Summer of Salt

by Katrina Leno

  Not knowing what else to do, I cleared my throat.

  Harrison jumped a mile, and then he saw me and smiled and put a hand over his heart. “Geez Louise,” he said, adding “geez Louise” to the list of things that made Harrison Lowry strangely appealing. “Georgina! What a strange place to meet.”

  I felt an overwhelming happiness—that he didn’t run away the moment he saw me, that he didn’t seem that bothered at all to be so close to me, and that he even seemed, maybe, pleased to have run into me. I held the ice cream out to him, and he came and sat next to me on the bench and took it.

  “Tell me,” he said, taking a bite of Broken Hearts, “what brings you to the graveyard in the middle of this rainy night?”

  “I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” I said. “You?”

  “A little bit of insomnia, I’m afraid. I spent so many nights looking for Annabella that now I can’t seem to sleep. I didn’t want to wake my sister, what with all my tossing and turning.”

  Ah, Prue.

  Her name still sent a little rush of warmth down my arms, even though I hadn’t seen her since the funeral. It was nice to know that she was well, even in the chaos of everything.

  Harrison chuckled, took another bite of ice cream. “I bet it gets old, dealing with all these bird lovers, doesn’t it?” he said after a minute. “I think we’re all prone to the sentimental. Even those of us who didn’t know her well.”

  “It doesn’t get old,” I said softly. “It’s nice. What made you want to find her in the first place?”

  “Just the idea, I think, of seeing something that so few people before me have seen . . . It became a bit of an obsession. My sister would say it’s a big obsession, I’m sure.”

  “It’s nice that you have each other,” I said.

  “It’s nice to have sisters, isn’t it? You would know,” he said, and looked at me out of the very corner of his eye, like he was trying to hide how eager he was to hear my response. Like he had heard something.

  “I do have one of those, yeah.”

  “It’s nice,” he repeated. He looked so suddenly sad, sitting there, and more like a little kid than ever, his shoulders hunched and his arms hugged around his knees and every inch of him completely dripping wet.

  “I’m glad you don’t hate me,” I blurted out. I wished I could pluck the words out of the air and force them back in my mouth, back down my throat. But you can’t unsay things once they’re out in the world. Not even Fernweh women can manage that.

  Harrison swallowed. He put the pint on the bench between us, resting the spoon carefully across its top. “How do I put this,” he wondered aloud. “All right. Georgina, I don’t believe for a second that your sister—or anyone in your family, for that matter—had anything to do with Annabella’s death.”

  “How come?” I asked.

  I really needed to learn how to keep my mouth shut unless it was to say thank you for not thinking we’re murderers.

  “You’re all smart women,” Harrison said. “And it would be decidedly unsmart to sabotage your only means of livelihood.”

  “We wouldn’t kill the bird because without the bird there won’t be any birdheads, and without the birdheads there would be nobody to stay at the inn,” I translated.

  “Exactly.”

  “How come you’re the only one intelligent enough to figure that out?” I asked, even though I was thinking something more along the lines of you don’t know my sister; her motivations are a little harder to pinpoint.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Harrison said, picking the ice cream up again, taking a thoughtful bite. “And I think it’s because we’re the newbies.”

  The word newbies coming out of Harrison Lowry’s mouth made me laugh out loud. He smirked in response.

  “I just mean,” he continued, “that of all the birdheads here, I’m the most removed. I’ve never been to By-the-Sea, I’ve never met you or your sister before this summer. I don’t have a real attachment to you yet. No offense.”

  “None taken.” The ice cream was exchanged from Harrison’s hand to mine. A symbiotic ice cream relationship in a graveyard. One could do worse.

  “There’s a lot of emotion running around. The birdheads just want to blame somebody and get it over with. And with all the rumors floating around about your family already, I think it makes sense they’ve chosen Mary as their scapegoat.”

  “Not rumors,” I said. I suddenly didn’t care much about the Fernweh family secrecy. It hadn’t gotten us anywhere but suspicious looks and whispered accusations.

  “Not rumors,” Harrison repeated.

  “If you’re referring to the general spookiness of the Fernweh women then no, not rumors,” I clarified.

  “Spookiness.”

  “You know. Boil and bubble and all that.”

  “Ah. Well, I guess that changes things a little.”

  “Oh?”

  “Back to the drawing board. No telling what you may or may not have done.”

  But he was smiling. And there was also an earnestness there, like he was taking my magicky revelation at face value. That was sort of nice.

  “Have you ever heard that poem?” he asked, suddenly distant, looking past me.

  “What poem?”

  The ice cream was almost gone.

  “‘In her tomb by the sounding sea,’” Harrison said.

  “Ah. Of course I’ve heard that poem. Poe was quite taken with the theme of death.”

  “Of women in particular. Sort of morbid, no?”

  “What about it?”

  “Hmm? Well, it’s been in my head since I stepped off the ferry. I never considered myself much of a poetry person.”

  “Well. Islands. The sea. Rain. Graveyards. Dead things. It’s hard not to feel poetic here.”

