Free The Drowning House by Elizabeth Black Page B

company. A developer who had renovated one of the old hotels. Across the lawn I saw Leanne, her head thrown back, asleep in a lawn chair.
    Will led Eleanor onto the dance floor. The band struck up a familiar number, and there was scattered applause. Will was a wonderful dancer, graceful and light on his feet. But his real gift was the way he showed off his partner. As he spun her out, a strand of hair fell down past Eleanor’s cheek, and she laughed and pushed it back.
    Then it came to me. Will was a fisherman. Hadn’t I seen a photo of him in the foyer? On a boat, wearing a canvas hat stuck with lures? It was his urgent step I had heard in our house, his hat I had seen in our front hall.
    No wonder he and Eleanor looked so much at ease together. If Mary Liz objected, she wasn’t letting on. Probably everyone else understood too. Some of them, at least, applauded. Who knew what they really thought?
    I took a deep breath. It seemed I needed more oxygen than themoist air provided. I looked up into the night sky and saw that what I’d thought was an especially bright star had moved. I realized that it wasn’t a star but a plane, entirely silent, on its way to a destination I could only guess at.
    Ty asked, “Are you all right? Can I get you something?”
    I shook my head and stood up. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just tired. I’ve been doing a lot of driving. I think I’d better make it an early night.” Ty stood too. I could see that he was disappointed, but he was too polite to ask questions.
    There was no point in trying to explain. If Ty remained in Galveston, he would learn that whatever was happening between Eleanor and Will, the Islanders had already taken its measure and made the necessary social corrections. If he wanted to belong, to be part of Will’s circle, he would have to be willing to adjust his responses too. He’d heard the stories. But he didn’t understand yet. Things were different here.
    A BARRIER ISLAND, LIKE GALVESTON , is a slim formation of loose sand, no more than five to ten feet above sea level. The sand is always moving, raising itself into long bars offshore, into dunes above the beach.
    The sand becomes stable only when it is covered with vegetation. First the grasses and sea oats. Then the vining plants, low to the ground—beach morning glories with interlacing runners, doveweed, goatweed. The leaves of these plants are thick and succulent, hairy, or reduced in size—adaptations that decrease water loss. Their roots go down deep. So specific and so extreme are the requirements of the environment that many of these plants can grow nowhere else.
    Everything on a barrier island is dug in or braced—the plants, the egrets in the marsh grass, even the fishermen in caps and T-shirts, squinting, waist-deep, leaning into the wind, searching for shifts and currents.
    There is so little to rest the eye on. Is the emptiness too much to bear? So that without understanding why, Islanders will do anythingto fill it? I don’t know how it happens. But islands have a way of taking over, of seizing the imagination. So that the people who live on them become different too, become wishful thinkers, fabulists, rearrangers of facts. What those on the mainland would probably call liars. It’s not surprising really in a place where survival, life itself, is the result of a kind of stubborn reinvention.
    A hurricane can cause a small island to disappear in a matter of hours.
    For some, the potential for catastrophe makes island life irresistible. It acts like a drug, heightening the senses. It magnifies the sound of the surf until you can hear it through heavy curtains and thick walls. It makes the breeze sweeter against your skin. It invests each day, each small decision with significance because it could be the last. You are waiting for the world to end, and part of you wants to see it happen.
    The Islanders like to talk about the weather. That’s how they greet each other. There’s a storm in the Gulf