Jake explained that there were two ways out to Haven. One was to take a launch from Barrel Key and circle around to the far side of the island, where the coast dissolved into open ocean, staying clear of the marshes. This was the way the passenger boats ferried employees back and forth, and the way that freight was moved. No boat of any size could navigate the marshes.
But there was another way: the Wahlee River, which passed the tiny fishing village of Wahlee and fanned out into the marshes—miles of winding, narrow channels and half-submerged islands that reached nearly all the way to Haven’s northern coast.
“How do you know all this?” Gemma asked. They’d found a diner tucked off the main drag, empty except for a mom and her toddler and two older men in hunting vests huddled over coffee, with faces so chewed up by wind and weather it looked like their skin was in the process of dissolving. Although from here the ocean was invisible, there was still a rubber-stink smell in the air, and they could hear the occasional threshing of helicopters overhead.
Jake lined up four containers of half-and-half and emptied them one by one into his coffee. “I’ve lived in Little Waller my whole life,” he said. “That’s forty miles from here. My dad was big into fishing, camping, that kind of thing. We used to camp on the Wahlee. Spruce Island used to be owned by some timber company but Haven bought them out to build the institute. I remember they were still doing construction on some of the buildings when I was a kid.” He shrugged. “Maybe that’s when his obsession started. I never got the chance to ask.”
Gemma swallowed. “Is he . . . ?”
“Dead,” Jake said matter-of-factly, without looking at her. He stirred his coffee with a spoon but didn’t drink. “Died four years ago, when I was fourteen. Drowned in the marshes. That’s what they said, anyway.”
Gemma felt suddenly cold. “What do you mean?”
Jake just shook his head. He leaned forward on his elbows, staring out the window, and was quiet for a bit. A small TV mounted above the coffeepot was tuned to the news and kept scanning across the marina they’d just left behind. The waitress, a woman with hair shellacked into a bun, was parked in front of the TV with her arms crossed.
“I never really understood my dad,” Jake said. His voice was rough, as if it were sliding over gravel. “He wasn’t like the other dads. He worked at one of the plants cleaning out fish guts, but he carried a business card everywhere like he was the president of the United States or something, never left the house without a blazer, no matter what else he was wearing, Bermuda shorts or a bathing suit. He was always talking about his theories. He talked so goddamn much. He used to joke that’s why my mom left, because she couldn’t stand the talk. But I don’t know. He might’ve been right. As a kid I just wanted him to shut up sometimes, you know?” He leaned back, meeting Gemma’s eyes again, and she was startled by their darkness, their intensity. She couldn’t help thinking that Jake and Pete were complete opposites: Pete walked like he was jumping, Jake as if the gravity were double for him what it was for anyone else. Pete was all lightness, Jake all weight. “I was ashamed of him, you know? Even as a kid, I was ashamed. Does that make me a bad person?”
“No,” Gemma whispered.
He smiled as if he didn’t believe her. He was neatening his empty plate, lining up his silverware with the table, his cup and saucer with the plate. He was the neatest eater Gemma had ever seen. She was embarrassed to see a ketchup blob and some crumbs by her elbow, and quickly wiped them up when he wasn’t looking.
“My dad liked to say he missed his calling as a journalist. He always saw cover-ups, conspiracies, that kind of thing. JFK was killed because he was about to do a public memorandum on sentient life on other planets. Chicken pox was actually a biological agent released from a government lab. But Haven. Haven was his white whale.” Jake pressed his hands flat against the table, hard, as if he could squeeze the memory of his father out through his palms. Even his fingers were perfect. “He used to take me with him on fishing trips out on the marshes. Or at least, I thought they were fishing trips, at first.”
“Reconnaissance,” Gemma said.
Jake nodded. “Being on the marshes is like being inside a maze. Red maple and cordgrass, needle rush, palmetto—it grows ten, twelve feet high and swallows up the horizon. My dad had friends who’d gotten lost for hours, even days out there, floating around trying to lick water from plant leaves and eating grubs for dinner and there they were, not a half mile from camp. Once we got really close, within shouting distance of the island. Well, all of a sudden there must have been eight, ten guards with guns, shouting for us to turn around and head back. My dad was furious. I was just a kid, you know. They acted like they were about to blow our heads off. They probably would have. They’ve fired on people before, civilians. I know a fisherman from town, says he almost got a hand blown off. Says he thinks it must have been a sniper to get him from that distance. Of course they’re all from the military.” He shook his head, smiling faintly. “In all the years I’ve lived down here, I know of only one person who made it onto the island—some kid snuck under a bad bit of fence in the middle of the night. Got chucked out just as quickly.”
Gemma was having trouble following everything that Jake was saying, but she understood the main points: crazy-tight security, no one allowed to talk. “What about the people who work out there?” she asked. “The guards and the staff? Someone must be going on and off the island.”