Page 39 of What You Never Knew

May and I used to come out to the verandah for every big storm—safely tucked under the overhanging roof but able to feel the mist of the rain on our skin. Our mother would often join us, stopping whatever she was doing to marvel at the magnitude of nature. She’d get a look in her eyes as she stared out at the storm. As though she wanted to run right out into it, to abandon everything and let its strong winds carry her away. She would seem disappointed when it cleared up or just turned to soft rain.

The sound of my phone ringing pulls my attention away and sends me inside in search of it. I find it just in time. It’s Bea, and right away she scolds me for missing her earlier calls. I pull the phone away from my ear and see that she called four times while I was in the hammock napping. She won the athletic award at school and wanted to tell me herself before it was posted on the school’s Instagram account.

I want to tell her that there was no danger of me seeing it on social media; I haven’t looked at any social media since coming to the cottage, though I didn’t even realize it until now. Instead I let her prattle on about the end of school, the pool party she and Madeline are going to this afternoon.

Only when she’s run out of news does she stop and ask me what I was doing when I missed her calls. I don’t want to admit that I was napping in a hammock, so I tell her I was doing some gardening and had forgotten my phone inside.

I start to tell her about the storm, but she cuts me off to say that Leo wants to talk to me. He gets on, politely asks how I’m doing, and then scolds me for not answering Bea’s calls. “She was worried, you know?” he says, as though missing my daughter’s phone calls makes me the worst mother in the world.

“You know, there was a time when we weren’t reachable twenty-four hours a day, and somehow we all survived it.”

He sighs loudly into the phone. “Point taken, June, but you’re across the country missing important things, so the least you can do is try to be accessible.”

I want to tell him and his high horse to fuck off, but instead I concede and say I’ll try not to forget my phone again. I ask to speak to Madeline, but she’s out, so Leo and I hang up and I’m left with that familiar feeling of failure that always seems to linger after talking to him.

By the time I’ve finished dinner, the storm has mellowed slightly and I hear only a few low rumbles of thunder in the distance. I put on some music and make myself a fire to keep the damp away.

Opening one of Ezra’s beers, I plop down on the couch to stare at the fire. It’s cozy inside with the rain still coming down, but all I feel is lonely and depressed. Not to mention pathetic. I actually miss Ezra, and it’s only been a matter of hours. What is wrong with me? I’ve never been this foolish about a man before.

I imagine asking May that exact question and I can almost see her standing in front of me, ticking off the possible reasons on her fingers: You’re far away from your home and the girls, you’re still grieving about my death, you’ve just learned about Mom and her affair, he’s the most familiar thing around you right now, and he makes you feel safe.

I hold up my beer, pretending to “cheers” someone who isn’t there. “Right as always, May,” I say to the empty room.

Did my mother feel the same way about West? The question forces itself into my mind, and I no longer try to keep my thoughts around their affair at bay. I have to face them sometime. Ironically, sitting here as an adult, I can even understand why my mother fell in love with West.

He was handsome in a rugged, outdoorsy kind of way, with blond hair highlighted by the sun and blue eyes as clear as the lake. He was also everything my father was not. Calm, good with his hands, slow-moving, and kind, caring more about nature than money or material things.

My father couldn’t even change a lightbulb without hiring someone to do it. He was wound up too tight, always stressing about appearances, and money mattered to him. He’d grown up with it. His hands and middle were soft because of it. And he treated May and me like we were just extensions of my mother, things for her to take care of and for him to discipline and question now and again.

West was one of the kindest men I knew. He always let me help him with his work when I asked, and he never scolded me for interrupting him if Ezra and I needed help building a fort or getting a Frisbee out of a tree or the canoe up on shore. He’d stop me as I passed by and point out different types of birds on the island, often placing one large, heavy hand on the top of my head, grounding me to the earth and to him. The light that dances in Ezra’s eyes, just like his easy and genuine nature, was most definitely influenced by West.

I suddenly have an overwhelming need to write things down. I’ve learned so much since returning to Avril Island; writing will help me make sense of it all. It used to be the only way I processed things. Writing gave me a way to interpret the world, my life, but I lost the motivation to do that somewhere along the way. I’m surprised and excited to finally have it back.

Going up to my room, I find an old notebook in the desk drawer. It has a few story ideas scratched across the front page in my childish penmanship, but otherwise it’s empty.

There’s no real rhyme or reason to what I’m writing, just descriptions of people, things, and events. I have a feeling that if I can write enough, I’ll be able to string it all together into something more tangible, but for now I just want to get it down. It feels good, like something in me has been curled up and hidden away and is finally unfurling.

I’ve completely lost track of time when a sudden crack of thunder and then a flash of lightning jolt me out of my writing trance. Another storm is rolling in. Late-night storms are not as much fun as daytime ones. Even as a full-grown adult, they creep me out.

My hand aches from all the writing, so I decide to stop there and go up to bed and read until I fall asleep. I close the notebook and tuck it under my arm with a sense of accomplishment. I haven’t written that much in years, and it feels good.

I’ve just turned all the lights out downstairs and am feeling my way to the stairs when another roll of thunder booms through the sky, causing each pane of glass in the old windows to quiver. A bolt of lightning follows right after, illuminating the whole living room. In that split second of light, I’m sure I see the outline of another person standing by the couch. I rush to a light switch, throw it on, but nobody’s there.

That doesn’t mean my heart isn’t racing. It was obviously just a shadow, the storm igniting my imagination. I take a few deep breaths, scan the room once more, and then head upstairs, leaving a light on just in case. Counting the seconds between the thunder and lightning, just like West taught me to do.

Something woke me. A sound from somewhere else in the cottage, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t part of my dream. A heavy stillness sits over everything, as though the whole cottage is holding its breath, and it’s dark—abnormally dark, no light coming in from the hall or the moon. I hear another sound, closer this time, and I’m fully awake now, so I know it wasn’t part of a dream. Sitting up, I reach out to turn the bedside light on, but when I pull the chord, nothing happens. The power must have gone out because of the storm. I grab my phone and curse under my breath when I see that it’s dead.

I’m almost positive I hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs, but I can’t tell if I’m imagining it or not. Is it just the place settling after the storm? Then there’s a creak in the hallway just outside my door. There’s no way I imagined that. I lower both legs onto the floor and reach for the base of the bedside lamp, the only thing in this room that could be used as a weapon. My door slowly swings open to reveal a dark figure. I try to raise the lamp up over my head, but it’s still plugged in and is yanked out of my hand and comes crashing down on the floor.

“June?”

“Ezra!” I yell.

“June,” he says again.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“The power’s out,” he says, as though that’s an adequate explanation.