Scared of the Dark: A Crime Novel

by Easton Vaughn

  “Listen,” he said, clearing his throat. “When he let me go, Sheldon gave me very clear directions and then somehow I got turned around and it all hit me at once. I was lost, confused, probably stuck on this island forever. My chance for escape and I’d blown it, again. I didn’t think I’d get many more opportunities to leave here, if any. The reality of that had me feeling…inconsolable.”

  Lemon nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Normally, I’m—”

  “Aiden,” she said, squeezing his hand with two quick pumps. “You really don’t have to apologize for being human. You’ve been through a lot. And you’ve handled yourself well. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “It’s just that—”

  “Nothing to be ashamed of,” she said again.

  He sighed and let it rest, Lemon still gripping his hand as they quietly wound their way toward the beach. Once they reached it, what felt like a lifetime later, Aiden nearly yelped with joy, but he noticed that Lemon was subdued, that she’d slowed and her shoulders were slumped. She eased her hand from his grasp and hugged herself against a shudder. She looked toward the water and didn’t move in its direction.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked her.

  She nodded at the boats moored in the sand. A Carolina skiff and two fiberglass johnboats, just as Sheldon had told him. “This is hopeless,” Lemon said, sighing. “I know nothing about boats. I’ll end up sinking us in the sound.”

  “Sinking in the sound,” Aiden said. “Alliterative.”

  “Now’s not the time,” Lemon said, chastising him.

  “Has it crossed your mind that I might know my way around a sea vessel?”

  Lemon’s eyes widened and some life came back into her posture. She grabbed him by the shoulders, smiling brightly once again. It exhilarated Aiden to affect her in such a way, a feeling he never wanted to lose now that he’d experienced it. “You know how to drive a boat?” she said, her voice pitching high. “Is that the correct term? Drive? But you can manage a boat?”

  “Intellectually,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’ve never, um, driven a boat but I’ve ridden on them plenty.”

  She released the grasp of his shoulders, deflated, her own shoulders sagging again. “And I’ve watched Star Trek but I couldn’t beam us into outer space.”

  “Persona Non Grata has a Boston Whaler,” he quickly told her, not wanting to lose her enthusiasm or the feelings it stirred inside of him.

  She frowned. “Who has a what?”

  “Boston Whaler,” he repeated, not bothering to clarify the “who” in his statement. “It’s a boat. An impressive one, at that. Built for offshore and big water. Unsinkable. The one I spent time on had a framed copy of the Life magazine advertisement from 1961 with Dick Fisher, the original designer, demonstrating just how unsinkable the Whaler is. He’s sitting in the 13-footer, the hull cross-cut in half with a saw. Fisher’s in the stern and another man is in the bow. Both sides of the boat remain afloat.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “They use a chain saw in their ads today,” he continued. “Still positioning the Whaler as “the unsinkable legend.”

  “And these are Boston Whalers?” she asked, nodding at the island’s three boats.

  “Well, no, not exactly,” Aiden admitted. “The two smaller ones are fiberglass johnboats. The bigger one’s a Carolina skiff.”

  “They’re at least similar to the boat you’ve ridden on?”

  “The skiff is close. It’s built for inshore, bays, calm waters. The flat bottom makes it sturdy but it’ll ride rough in any kind of chop. We’ll have to make sure we trim down and go slow if we hit any sort of swell.”

  “We’ll do that,” she said, sighing again, then smiling and nodding. “We’ll…trim down and go slow. I’m glad I have you with me.”

  Aiden didn’t believe she felt any real confidence in him, but still, he was exhilarated by her words. Again, he flashed on a mental image of himself back at the marsh, crying like a weak fool. He’d have to impress Lemon out on the water. It was a must.

  “What happened with you and your father?” she asked as they moved toward the skiff.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Persona Non Grata,” she said. “I take it you two had a falling out.”

  He looked at her with amazement. “How did you know I was talking about my father’s boat?”

