braid falling over one shoulder. Few women his age keep their hair long, Eddy thought, and he liked the braid, and the tanned arms caked in dirt. He visited the nursery three more times that week before asking her to dinner. To his surprise, she said sure.

He picked the island’s best restaurant, but it was too fancy for both of them – Eddy nearly split his too-tight suit pants – so they left after appetizers, and he walked her back to the nursery where she parked. As they walked, Julie talked: she loved plants, painting, hiking, and seafood. She hailed from Montana like he did, but she couldn’t bear to leave Washington once she discovered fresh oysters.

Eddy listened and looked.

Before this date, he had been fine with a solitary life. After everything with his ex, he even thought this life suited him. But on a moonlit highway, a world opened to him. It was the same old life, but now it was in bloom.

They had dinner the next night, this time at Eddy’s place. He cooked from his garden. He noticed her glances at the piles and half-finished projects, but she didn’t leave. That was something.

Once her plate was empty, Julie set her wine glass down and looked at him seriously. Then she told him: she was going to be a mother. She’d submitted all the papers, survived the red tape, and now she was just waiting to be told a child was ready. She’d always wanted to be a mom, she repeated, taking his hand. With a few boyfriends she hoped it might happen, but it never did, so she was taking matters into her own hands.

She liked him, she said, but she didn’t want to waste her time.

Eddy stared at the table and hoped the right words would come to him. He wanted to tell her that he had a kid, grown already and off the island for years now. He hadn’t done a good job. He loved the kid, but that period of life had been tainted by overwhelming anxiety and endless fighting. He wanted to tell Julie that he liked her, too, and he liked that she was the kind of person who took matters into her own hands. He wanted to tell her about life blooming.

 He couldn’t say that he’d never figured out parenthood. That he didn’t have the track record to be the right choice for her.

So, with Julie’s warm hands on his, Eddy chose the only kind of words that felt safe: “A kid? Christ, why bother this late in life?”

They didn’t have dessert.

Julie gave him a long hug, and she told him goodbye. He tried to soften the break with more jokes, but she just looked at him with sad eyes then walked off into the darkness.

*

Charlotte charges into the yard.

She doesn’t want to cry in front of Connor, knows he’ll get scared when he discovers she is. She presses hard on the soft hollows below her eyes, pushing the tears back in. Her brother will notice soon that she’s gone, so she starts walking.

She’d promised her mom’s voicemail that they would get on the ferry, but there are still so many problems to solve. Where is the dock from here? How will they get there? Where is her dad, and does he know they’re gone? How much trouble will he get in?

Her mom hadn’t wanted them to visit the island at all. Charlotte overheard her telling friends that she didn’t trust Craig with a houseplant. Which was unfair. He’d moved to be closer. To be with them. Charlotte wrote each of her mom’s concerns in a notebook, and next to each, she outlined a plan. She would look after Connor. She would carry emergency money. She’d memorize phone numbers, and she’d call home immediately if she ever felt unsafe or upset.

Her mom cried when Charlotte gave her the notebook. But she’d said yes, to Charlotte’s triumph.

The field she’s marching across yawns in every direction, dotted by weeds and ramshackle buildings, and she stops at an open sliding door to look inside.

If this is a greenhouse, it doesn’t look like the ones in the movies. Everything is dusty. String and bits of plastic are strewn across the floor, and the glass walls are actually green from a thin layer of grime. One long wall is barely visible behind stacks of newspaper and an array of misshapen tools. Most of the floor space is taken up by beds of dirt, littered with empty yogurt containers. Nothing is growing.

Charlotte laughs. This is perfect. Her dad abandoned her, and her mom is nonresponsive. It’ll serve them right when she gets murdered (maybe with one of these rusted shovels). Her mom will live with the guilt of not picking up after all the constant contact she had insisted on.

Her mom, who was so sure something would go wrong. It stings that she was right. Something is wrong.

Because of her dad, her stupid dad, who ruined Charlotte’s plans by disappearing. He messed this up, for all of them, because they’ll never get to come back to the island after this. Charlotte presses below her eyes again at the thought. These trips are their chance to be together. She can’t believe he disappeared.

Well. She can kind of believe it.

It’s like last Christmas, when her dad shipped gifts from Japan but didn’t include anything for Connor. Her mom bought candy from the Asian supermarket on Christmas Eve and forged his signature.

