A Sea of Unspoken Things

“Even when we were kids I knew that Johnny was different. He’d always found comfort in places that others deemed lonely.”

James initially characterizes Johnny through his solitary, introverted nature. He loves the outdoors and thrives in his chosen field of nature photography because he is well-equipped to spend long hours alone in remote locations. In this way, he contrasts with his sister, who is much more comfortable in cities and does not crave the isolation that her brother requires.

“Micah Rhodes had always been an expert in the unspoken, and there was a time when I was one of the few people who knew that language.”

James and Micah have a complicated relationship characterized by subtle intimacy. Both are devoted to Johnny and that devotion adversely impacts them. Johnny is troubled and volatile, and because they are afraid of hurting him, they keep their love secret. Micah’s ability to communicate nonverbally is an asset to them because much of their communication, when Johnny is around, must be clandestine.

“Olivia and I had been neck and neck in our pursuit of fine arts as we came up through high school, and I knew there was a time she believed she’d be shooting for National Geographic or doing editorial work somewhere by now.”

This quote reveals the tension between James and Olivia, which is grounded in similar interests and ambitions. Both girls wanted success, but James achieved her goals while Olivia did not. Olivia’s simmering resentment ultimately led to her to murder, highlighting how unrealized dreams can fester dangerously, especially in a place like Six Rivers that characters struggle to escape.

“The same link would wake from time to time, connecting us in an impossible, metaphysical way. I could feel what Johnny felt in those moments, almost like I was him. Spaces and things that held onto bits of my brother felt like conductors.”

James has an uncanny connection to Johnny. The imagery of “conductors” suggests a sensory connection rooted in space and memory. Their connection both upsets her and helps her to investigate the mystery surrounding Johnny’s death.

“Growing up, Johnny had gotten the bad twin rap early on.”

The characterization of Johnny as “the bad twin” introduces the trope of the twin dichotomy and characterizes Johnny as the troubled sibling. The novel gradually subverts this as it gradually builds a more complex portrait of a character with negative as well as positive attributes.

“I was still trying to get used to the ways that Micah had changed. Knowing him at 18 wasn’t the same thing as knowing him at 37. The kind of shifts that happen in that time were more felt than seen, but there were some things, like the width of him or the look of his hands, that were different now.”

When James returns to Six Rivers, she is confronted by the passage of time. Here, she notices the physical markers of Micah aging. Her observations underscore the differences between past and present, as well as between memory and reality.

“The Gorge was something like a rite of passage for teenagers in Six Rivers. Once you got to high school, the legends about the place found their way to you, and before long a new generation of kids with their drivers licenses were spending their Saturdays making the trip to the swimming pool.”

James describes the gorge as a symbolic space of transition and danger. Its legendary status among teens and its description as “a rite of passage” indicate it is a liminal space between childhood and adulthood as well as between innocence and knowledge. To James, it is the site where she first recognized her brother’s penchant for violence, causing her to flee the town. Later, it is also the site of Johnny’s death, causing her to reevaluate her relationship with her past.

“That single moment hung like a black cloud over everything that came before or after. We’d all lied about what had happened that night, a choice that had haunted me since. We’d never discussed it again, never rehashed the events or tried to talk it through. We’d made a decision, we’d stuck to it, and we’d done it for Johnny. Looking back, everything we’d done was for him.”

The Weight of Buried Secrets is one of this novel’s key themes, and this quote captures the psychological burden of secrecy and guilt. The simile comparing the moment of Griffin’s death to a “black cloud” that hangs over their lives ever since captures how that one decision has long-reaching negative impacts on several lives. James also reveals her understanding that her and Micah’s decisions to stick by Johnny were self-sacrificial and distorted by co-dependence. With this quote, James complicates Johnny’s character, painting a portrait of a deeply troubled individual.

“Only an hour before, I’d been kissing Micah in the dark, giving my body to him for the first time, but even that I couldn’t have. Everything always came back to Johnny.”

Johnny’s volatility and selfishness dominate James’s life, even during her moments of intimacy with Micah. Johnny has a firm emotional hold over both Johnny and Micah. The two feel duty-bound to protect Johnny, but they do not stop to consider the unreasonable nature of his demand that they break up.

“You changed my life.”

This note, written by Autumn to Johnny, becomes a key part of the novel’s suspense structure. Mystery surrounding the true nature of their relationship swirls in the town, with many suspecting that it was sexual and therefore inappropriate. Thus, the note is a symbol of misread intentions that nevertheless helps James arrive at the truth behind her brother’s death.

“I remembered what it was like to be on the edge of adulthood. How tiny the steps were between one thing and another. You could just wake up one day and be standing on the other side of a line you didn’t remember crossing. For Johnny, I’d done it many times.”

James meditates on the blurred lines between adulthood and adolescence, reflecting that Johnny’s immaturity and impulsivity when they were growing up forced her to assume responsibilities prematurely. While she did this out of love and loyalty, this quote also subtly acknowledges that this pressure was solely on her—Johnny did not cross into “the other side of the line” for her.

“When Johnny got himself into trouble, there was a protocol. Micah and I took care of it.”

