The warm, enveloping air was slowly being replaced by the cool breezes that signaled the change to fall. Rich greens that adorned the tree tops started to mingle with burnt oranges, dull yellows, and sunset reds with hints of pink. The geese honking above the vibrant October sky filled the silence of the Chesapeake Bay lapping against the shoreline. Fiona stared across the stillness from atop the raft that was beached for the summer, slowly circling her ankle around the tiny pebbles and cigarette butts lodged in the chilled sand.

Fiona made this spot upon the beached raft her spot. Her family came down the street countless days during the summer months to take their boat out on the Bay. They came down to swim and soak the rays, but Fiona came to stare across the water and dream about the depths of the water and their secrets. This spot let her mind relax, let her thoughts drift, let her remember.

* * *

On a warm, July evening, Fiona’s brother committed suicide by untethering the raft that was positioned by the anchor in the murky water, floated out about 50 feet from the roped off safety section that raft was kept in, tied an old, beached cinder block loosely around his ankle, and dropped into the Bay, letting the fresh water suffocate his lungs.

He left no letter, just his water-absorbed, wrinkly shell a boater found six days later. His death was slow, just like the way his impending depression had overcome him in the months leading to his never-ending swim.

* * *

A breeze shook the maple leaves at the end of the street where Fiona starred across the Bay. Her mentally drained, young wrinkles crinkling across her cheek bones, her nose a light hue of rose from the crispy air. Devon’s death loomed overhead in the overcast sky as Fiona imagined him sitting atop the raft, slowly pushing forward with his arms to get further from the ropes. She imagined him without a smile plastered on his face, a face with determination to get away from the Earth that kept him grounded and make his way to the sea-floor he was placed on a few months after his adoption at the age of two. She couldn’t remember the last time he laughed, just the last months before he walked out the door for a walk and didn’t come home.

* * *

Devon wore a light rain jacket over his favorite band tee. Acid washed jeans clung to his legs, his black Vans clasped to his feet. He was getting ready for his evening walk, a walk he always needed to take alone to clear his mind, despite Fiona’s efforts to accompany him.

Fiona saw the way her brother changed from the happy teenager, to the sunken face of someone who kept being battered with news.

Before the start of his sophomore year of college, the admissions office called in regards to his all-inclusive ride to engineering school. The scholarship was revoked after he failed to meet the grade requirements.

After a long conversation with his parents, with Fiona at the table to witness the disappointment written over their parent’s faces, Devon decided it would be best to take a semester off.

Not even a week after realizing his education would be on hold, his girlfriend, Samantha, told him she didn’t love him anymore because things had changed. The only things that changed was Devon wasn’t on campus that semester, and Samantha’s profile picture with another guy stared back on the computer screen.

Fiona knew something had changed when Samantha didn’t come to family dinner that Sunday. When she went to ask Devon, she listened outside Devon’s bedroom door as he and their mother talked about love. Devon didn’t say much, just made some disgruntled noises.

A few days passed before Devon yelled at the top of his lungs, startling the household as they all ran to see what the fuss was about. When Fiona busted into the room first, she saw Devon on his knees, pounding his fists on his mattress with tears streaming down his face. He had gotten a text the night before from his best friend, Rodney, saying how he felt like he wasn’t worth it. Devon dismissed the messages, thinking his friend was messing around like he always did about death. It all changed the next morning when he woke up to a voicemail from Rodney’s mother saying he was found by his roommate strung in the closet by his skinny neck.

Devon became quiet after Rodney died. He started taking more walks.

* * *

Fiona had spaced out looking across the Bay, trying to remember all the details she missed leading up the Devon’s suicide. After Rodney let the rope strung in the closet kill him, Devon became increasingly more interested in the boating rope their dad kept in the shed. She would see Devon from her window, measuring, cutting, and knotting the rope. He would tie it around trees, barrels, anything that had an excuse for a rope to go around it.

When Devon would allow Fiona walk with him to the Bay, she would sit on the benches at the edge of the sand, while Devon wadded out to the raft in the ropes, seeing if he could hold his breath long enough to tie, and untie, the rope that held the anchor to the raft. She would watch his head go below the surface, imagining the small creatures that made their home on the underside of the raft being moved by her brother’s intrusion. She would keep her eyes scanning across the surface of the brown water, looking for the common ripple that indicated water snakes traveling to the rocks by the docks that lined the shoreline.