She begins to pace between the plant beds as she reviews her memories: finding the cracks, shoving her fingers inside to pry them open.

The missed birthday calls.

The late arrivals at T-ball games, recitals, and graduations.

The flimsy reasons for canceling plans.

Each memory is a paper cut that she’d bandaged with excuses because she wanted to be with him.

Now they’re starting to sting.

Now, he lives less than an hour away, and still, Charlotte is alone. Waiting.

Now, after all the work she did to get here, her dad can’t even stay in a grocery store.

Something cracks inside her, and the anger is a tidal wave. The table next to her is scattered with cheap paper coffee cups filled with dirt. She picks one up and swims a finger around inside it. Just dirt.

He couldn’t stay in a stupid store.

Charlotte hurls the cup against the greenhouse wall. It feels good. Really good. She picks up another.

He moved away when he didn’t have to. 

Dirt sprays as each cup makes contact with the wall.

We won’t get to see him again. 

A feral sound erupts from her chest, and then the tears come. The cups are nearly gone.

Maybe he wouldn’t care.

She’s about to throw another when she hears,

“What the hell are you doing to my plants?”

*

Eddy has no clue what to do with the boy. He asks if Connor wants to watch TV, or play outside, but he says no. Instead, he just sits here, watching Eddy put away dishes and asking questions. What’s the biggest tree? Why are ants squishy? Could the dinosaurs just be hiding somewhere we haven’t looked yet? 

At that age, Eddy never had questions for grown-ups. He’d basically lived outdoors and learned from the woods instead of his parents. His daughter had been the same: Lily had overflowed with energy and curiosity, and the farm was her playground. Every night she’d run into the house with sticky hands and dusty feet. But once Eddy became a parent, every pocket of wildness had become a den of danger. And it never ended. In his dreams, a tableau of tragedies befell her – falls off ladders, accidents with the table saw, feet stepping on stray nails, vicious bites from the sheep.

His ex wanted to sell the death trap of a farm, but Eddy owned it and kept it. He did everything in his power to keep all the things he loved alive and happy. When Lily pretended to drive the tractor, Eddy yelled at her to get down. If she wanted to help shear sheep, Eddy watched – and corrected – every snip she made. He banned her from the woodshop, which meant he found her there weekly.

When she was little, she thought it was a game and would laugh when he roared. But once it was just the two of them, and Lily got older, she stopped laughing. She got mad back.

At eighteen, she moved off the island, and Eddy knows now he did it all wrong because she’s never come back.

“Where did Charlotte go?”

Eddy realizes the girl hasn’t come back inside. The boy is looking around now, and Eddy panics as the kid’s face starts to pucker. He offers another sticky bun and suggests they go look for her.

Outside, Eddy surveys the property for signs of a teenager. Over the years, when he finds the right lumber or trades for a set of windows, he’s added outbuildings. They walk past the old barn where he stores lumber, past the pump house, and the sheds where the sheep sleep, eat, and give birth. Then there’s the greenhouse where he spends most days: balancing the soil, pulling weeds, harvesting vegetables, and starting hundreds of seeds that will graduate from cups to pots to the earth, where he will water them daily. This is where his mind can rest.

Before they go inside, the boy reaches up and grips the pinky of his right hand. Eddy’s first reaction is to pull back, but he doesn’t. He’s about to ask the boy if he’d like to pull dandelions, but then they turn through the sliding door.

And there is Charlotte.

Watching the girl hurl fragile seedlings against the wall, his rage starts in his chest and propagates fast. He doesn’t realize he’s shouting until she turns around. Dropping Connor’s hand, he strides across the greenhouse to assess her damage.

There must be twenty cups empty at her feet. Twenty seedlings thrown against the wall before they had a chance to sprout. Hours of careful planting, destroyed in minutes by a selfish tantrum.

This is why he can’t be around children.

Children break things. They poke, they seek, they question. They meddle where they’re not needed, and they act without understanding. They have no sense of their own survival, so when they explore, and when they inevitably get hurt, they break hearts.

The girl just stands there, still holding an empty cup at her side. It’s clear she’s been crying, but he won’t let her off the hook.

“Why are you destroying plants? This is not your property.”

The girl hiccups. “I… I don’t understand. Plants?”

He bends down and sifts the soil until he finds something small and pear-shaped. He shoves the proof in her face.

