I look up at the marmalade light coming from the house. I can smell food even from here. Family.
The sound of crickets and the trees buckling under the breeze seems to rise around us as the sky lightens even more.
Jason tugs on my hand and we walk to the house. He pauses just before the front porch steps. “For a while it was just me and Kidd and Neve. When I met her she was dumpster diving and these guys … she couldn’t defend herself. All we had was each other. I was just trying to stay with Kidd, keep my house. Until we found the cave and everything changed.”
“It’s still changing.”
“Yeah, it is. And that’s why we have to take care of each other. It’s nothing to do with you. I just don’t want Neve to—”
“—think you’re going to stop,” I finish.
We hear the front door creak open, the sounds of footsteps on the porch, and we glance at each other. Jason steps away from me.
I understand.
Elle is spooning rice and beans into bowls and Neve is finishing her food when we walk in, keeping a civilized distance between us when all I want to do is glue myself to Jason.
“I was almost worried,” she says, not looking up. “Almost.”
Neve pops a piece of a roll in her mouth. “Finally. You guys are back.”
Elle puts the bowls in front of us and sprinkles them with lime juice.
I sit down to eat, but once I’m in front of the food, what I saw by the trees comes back to me with so much force my breath catches.
“What is it?” Jason says.
“You’re not going to eat?” Elle puts her hands on her hips. “Because I know you and your mom aren’t used to it, but processed food is poison. Your body needs actual nutrients—”
“I saw the Sand Snatcher.”
Jason and Neve look at each other and Jason’s face twists into a question.
“Right before I found you,” I say to Elle, “I saw the Sand Snatcher when I was looking for Jason. I know who he is.” I shake my head. “I mean, I know what he is.”
“You saw him?” Elle is standing completely still. “Visually?”
It’s like time and everything else in the world have stopped, waiting for my answer, and it scares me. My stomach starts pulsing with something thick and dangerous.
“I saw him, or I was him or something,” I try to explain.
Neve shoves her chair back from the table and puts her elbows on her knees. Her hair falls over one eye and the one that’s left is a dark slit. “But that’s not how it works. You have to see them in person, so you probably didn’t even—”
“Neve, let her finish.” Elle leans over her and takes Neve’s bowl, in motion again. “It’s not likely, or usual, but it’s possible. Julianna had that level of sight. Maybe Mayhem has it, too.”
Neve grabs a lettuce leaf out of the salad bowl and munches on it. “Because she’s a Brayburn?” I don’t miss the tinge of bitterness.
“This has nothing to do with blood, Neve. It’s a little different in all of us. Maybe it’s more developed in her in this one way. All I’m saying is it’s possible.” Elle places her hands on my shoulders. “Go on, Mayhem. Find him for us if you can.”
Elle’s fingertips seem to send energy through my skin. I try to find the image again, the way it came before. It’s like I’m searching a dry-cleaning rack for the right image. And then it’s before me. I let myself dive into it, and even though it’s disorienting and sickening, I invite it back in. “He was up high or something,” I murmur. “He was with a woman and then—” I pause as the images come crashing in like waves, down my throat, push into my lungs, and squeeze.
Up high. Up high.
It’s so cold in him. It’s lonely and plastic, fake and empty.
“Well?” Neve throws one foot up on the chair next to me. “Spit it out!”
I press past the discomfort, make myself come back here, to the kitchen in the house on the hill, to the warmth and the smell of beans and flowers, and I choke out the words.
“It means he’s up high,” I say.
A lifeguard.
“What do you mean up high?” Neve says. “What does that even mean?”
“He’s a lifeguard.”
“Watching everyone,” Neve says.
“Hiding in plain sight,” Elle says. She takes a breath. “Well I’ll be damned.” She spoons some food into a bowl. “Eat, then get some rest. You’re going to need it.”
