Water Steps (10 page)

I fought hard to get ahead of the memory, to push it back before I slid into that water, but the rain kept coming, my mind kept going deeper, falling into that night, so deep I couldn't crawl back out.

Even on the beach of Lake Champlain where only rain threatened me as I clung to a boulder for safety, I choked on the memory of those waves.

My mem said she held me to her as she swam sidestroke toward the shore. How did she find me in
all that dark water? Carry me to the rocks against those angry waves?

As I hugged the rock on the lake's shore, the rain poured over me. I cried. Cried for my mom, my dad, Grandma Bella, and Kenny. Cried to have them there with me. As I looked out over the choppy waves, anger shook me from the inside out.

Grabbing a rock, I threw it in, wishing it could shatter that lake like glass. Tossing rock after rock, I screamed and yelled at that stupid, awful water for taking them from me. I wanted to see it hurt, but it only twisted and turned in the wind, coming again and again to the shore.

Angry, tired, and wet, my eyes fell upon a shell, eddied in, then out, in, then out, by the waves crashing
in, then washing back out. They came day and night, again and again, never really changing except in speed and strength, shaped by the wind and the pull of the moon, but always coming back. The water didn't care. Didn't live like people do. Water would never change. I couldn't hurt it. Couldn't punish it for hurting me.

Only I could change. Grow stronger.

Standing, I walked away from that water to the stairs leading up to dry ground and a place where I could let go of all that anger. Let it sail out to sea and never return.

F
unny thing I realized about lake houses as I walked along the upper edge of the shoreline—they have two fronts. Driving up to our lake house, I had seen all of the name plaques hanging from posts, mailboxes, and even trees. Each sign gave the family name of the people who lived at the end of the driveways we passed. As I read them, they almost seemed to be inviting us to come for a visit. Now that I walked on the shore side of the houses, I saw a whole new set of signs with the same names—Holbrook, Ryan, and Lushia—all silent wooden invites to come in from the rain. And a good thing, too, or how else would I have found Tylo's house in that storm?

Knocking on the door, I didn't expect to find a storm inside, but that's what I got. The door flew open with a bang as Tylo's mom rushed out to pull me inside, shouting, “Kyna! You're Kyna, right?”

“Yes,” I said, as she started to dry me off with the towel she'd had over her shoulder, rubbing my head like I was the family dog caught in the rain.

She kept talking in a gust of words as two of her sons fought over one of those handheld game gadgets and another dive-bombed a row of marshmallows on the counter with baby potatoes. “Your parents are a mess trying to find you!”

“I told them I was coming here,” I said, pulling my head free.

“Well, you must have been using a language only dogs can hear.” She shook her head and started to take my shirt off.

“Hey,” I grabbed my shirt.

“Oh,” she looked embarrassed for only a second, then she shuffled me into the laundry room. “Sorry, dear. Used to having only boys.”

Closing the door, she yanked off my shirt before I had any chance to even speak, telling me, “Your mother's calling all over the neighborhood, trying to find you. Your father's out on foot. My husband
even took Tylo out to search the woods.”

She tugged and pulled and got me into dry clothes so fast I wondered if she'd roped and branded cattle in a past life. “Really, Tylo dragged his dad out to look for you. And here you are!” Stepping back, she took a look at me in the baggy shorts and too big T-shirt she'd dressed me in. Probably Trevor's.

“You don't look so frightened.”

“I'm not.” I laughed, so shocked to even say such a thing, let alone feel it.

“Well, good. I better call in the troops.” She headed back into the kitchen.

Speaking into the walkie-talkie, she said, “We found her, Mr. Monahan. We found her.”

Tylo answered back in a crackly shout, “This is me, Mom.”

“Sorry.” Mrs. Bishop grabbed another walkie-talkie on the counter. “Mr. Monahan?”

“Aye,” Pep's worried voice came back.

“She's found her way to my house.”

“Is she there, now?”

She handed me the walkie-talkie instead of answering. Felt kind of jittery to tell him, “I'm here, Pep.”

“Silkies be praised, you're safe.”

“Sorry I scared you. I thought you heard me say I was going to Tylo's.”

“You stay put now. We'll sort that out later. Let me talk to Mrs. Bishop.”

“Okay.”

Pep had Mrs. Bishop call Mem and before I even had a chance to swallow the marshmallow Tylo's brother Greg offered me, people started flooding into their house. And flooding fit because everyone showed up soaking wet in a gust of wind and rain from the lake-side door, the front door, a side door—Tylo and his dad, Pep, Mem, Aunt Rosien, and even a whole crew of people I didn't know. They'd called out an army to find me.

And now that they'd found me, they planned to kill me. Tylo kept hitting me with his bag, yelling at me for running off. Pep scooped me up and hugged me so hard a rib nearly popped out of my mouth. Mem kept squeezing me, then stepping back to look me over, then squeezing me again. I started to get a little dizzy. Aunt Rosien said, “Like to kill her parents for the worry of it.”