“Seeds, girl, I was growing seeds, which you’ve now destroyed.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Of course not, but you still destroyed it, didn’t you?”

“It was an accident! I didn’t know!” Charlotte yells back through tears. He can hear Connor, still at the entrance, and he’s crying now, too. Christ.

“Because you weren’t thinking!”

“I thought they were junk.”

Eddy hears the unsaid words: junk, like everything else in the greenhouse.

“Ignorance isn’t a free pass!” he roars.

He’s about to repeat the accusation, but the girl backs away and sits hard on the ground. Face hidden, she hugs her knees to her chest, folded tightly to make her small. This movement – the desire to be smaller in the face of his anger – drags him twenty years into the past. To another upset child, sitting in the same dirt, crying from the same words over some other mistake.

It hits Eddy – he’s still a father. He’s just yelling at a different daughter.

He retreats to the pile of dirt and begins to scoop handfuls back into cups, letting his anger simmer. When he finds a seed, he sets it aside.

Small knees appear next to his own. Connor grabs fistfuls of earth and shoves them into a cup. He’s making the mess worse, but Eddy doesn’t stop him. When everything is filled, he gathers the seeds and kneels in front of Charlotte, who still won’t meet his eyes.

“Here. You made the mess, you can replant them.”

She shuffles her sneakers in the dirt. “I don’t know how.”

Eddy sits beside her. He presses a hole into the dirt with his thumb, and then he drops a seedling in, its teardrop pointing up. Then he brushes the loose soil over the hole until it’s hidden. He motions for Connor to bring another cup, which he sets it in front of her.

She nudges at the dirt until a cautious indentation is made. She checks with Eddy before she drops in a seed, and at his nod, she covers it. She takes a shaky breath.

“I’m sorry. It was an accident.”

Eddy breathes deep. “It’s alright. I believe you.”

The seeds are hardy. They should grow just fine. But memories still linger at the edges of his vision, like ghosts these children let in. Eddy takes a pail of crushed oyster shells toward a glade of zucchini to fertilize the soil. As he works, he sorts out his mind. He’d gotten used to pretending other things – other lives – weren’t grown here, too. It was easier to write them off as plants he couldn’t figure out how to tend. But now, as he looks at the plant in his palm, he thinks it took decades of trial and error to learn the perfect way to grow this zucchini. He only gave himself one chance with a kid.

*

The dirt feels good between her fingers. She examines every seed, squinting at each podded form before giving it a home again. The repetition feels good, too. She wants to sink her hands deep into the long beds of undisturbed soil and keep reaching until she finds something to hold onto.

Behind her, Eddy begins to fuss with a bramble in the corner. He uses a Wonder Bread twist tie to support a leggy plant. On another, he pinches off the smaller leaves near its base, and she notices it’s growing out of a yogurt container.

Amid the clutter and the junk, life is peaking through.

Suddenly, Eddy drops the container he’s holding. He turns.

“What time is it?”

“I have no idea.”

Connor checks his Disney wrist watch. “It’s one, and… what does the long hand mean when it’s over here again?”

Charlotte grabs his wrist, then groans. If Donald Duck is right, then it’s 1:45 p.m. and they are in deep trouble.

The boat leaves in fifteen minutes, and they’re supposed to arrive thirty minutes early. Their dad said he missed three boats in his first week on the island before he learned.

She runs out of the greenhouse as the desperation returns in force.

“We’re going to miss the boat, we can’t get there, and then Mom will be so mad, and then we can’t come back, that is assuming we ever get off this island–”

“I can get you on the boat.” Eddy is standing by a line of half-built cars. Waiting.

He gestures to a small vehicle with no doors, almost a golf cart, but not quite. Charlotte walks closer.

It’s a meter maid cart.

Only this one looks like it’s been beat up by all the bigger trucks in the yard. There’s no way it will run.

“I won’t ride in that. And what would we do, give the captain a ticket?” she says. Connor is already scrambling across the splitting vinyl seats. (Traitor.)

Eddy shrugs. “You get to skip the entire ferry line if you’re in this. We could take my truck, but you’d have to wait for the next boat.”

Connor honks the steering wheel, and it bleats a creaky, complaining sound. Charlotte hates relenting after she’s stated an opinion, but she’s realizing she has no other option. She climbs in.