This quote clarifies the dysfunctional dynamic between Johnny, Micah, and James. Micah and James take a caretaking role in Johnny’s life, helping him to cover up a variety of mistakes and missteps. This ultimately enables much of Johnny’s problematic behavior. Johnny’s volatility, in turn, adversely impacts Micah and James’s burgeoning relationship.

“I could see that Micah believed it. And why wouldn’t he? He hadn’t felt what I did. He hadn’t almost audibly heard that scream of fury resounding through my brother’s head. I was the only one who knew, in that moment, how badly Johnny wanted to hurt Griffin Walker.”

There are many mysteries and secrets in this novel, but James and Johnny alone know the truth about the mystery of Griffin’s death. James’s psychic link with Johnny gives her insight into what Johnny was feeling during the moment when he pushed Griffin off of the cliff. Unlike Micah and everyone else in town, James knows that it wasn’t an accident. Her knowledge becomes a burden: She realizes that she cannot stay in Six Rivers with her brother since she is terrified of his violent tendencies. This highlights the theme of The Weight of Buried Secrets.

“The harshness of the environment made things grow differently here, and maybe Six Rivers was like that too, maybe that’s why Johnny said we were made in the dark.”

This quote highlights the theme of The Impact of Place on Identity, linking environment to identity. Johnny’s idea that they were “made in the dark” reflects not only their town’s remote location and the ominous character of the forest, but also their childhood abandonment as well. James concludes that Johnny’s darkness reflects the difficult nature of his circumstances.

“Micah had been the other problem. He wasn’t honest when I asked him if he and Johnny had been fighting, and I suspected that he hadn’t been telling me everything.”

Many of the characters in this novel are not what they seem to be. Part of this novel’s slow-burn suspense structure is to gradually reveal each character’s complexities. Johnny’s trust in Micah is complicated by secrecy, and this is symptomatic of many relationships in Six Rivers. Sadie, Ben, Autumn, and even Micah have dark sides that are not initially apparent to James, and figuring out these pieces of each person’s story become a key part of the process of unraveling the mystery of Johnny’s death.

“Maybe the truth was that Johnny had been showing me who he was for our entire lives. Maybe I’d just created a version of him in my head that I could live with.”

Johnny is a complex character whose many layers are revealed slowly. This is, in part, because James does not fully understand her brother, and her memories of him are clouded by guilt and denial. James has to admit the truth to herself about her brother in order to truly understand his identity.

“I loved my brother, but I knew I had to get away from him.”

James’s choice to leave Six Rivers is a key aspect of her characterization. She does not want to get stuck in her small town, but, more importantly, she wants to escape her brother. This is why she never returns. This quote reflects the duality in her feelings for Johnny: love mixed with fear.

“The news about Autumn had engulfed the entire town, and I could only imagine the rumors that had started, especially if there’d been gossip about Autumn and Johnny before.”

Six Rivers is a small, isolated town. The insular nature of its inhabitants and the rapidity with which gossip spreads are part of why James wants so badly to leave after high school. When she returns, she once again confronts the social dynamics of small-town life, noticing how rumor can obscure the truth.

“I struggled to find fault with Sadie. She had her reasons for not wanting Johnny to be Ben’s father, and I couldn’t deny that at least some of them might have been valid.”

Although Sadie is a murderer, James’s empathy for her reflects James’s own instincts to protect Johnny, even when his actions were morally wrong. Like James, Sadie is fiercely protective of her family and is willing to break the rules to protect her son. This complicates James’s grief over Johnny’s death.

“We could fill an ocean with the things we never said.”

James and Micah acknowledge that, in the past, they didn’t express their feelings to each other—the metaphor of the “ocean” emphasizes how much went unsaid between them. This had harmful consequences to their relationship and led to their continued, unhealthy relationship with Johnny.

“Even if I wanted you James, I was never going to be a guy in a tuxedo at an art show living in San Francisco with you.”

Micah and Quinn are foils, and Micah understands how different his life is from the one that James chose. Although he does make a show of putting on a tuxedo for James’s opening, they both understand that this gesture reflects his love for James but not his identity or the life he has to offer her. Micah is secure in his identity and his life choices, and he dons the tuxedo to show James that he cares about and values her work as an artist. This shows his desire to compromise for her while highlighting his authentic identity.

“Some people are just lucky, you know? People notice them, open doors and create opportunities. Autumn was just one of those people.”

Olivia’s words highlight her deep insecurity. She struggles to reconcile herself to the fact that her career never materialized while James’s took off. In order to cope with her own loss of opportunities, she re-casts Autumn and James as “lucky” rather than talented. By doing so, she no longer has to face the fact that her work was not good enough.

“History repeated itself in this forest, and in the years that Olivia was Autumn’s teacher, Olivia had relived her old experience as the less talented art student who never made it out of Six Rivers.”

Faced with Autumn’s talent, Olivia relives the old feelings of envy and inadequacy she felt for James. The forest becomes a symbolic space where old wounds are “repeated.” James, too, is forced to confront her emotional pain regarding Griffin’s death when Johnny is killed in the same spot.