The Darkest Joy Read online

  My eyes snap to his. I silently nod. Then blurt out, “My mom used to”—I swallow—“measure my feet like that.”

  She hadn’t done so since I was ten. It’s been a decade, but the memory had risen until it burst like a bubble seeking oxygen.

  Evan smiles tentatively and his teeth are white; blond stubble covers the square jaw of his friendly face

  “Listen . . . you’re new here,” he begins in a soft voice. Then his eyes move to my face, looking for some small reaction as my breathing settles back into an acceptable rhythm. “Why don’t you meet me and a few friends for a bonfire tonight?”

  No relationships, no people . . . escape. But in my heart, I know these people don’t know me. I did escape. And Evan saw the sadness in me and he didn’t bolt. Nor did he push.

  Points were stacking up in his favor.

  “Okay,” I say after mulling it over briefly, and his face lights up. His hand sweeps through his curly blond hair, impossibly long lashes touching his eyebrows.

  Evan rings up my purchases, then looks at my face and I blush a little at his scrutiny. He grins back, ignoring my discomfort or choosing to not notice. “Do you have wool socks?”

  I nod. There were some universal things that I picked up before moving to Alaska.

  He gives me the damage and my jaw drops. “It hurts, right?”

  “Hell, yes,” I say with a laugh.

  “Let me help you,” Evan says.

  We troop out to the bus and Evan turns suddenly, my packages stacked in his long arms. He barks out a laugh. “Tucker, right?”

  I stop, following his gaze as it moves over the bus. “Yeah,” I say slowly.

  “Looks like his work.” Evan opens the hatchback to the bus and puts the packages into the back.

  “Does everyone know everyone here?” I ask incredulously. No one knows anyone in Seattle.

  Evan nods, slamming the back. “Yeah, population swells in summer for the wharf rats . . .” He gives me an apologetic look. “I mean, migrant workers.”

  “Wharf rats,” I say, putting my hands on my hips.

  “Not you!” he says, laughing as he backpedals. “I meant . . . y’know, people that live on the beach and work.”

  “Like homeless people?” I ask, trying for clarity.

  He scrubs his face, the skin warming slightly underneath his palm. “You don’t live at the beach, do ya?”

  I let him sweat it. Then finally I let Evan off the hook. “I inherited my great-aunt’s place.”

  Evan breathes out a sigh of relief. “Who?”

  I tell him.

  Evan snaps his fingers. “East End . . .” Then laughs. “The very end.” His brows rise to that curly hairline.

  “Yeah.” I laugh.

  We stand there awkwardly for a minute. Then Evan’s eyes flick to mine. “So . . . why don’t you meet us at the Dawg and we’ll go from there.”

  I give him a blank look.

  “Right,” he says, then shifts his weight. “The Salty Dawg Saloon?”

  I think quickly. Then an image of a lighthouse pops up in my mind. “Is it that lighthouse building?”

  He nods. “One of the oldest original buildings.”

  “Rowdy?” I ask in a drawl, suddenly feeling the need to spend a night out, away from my dingy cabin, away from . . . myself. My self-imposed solitude. I recognize it’s a chance I’m willing to take.

  “Definitely. We know how to party here in the Land of the Midnight Sun.”

  “Does the sun never set?” I ask, slipping into the bus and closing the door. I crank the window open and he leans in, smelling like pine and soap. Clean.

  I swallow uncomfortably at his nearness and he smiles. The concept of personal bubbles is clearly nonexistent up north.

  “We get a twilight of sorts, but the sky just . . .” He pauses, his face turning to the brightness of the sky. It’s colored the vacant blue of spring, not the deep cerulean it’ll be when autumn comes calling.

  He finishes his thought, “It just gets kinda dim.”

  “The light?”

  “The night.”

  “I guess it’s tough on stargazing . . .”

  “Nah, we have the aurora borealis.”

  I’ve heard of it.

  He slaps the window rim lightly with a palm. “So . . . seven at the Dawg?”

  I nod, feeling simultaneously hopeful and desolate . . . my emotions wrapping me in a package of uncertainty. But that’s the tenor of my life these days—uncertain.

