You Are the Waves, You Are the Wind novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Cottage Key

Sadie takes Poppy to her late mother's cottage on the coast, where a boatyard owner waits with the key and a recording her mother left for her.

The family room on the second floor of the courthouse had a rug with letters on it and a clerk who gave out stickers.

Poppy was sitting on the letter P with her lamb in her lap.

"Did you win?" she asked.

"I got to keep you," I said.

She thought about that and decided it was a good answer.

Garner was standing in the doorway when I looked up.

He had loosened his tie, and he looked like he hadn't slept in a week.

"Can I say goodbye to her?" he asked.

"You're not saying goodbye. You see her on weekends. That's in the order."

"I know what's in the order."

He crouched and let Poppy hug him.

He kissed the top of her head and held on a second too long.

Then he stood and followed me out to the parking garage, and I let him.

"Why didn't you fight?" he said. "You built that thing, Sadie. It was you in a boat, filming on a phone, before I ever showed up."

"I built it for the three of us. Then it got bigger than us."

"It's sixty million people."

"It's four videos of our daughter that a stranger can pull up in a second," I said. "I'm not trading her face for a number."

He rubbed his jaw.

"My lawyer said you'd never give it up. She said you'd drag it out for a year."

"She was wrong."

"Somebody gave her that clip," Garner said. "Somebody put a camera in your kitchen. I swear on Poppy it wasn't me."

I wanted to believe him.

I buckled Poppy into her seat instead and shut the door.

Bree came running across the garage with her cardigan flying and her phone still in her hand.

"Wait, wait, wait. Where are you going?"

"Home," I said.

"Your house is Garner's lawyer's problem for the next week. Come stay with me. I have the guest room made up."

"I'm taking Poppy to the coast."

Bree's face went through something quickly and settled.

"Port Hollis? Sadie, your mom's place has been shut up for three years."

"Then it's quiet."

"Okay." She hugged me again, and she smelled like the same vanilla lotion she'd worn since college. "I'll keep your email forwarded so nothing gets lost. Text me when you're there."

"I will."

She blew Poppy a kiss through the window and waved us out.

In the mirror, I watched her lift her phone and film us pulling away.

I told myself she was only saving it.

We were on the coast road by dusk.

The cottage was at the end of Cormorant Lane, gray shingles and a blue door, with the boatyard fence right next to it.

My mother's porch light was off.

There was a man sitting on her porch step with his elbows on his knees.

I had Poppy half asleep on my shoulder and my keys in my free hand, and I stopped at the bottom of the path.

He stood.

He was tall, in a canvas jacket, with gray coming in at his temples.

He held up a brass key.

"Your mother left this with me," he said. "It's the only copy that works. The lock was changed after the storm."

"Who are you?"

"Elliot Tarn. I own the yard next door." He nodded at the fence. "I've been checking on the place."

"Why?"

"She asked me to."

He didn't say anything after that, and I was too tired to ask more.

I took the key.

His fingers didn't touch mine.

"I'm only here for the summer," I said. "I'll pay you for the electricity and anything you've fixed."

"There's nothing to pay for."

"I don't take favors."

"Fine," he said, and almost smiled. "Then you can pay me for the electricity."

"And nobody films anything. Not here. If you see a camera, a phone, a drone, you tell me."

"I don't own a phone that takes pictures."

I looked at him.

"It's a flip phone," he said. "My sister mocks me."

He opened the blue door for me and switched on the hall light.

Everything inside was clean.

Not dusty, not shut up.

The sheets on my mother's bed had been changed.

"You've been in here," I said.

"Every week."

"For three years?"

"Yes."

Poppy lifted her head and looked at him in the doorway.

"Is that the boat man?" she asked.

"I'm the boat man," Elliot said.

"Mommy, he's the boat man."

"I heard her."

I put Poppy down on the couch and turned back to him, ready to say thank you and goodnight.

He was holding something else.

It was a small gray voice recorder, the kind with a cracked screen.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I should have given you this three years ago. I couldn't find you. You were never on a phone that rang."

"What is it?"

"Your mother's voice," he said. "She made it the week before she died. She said it was for you, and not for me to hear."

I didn't take it.

My hand wouldn't move.

"I never listened," Elliot said, and put it on the table between us. "I'll be next door."

He walked out and shut the blue door softly behind him.

The recorder sat on the table with its little red light blinking.

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