Chapter 22: Port Calder

Ivy's POV

"It's far away, baby," I told Polly in the park. "We'll see it after Pop-Pop."

She accepted that, because it came with a promise.

On Tuesday we flew a thousand miles to the town I had run to with nothing.

Port Calder smelled of salt and diesel and wet rope.

I had forgotten how much I loved it.

The cemetery sat on a slope above the harbor, behind a low stone wall.

The grass was bright green from the rain.

Polly walked ahead of all of us with a paper bag in her fist.

She stopped at the third row without being told.

"This one," she said.

I had not told her.

She had been two years old at the funeral, and she remembered a gray stone with a small iron fence.

His name was carved on it, and the dates.

Under them was a line I had chosen myself, in a hurry, with a pen that was running out of ink.

He pulled me out of the dark.

Nobody said anything.

Polly opened the bag and took out a peanut butter sandwich with the crusts cut off.

She laid it carefully at the foot of the stone.

"Pop-Pop did the knife," she said. "I did it with a spoon. It's not as good."

My mother took a handkerchief from her bag and gave it to me.

I had not noticed I was crying.

I knelt on the wet grass and put my hand on the cold top of the stone.

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