  I put the bus in gear, my new fishing gear and a tentative date with an Alaskan stranger set for tonight.

  Two days until fishing.

  I catch Evan’s eyes in my rearview mirror and he gives a single wave as I pull away.

  It doesn’t stop my sadness, but affords a temporary abatement.

  The guilt is always there.

  THREE

  I put the last of the supplies away and, moving with great reluctance, I turn the faucet to hot on the old shower. The pipes moan as the water moves through them underneath the floorboards and I wait.

  Then wait some more.

  After about three solid minutes, steam begins to pool then rise as the water becomes hot.

  No temperature gauge on this, I note, fiddling with the faucet until the water won’t melt my skin off.

  I kind of have a date, I think as I step into the shower.

  Not really, my mind answers as I lather, rinse, and repeat.

  I towel off, feeling lucky to have running water in the joint, then check my phone for messages.

  My finger hovers over Yahoo! News, a trap of depression if ever there is one. Then I tap the familiar icon. I scroll through the top news stories and something catches my eye.

  It’s so profound I almost drop my cell when I see the headline:

  ANOTHER JUILLIARD FINALIST FAMILY SLAUGHTERED

  My heart stutters a savage rhythm inside my chest, my blood roars in my ears. I sit down on the couch; it’s either that or fall, because my legs are giving out. I skim the article, my eye stumbling over key words and phrases.

  Entire family

  Gruesome

  Orphan

  Ruined potential

  Bloody

  Those are the words that were in our local coverage last December. When my family was erased.

  Another pianist is suffering like I suffered. Like I’m suffering now. I glance at the newspaper and read the name of the pianist:

  Marianne VanZyle.

  The wheels of my memory turn. I know her . . . she’s in that elite group of pianists who live to practice. Juilliard contenders, students like me who feel playing is like breathing—automatic, natural.

  The notes are like food edification on a tactile level, unlike eating it nourishes not the body, but the soul.

  It’s a small group, a handful of musicians whose focus is the music, the art of playing for its own sake. We’re all aware of each other, our shared passion unifying us to some extent.

  Another pianist has been cut down. Not by a weapon. By grief.

  I hold my cell in a loose grasp. What does it mean? It is beyond coincidence that both she and I would suffer this dual tragedy. It means something.

  Yet it changes nothing.

  My family is gone regardless of circumstance, motivation, this second atrocious crime.

  I clench my eyes, reflexively squeezing my cell in a merciless grip.

  When it vibrates I drop it. It lands on the old wood floor with a clatter, skittering like plastic sleet on the floor as it vibrates and shrieks its ring tone.

  A face lights up on the screen. Marshal Decatur Clearwater. The FBI agent who’s assigned to my family’s death. I watch it twitch on the floor, his image blinking on the screen.

  It rings and I let it.

  Finally, my cell falls quiet and I reach forward, scooping it off the floor. With my finger I move between the details of the news story, then back to the phone icon that signals a voice mail from Clearwater.
r />   I swipe delete.

  With hands that tremble I turn off my cell and open a tiny drawer inside a little table that sits beside the front door. The small glass pull winks as I slide the cell inside and close it.

  I turn away from my phone, the reminders of my past safely sealed off in a drawer. Shut away.

  If only I could do that to my emotions.

  I pull up to the Salty Dawg Saloon, established 1897. Actually, as I peer at the sign it says that the old one-room cabin was erected in 1897, then went through many incarnations to finally become the saloon of today in the 1950s.

  Large whiskey half-barrels hold sprays of nasturtiums, their variegated leaves striped with creamy lemon yellow veins. I run a finger over a fragile blossom that’s the color of sunrise and a little hurt starts in my chest again.

  I shouldn’t have come. I’m not good company . . . to anyone.

  “Those are hothouse grown, y’know.” I whirl around, hand to my chest.

  “You scared the crap out of me,” I say. Evan’s hooded eyes capture mine as he takes a pull from an Alaskan Amber.

  I cross my arms over my chest, my eyes flicking from his beer to his face.

  “The flowers,” he says without shame, and grins.

