JODI LEE: There is a rumor that I’m wondering if you could clarify for me.
MARLOW FIN: All right.
JODI LEE: Your sister, Isla, got married in 2012. You attended her wedding?
MARLOW FIN: Yes.
JODI LEE: Were you sober?
MARLOW FIN: No.
JODI LEE: Is it true that you were not welcome?
MARLOW FIN: That is not true. I was very much welcome. I was her maid of honor. She had us all wear mint dresses. [Smiles]
JODI LEE: Is it true that you got into an altercation with your mother, Stella Baek?
MARLOW FIN: There is so much more to this than a really simple answer to that question.
JODI LEE: So there was no altercation?
MARLOW FIN: I didn’t say that. There was, yes, an altercation between myself and my mother at the wedding.
JODI LEE: Okay. Here goes: Is it true, Marlow, that you tried to strangle your mother?
CHAPTER 12
ISLA
1996
Sawyer slid the worm onto the hook, a fleshy accordion bunched up over the wet metal. He handed the pole to me, letting the bait dangle. The line shimmered in the sunlight.
“That’s not how my dad does it,” I said. The worm smelled metallic, the pond water still and hot.
“I’ve caught six sunnies this morning already. Toss her in.”
Marlow sat on a large, speckled rock near the water’s edge and scooted her purple jelly sandals out until her toes dipped. She leaned forward and skimmed the top of the water with her hands.
“Look, tadpoles.” She pointed.
Sawyer knelt behind her and pulled her back by her white sleeveless cotton top. “You’re going to fall in like that.”
“The water is pretty shallow,” I said, throwing the line in, the satisfying plop disturbing the pond water.
He led her closer to where he was and handed her his tackle box.
“Here. Pick a lure.”
She slid it on her lap and opened it like a book, fingering a few of the brightly feathered ones and picking up a heavy silver drop as if it were an earring.
“Sawyer, can I have this one?”
He nodded, not really looking as his line bobbed down once and then hard.
“Got another one!”
The fish shook back and forth as he dragged it onto the grass and held it up. The green scales glistened; the orange underbelly heaved in and out.
Marlow jumped up next to him, the tackle box falling to the side.
“Don’t step on it,” he said.
She picked the sunnie up without even hesitating, squeezing a little and holding its mouth up to her own.
“Kiss it,” she said to him.
“Marlow, hand it back,” he said patiently.
She brushed it against her lips and giggled. “I did it!” she squealed, her eyes closed tightly.
“Gross,” I groaned, reeling my line back in and then casting it out again.
Sawyer laughed at her and then looked at me with his mouth still wide, the freckles across his nose darkened from sunshine.
The summer had taken us all up to a height of familiarity, sweeping us away together with warm dusks cupping fireflies, sore tongues from too many popsicles, dirt-lined feet that never seemed to get all the way clean, a perpetual sweat at the base of our necks, hair clinging hot and fixed, our knees high-stepping in the tall grass, dancing until it got too dark as we were called back inside to settle in our beds, heads spinning from the dizziness of the pleasing day.
We were home.