TWENTY-FIVE
LYLE
The phone rings through the house. Everyone is asleep around me, and Kidd has found her way to my side and is holding on to my waist. The phone rings again and no one stirs, only me, and I can’t even move my body. I glance at the clock on the card table. It reads 7:02. I pry myself out of bed, wobbling. I stumble back down. I grab for the nearby jug of water and drink. By the time I can breathe properly and there’s sensation in all my toes, the phone has stopped ringing.
I stretch my arms over my head and look around the room. Hopefully there’s some kind of laundry day coming, because it’s starting to smell musty.
The phone rings again, clanging around the house so loudly the birds start up from outside. When no one answers after the third ring I make it down the stairs to the phone in the hallway and pick up. “Hello,” I say.
“Good morning,” Lyle says. He says it like it hasn’t been a month since the last time we spoke, like I didn’t run from him to save my own life, and Roxy’s. His voice is the same old smarmy ooze as it ever was. “May, that you?” He waits, then chuckles. “Good thing. I was afraid it would be that aunt of yours, and I don’t think she likes me much.”
I almost drop the phone. My hands want to let go.
“Third time’s the charm,” he says. “Sometimes you just got to let the phone ring-a-ling, you know?”
I hold the phone so tight my knuckles are turning colors.
“May,” he says. “You’re not being very considerate. You’re not even going to say hello?” Consideration. Respect. Submission. Lyle’s rule of three.
“No,” I say, letting the word dangle between us.
“Your mama there?”
“No!” I snap, not knowing whether it’s true. I’m not going to tell him I haven’t seen my mother in days.
“I’m just checking on you all,” he says, acting like I asked him a question. “To be honest, May, I’ve been wanting to see if you’re ready to come home.” There’s a pause. “Your room is all set for you, your mama’s new car just sitting here waiting for her.” I stay quiet. “May, can I talk to her?”
“I told you she’s not here.” I look to the bedroom door, which is closed, weave my finger through the coiled black cord.
“At seven a.m.?” He pauses. “Well, I guess there’s a silver lining, because it gives me the chance to talk to you.” His voice softens, goes from that aw-shucks, well-meaning tone to something more intimate. “Can I talk to you? Really talk, me to you?”
I don’t answer, but I don’t hang up.
“I know it all went wrong,” he says. “I lost my temper. I would never argue with that. I shouldn’t have done that. I know, I know I shouldn’t have put my hands on you, but you have to understand, that journal was a shock for me. The things you said? They were nasty. But now we can put all that behind us. Everyone has had some time now, to think.”
“Behind us,” I repeat, looking out the window to the treetops and the sky, anywhere that takes me away from this conversation.
“Thing is, if you forgive me, Roxy will.” This is an admission he doesn’t want to make and I can hear in his voice how it costs him. “She told me she doesn’t like it there, that it’s a strange place and her sister’s in charge and God only knows what you’re up to.”
This brings me back to the moment with a sour-tasting jolt.
“You’re lying.” He has to be. Roxy can’t want to go back to him again.
“Well, that’s just plain rude.” The arrogance is back. I can hear the victory i
n his voice. He got to me. Consideration. Respect. Submission. “You know it’s what’s best for your mother. She’s not going to make it there. Between you and me, May, she was drunk as a two-dollar hooker when she called me, just begging to come on home. I told her I’d come get her. You think anyone else would put up with that? No. That’s the answer. But I do because I love her and she is my wife in spite of her flaws. And you know what she said to me?” He laughs, savage as a hyena. “She said she couldn’t come unless you told her it was okay. You believe that? My wife said she needs her daughter’s permission to come home to her husband.” His voice is a snarl now. We’ve only been on the phone for a few minutes and he’s already run through all the versions of himself.
“If she said it, she didn’t mean it. You think she would say that if she were sober?”
There’s a small snorting noise.
“No way, Lyle. She’s done with you. I heard her tell you to leave us alone.”
Lyle takes a deep breath. I hear him trying to steady himself, can picture him leaned into the kitchen counter back in Taylor.