  “A hunch,” she said, shrugging. “Or maybe the ghost woman in me. So what happened between you two?”

  “That’s a long story,” he said, using her words from earlier. “I’ll explain never. Right now, we really need to go.”

  Lemon flashed a crooked smile. “Fair enough, Aiden. Just so you know, though, you had a boyish glow when you were describing your father’s Boston Whaler. And I think it was due to more than just some boat.”

  “Those were good times,” he admitted, speaking softly. “We didn’t have many. I suppose my father cares about me, in his own way. I know that I’ve learned to tolerate him.”

  “Mmm,” she said and nothing else.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s not something you care to talk about. I have to respect that.”

  “You don’t sound remotely sincere.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, but listen, I just thought of something else.”

  “The artless dodge.”

  She ignored the dig, moved to the water’s edge. “Can we set these other boats—the johnboats—adrift? Is that the right word? Adrift?”

  “Everyone on the island will be trapped here,” he said.

  “Exactly.”

  Aiden thought about it a moment. “Merritt and his goons won’t be able to chase us down.”

  “Unless they can swim like Michael Phelps.”

  Aiden smiled. “Help me loosen these ties and push them out into the water.”

  The johnboats were secured with heavy rope looped through cinderblocks buried halfway in the wet sand. The knots came undone easily enough and between the two of them they were able to maneuver the boats out into the sound. Lemon grasped Aiden’s hand again as they watched them drift far out into the water.

  “Now let’s get out of here ourselves,” he said.

  Lemon stood by and offered the occasional supportive word as Aiden worked to unmoor the skiff and set them sailing. It took longer than he would have liked but he managed the task and had them gliding across the sound and away from the island. Neither of them looked back. Lemon smiled but kept silent as they passed the johnboats, which were caught up in a strong drift and moving as if commandeered. The water was murky and lit by the skiff’s running lights, red on portside, and green on starboard side. A gentle breeze blew, rocking them slightly.

  “Something’s on your mind,” Aiden said after a while at sea.

  “I’m not the only one,” Lemon replied.

  Aiden forced a smile he didn’t feel, to which Lemon frowned. She could read him like a long-time lover. “Ladies first,” he told her.

  “Avoidance masked as chivalry.”

  He nodded. “That might be the case. But I insist. You tell me what’s on your mind first.”

  And so she launched into a diatribe about their failed sexual encounter, how badly she’d felt and still felt, how insecure she’d been ever since, how she kept examining herself to see what was wrong with her physically.

  “Nothing’s wrong with you,” Aiden replied. “I’d venture to say you’re perfect.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “I wanted to make love to you, Lemon. Trust me on that.”

  “But…”

  “But…” He sighed. “Saina and I weren’t on good terms when I left Massachusetts.”

  “Oh?”

  “Actually, she broke up with me right before I left.”

  “You love her very much,” Lemon said.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But love seldom matters enough. There are so many ot
her factors.”

  She looked at him deeply, hugging herself against the night chill that seemed to rise off the surprisingly calm water. “Please don’t say that. I have to believe in something. Why not love?”

  “Fairies, goblins, zombies?” he suggested.

  “You paint an ugly picture.”

  “Saina and I can never go back to the way it once was,” he said, looking away.

  “I wouldn’t give up on your relationship.”

  He shook his head. “In some ways, I already did. I cheated on her.”

  “Cheated?”

  “Julie Eagan. A girl I grew up with. I lied to Saina about it, but she knew. I could tell.”

  “Men are such bastards.” Lemon forced a laugh she didn’t feel. Aiden frowned. He could read her like a long-time lover. They lapsed into another stretch of silence, which she eventually broke. “You wanted to ask me about killing my child?”

  Stunned, Aiden couldn’t find the words to respond with.

  “Deborah is hateful enough to have told you,” Lemon said.

  He nodded. “She doesn’t seem to like you very much.”

