chapter 1 IT’S A DRIZZLY SUNDAY MORNING the day after my twelfth birthday and my family such as it is has arrived at Swallowtail Island in the western end of Lake Erie All six of us stand on the foredeck of the ferry Niagara as it makes the turn at the buoy marked R3 at the entrance to the harbor My ten year sister Pip and I shiver in our thin cotton dresses our arms pocked with goose bumps as the town comes into view before us Its two piers are like long arms reaching out into the harbor to greet us Pip’s interpretation or to push us away mine As the Niagara bullies its way down the narrow channel its bow pushing a wall of water the previously unruffled unruffled surface is pulled and stretched like gray taffy Moored boats dance in our wake as we pass bows and sterns rising and dipping with each wave Near the east shore a fleet of mallards 1
MICHAEL D. BEIL steams south toward a dilapidated wooden dock and above me a single gull cries then swoops down to see if I have anything anything to offer it Pogo our English setter sets beside me body quivering and tail high in the air I reach down and stroke the top of her head but she doesn't take her eyes off the gull for a second My heart leaps when we bump against the pilings at the ferry dock and lines are made fast we have arrived Without a word Pip slips her tiny hand into mine together our hearts pound out a rhythm that I am sure can be heard over the whin ing engine and shouts of dockhands Our stepfather Thomas gathers Pip and me along with his own three boys Blake Nate and Jack with his long arms Everybody ready We should get a family picture This is a big- Let's not I say When I was five and Pip three our dad died when the small plane piloted by his best friend crashed into the Connecticut River a few hundred yards short of the runway at Goodspeed Airport That same summer Thomas's wife was killed by a falling tree branch while she was jogging jogging in Central Park Four and half years later Mom married Thomas They had been friends nothing more they both insisted in college and reconnected at a class reunion So we had kind of a Brady Bunch thing going for a couple of years but then three months ago Mom died and what was left Thomas and his kids and then Pip and me I don't know 2
WRECK AT ADA'S REEF what we are exactly but it doesn't feel quite like a family C'mon Lark Pip says squeezing my hand We should I am saved from the indignity of a family selfie there on the foredeck by one of the ferry's crew Okay folks Need to ask you to move along We wind our way down the steep metal staircase and onto the gangplank When I reach the end I hesitate before taking the final step onto the worn wood planks of the pier but there is I know no turning back For the next seventy two days yes I'm counting this is home I'm not off the hook for that family portrait yet though Thomas has already recruited a woman in a yellow slicker to take our picture in front of a sign that announces Welcome to Swallowtail Island and is busy composing the shot Lark since you're the tallest in the back with me and Blake WELCOME TO SWALLOWTAIL ISLAND