“Sweetheart,” he says, “you don’t understand what’s between me and Roxy and you never did. It’s complicated and it isn’t always easy, but she’s my girl.”
This is his final injury, the last knife he has to throw: that he somehow knows my mother better than I do, that he’s secretly more important, and that Roxy would choose him over me.
I swell with all the things I want to say. I don’t know how he can believe his own words, be so dead set against his part in all of it. And then the voice saying maybe he’s right. Maybe Roxy really does love him more than me. Maybe she misses him so bad, she would go behind my back, sober or not. And the worst is, if he would just leave us the hell alone, I wouldn’t have to think any of these thoughts at all.
I want to hurt him. I want to hurt him bad. For every time I have been wounded by him, for every time he has hurt my mother. I also want to hang up, but I can’t because I have more to say and I hope this will be my only chance to say it, that I will never have to speak to Lyle St. James again. I hope I can say this in a way that sticks to his ribs even if it’s something he doesn’t want to hear.
“She’s not your girl.” I grit my teeth against the words. “You gave her a house and a car and a place to run when she was mourning over the man she actually loves. My father. She used you and you fell for it and she let you beat the shit out of her because she felt guilty you were such a sucker.”
He lets the words settle over him. If I was smart, I would hang up right now, but we have each thrown the other on a meat hook, and neither of us can climb off, so we hang there in the empty space of the miles between us and every wrong thing that has ever happened in the time we’ve known each other.
“No respect,” he says, but his voice is weak.
“Respect?” I pick at the wall in front of me. “No, Lyle. There’s no respect here. Not from me. Not ever. I do not respect you. I do not consider your feelings. And I will never, ever submit.”
That’s when the hold we have on each other breaks. There’s a series of loud smacks as Lyle bangs the phone against the counter or the wall or maybe even the stove. I hold the receiver away from my ear and smile. It feels good to make him lose it. I know just where he’s standing, how the white tiles on the counter will be clean and stink of bleach, how the dish towels will be perfectly symmetrical and he will still fix them as he walks by to calm his mind. His jeans are tight and his hair is tight and he’s probably clenching everything.
“I ought to come over there and wash out that filthy mouth,” he says, low. “You need to be taken in hand, Mayhem Brayburn.”
“You mad, Lyle?” I ask. “You losing your temper?”
“I’m going to see you soon,” he says. “Real soon. And I’m bringing a bar of soap just for you and your dirty, ugly mouth.”
My stomach rolls. “I’m looking forward to it,” I say, and slam the phone down.
I can’t breathe. I just picked a fight with Lyle. I just invited him to come and try to take us back. Something is seriously wrong with me. I stand in the hallway, frozen for a few moments before I hear the front door open and then close.
“Hello! Anybody up?”
It’s Roxy, her voice light and cake-sweet.
“No one’s awake yet.” She’s talking to someone. I’m ready to storm down and tell her about Lyle’s call, to demand answers about what she did or did not say to him, and to tell her that he may or may not be driving here right now in a psychotic rage, when I hear a male voice rumble back.
I inch down the stairs far enough to see that Roxy is in the doorway with Boner, the cop from the police station. He’s got on a T-shirt and jeans and looks mildly less annoying than when he was in cop mode. His hair is still way too short and his pecs are still way too big. Roxy stands on her tiptoes to give him a quick peck on the lips, but he holds on to her and dips her, kissing her more deeply.
I try to click in to Boner, to see what secrets he’s got hanging on him, but nothing happens. It’s like trying to make fire with a wet match. I make a noise of effort and frustration, and Roxy glances up and blanches. “Oh May … hey.”
I wave. “Well hello there, Mother.”
“You remember Boner?”
I descend and Roxy moves away from him until we form a triangle.
“May.” He comes forward to shake my hand. I hold it limply and search again, but there’s nothing. No icicles or honeycombs. He’s a cop who has lived a whole life. How can he have no regrets, nothing hanging off of him? He regards me curiously and takes his hand back, then checks his Timex watch.