  I shake my head. “Do you always just prowl up on unsuspecting women?”

  Evan looks around, kicking an errant pebble with his ugly brown boot and grins. “Yeah.”

  “Huh,” I huff.

  I look at the brilliant flowers, yellow, red, and orange flopping over the bounds of the beat-up edge of the whiskey barrel and smile.

  “We have to cheat this far north,” he says, his eyes on me, his words referencing the flowers. I suddenly wonder if we’re still talking about plants.

  He takes another pull from his beer, then he says something I’ve not heard in a while.

  “Y’know, I didn’t really notice in the store but . . . your eyes.”

  I cock a brow.

  He steps closer and I fight not to move back. He takes my chin and inspects me, searching my eyes.

  “They’re not really blue . . .”

  I shrug. I’ve heard it a lot. I have Liz Taylor’s eyes.

  “They’re . . .” He looks deeper as I squirm. “Sort of purple, shot through with blue.”

  Evan releases my chin.

  “Who gave you those?” he asks in soft inquiry..

  I breathe in and out in a measured rhythm. “My great-aunt.”

  His brows rise to disappear underneath his mop of hair. “The one that gave you the cabin?”

  I nod.

  I know her eyes will never see again. But mine do.

  Evan studies me, internally deciding something, then he grabs my arm. “Time for beer!” he says, breaking the sadness that moves in around me like a tide pool.

  “ ’Kay,” I say, sucking my bottom lip inside my teeth, my underage status my secret—for now.

  He tows me after him and as we move deeper into the small structure. I look around in wonder.

  Money is tacked everywhere. Monopoly money. And photos—what look like snapshots of locals. The clutter telling the town’s story.

  I spot Tucker right away and wave. He lifts his hand, rising from his perch at the bar, the surface deep, thick, and wide, running the length of half the room.

  “Hey, Seattle!” he says as he draws nearer.

  “I found her first,” Evan warns, then winks at me.

  I relax a little, trying to shake the sadness that clings to me, trying to enjoy the attention.

  Tucker gets close, looming over me. He’s easily six feet three and built like a lumberjack, though I know most everyone fishes here.

  He claps Evan on the back. “So you’ve met our little Brooke here?”

  “Yeah, she came in.” He takes a sip of his beer, notices it’s gone, and puts a finger up for another. “For ’but season gear,” he half yells over the din of the saloon.

  Tucker nods, palming his short, scruffy goatee and nodding, the communion of words understood. “She’s going to give it a shot like Joey,” he says.

  My breath stills as Evan’s brows rise and my heart thumps an uneasy rhythm inside my chest.

  Tucker explains over the din. “Her brother, remember hearing about him . . . He’d fish the summers, loved Alaska . . .”

  Evan shook his head, taking another pull from his beer.

  He knows, I have time to realize.

  I’m measuring a quick evasive response as my grip on anonymity is threatening, while my guilt and grief encroach. But circumstance saves me again.

  Tucker opens his mouth to ask a question when a rippling silence overtakes the crowd. Evan gives a small smile. “Act one,” he says quietly and throws me a sidelong glance.

  What? I mouth. He jerks his chin to a small corner stage where a guy sits bent over a guitar and a small spotlight filters pale light that’s at once bright but with a blue cast that makes him look like ice washed by the night sky.

  Tucker puts a beer in my slack palm and I take a solid gulp, my eyes riveted to the stage. It’s a virtual sauna inside the saloon, people packed in like sardines, but I notice a small open area around the guitarist as I study him, the crowd giving him room, making a bubble of space for him to strum.

  He begins to move nimble fingers over his guitar strings as I sip beer and watch him master the frets.

  I recognize the melody instantly.

  The piece I would have played had my family lived.

  Had I kept my position for the audition at Juilliard.

  I’m mesmerized like inert organic material. Girl inside saloon drinking beer while wallowing in secret grief.

  Tucker takes my empty beer that I’ve guzzled and replaces it with another. Notes filter through the stillness of the saloon, as every eye is on the lone player, I stay, enraptured by deeds unaccomplished.

  A life aborted.

  A path severed.