Eddy cranks the key, swears at it, kicks the pedal, and the little truck burps into life. Charlotte and Connor are nearly bounced off the bench when they turn from the dirt driveway onto pavement, but Eddy throws an arm across them and snarls to watch out, damn it. 

And then they’re on the road and picking up speed. They surge up a small rise and drop quickly, and as Charlotte’s stomach flips, she giggles. Connor laughs too, and to her surprise Eddy is smiling, too. He takes the next hill even faster. They’re riding down back roads, past lavender farms, dense forest, abandoned radio stations, and countless fields. Eddy honks the horn as they crest another hill, and Connor’s gleeful shrieks tunnel deep in her heart.

They arrive at the last hill and the longest, and she can feel her brother’s tightening grip as they soar downward at speed. But when she looks up, she sees everything: the city glittering across the water, and there’s the boat, and a steady stream of cars boarding. They putter past the long line until they’ve reached the ferry terminal building where passengers board on foot. Their eyes are all on the ferry, so they don’t notice him until he calls out.

“Charlotte! There you are!”

*

As soon as the vehicle stops moving, Charlotte pours out and rushes to hug the man who must be their dad. Connor doesn’t follow. When Eddy stands, the kid hangs back, pressing against his leg and reaching up to grab his pinky finger again.

“Who the hell are you?” The man separates himself from Charlotte’s arms to approach Eddy. “What are you doing with my children?”

“Watching them, I suppose.” Eddy punctuates the sentence by spitting on the pavement, and it has the intended effect on the man’s temper.

“Like hell you are–”

Charlotte interjects. “Where did you go?”

The man turns. “I–I went to the ATM across the street. Didn’t you hear me say that?”

“Your car was gone.”

“No, sweetie. Why did you leave the grocery store?”

Charlotte begins to explain, describing the journey that took her and Connor to Eddy’s property, but she keeps getting interrupted with stupid questions. But why did she leave the store? Why would she take her brother on the dangerous main road? Why didn’t they wait? It occurs to Eddy that the man hasn’t apologized or asked if the kids are alright. Charlotte is hugging herself again. The boat is loading its final cars, and behind his leg, Connor begins to cry.

*

He keeps asking her questions without simple answers. She can’t bear to tell her dad about the surety she felt – in the grocery store, at the farm – that he was gone. And as he talks, the feeling is slipping away.

She looks back up the hill they just flew down. Moments ago, the world was big, and she’d felt one step older in it. Now she’s four again, getting scolded like she ran away. But that’s not what happened. She wasn’t the one who left.

Now her dad is berating Eddy again. “This vehicle cannot be street safe. Did you drive my kids without seatbelts?”

She steps forward. “Stop, please. Eddy helped. He took us in, we used his phone, he–”

“He’s a stranger!”

“A stranger who was there!"

“Enough. We’ll talk about this later.” Her dad began looking for his keys. “Come on, we’re going home to call your mother and sort this mess out.”

She wants to talk now. He should have to know all the dark thoughts she’s had today (the paper cuts sting). He deserves to share the weight. Charlotte opens her mouth to speak, but a sniffle interrupts her. A tear-coated crescent of Connor’s face is just visible behind Eddy’s bulk.

Charlotte takes a deep breath, then walks over, and offers her hand. When her little brother accepts, she gives a little squeeze. Eddy doesn’t move. She notices that his T-shirt is even more smeared with dirt. Must be from the garden.

“Thank you for everything,” she says. He nods. It says enough.

She turns toward the man she’s been looking for all day. It was, it occurs to her, easier to pretend he was a different kind of dad when he was in Japan.

“We’re getting on the boat. We’ll call you later, Craig.”

She leads Connor down the ramp into the boat’s open stomach. She doesn’t look back until they’re seated in a booth by a tinted window. She can see Eddy watching the boat, a funny look on his face. Another form might be Craig. She can’t be sure. She reaches in her pocket and rolls around the teardrop shape tucked there.

*

Eddy watches the boat leave, still feeling the fierce warmth of a hand around his finger.

He thinks about long roads, fresh oyster shells, and what it takes to grow a garden. The patience, the resilience.

And then, as the wake shrinks and the traffic thins, he walks across the parking lot toward the island’s only phone booth, digging a quarter from his pocket. He’s betting she’ll know where to find the dinosaurs.