Hiders

by Meg Collett

  The floorboards creaked beneath his weight as he entered her room.

  “Sorry I’m late . . .” he started but trailed off. Her back was turned to him, but she imagined the expression on his face as he took it all in. The open closet. The clothes laid out all around. The empty dresser drawers left open. The heat of his gaze landed on her, and he took in her new jeans and the top she’d found at the local vintage store. She wore new white sneakers and her glasses.

  Normally, she only wore the glasses on her worst days, but now she woke up and put them on. Almost every day for the past week, they’d sat on her nose, helping her faltering vision the best they could.

  She turned around when he still hadn’t spoken, and his eyes darted from her to the boxes at her feet, to the suitcase on the bed, and to the emptiness around her. His eyes drew back to hers, his words a bowstring pulled back, ready to fire. “Why are you packing?”

  She returned to folding and tucking her old clothes away and separating them. She’d decided to keep a few of her mother’s dresses, but most had gone into the giveaway pile. “Because I’m leaving.”

  “Where are you going?”

  He didn’t understand. His gaze swept the room for answers, as if they would be written on the walls and not all over her face if he just looked, but he hadn’t been looking at her for a while now. It was okay, though, because he was getting ready to start the next stage in his life and so was she.

  “They’re taking the house, Arie.”

  “What? No. We fixed that. The party and the petition. It worked.”

  Her fingers trailed across the silk of a white blouse she’d just tucked into the giveaway pile. The pearl buttons were a little yellow, but they still shone through their age and wear. Her mother had worn it on her birthday the year she died.

  Violet hadn’t wanted him to find out this way, but when he texted to say he was on his way, she’d left it up to fate. He had to know at some point, and she had to keep moving on and crossing impossible tasks off her list. Her bedroom was the last room left to pack up.

  “Violet.”

  She’d waited too long to respond again.

  She always waited too long. It was time for that to change. Tonight.

  “Look at me.”

  She did, and her knees went a little weak, because he was Arie. For a while, he’d been the only reason she stood a little straighter. She’d felt alive when she caught sight of his dark truck bobbing up her hill, glinting in the fall sun, and when she heard the car door open and close and his boots stomp across the gravel. He’d given her strength at night, his callused hands on her pale skin and his dark face above hers with concentration in his eyes as he worked to make her come undone. He was the reason she had the confidence to walk down the street and meet people’s eyes. She’d left her home more because he was in her life and life was lived outside these walls, where her parents’ memories couldn’t reach. She’d been okay with that because she was becoming okay with them being gone and not surrounding her every moment.

  But that didn’t work now. He could no longer be that reason.

  He was leaving and she was staying, and her house wasn’t her home. Her parents were dead and she was alone and somehow that had to be okay. She had to make that okay. She had to find the strength to check that off her list.

  She was still looking at him, still waiting too long to respond, but he waited because he was her Arie and he’d been the only one to wait for her.

  “The petition didn’t work because the mayor had already approved the eminent domain seizure. I signed the state’s offer weeks ago.”

  “Violet—”

  “The state will take this house and tear it down. They’ll hire Teller Morgan Group to construct the golf course, and it will happen because it was always outside my control. I couldn’t stop it.”

  His fists clenched, and a muscle along his jaw ticked. “We can appeal it.”

  “I have to be out by the end of this week.”

  “So fight back. Get a lawyer. Come on, Violet. Screw them. This is your home.”

  “No.” It finally happened. Tears spilled down her cheeks and tumbled off her chin onto her shirt. She’d held them back for days, but saying the words to Arie was different. They were real in a way that they’d never been in her head. “It hasn’t been since they died. When my mother drove off with my father that night, this place stopped being my home. For a while, I thought I could never leave because they were here, and I told myself they were because I needed to feel safe somewhere. I made myself believe this place was my only tie to my parents. But it isn’t. Not really. Their memories aren’t confined to one place. They’re with me, not here. When these walls are torn down, they’ll still be with me.”

  Arie’s eyes once again took in the space around her. “I know after Annabelle’s death, we dropped the ball on fixing—”

  “No, Arie, don’t. Please don’t think that way, because it was always supposed to happen like this. I never would have left without a push. I’m okay with it.”

  “But you shouldn’t be leaving. They’re stealing from you.”

  “I’m fine with it.”

  Arie’s brows lowered. “They took advantage of you and they should pay for it.”

