Lady Sunshine

by Amy Mason Doan

  He picks out the biggest fragment and hands it to me—a piece of shell. “It took me a while to find them.”

  I don’t understand. “So a couple of shells made their way over here, off the trail, over the last twenty years? People kick them. It rains. Kids play.”

  “No. That’s not what this is.”

  His voice is tortured. Even worse than it sounded when he tried to take me here two weeks ago.

  “Then, what? Why are you—”

  “There was a real pile here once, Jackie. A whole cairn. But it was only here for a short time. Less than a day, actually.”

  I shake my head.

  “Yes. The shell cairns were moved once. The night Graham died. The whole line was shifted so he’d get lost in the woods.”

  “But—”

  “I know because I saw her move them.”

  He takes my hand, gently shapes it into a cup, and pours the dirt into it. Remainders of what was here for a short time, the night Graham got lost, and stumbled. And died.

  Flashing remnants in with the dark earth. Brighter than sand, because Graham only chose the brightest shells for his trail markers. I’m holding points of light.

  I want to get away. Up out of the trees where I can breathe, where what Shane’s hinting at isn’t suffocating me.

  I saw her move them.

  Clutching the dirt in my hand, I run. Heedless of rocks, roots, gopher holes, phantom trails and grown-over logging roads, all the perils that Willa had warned me about. All the things that can trip and confuse you. Hurt you. Send you in the wrong direction.

  “Jackie!”

  I have no idea where I am or where I’m going but I let instinct take over, because it knew I shouldn’t have come here. I should have listened to my pounding heart the day the paperwork arrived in Boston telling me I’d inherited the Kingstons’ home.

  “Jackie!” Shane’s calls grow faint, then disappear. But I keep running.

  The trees all look alike, the sun will soon be gone completely, there’s no sound of ocean or dinner bell or waterfall to orient me. It’s getting foggy, though I never learned to navigate by stars, anyway.

  I stumble and my knuckle meets something brittle. There’s a mound of white at my feet. A shell cairn.

  I’ve made it back to the markers. I count the little piles of shells as I pass them. Three, four...ten. I’m running so fast they blur into white streaks. Like neon. Like magic. I’m running so fast I can make it to the top before it’s too late. I can help him down, show him the way. Undo it all.

  After the last pile I come to the section of hillside that’s so steep it’s almost vertical. At the top, the trees huddle, like they’re afraid of falling. It’s dusk. Hard to see here.

  But the sound of the falls guides me: a sigh, then a whisper, then a roar.

  The shell cairns were moved...

  I fly into the open, the ocean so bright and sudden in front of me that at first I’m blinded.

  My lungs burn. And a single sentence throbs in my head, in time with my beating heart:

  I saw her move them.

  I saw her move them.

  Shane stumbles up behind me, panting, and he almost slips on the wet rocks that border the falls pool, but he rights himself in time. He rests his hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath. “Jackie? This isn’t how I wanted to...”

  I sink to the wet stones by his feet. The ocean’s in front of me, the falls are behind me. Both are magical. You could go a whole lifetime and not be lucky enough to see anything so beautiful.

  But instead I look down at the clump of spangled dirt in my hand.

  “I need you to tell me what you know,” I say numbly. What you think you know.

  He sits and I feel him staring at me, but I can’t take my eyes off of that handful of earth. The roar of the falls behind us is so loud, so steady, it mutes everything else—the gentle music of early evening I’ve become familiar with, fond of again—frogs chirping, the occasional, distant calls of an owl. I hear only that never-ending rush of water.

  And then Shane’s voice. “That it was her fault he fell that night. Angela’s. She moved the shells so he’d get lost coming back from here. She kept looking over her shoulder, checking to make sure no one could see. She was wearing her green work shirt, and that green army cap over her hair. She used that old newspaper bag she carried everywhere. Swept the shells into the bag with a piece of bark, then poured them out into new piles to form a different path. Leading southeast instead of east. They were fighting...they fought a lot. I used to watch her, crying in the woods...and I didn’t realize it then, but I’m sure, now, that she wanted him to miss his big show.

  “Jackie? I saw Angela move them. But they were moved back before anyone else noticed. I know because I’m the one who did it... I’m the one who moved them back where they were supposed to be. After one of the sheriff’s men knocked on our door looking for Graham.”

  My head’s roaring louder than the falls. I saw Angela move them.

  “They came over that night, asking if we’d seen Graham. Because his manager was furious he’d blown off his ride and no one was at the Sandcastle. And I didn’t say anything...but before anyone could see what she’d done, I snuck up here and put the trail back to how it usually was.”

  “You put it back...”

  “I didn’t want Angela getting in trouble for tricking Graham. My dad was always complaining about the Kingstons, Angela’s pot plants. He was always threatening to call the cops on them so they’d move. I’d seen her once, yanking out pot plants in a little clearing in the woods when my dad sent the cops over the ridge to poke around about a noise complaint. She’d looked over her shoulder the same way that day as that night at the falls. Like she was nervous.