Fiona used to whistle to her brother when she saw the ripple of the water snakes, but Devon hadn’t listened to anyone for almost three weeks, bringing no purpose to letting him know the slippery creatures were traveling through his path. Nothing seemed to bother with Devon, even himself.

* * *

Devon’s motive to float out in the Bay and drop below the surface came just three days prior, when a letter from a county prison came in the mail addressed to Devon.

The letter contained written descriptions of how Devon’s father slaughtered his mother and why his father did it in the first place, from the written words of the slaughterer himself.

Devon, having read his mail, angrily sought after his parents to ask why they had kept this secret from him. It was no secret to Fiona, or Devon, that he had been adopted as a young toddler, since his home life had turned tragic. His parents always told him they didn’t know what he had come from, but that was a well-kept lie.

What Fiona found out alongside Devon that evening was that the same letter had been getting sent to him for years, under his biological birth name, Kyle Brupt, which was thrown out every time, assuming it was the wrong address. Not even Fiona could figure out how that monster got Devon’s given name.

After the reveal of Devon’s past late one October evening, Fiona sauntered upstairs to his room to give him someone to talk to. Fiona, being three years younger and the biologically daughter of Devon’s adoptive parents, always looked to Devon as her own brother, since she had never known anything other than a brother.

Devon stayed quiet, just letting Fiona’s kind company surround his silence.

* * *

Fiona stood from the beached raft, not letting the Bay move from her eyesight. She knew exactly where Devon had plunged when he went 50 feet passed the roped section where the raft was kept in the summer. As children, they always tried to see who could make it to the buoy signaling the Bay depth, see who was the lesser chicken of the two.

She started walking towards the lapping pools that touched the shoreline. As she continued to look over the Bay, she imagined a sea God emerging from the murk, telling her to turn around because she was too chicken to go into the cold water. The sea God would tell her that the sea floor was closed for playing, unlike it was just two weeks prior for Devon who ignored his warnings.

She stared the God in his majestic, sea-eroded face, while she placed one foot in the water. A shock of cold painfully shot up her spine as the sea God shook his head in disbelief as he slowly faded from her vision.

She had a cinder block in her hands, one she took from her shed at home, with a boating rope tied around the block, with a loose loop at the opposite end.

* * *

Fiona missed the last sign before Devon mingled with the sea God that encouraged him to go further into the water.

She should have known something was going to go terribly wrong when Devon began cleaning his room. The nautical blue room, with anchors, fishing nets, and wooden accents, was barely noticeable under the mounds of laundry he refused to put away. Everything from his ancient dresser with old copper hooks to his mapping desk that was on the ship of their Great, Great Grandfather’s whaling ship had been wiped clean from debris. Even Devon’s closet with the rope handles was being crafted into an untouched work of art.

Fiona, for whatever internal pull she felt, decided it was a good time to give Devon his birthday present. His birthday wasn’t for another two days.

* * *

Both of Fiona’s feet entered the Bay as she continued to shuffle forward to go deeper into the water. She was soon up to her shins in cold, October water before the sea God appeared before Fiona.

The same face starred at the cold faced Fiona, slowly raising its arms to raise the tide. Fiona scowled back at the beast as the sea level slowly began to creep up her waste. She turned around towards the raft she was just sitting at, the same raft Devon had drifted with until he found his final resting spot in the Bay.

The sea God let out a tremendous laugh as Fiona kept pushing forward, chest deep in the murk.

* * *

As Devon was folding shirt after shirt and placing it into his dresser with the copper handles, Fiona paddled her feet to her room to grab the gift she purchased for Devon for his birthday.

She floated outside of his door before walking in with her hands outstretched.

“What’s this Fi?” Devon asked.

“Your birthday present. I know it’s in two days, but I just want to give it to you now.”

A faint smile crept on the side of Devon’s mouth as he began to slowly tear the newspaper wrapping from the tape that bounded it down.

Sitting in his hands was a beautiful kinetic watch. Fiona had gotten the idea from the magazine tear-out that was pinned to the cork-board in their kitchen with a note scribbled on it, signaling that Devon wanted it for Christmas.

“Fi, you shouldn’t have spent this kind of money,” Devon said.

“Happy Birthday, Devon,” Fiona said.

Devon buckled the watch to his left wrist and tapped it a few times to make sure the ticker was tocking. Fiona saw the happiness glimmer in his eyes only for a moment, before the haze of the weeks prior came back over his face.

“Thank you, Fi. You really didn’t have to do this. I love it,” Devon said.

Fiona just smiled back, unknowing that the watch would only get to be worn for one full day.