  Lemon smiled sadly. “Her little boy…Noah…Shepherd’s the father.”

  “What?”

  She nodded. “She’d had him already when she came to the island. I tried to befriend Deborah, but she was angry from the very start. I couldn’t figure it out. Then I began to hear whispers. Merritt had insinuated that Shepherd is the father on more than one occasion. Tonight he told me it was so, outright.”

  “Merritt could be lying to upset you.”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Shepherd would have told him,” she whispered. “They have a…bond. Merritt was the first one on the island. Shepherd trusts him enough to share his greatest secrets with him. Yeah, Shepherd is Noah’s father.”

  “I’m sorry,” Aiden said.

  She looked at him. “For what?”

  “That’s a difficult thing to contend with,” he said, his voice lowering. “Betrayal.”

  She studied him for a moment. Then said, “Are you real?”

  “I’d like to think so,” he replied, smiling.

  Lemon tried to match Aiden’s smile, which broke his heart. She sat up straight on her bench. “Deborah’s a witch for telling you what I did, but that doesn’t absolve me. What do you want to know?”

  “As much as you want to tell,” he said quietly.

  “It really is a lovely evening,” she began, looking out over the glistening expanse of the sound. “And if nothing else, at least the water’s calm. Do you think that could be a precursor to what we can expect moving forward? Calm waters?”

  Aiden nodded and waited.

  “Her name was Elena,” she said a beat later. She started slowly, eventually launching into the rest: her ex-boyfriend Albert and the dropped “O” at the end of his name; the rape; Elena, her “bright one,” and the issues her daughter had had with joint attention; the pillow she used. “Soft and fluffy, a pretty pink cover with mesh at the edges.”

  She started to cry softly then, and Aiden thought she was done. “I know it must be hard for you to share that story,” he said. “Thanks for entrusting it to me. I’m not sure I deserved that.”

  “I don’t know for sure why I did it,” she said, wiping at her eyes, clearing her throat. “But I’ve given it a lot of thought.”

  Aiden’s mouth was dry. He thought of licking his lips, telling Lemon she’d said enough, but he didn’t.

  “My Elena was doomed for a lifetime of suffering. In my mind, I was saving her from the misery that would certainly visit her. That’s one possibility, I suppose. Or maybe I was simply acting as selfishly and shallow as I’d always been. Perhaps I just didn’t want a special needs child. That’s another possibility. Or maybe I simply lost something crucial inside when my father started getting too familiar with me. Maybe the fact that I encouraged his attention speaks to a wide, ugly fissure in my spirit. Think of the sickness in my Elena. Think of what she’d come from. What was a part of her…rape, incest, all manner of ugliness. She didn’t stand a chance, right from birth. I was doing her a favor. There’s that possibility.”

  Aiden could think of only two words: “Your father?”

  Lemon smiled sadly. “I think abusers see some weakness, some flaw in those they victimize,” she whispered. “You’re looking at a two-time loser over here. Three if you count what Merritt did to me.” She touched the soft tissue around her eye. “That has to say something about me.”

  “You’re blaming yourself for what Alberto did to you? For whatever your father did? For Merritt?”

  “I encouraged my father’s…want,” she said.

  “How old were you?”

  “Eleven,” she said, “twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…”

  “You couldn’t have encouraged it,” he said. “You were a child. He was the adult.”

  She smiled sadly. “I don’t get that pass, I’m afraid.”

  “You were a child,” he repeated.

  “I’ve long known there was something wrong with me,” she said. “Albert and my father validated that belief. Merritt reminded me.”

  “What you’re saying is incredibly sad, Lemon. I happen to think you’re fantastic. I wish you could see that in yourself.”

  “You’re kind,” she said, looking over at him.