  “I never told her that I moved the shells. Or anyone. And Angela wouldn’t talk about Graham’s death, at Arbor View...she’d only talk about the album. How great it was going to be. But it was Angela’s fault he got lost that night. And I know it’s hard to hear.

  “But I think—no, I’m sure she wanted to make peace before she died. Choose Peace, remember the bumper sticker on that broken-down orange van the Kingstons had? That’s why she wanted this album to happen. Jackie? She must’ve blamed herself, even if it was an accident. Not just for Graham, but for Willa being brokenhearted about him dying, all of it... Are you okay?

  “It’s all right,” he says, his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure Angela never imagined he could die.”

  I stop breathing.

  “Jackie? I wasn’t sure if I should tell you or not. But I decided you had a right to hear the truth about what happened that night, and why I think Angela was trying to...atone. With the album.”

  I want to hold on to this moment. I want it so desperately, as desperately as I wish I could go back to that night he’s talking about, go back in time and stop it.

  But I can never go back.

  I stare over at the woods that hide the falls trail.

  “I know it hurts,” he says, caressing my arm. “I know it’s just a stupid bumper sticker slogan. But Angela deserved peace. We all do.”

  “Not me,” I whisper.

  His hand is featherlight on my arm, his voice even softer. “Of course you do.”

  I can’t look at him.

  “It wasn’t Angela you saw. It was our plan. Willa’s and mine.”

  His hand stops, clenches my elbow in shock. “I thought...because of the bag, and her clothes...the way her hair was tucked away. I was so sure it was Angela. It was you two?”

  I shake my head. “Not two. One.”

  “You mean?”

  I say it softly: “One of us changed her mind.”

  36

  Still Time

  August 25, 1979

  Six p.m.

  I sat in the field, just inside
the gate, my diary in my lap.

  I’d been down here for half an hour, and there’d been no sign of Graham. No ring from the dinner triangle, aborting the plan.

  Crunching gravel—Graham’s limousine pulled up and stopped outside the gate. The driver looked confused by the rows of assorted VW bugs, vans, motorcycles and woodies sloppily parked outside the gate.

  He was surely thinking what the hell is this place? Just like my driver had back in June when he dropped me off. Just like I had.

  He got out and again I was glad that Willa wasn’t around. The fancy driver in his black uniform was one more thing that might have made her take pity on Graham and back out, run into the forest and find him just in time.

  I walked up, casual. “Hi.”

  “Hi there. I’m supposed to pick up a...” He looked at a notebook. “...Graham Kingston?” Zero recognition. Poor Graham.

  “It says here he’s going to meet me in front of the house. Is this the front of the house?” He looked around doubtfully.

  “This is where his drivers always come. You can’t get up to the front door. It’s too steep and muddy. I’ll go find him.”

  “Hey, thanks!” he said, relieved. “I should cut you in on my tip.”

  “No problem! My cousin and I are catching a ride, too, actually. I can’t wait to get down to the city. I’m sure he’ll be ready soon.”

  I headed up the hill and darted into the trees so I could watch him.

  He leaned against the car, smoking and reading the paper. I watched time tick by on my gold watch.

  Ten minutes, no alarm from Kate’s dinner triangle.

  Twenty minutes, no bell. The driver looked around, wondering what was taking me so long.

  Half an hour. Forty minutes.

  No sign of Willa or Graham. No one searching for him in the field; it was deserted except for a couple of little kids playing. No one to ask what I was still doing here, or if I’d seen him, or Willa.

  Everyone going to the show had left hours ago so they could catch the whole thing.

  The driver tossed his newspaper into the car window impatiently and walked to the gate.

  “Hey!” I waved, running down to him. “I don’t think he’s here. We’re looking, but someone said he decided to catch a ride earlier, with someone else.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry, he’s always doing stuff like this.”

  He looked over my shoulder doubtfully. “Is there a phone I can use?”

  “We don’t have a phone. But there’s a booth downhill, by the beach. Did you see that place called General Custard’s?”

  “The ice-cream joint?”

  “Yeah. It’s in their parking lot.”

  He stared at me, unsure. I gave him my best Vaughn Academy Chapel smile. “I guess my cousin and I will have to hitch a ride with someone else.”

  “Well. Okay. Thanks.”

  “Sure! Have a good day!”

  It would take the driver fifteen minutes to find the phone booth and figure out the phone didn’t work. Then, if he still bothered to call his dispatcher, and if he got lucky and headed the right way to the closest working phone booth—ten miles north at the truck stop—that was another half hour. He wouldn’t be back for an hour, if at all.

  I walked to the bowl and sat. Night would soon fall; we’d nearly done it.

  I didn’t realize it until just then: I wasn’t just mildly worried that Willa could change her mind. I’d expected it.

  But she hadn’t. I should’ve been triumphant—the plan had worked. Instead I felt only jittery. Slightly queasy.

  The boy Graham had been talking to at the picnic bench earlier sat in the center of the grass not far from me, yawning. Staring down at the guitar pick in his hand like it was the most precious thing he’d ever seen. A splinter from the true cross.

  His mom collected him, carrying him away to their distant cabin, and I was the only one out on the darkening field.