  “I think you have a point.”

  “Harrison—will you take a walk with me?” I asked.

  That declaration on the widow’s walk buzzed around in my head, loud and angry, I will find who did this. Even if that person might be my sister.

  “Where?” Harrison asked.

  “To somewhere unpleasant.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I am at your disposal.”

  And we began to walk.

  The entrance to the Elmhursts’ barn was roped off by bright-yellow police tape. It was raining in earnest over here, just a short walk from the graveyard. We huddled underneath my one umbrella as Harrison fiddled with the lock on the door, wiggling a paper clip around inside it until it popped open with a soft click. He let it fall into his hand and then, looking around to make sure no one had seen us, we ducked into the dark mouth of the barn.

  Harrison pulled a flashlight out of the pocket of his trench coat (where he’d also pulled the paper clip from, which begged the question: what else did he have in there?) and clicked it on. I put the umbrella near the door to dry out.

  “What exactly are we doing here?” he asked.

  “Didn’t you know? We’re solving a murder,” I said. I grabbed the flashlight from him and put it under my chin.

  “And what do you expect to find here?” he asked.

  I handed the flashlight back to him. “Something the police missed.”

  “When you say the police like that, it implies more than just a sheriff and a deputy,” Harrison said. “It’s sort of false advertising.”

  “Fair.”

  He scanned his flashlight around the interior of the barn. “There’s an overhead light in here somewhere, isn’t there?”

  I found the light switch on the wall and turned it on. The barn was washed in pale, dusty light. I half expected there to be a bird-shaped white chalk outline in the dirt marking where Annabella was found, but the ground was clear. The nest was gone. It looked like nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened here.

  “I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” I admitted.

  Harrison tossed the flashlight from hand to hand. He looked around the barn. “So far we don’t seem to be sh
owing much promise as sleuths.”

  “I know.” I took a deep breath. “All right. You take the loft. I’ll look around down here. Shout if you see anything.”

  So Harrison climbed carefully up the wooden ladder that led to the lofted area, and I explored the ground floor, the wood underneath my feet creaking as I walked around. I had “Annabel Lee” stuck in my head now, and I kept seeing shadows moving out of the corner of my eye because the half-light made everything spookier than it was.

  Then Harrison started whistling again, and that made everything spookier than it was, too, and so finally, my nerves shot to hell and my skin crawling with goose bumps, I climbed up the ladder to meet Harrison in the loft. Because I didn’t want to be alone. Because the phrase higher ground was suddenly ringing in my ears. Because outside the rain beat a torrential staccato against the roof, and I thought my heartbeat might be trying to match it.

  It was brighter up here (closer to the overhead lamps), and I felt instantly more relaxed. I forced myself to breathe, breathe, breathing through the panic I could feel welling up in my chest. A sort of buzzing around my rib cage. The ever-familiar feeling of fear.

  “Harrison?”

  He turned around to face me, and as he did, the beam of his flashlight caught on something by his foot. A flash of gold. I bent down to pick it up and held it in my cupped hands. I felt that icy trickle of horror when you are home alone and hear a sound too loud to be just the house settling, or when you are walking at night and suddenly hear footsteps following too closely behind you.

  It was my sister’s necklace.

  I would know it anywhere. It was a delicate heart-shaped locket, identical to the one given to me on our sixteenth birthday. Matching lockets. Mary wore hers often; mine was tucked safely inside the top drawer of my bureau. I’d never been one for jewelry.

  The Ouija board had said: with her.

  And now I had proof of it: Mary was here, in the barn, the night Annabella was murdered.

  I knew if I opened this locket I would find a picture of the two of us on one side—Mary and me—and a picture of my mother and father on the other.

  The clasp of the necklace was broken.

  I held it up to Harrison, so he could see it. “It’s my sister’s.”

  “What would your sister’s locket be doing in this barn?” Harrison asked, his voice careful and measured, like he was trying to keep something out of it.

  “I know she didn’t kill Annabella,” I said, but even as the words left my mouth I wondered—did I really know that? It was my sister’s word against the Ouija board, against this locket. It was my sister’s word against everything piling up against it.

  “But if she was here, she must know something,” Harrison said. “Have you asked her?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what she knows. She’s being . . . strange.”

  “Strange,” Harrison repeated.

  “Oh, please don’t change your mind about us,” I said quickly.

  “Not changing my mind. Just . . . processing.”

  “Did you find anything else up here?”

  “Feathers,” Harrison said.

  I took a step closer to him. “What?”

  “Feathers,” he repeated. “But not Annabella’s.”

  “Not Annabella’s.”

  “Look.”

  He took one step to the side, revealing a small, neat pile of feathers. They were white and long and clean. Not Annabella’s.

  “What kind of bird did these come from?” I asked.

  I felt sick to my stomach.

  “It’s hard to say,” Harrison said. “They don’t look familiar to me.”

  “I think I need some air,” I said.

  “Mmm,” Harrison said. He picked up a feather and carefully put it into a pocket of his trench coat.

