Shouting at the Rain: Chapters 28–49

When we get to the spot, the birds are angry but Henry is happy. “We’re right over a shoal. And I think we’re looking at some stripers here on the screen. Let’s get fishing and see if we can get them in the boat.”

Ronan reaches in and picks one up.
“Good. Not squeamish. Good way to begin.”

With Henry’s directions, I pull the pole back behind my head and then crank the reel, moving the pole forward, never letting the line get slack.

Henry hoists the fish into the huge cooler filled with ice.

We sit at the counter, and Ronan is mesmerized watching Saucepan.

“Everything!” she bellows, pointing her whisk at him. “A good cook knows you can’t go turning up the heat because you’re impatient; you gotta let it simmer. Take its time. Let all of those flavors come into their own. Because if you rush it...well, it won’t satisfy. But...”

She leans toward the back room and yells, “Someone get me the broom!” Then she turns back to Ronan. “Well, perhaps you need a bit of finesse, but I think you’ll do great things, kid.”

I know Grammy likes her metaphors, and I think back to her saying “Joseph is my rock.”

“She lived in the bottle, but the day”—she points at the end of my nose and leans toward me—“the very day she found out you were coming, she stopped. She sweated with the fits and heaves. She curled herself up on the floor and moaned and called for God and the devil, but she swore that while you were growing, she’d die before taking a drop. That was the strongest I’ve ever seen anyone be.”

We head to the cove just as the tide is going out.

We wade out into the bay.

“They are one of the oldest animals on earth,” I say, touching one of its legs. “They literally swam around with the dinosaurs four hundred fifty million years ago.”

It’s not a fancy place, but it’s the best spot on all of the Cape—and it’s on the pier where the Reel is moored.

I walk down the stairs, drawing my hand lightly along a railing to avoid slivers, and walk out to the end of the pier.

“That must have been awful,” Ronan says. “A great white shark can’t survive in captivity. Most die after a few days. They won’t eat. They ram their heads into the walls of the tank.”

“Some people aren’t dealt easy hands, and it isn’t fair. But I think if you play a difficult hand with courage and compassion, you end up stronger. It’s hard, and I know there are times when the world beats you down and you feel like that’s the only way it’ll ever be.”

“What is the thing you’ve been begging and badgering me for all these years? Leaving notes around the house to remind me. In my shoes, in the sugar bowl.”

As she puts the car into reverse, I look back up at the house, and standing there on the porch, with her arms folded and that smug smile, is Tressa.

Olive sighs. “Well, of course they are, child. You’ve been prattling on for months that you wanted that Melody doll and matching outfits. I couldn’t manage the expensive doll, but I thought the dress could be worn by another of your dolls.”

A car swerves to miss the furry runner.

I try not to wince. “I have to get back to my mom and dad on the beach. They’ll be worried,” I say.

As we get closer, I hear Grammy’s voice. A bit of a wail and a cry wrapped around each other. And I am relieved she’s making noise.

He bends over and points at the top of his shell. “There’s even a tinge of blue there. See that?”

“Well, he’s safer in shallow water than out there,” I say, pointing to the lobster traps. “Their most dangerous predators are people. If he’s hungry for bait, he’ll get caught again.”

“Sure is! Brant Point Light!” Henry calls. “And on the other side of the island is my favorite—Sankaty Head Lighthouse. They’ve already moved that one back once because the bluffs are falling into the ocean at one to two feet a year. Scientists say Nantucket will disappear completely in about four hundred years. I’m going to leave in three hundred, as I don’t want to see that.”

When I dive into the water, I go from sweltering hot to nice and cool.

“Because they fought back when whalers harpooned them. Right in these very waters, actually. Back in the 1800s. Now, the other types of whales? Well, they’d die pretty conveniently once the harpooner stuck ’em. But the sperm whale...it crashed boats into toothpicks...."

At the end, I am the first to lead the standing ovation. I hoot and holler and yell Michael’s and Aimee’s names.

I look over at Ronan, who is searching the cracks in the floor, trying to retrieve something.

“Aimee,” Tressa gushes, “you should come to my house sometime this fall. I can take you to the theater district in Boston.”

As I turn away, I feel a twinge of sadness at Brandy’s use of my old nickname, until I see Ronan grinning at me.

Ronan and his dad living right across from us. It’s like a rainstorm after a drought—and I didn’t even know a friendship like his was missing till I found it.

I can tell there’s a squall inside he’s trying to sort out, too. And then he turns to me. “I think you’re right. Wind and anger being alike. You can’t stop the wind. But you can use it.”

Saucepan Lynn approaches. “So, you two going to gab all day or order?”

She smiles when she reads the sign I made: MEMORY SHAKER WALL. Her fingertips caress a photo of Papa Joseph.