To ride across the bay at this hour is to see Shep’s Island at its most beautiful. The light of the setting sun sends sparks off the water in every direction. On this particular night, there is electricity in the air. The water runs deep here along the coast of Maine. It is bitter cold and black beneath the glimmer on the surface. The wind bites into the skin. Seabirds lift and soar, chaotic and fluttering, then change direction. They look back, beak over wing, as if to say goodbye. The ferry churns along, and Shep’s comes into view. The smallest one in a chain, this island is the third stop on the ferry. Its contours blur against the horizon. But get a little closer and a line of trees comes into focus, leaning forward, beckoning, bent by the Atlantic winds.
There used to be a long luxurious beach on the east side of the island, a stretch of soft sand protected by massive boulders at each end. But the seas rise a little more each year, the island gets smaller still. The long beach is gone. Only the oldest residents remember it. A small strand of pebbly shore took its place. The half-submerged boulders can be seen just across the breaking waves. Crabs and mussels, prehistoric bugs, bits of seaweed, tiny minnows, they all get deposited, then stranded, in the cracks and crevices on top of these massive rocks. The waves wash them clean during high tide. Other things have been lost too: empty wooden houses, left to rot and rust and be swallowed by the forest; docks that tumbled into the shallows and lay sideways like a sea creature’s spine left to whiten in the sun. The water and the wind never stop carving away at the place. The people who live here, those who last, live close to the center of the island, tucked in among the narrow looping roads, well inland, protected by tall pines, at least a mile from the ocean and the havoc it can wreak upon a home.
The road that leads inland burrows into trees. Feels like rain: wind picking up, air prickling skin. Near the center, equidistant from Sunrise Beach and Sunset Cove, the McCauley’s small wooden house, in need of paint; a large barn, a flower garden, a kitchen garden, too. A meadow along the side, evergreens towering above, ferns blanketing their trunks.
On this particular night, there is a woman, newly widowed, inside the house. She’s alone there except for her young son, asleep in her bed upstairs. She came from away and married one of the McCauley twins. Everyone on the island knows the story, how it started with scandal and settled into a life. She sits in the kitchen, and soon the moon lights up the room in flashes, siren-like; she is shivering with cold; she’s in shock. She won’t sleep tonight: She’s waiting for the morning, which will bring with it not only the sun’s warmth, but her husband’s funeral and, finally, the return of his brother.
The trees begin to sway. They begin to groan, their limbs scratch and creak against one another. Shutters bang, screen doors slam; the wind whips them all into a frenzy. A hush falls, silence hangs in the air, suspended like a confession. And then the rain begins. It hits the roof with a bang. It lashes the windows and pours down the screens in thick, dark waterfalls.
In the morning, just as dawn’s light spreads across the island, Lea McCauley finally closes her eyes. She is asleep when her son comes downstairs. He doesn’t breathe, counting slowly as he crosses the room, footsteps light as a cat’s. It’s something he’s only just begun doing, counting how many seconds he can hold his breath. When he gets to fifteen, he climbs up next to her on the couch. He folds the front of his small body up against the warmth of her back. Soon he is sleeping too.
By the time they wake up, the room is bright. It is midmorning. Lea’s face is pressed against the back of the couch. In the first moments of waking, she doesn’t remember that her husband is dead. Emerging from sleep, her mind retreats to the before-time. She reaches back and wraps her arm around her son’s waist and hugs him to her. The door opens slowly, and before she can stop him, he is off the couch and running toward the man who has stepped inside the kitchen. “Daddy!” he yells. “You came back!” and Lea is launching herself toward them, “No, Son, no!”
Her boy wavers at the threshold, suddenly uncertain. Lea calls him back to her side.
Even now, after all these years, the resemblance is overwhelming. This man could be her husband, standing there in the kitchen.
“Lea,” he whispers. He takes a step forward, then he reaches for her.
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From The Shared Life of Egan and Lucian by Rose Smith. Used with permission of the publisher, Hawthorne Books. Copyright © 2026.
