What I Thought Was True by Huntley Fitzpatrick Read Free Book Online Page A

E.
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    over my shoulder, trying to sound breezy. “Unless you want
    them for dinner tonight, in which case I can make a butter
    sauce. Or hollandaise.”
    “Oh no!” she says. “I want Ben’s lovely sauce with chilled
    lobster. I will make do tonight. In fact.” She cocks her head,
    then calls out, “ Joy! ”
    Just as I’m worried she’s lost her mind for real, the door
    opens and a tired-looking woman in hospital scrubs comes in
    from the carport. “Yuh-huh, Mrs. El? I’m here.”
    “Well hello, Joy! This is Guinevere Castle, who is to keep me
    out of mischief during the day. Gwen, this is my night nurse.
    Joy, will you show her out? I find myself a bit fatigued with all
    the excitement of the day.”
    Joy leads the way through the porch hallway into the car-
    port, hauling her gray hoodie off over her head and hanging it
    on a hook on the wall. “So you’re the babysitter.”
    That word makes me uncomfortable. “I’m here to keep Mrs.
    Ellington company during the day, yes.”
    Joy grunts. “You’ll be getting the same amount of money I
    am, without medical training. Makes no sense. That son of hers
    has more cash than brains, if you ask me.”
    I don’t really know what to say to that, so I stay quiet.
    “She needs a trained nurse twenty-four/seven, after a fall
    like that. Could easily have been a broken hip, and at her age
    that can be the beginning of the end, but the family just won’t
    accept it. I got no patience with them.”
    Maybe you shouldn’t work here then, I think, and then want to scratch the thought out. Here on island, how many of us have a
    choice, really? Joy opens the latticed screen door to the carport
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    and I walk out, grateful our shifts won’t coincide much.
    Outside, I halt, listening. Over the soft roar and shush of the
    waves, I hear the lawn mower thrumming again, farther down
    Low Road. Even though it’s the longer way home, I turn uphill
    in the direction of High Road.
    How am I going to get through a whole summer of con-
    stant Cass? I’ll have to ask Marco and Tony what his schedule
    is . . . Right. “Tony? Marco? Your yard boy’s a little too hot for me to handle, and now he’s getting on my nerves too, so if
    you wouldn’t mind ordering him to wear a shirt? Grow some
    unsightly facial hair, pack on a few pounds, and stay clear of
    Mrs. E.’s? Thanks a bunch.”
    I pick up my pace, and then turn into the small, beaten-down
    clearing in the Green Woods at the bend in the road. Maple
    trees arch and curl their branches over me, making the path
    a tunnel. The air smells earthy and tangy green. These woods
    have been the same for hundreds of years. When we were lit-
    tle, Nic, Vivie, and I used to play a game where we were the
    Quinnipiacs, the first people to live on Seashell. We tried to
    tread soundlessly in the forest, one foot in front of another,
    not even snapping a twig. Now a turn by a twisted branch,
    then another by an old stone shaped like a witch’s hat, and I’m
    out in the open again, by the rushing creek that runs into the
    ocean, cleared only by a bridge so old that the wood is silver
    and the nails rusty dark red. I climb to the apex of the bridge,
    look down at the water, clear enough to see the stones at the
    bottom but deep enough to be well over my head. I shuck off
    the T-shirt I’m wearing over my black sports bra, kick off my
    sneakers, climb to the highest point of the bridge, and jump.
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Chapter Six
    The water is an icy shock, stripping away any fears or feelings. I blast up toward the surface, emerge, take a deep, gasping breath
    of air, then plunge back down into the cold depths, push off
    from the pebbly bottom, flip toward the surface, turn on my
    back, eyes closed, lazily breathing in the difference between
    the icy water and the