  “I’ve found a place out here to rent,” she said as if his anger wasn’t a physical force in the room, threatening to buckle her and cause her to beg him to set things right for her. “I’m moving on.”

  She was her own reason to straighten her spine. She told herself the words over and over.

  “No. You didn’t even let it go to court. The judge would have ruled in your favor if you’d shown how important this place is.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does!” he roared, and the walls might have shaken from the magnitude of his voice.

  But she heard it—the slightest sliver of desperation in his tone—and she looked at him, studying him for the first time tonight.

  He was tired. His red-rimmed eyes and the way he leaned on his good leg proved it. His hair wasn’t smoothed back, but shoved from him raking his hands through it all day. His shoulders were tense and a vein in his neck stood out prominently. He carried a lot of responsibility now at Cooper Bros. Contracting, but while the stress showed in his body, there was also a flare of excitement around him. He was ready to grab onto the next thing and make it his, make it right, make it okay.

  But that thing couldn’t be her. He had so much else going on in his life, and she couldn’t be his purpose.

  They both had too much on the line.

  “I’m leaving,” she said, meeting his eyes. “And I won’t be back to this house ever again. Not because they stole from me, but because I need to move on. It’s time to let go of the guilt tying me to this place.” She fisted a hand over her heart as if she could pull at the ropes that bound her to this soil, to the road her mother had driven out on. “I have to go, Arie. I can’t stay. It’s not good for me.”

  Her words sank through his rage and struck him at his core; she saw the impact and its damage. Her guilt had somehow become tied to his guilt. In the dark nights, with only the fire crackling orange and bright in her bedroom as they touched, skin to skin, he’d intertwined his fate with hers. Her emancipation was his, and he wasn’t ready.

  “So you’re giving up,” he said.

  “I’m moving on. You are too.”

  His head snapped up at her words, every ounce of his attention laser-beaming onto her. “What are you saying? Because it sounds like you’re saying something, Violet.”

  “I’m saying you’re leaving Canaan, and I think we need some time apart.”

  The words fell like anchors between them. Chains snapped into place, clanging through the ocean depths.

  “You,” he said, his brow furrowing, “want to break up?”

  If people could watch this moment in a late-night reality show format, they would be screaming at the television for the ugly, weird girl to realize how good she had i
t and shouting for her to not break up with the handsome quarterback, all-star type. But they didn’t feel how hard the weird girl’s heart beat to be free and fly out on her own.

  Now that she’d started down this path to freedom, she couldn’t stop.

  “I like you,” she said. “I like you a lot, I promise. Everything I’ve ever said to you, I’ve meant. But I have to figure out how to live on my own, away from this place. And you have your own things to figure out. You’re going to build an entirely new life out there at UGA, and you deserve it just as much as I do.”

  “But why do we have to break up? We can do this together, Violet.”

  The dark words rose up hot on her tongue. The hidden ones lost to shadows that never should be spoken. Maybe it hadn’t been the medicine eating away at her father’s mind that made him blurt out the words. Maybe he’d believed those words deserved to be said because they were the closest to the truth that people got.

  So Violet said them. “I don’t want to do this together. I want to do this on my own.”

  Arie’s eyes fell closed at her words. “Tell me what I have to say to keep you.”

  She shook her head, even though he couldn’t see her. “I’m sorry, Arie.”

  18

  The knock on her door startled her.

  She’d been packing up the last of her things in the kitchen since early this morning after getting up from a sleepless night of tossing and turning. She kept replaying her conversation with Arie over and over in her mind. She’d dreamed of him taking in her words, absorbing them, and nodding before walking out. He’d said he needed to think. That he still wanted to talk this out with her.

  But that hadn’t been a dream; it had been real life. On a loop, she heard the front door to her house closing, the engine roaring, and then the truck driving off, away from her.

  She’d sunk onto the edge of her parents’ bed, her knees too shaky to hold her up any longer.

  Of all her impossible tasks, that had been the hardest.

  So when the knock came on her front door early this morning, she sprang over the packed boxes and raced to it. She tore the door open, her mouth already forming the words to betray the task she’d crossed off her list last night.

  But it wasn’t Arie on her porch. It was Gregory, and he looked startled by her sudden, harried appearance at the door.

  “Ah, well, hello,” he managed as he wrung his hands in front of him.

  Her shoulders slumped. He took in her disappointment and flushed, his eyes going to their feet.