  I wondered again what else he might have in those pockets. The reason why it was raining so much? The location of my missing magic powers? That which my sister refused to tell me? The identity of the evil man who’d killed Annabella? What part my sister must have played in her death?

  My head was spinning.

  I descended the ladder quickly and raced across the barn to the door, which was standing ajar just an inch or so. I pushed out into the cold, wet evening. The moon was fat and almost full in the sky above me. I leaned against the outside wall of the barn and breathed and breathed and breathed.

  Until I heard the barn door creak open and closed, and I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  I opened my eyes.

  Harrison, holding my umbrella.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Just needed a little air.”

  He offered me his arm. “Let’s go home, shall we?”

  I took it, gratefully.

  And we set off into the dark.

  That night, late, Mary crawled into my bed. I moved over to make room for her.

  “I can’t sleep,” she said.

  “Where did you go?”

  “When?”

  “At the party, Mary. Where did you go?”

  “Oh. I just got there and I saw the lights and I heard all the people laughing, and I couldn’t do it.”

  “You’re cold.”

  “Can I stay in here?”

  Usually it was cramped with the two of us in one bed, but tonight Mary felt smaller, like she took up less space.

  “Of course.”

  “Did you have fun? At the party?” she asked.

  “I didn’t stay either. Why are you so cold?”

  “I don’t know,” Mary said.

  I reached down to the foot of the bed and found the extra quilt that was folded there. I draped it over her, tucking it under her chin.

  I knew I should have told her about the Ouija board, about finding her necklace in the barn, but I couldn’t. She was shaking she was so cold, and I couldn’t make myself ask her why she had lied to me. I couldn’t make myself ask her what had really happened.

  The bed felt so much colder with my sister’s shivering body next to mine. I moved an inch away from her.

  “Stop that,” she said. “You’re my sister.”

  When she said that word it felt more like a curse than a familial relation.

  I took her hand in mine, and my fingers froze to ice.

  “Mary?”

  “Not now,” she said.

  When I woke up, she was gone.

  In her place: plain white feathers.

  Feathers

  The next morning I picked white feathers off my white sheets and stuck them into a white pillowcase I’d taken off one of my pillows. My mother came in when it was halfway full.

  “What’s all this about?” she asked.

  “I think something’s going on with Mary.”

  My mother picked up a feather and held it between her thumb and her middle finger. She looked at it. She smelled it. She licked it (gross).

  “What are they?” I asked.

  She sat down on the bed, causing a small swarm of feathers to rise up and float around her. She collected them in her lap, examining each one, twirling them around.

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  “Are they coming . . .”

  “From your sister?” She exhaled slowly, thinking. She looked very unmagicky today. I think, given everything, that was a deliberate choice. She wore faded baggy jeans and a white sleeveless collared shirt tucked into them. She had rainboots on and her hair was tied into a ponytail at her neck. I felt a sudden rush of emotion for her, this woman picking feathers from my bed and piling them into a careful mountain on top of her thighs.

  “Your sister has had an emotional upset,” she said finally. “We all have.” That seemed to be putting it lightly. She opened her mouth to say more but paused, decided against it, dumped the feathers from her lap into the pillowcase. Then she sniffed. Once. Twice. “Georgina,” she scolded. “You smell like cheap tricks.”

  “Oh, it was nothing—”

  “The spir
it world is not nothing!”

  “I don’t even believe in that stuff, really. It was all Vira’s idea.”

  “Cheap tricks and hay,” she amended. “What exactly are you up to?”

  “Okay, well, we did use the Ouija board. But just a little,” I admitted, sitting next to her on the bed.

  “Did you learn anything?”

  “The person who killed Annabella is a man,” I said.

  “It’s always a man,” she said grimly. “Anything else?”

  If I wasn’t ready to tell Mary that I knew she was in the barn the night Annabella was murdered, I certainly wasn’t ready to tell my mom. I was suddenly thankful she had never fed us a truth serum (that I knew of) and did my best to make my face as neutral as possible.

  “That’s all. The spirits were pretty unforthcoming.”

  “And the hay?”

  “What?”

  “Why do you smell like hay, Georgina?”

  “Oh.”

  “You went back to the barn.”

  “Just for a minute.”

  “And you found?”

  “Nothing at all,” I said. The locket burned in my bureau, announcing my lie, and I was afraid it would set the whole thing on fire. But my mother just nodded to herself.

  “Throw those over the cliffs,” she said, getting up, pointing to the bag of feathers. “Or bury them, or burn them, I don’t care.”

  “But if they came from Mary, isn’t that a little harsh?”

  “If they came from Mary, I’m sure she’ll just go ahead and make more,” she said. She looked tired, strange, worn thin around the edges.

  “You don’t think this is like . . .” I paused. I held up a feather in the hopes that it could convey what I meant without me having to actually say it. That Mary wasn’t the first Fernweh woman to leave feathers on her pillow when she woke up in the morning. That was how it started with Annabella too.

  My mother sighed. “If it is,” she began, “then it’s your sister’s business. And I suppose, for now, we’ll just have to wait and see.”