  I study the suppleness of his playing. Tapered and long, his fingers stroke the strings like breathing . . . he’s that natural. My eyes travel up an arm taken up with a sleeve, not of cloth, but of an intricate and colorful tattoo. The fine muscles of his forearm ripple with the movement of his fingers playing chords that become increasingly more complicated.

  I know where the song goes, where it will take me, and I can’t stand another moment, another memory.

  I poise to leave, but at the exact moment that I’ve decide to flee, he looks up, his dark eyes locking with mine.

  And I’m rooted to the spot for an instant, staring back into a face that’s all hard planes and sharp angles. His bottomless eyes create a magnetic pull, a physical tug that almost beckons me forward.

  But as soon as he glances down at his fingers, the spell breaks and I stagger backward until my spine slams into the door.

  Evan says, “Hey!” and moves toward me, but my sweaty palm is on the handle, heating it as I push out into the night. It’s too much sensory overload.

  I flee.

  It’s too much.

  The beer, the new friends.

  The heartbreaking song that reminds me of what no longer is. Suddenly my sadness is no longer manageable, my guilt is a drowning tide inside my mind.

  I run until I’m out of breath, until the people and noise of the intimate little drinking hole are far behind me. I find that wedge of beach again and underneath a deepening sun, the night held back by a hairbreadth, I pour my sadness out onto the sand still warm from the day.

  I’m there by myself for minutes that become hours. When I look up, the sky’s a deep pink, my sweatshirt soaked where I’ve cried against it. Fine grains of sand litter my face like dark sugar. I blink once . . . twice, but it remains. The booze magnifies the fuzziness of my head. A lone diamond in the sky sits unblinking over the fjords.

  Venus.

  She sits, and in this moment she’s the sole witness to my sorrow.

  Suddenly I know what I need to do, what I should have done at the beginning. I’ve
been fooling myself that I could start somewhere fresh and just leave it all behind me. The distance brought only a deeper sense of loneliness and isolation . . . an even rawer pain.

  I know it’s the coward’s way.

  It’s a lie that you can change where you live, embrace anonymity and alter the past.

  Yet you just end up with the same baggage, different locale.

  I stand on shaky legs as my eyes move to their destination.

  The pier.

  I move, not bothering to wipe the tears from my face.

  The sea will cleanse my grief.

  Forever.

  Chance Taylor

  I retune my guitar before putting it away in its case. I tune it when I take it out too. OCD for guitarists, I think with a smirk.

  I rub my eyes as smoke rises in a foul cloud, floating like an interior sky inside the Dawg as Evan saunters over, a cold one in each hand. I give a chin lift and he nods back, his wild-ass hair flopping forward with the motion.

  “Hey,” he says, handing me my beer and giving me a knuckle-kiss palm glide in greeting. My lips twitch; Evan’s as laid-back as they come. And with my occupation, I can sure use a dose of that.

  I take a long slug of the beer, checking the label that it’s not a pussy light flavor or some shit. I’d have to cut him for that. Biggest insult ever: cheap beer.

  “Hey . . . chill, Taylor, it’s the good stuff.”

  I stand, nodding my thanks. “Yeah, I like it.”

  I tear the hoodie over my head that bears the slogan of the saloon and pick up my guitar case. I’ve got a long day tomorrow, probably shouldn’t have played the set tonight, but it gets me out of my head. A head full of fishing quotas, crew, food, weather, and of course, the sea.

  That’s The Sea. My mistress.

  I slam back the rest of my beer and dump the bottle into the recycler in the corner, an old wooden water-collection barrel. I think it used to collect rain before running water hit the spit. I smile at the irony of it collecting beer now. Nice.

  I give Johnny a nod as he swabs the bar top down after last call and he gives me a one-finger salute and I smirk. Characters . . . all of them. It’s my home, where I’ve spent my entire life, sea and salty people.

  Evan and I wade through the deep filth of peanut shells, napkins, and other stuff. He slaps the door open and the fresh air hits me like a wave of purity and I just stand there for a second, taking in the lush crispness of it all. I open my arms and stand there in the middle of the Dawg’s tight parking lot and inhale.