Chapter 1

Turtle looks to the horizon in pain. The burn distracts him from the unnatural angle of his leg. 

Moisture rising from the ground fills his nostrils with the smell of impermanence. Somewhere alongside a river Turtle’s family waits for him. They must. 

Turtle’s mother abandoned her eggs shortly after she buried them in the sandy soil, as mother turtles do. By the time he crawled out of the dirt, Turtle’s siblings had left him in search of water. Abandonment stings, but bad hatchling math can be forgiven.  

Turtle sees no danger in the desert and jungle ahead. He’s never known an adult to teach him to fear what he cannot see. 

At the age now when kids get bored and resist, questions of who and why stir him. Questions about the family he lost long ago. Answers requiring his three healthy legs to carry him home.


The back seat of Mom’s SUV no longer protects thirteen-year-old Imogen from the world behind a wall of leather. She lost faith in the cycle of life peddled by adults afraid to tell the truth about the line connecting birth and death. Round and gently sloping. Bullshit. A week ago she learned some lives cheat the circle. 

Dad’s family never understood why anyone in the tiny shiretown of La Grange, Vermont would buy a Range Rover. One of those vehicles driven by southern New England types from places with car washes and paved driveways. 

As the vehicle’s wheels crunch the gravel leading home, Imogen leans over to look out the front window. Someone’s got to watch for the detours possible in the cycle of life.

Mom looks over her shoulder from the passenger seat. “Please don’t lay on your dress, Bissie—” 

Imogen entered the world two years after her brother Jeremy. As if he knew she would become his protector, he elevated her status with a tender mis-pronunciation of “baby sister,” and Bissie became her nickname for life.

“—It’s going to get wrinkled.” 

Bissie has no intention of wearing the uncomfortable black uniform again. As of this afternoon, she has no more brothers to bury.

The driveway approaches, and Bissie squirms in wrinkled defiance, returning blood to her legs. She’s aching to jump from the car, change into pajamas, and sleep for a year. As the wheels grind, Bissie sees something tumble across the gravel. Geometric designs camouflage the object crossing the crumbly road at the speed of a— 

“Turtle…Stop!”

Dad retreated from the world this week, as if awaiting an explanation of God’s cruel providence. The distress in Bissie’s voice interrupts his vigil, and he slams the brakes in a desperate attempt to reclaim control. 

Turtle disappears under the car in a cloud of dust. Bissie snaps out of her seatbelt and fears she’s too late to save a life for the second time this week. 

In the shadow of the front bumper, a painted turtle lumbers toward the stormwater ditch on the other side of the road.

Bissie drops to her knees for a closer look. She smiles then resents the sense of relief. She’s supposed to be mourning. 

Turtle carries on, oblivious to the frenzy that nearly returned him to the earth moments earlier. 

Mom leans over the hood and watches Bissie ruin her dress in the dirt. The girl deserves to be scolded. Her brother deserved to live. Mom swallows her accusations as Turtle defies the normal distribution of survival and death. 

“She’s a lucky—”

“It’s a boy, Dad.” 

He doesn’t ask. 

“Don’t touch…Your allergies.” 

“I’m allergic to fish, Mom. And I don’t plan on eating him.”

Turtle hobbles across the uneven terrain, showing no regard for the audience he’s attracted. 

“I want to bring him home.” 

“Oh, honey. We have no space for a turtle.” 

Just like Mom to expect a house equipped with designated turtle areas.

“The best thing you can do for that guy is leave him be. Let him live his life in the wild.”

Unlike her brother, Bissie sees what the adults raising her do not. “He’s all alone.”

“I don’t think turtles live—” Dad stops mid-sentence before proving himself wrong a second time in the conversation.

“And he’s injured.”

The adults take a closer look.

“See. He’s limping. It looks like his back leg.” 

The difference between a turtle’s healthy lumber and a limp requires an eye for nuance—and a child’s art of persuasion.

“Look at that!” Dad beams like a farmer's son over creatures discovered outdoors. 

Mom shivers, no doubt picturing the maintenance. “How are we going to get him home? We can’t just carry him in our hands—” She looks to Dad, lost in nostalgia. “—Can we?”

“Mom, our driveway’s right there.” Bissie points to the mailbox a hundred yards up the road. 

Her parents whisper scenarios and implications while Bissie removes a shoe. The opening for her foot was practically designed to hold a seven-inch turtle. “Turtle can make his own choice.”

She places the shoe on the ground between her and Turtle. Turtle ceases forward motion and retracts his neck into his shell. The gold lettering on the footbed of the shoe glitters in the sun. Turtle extends his neck as if investigating a possible source of food. 

“Come on, little fella. I won’t hurt you.” 

The muscles on Turtle’s forehead contract, pulling his eyes wide open. It’s a familiar look of cautious desire Bissie has seen in other animals. A deer contemplating an open field. Her brother scanning a room of kids he wanted to call his friends. 

Something sparked Turtle’s curiosity, and before second thoughts set in, Bissie slides her shoe forward, making Turtle’s decision for him. She covers him securely with her hand, stands, and turns to her parents. “See you back at the house.”

Dressed in their finest, standing in the center of a dirt road, the adults resemble a black and white photo of old-time outlaws—if you ignore the luxury SUV in the background—expressionless faces hiding dreams and despair from the viewer.

Bissie removes her other shoe, places it on the hood, and starts walking. She’s been through too much this week to let the sting of gravel under her feet deter her. 

Mom swallows her insistence on tidiness. Dad surrenders control of the moment. Neither know how they’ll survive burying their fifteen-year-old son this morning, but their daughter just showed them the only way forward is to start moving.