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Aileen slipped off her kitten heels and held them in her hands She turned her deep brown eyes on Eureka; they were the same color as her son’s She lowered her voice "Have you noticed anything strange about him recently?"
If only Eureka could open up to Aileen, hear what she’d been going through, too But Brooks ca an arm around each of them "My two favorite ladies," he said And then, before Eureka could register Aileen’s reaction, Brooks removed his arms and walked to the heliven you, she wanted to say, though she had read all sixteen groveling text es he’d sent this week, and the two letters he’d left in her locker She was here because of Mada told her that destiny e of Blavatsky dead in her studio with the memory of the woman at peace under thetree by the bayou, the one who’d seeood reason for Eureka to sail with Brooks today
What you do once you’re there is up to you
But then Eureka thought about Ander, who insisted Brooks was dangerous The scar on Brooks’s forehead was half hidden under the shadow of his baseball cap It looked like an ordinary scar, not solyph--and for a ht be evidence of so sinister She looked down at the thunderstone, flipping it over The rings were barely visible in the sun She’d been acting like a conspiracy theorist who’d spent too many days cooped up with only the Internet to talk to She needed to relax and get some sun
"Thanks for lunch," Eureka said to Aileen, who’d been chatting with the twins froplank She stepped closer and lowered her voice so that Aileen alone could hear "About Brooks" She shrugged, attehtness "Just boys, you know I’row up to terrorize Rhoda someday" She tousled her brother’s hair "Means he loves you"
Aileen looked out at the water again "Children grow up so fast I guess soive us Well"--she looked back at Eureka, forced a smile--"you kids have fun And if there’s any weather, turn back right away"
Brooks held out his arms and looked up at the sky, which was blue and immense and cloudless but for an innocent cotton puff in the east just underneath the sun "What could possibly go wrong?"
The breeze rustling Eureka’s ponytail becaine and steered away fro cute in their life jackets They balled their hands into excited fists at the first jolt of the boat The tide was soft and steady, the air perfectly briny The shore was lined with cypress trees and family camps
When Eureka rose from her bench to see if Brooks needed help, he waved for her to sit down "Everything’s under control You just relax"
Though anyone else would say that Brooks was trying to make amends and that the bay today was serene--a sun-blasted skylazing on the distant horizon--Eureka was uneasy She saw the sea and Brooks as capable of the same dark surprise: out of nowhere they could ht she’d hit the bottoht, but since then Eureka had lost both The Book of Love and the only person who could help her understand it Worse, she believed that the people who killed Mada her She really could have used a friend--and yet she found it nearly impossible to smile at Brooks across the deck
The deck was made of treated cedar, dimpled by a million dents froo to Aileen’s parties on this boat Any of these h heels she’d owned Eureka i her mother’s dents to clone her back to life, to put her on the deck right now, dancing to no ined that the surface of her own heart probably looked like this deck Love was a dance floor, where everyone you lost left a mark behind
Bare feet slapped the deck as the twins ran around, shouting "Goodbye!" or "We’re sailing!" to every camp they passed The sun wars a beautiful time She wished Dad were here to see their faces With her phone, she snapped a picture and texted it to hilided past twofroreeted each of the boat coast by The water was rich blue opal It smelled like Eureka’s childhood, much of which had been spent on this boat with Brooks’s uncle Jack at the hel the ship with easy confidence His brother, Seth, always said that Brooks was born to sail, that he wouldn’t be surprised if Brooks becauide in the Galápagos Whatever kept Brooks on the water was likely what Brooks would do
It wasn’t long before Ariel left behind the ca a bend to face broad, shallow Verripped the ashed bench beneath her at the sight of the small man-made beach She hadn’t been back since the day Brooks had almost drowned here--the day they had kissed She felt a mix of nerves and embarrassment, and she couldn’t look at hi the mainsail from the cockpit; then he raised the jib up the forestay
He handed Willia the the sails aloft They squealed when the crisp white sail slid up the mast, locked into place, and filled ind
The sails billowed, then grew taut with the strong eastern breeze They started on a close haul course, at forty-five degrees to the wind, and then Brooksthe sails appropriately Ariel was majestic with the wind at its back Water split across its bow, sending sate birds swooped in grand circles overhead, keeping pace with the leeward glide of the sails Flying fish soared above waves like shooting stars Brooks let the kids stand with him at the helht juice boxes and two of Aileen’s sandwiches up fro a lounge chair in the shady corner of the deck Eureka stood next to Brooks The sun bore down on her shoulders and she squinted ahead at a long, flat stretch of low-lying land overgroith pale green reeds in the distance
"Still mad at me?" he asked
She didn’t want to talk about it She didn’t want to talk about anything that ht scratch her brittle surface and expose every secret she held inside
"Is that Marsh Island?" She kneas The barrier island kept the heavier waves froht?"
Brooks patted the broad wooden wheel "You don’t think Ariel can handle the open seas?" His voice was playful, but his eyes had narrowed "Or is it ust of briny air, certain she could see whitecaps beyond the island "It’s rough out there It o out far!" Claire shouted between gulps of grape juice
"I do this all the tihtly east so they’d be able to slide around the edge of the approaching island
"We didn’t go out that far in May" It was the last tiether She remembered because she’d counted the four circles they’d made around the bay