Page 68 of A Winding Wave of Magic
“He wanted her Secret,” I whispered. “He wanted it, and she wouldn’t give it to him. So he took everything else and killed her. But I think—I think maybe she killed him too.”
I didn’t realize that Jonathan had reached for my hand until my emotions calmed enough to feel the concern humming through his being into mine.
But I didn’t want concern. I didn’t need to be rescued from my own grandmother by this person, I didn’t need to be taken care of in this whole mess, and I certainly didn’t need his pity.
Something tingled under my hands where they gripped the counter. Under my bare toes too. Visions threatened, moments I had Seen before. Not Gran’s history, but mine.
Every time I’d argued with her at this very spot.
Every time she’d tried to teach me something, and I hadn’t listened.
Every time she’d asked something of me, and I’d turned her down.
Every disappointment piled, one on top of the other, until the room was a cacophony of disappointment, all drawn in different shades of me.
Touch the water.
Jonathan reached out again through the visions. I swatted his hand away, then dodged around him to head for the back French doors leading out to the deck. The house shook as I clattered down the rickety wooden steps, away from the visions that seemed to follow me through the property. Even the manzanita leaves biting into my bare soles seemed to carry these memories.
Touch the water.
The ocean called through the dunes, though the wind tore through them, pushing me away.
Water, I needed water.
Anything to stop these voices. Anything to stop this pain.
21
YOU’RE NOT ALONE
She trembled a little when he came near her for fear he would prove too loving.
— PÁDRAIC Ó CONAIRE, “AN BHEAN A CIAPADH” (“THE WOMAN WHO WAS MADE TO SUFFER”)
As a child, my favorite thing about Manzanita Beach was the sand dunes. Rising ten, even twenty feet from the edge of the beach, the soft white sand sprouted beach grass that could reach up to my shoulder. The dunes provided refuge where no one could find me, not even my grandmother or my mother, or any of the visions that lurked in corners of the house.
The visions let me go now as I wove through a well-worn path through the dunes at the edge of the property, then made for a driftwood log washed up with a pile of bull kelp. My toes sank into the cold, wet sand as the high tide rushed in to cover my feet as bare feet into the cold sand and watched it flow through my toes as the winter wind blew straight through my thin sweater.
I barely felt a thing. All I could think about was Gran and the monster who had literally squeezed the life out of her and, for all I knew, was still lurking somewhere in the area. Looking for her Secret. Which I was now supposed to guard.
The box, maybe. Whatever it was.
It was too much to take. I tipped my head up and screamed into the wind as loudly as I could. Over and over I shrieked, keening wordless wails, willing the mountain to hear me and take vengeance on behalf of my family.
Finally, my howls quieted to gasps that were swallowed in the wind and the roar of the surf. By the time I was finished, I was shaking so violently that I didn’t notice Jonathan’s approach until he was sitting on the driftwood next to me.
His shoulder didn’t quite touch mine, but I could sense its warmth all the same.
Or maybe I just wanted it.
“It’s going to be all right, you know,” he said.
“Everyone says that, but they have no godsdamned idea.” I scrubbed my face with the backs of my hands. “And neither do you. You don’t know what it’s like to watch someone close to you be murdered like that.”
“Oh, I do.”
I turned. “You do?”