Everyone shouted and talked and carried on. Mrs. Bishop made tea and ordered her boys to make cocoa—three spills, a marshmallow fight, and a stern shout from Mr. Bishop later, we all sat in their living
room talking, a fire roaring and the stones of the fireplace heating up. Well, the Bishop boys did a little more kicking and threatening than talking, but I didn't care. I sipped cocoa on a cushy couch with Mem and Pep sandwiching me, stopping to give me a kiss or a pat between sips of tea.

Everyone expected a big adventure story, but I just said that I'd walked along the beach and got caught in the rain. That's all that happened really. Or at least that's all I wanted to say in front of so many people I didn't know.

“Got any salt?” asked a man with spiky little gray hairs in his mop of brown.

Mrs. Bishop tried not to look surprised when the man sprinkled it in his tea and passed it down. Friends of Mem and Pep, no doubt. I began to wonder if everyone from Ireland had salt in their tea.

From their hand-knitted jumpers and their baggy pants, the men who'd come in with Pep looked like they'd dressed out of his closet, and the clanking cups with the
“slancha”
salutes said for sure that they came from Ireland like him. Mates of his, I'd bet on it. So, why haven't I ever met them?

The ladies who'd arrived with Aunt Rosien had the same wild hair look. Their linen shirts, long skirts, and
rope sandals made me peg them as nature lovers like her.

The whole lot of them chatted all hunched over their cups, their voices pitching and rolling like waves. And when one of them called out a question, they all seemed to turn as one to answer.

They looked so out of place in a living room of DVDs, Nikes, and slogan T-shirts. As they all got to talking about the lady of the lake who wandered the shores calling out for lost children with their mile-a-minute Irish accents, I saw a likeness among them, like a clan had come to visit. Maybe they were commune folks living in the nature they fought to protect.

Leaning into Mem, I whispered, “Are these people nature hippies?”

Giving me a squeeze, she said, “In a manner of speaking, they are.”

The thought of all those folks living together in the woods made me think it was a bit like a summer camp for adults that lasted all year. I started to laugh.

“That's a bit rude, love,” Mem said, nudging me.

But why would so many folks from Ireland come to a lake in New York? I'd heard there are more Irish and their descendants in America than in the whole of Ireland, but why would such a loyal nature-loving lot come here?

Maybe it had something to do with that governor of Vermont who tried to have the lake declared a Great Lake so it would get the same conservation funds as the rest of them? They might have thought it wasn't getting the protection it needed. But I'm sure that could be said of plenty of lakes in Ireland.

I figured their reason for being there wasn't as important as the discovery that a small part of Ireland lived right there on the lake. Why hadn't Mem and Pep told me?

That would have made coming to the lake so much easier. If Mem and Pep wouldn't go back to Ireland because I was too afraid to fly over the ocean, then they could at least have a reunion with the folks they'd known back home. I would have jumped at the chance to spend the summer with people who knew them before I came along. Lake or no lake.

I'd heard my share of the banshee stories the lot of them were going on about, so I didn't feel bad about asking, “What were Mem and Pep like before they saved me?”

The whole lot of them started to speak with “well nows” and “you sure you want to hear about that rogue” and “my can I tell you a story” all in a bunch.

They had my heart racing for some real stories, but Pep popped off the couch, saying, “We'll save those tales
for another night. We've overstayed our welcome with this kind Bishop family already. Heavens, it's like they've been invaded by the Green Brigade this evening.”

With the nearly matching clothes and the way they moved almost like they knew each others' next move,

I couldn't help but think that Mem and Pep's friends did look like a group of soldiers called out to rescue me. They could have been the Green Brigade—those Irish soldiers from the Civil War.

“Good night, Ian. Keep to the jet stream, Morigan. Blessing to you, Gavin.” They all said their good-byes with kisses and well wishes like family. Had Mem and Pep lived in their commune? Were my parents real honest-to-goodness hippies?

Wading through the sea of folks in his front hall, Tylo grabbed my arm and handed me a walkie-talkie. “Take this. You ever get lost, you call in.”

“Are you sure?”

“We have like a million sets. We could keep track of every raccoon in Clinton County if we wanted to.”

“Thanks.”

He blushed and started to sidestep and stare at his feet.

Leaning over to be heard amongst the good-byes and thank yous, I said, “Spotting tomorrow night?”

“You bet.” He kind of hopped. “You still owe me some Irish barnacles.”

“That's biscuits.”

“Oh,” he smiled. “Good, because even if they are cookies, I don't want to eat any barnacles.”

“Good night.”

“Night.”

M
em and Pep herded me home. “Did you both live with those folks?” I asked as we left the lights of the Bishop house to enter the darkness of the woods.

“Never mind that.” Mem gave my shoulder a tug. “What I want to know is what you were doing wandering off with a storm coming in?”

“I didn't see the storm. I just wanted to go to Tylo's. I called into the house to tell you I was going.”