The hardwood floor is discolored where Erik’s throw rug once sat. Sun slants through the naked window. A sea breeze gently sways the branches of an old shore pine outside, and the light casts a wraithlike shadow on the opposite wall. Once, on a full-moon night when young Erik had forgotten to shut the curtains, he caught sight of that shadow and bolted across the hallway into Tova and Will’s room, dove under their covers, convinced he was being haunted. Tova held him until he slept, then continued to hold him all through the night.
Cameron’s eyes rake over every inch of the room. Perhaps he’s trying to commit it to memory, to scan it like Janice Kim’s computer. Tova has begun to retreat from the room to give him a measure of privacy when he says, “I wish I’d met him.”
She steps back in, placing a hand on his elbow. “I wish you had, too.”
“How did you, like, go on?” He looks down at her and swallows hard. “I mean, he was here one day and gone the next. How do you recover from something like that?”
Tova hesitates. “You don’t recover. Not all the way. But you do move on. You have to.”
Cameron is gazing at the floor where Erik’s bed once was and biting his lip thoughtfully. Suddenly, he crosses the room and jabs at one of the floorboards with his sneaker toe.
“What happened here?”
Tova tilts her head. “What do you mean?”
“Your whole house is red oak floorboards. But this one piece is white ash.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Tova shuffles over and adjusts her glasses, scrutinizing the floorboard. There doesn’t seem to be anything remarkable about it.
“See, the grain lines are different. And the finish, it almost matches, but not quite.” He produces a cluster of keys from his pocket, kneels, and starts working a key chain that’s meant to open bottles into the crack between the floorboards. Moments later, to Tova’s shock, the board pops up, revealing an open space underneath.
“I knew it!” Cameron squints into the cavity.
“Good heavens. Who would do such a thing?”
Cameron laughs. “Any teenage boy who ever lived?”
“But what would he need to hide?”
“Uh . . . well, my friend Brad used to steal his dad’s magazines, and—”
“Oh!” Tova flushes. “Oh dear.”
“I don’t think that’s what we’re dealing with here.” Cameron pulls out a small parcel. Its plastic wrapping crunches when he hands it to Tova, who drops it once she realizes what’s inside. Snack cakes. Or what were once snack cakes. They’re hard and gray as stones now.
“Wow, Creamzies. These are old-school,” Cameron says, picking the package up and studying it. “You know, I saw a show on some science channel about them once. Urban legend says they’ll survive a nuclear holocaust, but it’s not actually true, see, because the diglycerides they use as stabilizers don’t—”
“Cameron,” Tova interrupts quietly. “There’s something else in there.”
“In here?” He holds up the petrified cakes, squinting.
“No, in there.” Her focus is fixed on the floorboard compartment.
It’s one of Tova’s mother’s old embroidered tea towels, wrapped around something the size of a deck of cards.
Cameron takes it out and hands it to Tova. Her fingers tremble as she unravels the towel. Inside is a painted wooden horse.
“My Dala Horse.” Her whisper comes out like gravel. She runs a finger down the figurine’s smooth wooded back. Every last splintered piece is glued back into place flawlessly. Even the paint is touched up.
The sixth horse. Erik had fixed it.
Cameron leans over, peering at the artifact. “What’s a Dala Horse?”
Tova clicks her tongue. The boy is full to the brim with random knowledge about floorboard grains and snack cake stabilizers and Shakespeare, but how little he knows about his heritage.
She holds the Dala Horse out to him.
He takes it, and she watches him study the delicate carved curves. After a long moment, he looks up. “How did you get the class ring back?”
She smiles. “Marcellus.”
Day 1 of My Freedom
AT FIRST, I SINK LIKE A COLD BUNDLE OF FLESH. MY arms no longer function. I am a chunk of jetsam flung into the sea on a comatose journey toward the seafloor.
Then, with a twitch, my limbs awaken, and I am alive again.
I do not say this to give you false hope. My death is imminent. But I am not dead yet. I have time enough to bask in the vastness of the sea. A day or two, perhaps, to revel in darkness. Dark, like the bottom of the seafloor.