“Time for me to get to the station and I need to go home first and change.” He nods to me. “Now that we know that Sand Snatcher thing is real, all hands are on deck.”
“Sure, of course.” Roxy leans into him. Her blouse is open one button too many, and her hair is a mess. She might as well be wearing a neon sign that says I HAVE RECENTLY HAD SEX. I want to set my eyes on fire. “They found body parts.” She glances up the staircase at me as Millie steps down gingerly, trying to get to her. “It hasn’t even been announced yet.”
“They’re calling a press conference. Shouldn’t be long now.” Boner leans down to pet the cat, then waves awkwardly. “Hope to see you soon, May, and stay off the beach. After the press conference it’s going to be shut down until this is over.”
I cross my arms and stare at him until he leaves. He needs to understand right now no one is going to start telling me what to do.
Once he’s gone, after having given Roxy a tame kiss on the cheek that is nothing like the other one I witnessed, Roxy turns on me, the smile dropped from her face. “You could be nice to him, you know.”
“I thought you were going to Marcy’s. That’s what your note said.”
“I thought I was, too. Plans changed.” The smile is back, pasted on, desperate. “But guess what?” She reaches her arms wide.
“What now?” I say. Even though Roxy doesn’t know anything about Lyle’s phone call, I’m still mad at her for it.
“I got a job! You are looking at the brand-new employee of VHYes Video Rentals!” She shimmies her shoulders, laughing, then looks at me disappointed when I don’t hurl myself into her arms with joy. “Oh come on, May! Be happy for me! There’s side benefits and everything. I get free movies!” She glances up the stairs. “We used to have a TV. I’ll bet it’s in the attic somewhere. We can bring it down. We’ll rent a VCR, maybe even buy one.”
I remain expressionless. “So, let me get this straight. Since yesterday, you have gotten a job at a video store and have a new boyfriend?”
“Oh,” she says, waving me off, “I’ve known Boner my whole life. We clicked! It was just a date.”
“I guess that is what professionals call it.”
“Mayhem!” Roxy says.
Elle is at the top of the stairs in a long T-shirt, hair in a bun on her head, eyes thick with sleep. “What’s going on
here? What’s all the yelling? Did I hear the phone?”
“Oh, May is mad,” Roxy says. “Gearing up for throwing a good old-fashioned tantrum, looks like. She’s forgetting I’m a person and I deserve dignity no matter what I’ve been through in the past. I deserve the opportunity to start over fresh.”
“She was out with Boner,” I say. “She came in kissing him.”
Elle bursts out laughing.
“Shut up, Ellie.” Roxy turns to me. “You need to understand something. I may have things to work on, but I am here for you, and I am in this town which is scary on a million levels, and I am lucky to have a friend like Boner.”
Elle laughs again. “This is wonderful.”
“It’s not funny,” I say.
“Oh, sure it is. It’s hilarious, actually. He’s been pining for her since he was in diapers. Boy, Rox, I bet you made his life worth living last night. His eleven-year-old self is throwing a party right now. Hey, maybe now he’ll do his job instead of ignoring everything so he can spend more time lifting weights.”
Roxy says, “Maybe he will. Maybe we just had a really good time. We’ll see.”
“Come on, sis. Let’s go make some coffee,” Elle says. “You can tell me alllll about it. I didn’t sleep well.” She winks at me over Roxy’s shoulder, and it’s a lighthearted gesture, but all it does is remind me that the secrets between my mother and me are multiplying by the second, that Roxy’s losing sight of who I am and she doesn’t even know it. Maybe she doesn’t even care.
“You coming, May?” My mother extends both hands, her palms scooped, head tilted, so she looks like a statue of a saint.
But she is not a saint and neither am I, and if I go with them it will be a morning of heavy conversation, of anger and regret. As soon as I say Lyle’s name everything will go dark. More than that, I don’t think I’ll be able to keep from unleashing all my rage at Roxy for being so stupid, for calling a monster back into our lives.
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