  I went to the treehouse to wait, even though Willa wouldn’t be back for hours. I paced around inside, played the Walkman Graham gave me, tidied our carpet of fabric scraps. Seven-thirty. Eight. Nine.

  And then it came over me, a cold wave like the one that had almost drowned me the night I’d gone surfing.

  I couldn’t do it.

  But it was okay. There was still time to stop it. Still time to find him. A couple of cars in the parking lot to whisk him to his show.

  I ran toward the falls trail. Still time. If he hadn’t strayed too far into the woods yet. If we sped a hundred miles an hour down the highway, if there wasn’t too much traffic. It was summer. There might not be too much traffic. The other acts were probably running long. He was supposed to go on near the end, anyway; he’d been proud of that, that he wasn’t an opening act. In the morning, he’d laugh about almost missing his big comeback.

  Grateful we’d saved the day, he’d hold me and Willa close, and we’d get him some other kind of help for the ugliness, recruit Kate or his friends or...

  Still time.

  I clambered up the trail. So dark, but there was still time, and even without the shells’ help I thought I could remember the way from the one other night I’d come up here—that blissful, infinite-seeming night that Colin and Willa and Liam and I had camped on the beach and spied on Graham. How brave and graceful he’d looked, his long body arcing out like a sail in the moonlight between two tree trunks.

  A flash of white at my feet. The first cairn. Right where it always was. Twenty yards later, the second one. The third, the fourth. Willa hadn’t moved them.

  Relief flooded through me, the sweet conviction that Willa and I were the same, that I hadn’t let her down.

  She had changed her mind, too.

  * * *

  I waited in the treehouse, snug in the quilt Willa and I had bought at the thrift store, passing the time by playing tapes in the Walkman.

  There’d been no sign of Willa, probably because she was sheepish about changing her mind, afraid to face me. Or, no—maybe she’d driven down with Graham in someone’s car. Gone to the concert as we’d pretended we were going to, and would stay over in the city with his friends. I wouldn’t see her until morning. I wondered what she’d told him about me not going.

  But I was so eager to tell her it was okay, that I understood because I’d felt exactly the same way. I hated that it might be morning before I could reassure her about her change of heart.

  I dozed off around three, woke with one foam Walkman headphone stuck to my cheek, the other folding my ear back so it ached.

  Near dawn I heard the familiar scritch-scratching of Willa reaching for the rope ladder with the long shepherd’s crook branch. I threw the rope down to her, so giddy I almost flew down with it.

  I couldn’t wait to talk to her, to celebrate our joint decision. She’d say it was almost a psychic connection, a mystical event, or nonevent. Kismet.

  “Don’t worry, I changed my mind, too!” I said, the second her hair appeared, glinting in the moonlight. It was too dark for me to see her face.

  “You...”

  “I changed my mind, too, Wills.” I hugged her once she got on the platform. “You’re freezing. Have you been outside all night? It’s okay. I know you changed your mind about the shells, too, because we’re the same, I know you’re worried about telling me but it’s okay, we’re the same and I’m so glad.”

  She trembled from cold.

  “You’re exhausted, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here, sit. Bundle up.” I wrapped the quilt around her. “Did you end up going to the show with him?”

  “Oh... No. I didn’t feel like it.”

  “So I guess he got a ride down to the city with someone else? The driver didn’t come back?”

  “A ride... Yes, I think so. He must have.”


  “Oh, good. Did you talk to him, or...”

  No answer.

  “Wills?” And then I knew why she was so foggy, so quiet. I’d been relieved, thinking only of tonight.

  But she was in despair again, because we still had a horrible problem to solve. That’s why she’d stayed out in the woods so long, distraught. Of course it was.

  I hugged her again, bundled her tight in the quilt and stroked her fog-damp hair. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure something else out when the sun’s up. Just sleep.”

  * * *

  But the morning was chaos. We woke to voices foreign in their urgency, their efficiency. Willa was reluctant to climb down the rope. I had to go first, help her down the last bit.

  But it was so early, so noisy, I understood her confusion, her uncharacteristic slow pace.

  We made our way around the house to the porch. Uniformed men. Dogs barking. The engine of a sheriff’s truck grinding up the field, right up to the house. It left hideous tracks in the grass. Apparently the sheriff had come by in the night, sent in a rage by Graham’s manager, Augie, when he heard that Graham blew off his car service. But no one had answered the door at the main house. Kate and Angela were gone, everyone else was at the show except a handful of sleeping nonentities, Willa was off in the woods. I was in the treehouse listening to the Walkman.

  And of course there was no phone.

  Two facts took shape:

  Graham had never made the show.

  Graham hadn’t been seen since he climbed up to his falls yesterday.

  “It’ll be okay,” I told Willa, cradling her in my lap, as we waited in her bedroom for news. “He knows this land better than anyone. He probably had one beer too many. Or a bad joint. Maybe he just freaked out about the show and wanted to back out and couldn’t tell anyone?”

  She nodded, closed her eyes.

  “He’s probably meditating somewhere beautiful, or writing a song about spending the night in the woods. Things worked out the way they were supposed to. And we didn’t even need to do anything. It’s going to be fine.”