  He cleared his throat. “Enough of this. I was thinking…”

  And he told her about his father’s vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard, the Edgartown section, at one time a wealthy whaling port. Told her that his father had bought the house, nestled atop Sampson’s Hill with a clear 180 degree view of Nantucket Island, strictly for show, that his father visited it at most once a year. “My mother always thought it was too ostentatious. She couldn’t stomach the place. My father liked the idea of having it, but again, couldn’t be bothered himself. So he entrusted the responsibility of its upkeep to me. I check on it for him on a pretty regular basis. Every other month or so I take the ferry over and spend a weekend. He’ll ask me how it is and then in the next breath it’s forgotten. I haven’t yet hired a seasonal cleaning service. You could stay there.”

  “Are you actually asking me to be your maid?” she said, shaking her head. “The nerve.”

  “You know what I’m asking,” he replied, looking into her eyes.

  She was quiet for a long stretch. Then: “Just until I figure out what I’m going to do. Whether I’ll turn myself in or stay on the run.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone would look for you on Martha’s Vineyard.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “I’ll do what I can to help you remain anonymous.”

  “Next you’ll tell me you’ve seen enough thriller movies,” she said, “and that you know how to change my identity. Intellectually.”

  “Ghost Woman reads minds,” he said.

  “Do you know how crazy this idea is?”

  “I imagine I do,” Aiden said. “Being that I came up with it.”

  “You’re going to be a doctor. Why expose yourself to anything that could alter that course?”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  She smiled suddenly.

  Aiden said, “What?”

  “Merritt,” she said, holding the smile. “I snuck in his tent a while back and found a number written on a paper and well hidden. I thought that was curious, so I memorized the number. The other day he was bullying me in his typical fashion and for some reason I blurted the number to him.”

  “And?”

  “Like he saw a ghost,” she said, laughing. “He completely backed off.”

  Aiden frowned. “I can’t believe that. Merritt backed off?”

  “He did.”

  “Where’s the number to?”

  “I have no idea,” she said, and then she told him the number and the trick she used to remember it.

  “You’re going to call it, aren’t you?” />
  Lemon smiled. “Right before we get to Martha’s Vineyard. I’m too curious.”

  “Count me as curious, too,” Aiden said. “We’ll have to call it together on speakerphone.”

  Lemon shuddered, hugged herself. “I don’t want to get too high, Aiden. Something always brings me down.”

  “Land,” he said, nodding up ahead, grateful for the diversion. He didn’t want Lemon entertaining any doubt.

  Lemon turned and silently watched their approach. In the light of day, Aiden knew the area would look burned out and desolate. During the dark of night, however, it was arguably the most pleasing sight he’d ever gazed upon. A maritime forest crowded with live oak, loblolly pine, and shrub thicket. Black needle rush and cordgrass standing just about waist high. He could hardly believe it, but the idea of freedom, a concept he’d given up on, rested little more than a hundred yards up ahead. Licking his lips and swallowing spit, he reversed the throttle to slow the boat’s forward motion. Then, several beats later, he shifted into neutral and killed the engine so they could coast in with the current. The bow knocked gently against the bank with a quiet thud, barely registering above the hoot owls and crickets.

  “Careful stepping off, Lem.”

  Lem?

  “Okay,” she said. “How about you be a gentleman and give me your hand.”

  He did his best not to pull her into an embrace. Her hand was a trembling wet dog. He didn’t care.

  “Thanks,” she said as they touched down on relatively soft ground.

  “Welcome. Help me tie up?”

  “Show me what to do.”

  They looped rope from the skiff around a proud loblolly, tied off the end with a knot that was all improvisation. Still, Aiden took a step back and admired the sloppy handiwork. “Not the least bit attractive, but it should hold.”

  “We need to continue discussing the next step,” Lemon whispered. “But I need a spot of rest first.”

  “I figured you’d want to get to Martha’s Vineyard right away.”

  “Figured you’d want to get to Saina’s,” she shot back.

  “Saina and I are done. Don’t you listen?”

  Lemon’s voice was raw, thick. “So you say. Prove it.”