just above the white patch encircling his eye. I know that marking. But … it couldn’t be. What are the chances he’d be here now, with Mom gone?
I panic and force myself to look away from the churning water. Crawling forward, I fumble to get the oars in position, banging them against the side of the boat.
“Let’s go … now,” I tell Lena.
“Wait.…” she says, distracted. “I think they’re breaking up.”
I can feel her indecision. She doesn’t want to let them go. I stand halfway up, but she puts one hand up to stop me.
“No, forget it. Sit,” she orders, her voice quiet with disappointment. “They must be heading out.”
Grabbing the oars, she guides them back into the oarlocks. A long minute passes, then she shakes her head. “I don’t get it, Marisa.” She flicks her wet hair back over her shoulders. “I thought you were so hot on these whales.”
She wouldn’t get it, of course. She doesn’t remember the connection. I open my mouth, but have no clue where or how to begin. I just shake my head.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, you’ll explain later. It’s always later.”
We sit in silence, seesawing on the settling water, until finally Lena reaches for the oars. I realize I’ve been holding my breath and now, I allow myself to finally exhale. My body tingles as fresh blood rushes in. I’m still trying to shake off the eerie sensation I felt, staring into the whale’s eye. I’m suddenly mad at myself for freezing like that, not paying closer attention to his other markings, to be really sure.
“Too bad,” I hear Lena say, “we probably could have caught up with at least some of them before they left. Don’t you think?” Her voice is wistful.
Two months ago, I would have agreed. Now, I’ve learned you can’t stop anybody from leaving, not if they really want to go. As Lena maneuvers our boat smoothly back to shore, it dawns on me that there is something that would have kept Mom here in the inlet, kept her home.
The whales. I’m sure of it.
If only they decided to visit before she left.
CHAPTER 2
By the time we haul our rowboat up onto the gravel beach at the Tracyton launch, a crowd is already gathered there, buzzing about the whale sighting. I steady myself as we walk up the concrete ramp, then hang back while Lena stows our gear.
Dyes Inlet is narrow here—it’s easy to see clear across to the other side where the Olympic Mountains rise up behind the tree line. Little towns sit scattered all along the shore but Tracyton is the one with the killer views. It only takes me a second to spot a few whales again, swimming just off the far shore. Plumes of water rise up off the surface as they blow.
Nearby, a couple of boats are already prepping to head out.
“Whoa!” one guy yells to his buddies. “One just came clear out of the water and rolled back down on his side.”
“It’s called breaching,” I mumble, turning my back to the inlet. I can’t stop wondering. Could it really have been him, our whale, here in the inlet? Maybe I’m just missing Mom so much, I imagined it.
“… the salmon were schooled up in the shallows,” I hear Lena explaining. “Maybe that’s where the orcas were headed.”
The crowd is growing larger by the minute.
“How close did you get?” someone asks.
“We could see them fine from where we were,” I say quickly.
“Kids have more smarts than you,” another man says and they all laugh.
Lena gives me a look, then smiles. I fake a smile back.
We walk in silence up the steep incline and pull our bikes out from behind the bushes. In the narrow street, the flow of people streaming down to see the whales is so thick we have to weave back and forth, back and forth, to avoid them. Just like salmon, swimming upstream.
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Once we’re past the crowd, we split up and I ride home fast, my legs pumping hard on the pedals, my head swirling with everything that’s just happened. Lena might be way more easygoing than me, but in all the ways that matter, we’re alike. We think about and care about the same things. Meeting her was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me. But since Mom left—it’s like there’s this wall between us. My life totally changed and hers stayed the same. Talking about even the simplest things feels hard now.
I make the slow turn into the marina. The sharp smell of the inlet hits me and I remember again first visiting here almost five months ago, when school let out for the summer. Dad had heard about a houseboat that might be coming available and he wanted to check it out, “just for fun.”
Dad loves Dyes Inlet. More than loves it really, he lives in awe of it. So we all took a walk here one evening, over from the house we rented on East Sixteenth Street. I didn’t think much about it at the time. I was busy planning my three-month stretch of freedom that lay ahead. I sure never thought that the marina would wind up being my new “home.”
Then two months later Mom left, and we actually moved, like it had all been planned. I was so angry I didn’t speak to Dad for a week after.
I can remember exactly when everything started to change. It was just before school started up again in September, about a week before Mom’s birthday. We’d spent the day fishing on the inlet but it was a disaster. Dad had tried a million ways, trying to get Mom to talk or even just smile at one of his jokes. Nothing had worked.
That night, I couldn’t fall asleep. It was late and I’d made it halfway down the stairs when I heard them in the kitchen, talking. Dad’s voice was muffled; I couldn’t make out his words. At first I thought it was because he was afraid of waking me, until I heard Mom.
“Danny, don’t. It’s not your fault. Oh, Danno. Honey, it’ll be okay.”
I crouched there on the stairs, waiting for Dad to answer. Instead, the sounds coming from him got louder. He was crying. Crying! I’d never seen Dad cry, and it scared me, hearing it now. Mom’s footsteps echoed across the tiled floor.
There was a long, long pause and I could tell they were hugging.
“I haven’t been brave, Dan. I buried things, important things, willed them to just go away. And I dragged you into it, too.”
“It was my decision, Abbe,” Dad said. “Whatever it is, I love you.”
“I know,” she sniffled. “I love you too. And M. So much. It’s just … I need some time to figure out so much.…” Then—“Oh, Danno—,” Mom started to cry, “I’ve done such a terrible job mothering.”
The surprise of her words took my breath away. And listening there, on the stairs, I felt a new kind of scared and it wasn’t because of the crying.
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In
