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“That’s what men do,” Tom Docks says, sitting under the string lights on our back deck, shucking oysters with a flathead screwdriver. “Something goes wrong with the car, and they pop the hood and look at the engine. They don’t know what they’re looking at or what to do about it, but they feel that caveman compulsion to stand there and scrutinize.”
“I don’t know what they did with horses. Stared up their asses, I guess.”
Lol 😂
out here with no cars, fewer screens, and slower schedules, everyone was their best self.
But every summer, Zee and Callum and our neighbors’ kids run free with sand in their hair and sunburn on their noses, and they go back to the city with a force field of self-confidence and independence that keeps them safe.
Everything that’s hard in our marriage is easy out here.
“They never should have stayed past the end of the season.
Why what happens after the seasons ends?
It’s considered tacky to renovate or build an addition.
Everyone knows everyone, and no one cares who anyone is. We’re lucky out here. We’re blessed.
We always tell the kids that if they see something funny, look away. Ignore it. But we never worried too much. The Blanks never act like this. They haven’t acted like this in years.
Everyone watches for the green flash at sunset, and no one is sure they see it but some people think they do, and I smile and stay calm and do my best not to let anyone sense my panic.
They’re standing in the trees, barely ten feet away, outlined by the Stannards’ backyard light. There are more of them than I’ve ever seen before. Their tall, still shadows stand out against the trees; their dead eyes reflect yellow in the houselights. All of them stare at this window—all of them stare at my son.
I catch a blur of orange off to the right: a SaVo safety vest. He’s two houses down, just standing, just watching our house. Just keeping an eye on us. Now I know everything’s not okay.
The Safety Volunteers started up. People felt better. The sightings got fewer. Then, a bunch of homeowners tried to do something again, right after 9/11, when the whole country was fired up on Doing Something. That went even worse.
I think about the SaVo watching our house. They know we’re the people who found Tom Docks. We’re not going anywhere. Someone tried going somewhere once, before we moved here. They say that made it even worse.
So, we bought our place, and nothing happened. For sixteen years, nothing happened. Sure, you saw them sometimes, and that could be scary, but it was no big deal. You just didn’t look at them. You didn’t see them. And if one got in your field of vision, you ignored it.
I’m shouting because it’s too late. We made a deal years ago, and the time to back out has passed. Our life is built on that deal. It’s built on these families. Birthdays, deaths, summers, everything. And now it’s too late.
“I just realized we promised the kids pizza tonight,” she says. “Let’s do margaritas another time, okay?” And I know this is goodbye. I can’t move. I open my mouth, trying to get air, because suddenly nothing is the same anymore.
“He should have known better,” Steven whispers, then rephrases. “We should have taught him better.” “Mistakes” is too small a word for the things parents do.
because you’re not supposed to see them, no one sees them; you look away, you ignore them—everyone knows you ignore them; as long as you don’t see them, everything is okay; as long as you don’t notice them, you’re lucky. You’re blessed.
But we won’t come back to Jeckle Island.