  “I know you didn’t want to see me again,” he said when she didn’t say anything, “but I wanted to come out here and check on you. And I wanted, well, I wanted . . . I wanted . . .”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. She pushed the door open wider. “I just made coffee. Would you like some?”

  This time, he didn’t hesitate to enter her home, and the only fear on his face evaporated when she didn’t turn him away. “I would love that. Thank you, Violet.”

  She led him into the kitchen and poured a second cup of coffee. They sat at her table, and for a moment, neither spoke.

  Then they both did at once.

  “I wanted to say I’m sorry—”

  “I heard you signed the papers—”

  They cut off at the same time. Gregory’s grip tightened on his coffee mug. He brought it to his lips, his hand shaking enough to slosh the liquid.

  “Gregory,” she said, wanting to put him at ease. She’d never done that with him. She’d never been the one to reassure someone. “I wanted to apologize for how I treated you when this all happened. It wasn’t right, and I owed you more than that. You were one of my father’s oldest friends, and I cast you aside as if that meant nothing. I want you to know it never meant nothing. You were the only person I had for a while, and I appreciate every single thing you’ve done for me.”

  He sat his coffee down with a thump. “You owe me no apology, Violet. I messed up. I thought I knew how to handle everything best, but it never occurred to me to ask you. After your father died, it was easier for me to see you as an asset to manage than as a person. It’s so awful to say, and I’ve felt so guilty, but I never thought it through. I never realized what it was like for you up here, alone. I was an idiot, and the only apology you should hear today is mine.”

  She reached across the table and laid her hand over his. “I accept your apology, as I hope you will accept mine.”

  His breathing sounded wet and painful to Violet’s ears. “I do,” he said, finally smiling, his eyes creasing beneath his caterpillar eyebrows. He squared his shoulders. “I know I couldn’t help you keep the house, but I’ve come to help you move. I brought a U-Haul.”

  She held in a laugh. “You drove a U-Haul up that hill?”

  “I did.” His chest puffed out. “And I may not be able to load many boxes, but I can help. I’m here for you.”

  “Let’s see it,” she said.

  With their coffee mugs in hand, they walked outside. Violet shielded her eyes against the light and looked out at the driveway. Sure enough, a bright white and orange U-Haul was parked in her drive, with the rear doors turned toward her porch, open and waiting for the first boxes.

  “I have some movers on standby,” Gregory said. “All we have to do is give them a call.”

  Violet laughed then. “That might be best. I only have a few boxes and some furniture to move. I don’t see us lifting couches.”

  His shoulders slumped with relief. “I’ll call them now.”

  He was organizing the move within a minute. His directions were precise and measured. Within a day, her entire house would be cleared out. There was no wrapping her mind around that.

  While he finished up his call, she turned to the lighthouse and the bluffs in front of it. She didn’t know how anyone could want to turn this land into a golf course. It was barely safe to live on, and even then, not really. It was too harsh and biting for a posh golf course. No tourists in their right mind would want to come out here and golf.

  “They should put up safety barriers,” Gregory said after hanging up his cell phone.

  “Even if they build a course,” she said, “the ocean won’t stop chipping away at the bluffs just because my house isn’t here. In a century, this stretch of land will be nothing more than tiny scraps of rock fit for nothing.” She sighed. “I guess it’s for the best. The house won’t stand much longer anyway. Best not to be inside it when the wind blows too hard one day and it tumbles straight into the ocean.”

  She looked up to see Gregory frowning at her, his wrinkled face shriveled as though he’d sucked on a lemon. She knew him well enough to know it was the expression he normally wore when he was thinking long and hard. “Gregory? What is it?”

  “The public usage . . . they have to have a certain amount of space to justify taking land for eminent domain. Your land barely qualified for seizure because it’s so narrow. I checked it myself. The state used a survey taken back in the sixties, but with the bluffs crumbling . . . it has to be off by a few feet now.” His eyes tore away from the cliff edge and landed on her, firing hot. “Violet! Do you see what this means?”

  She smiled a sad, knowing smile at him.

  The fire in his eyes melted. “You know already,” he said.

  “I did some research into eminent domain after Francesca Morgan came by to tell me our petition would never work. I’ve lived with this crumbling house for nearly three decades. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about the space I’m losing along the bluffs. As soon as I saw the land requirements, I knew. But thank you, Gregory, for thinking of it too.”

  “But you could fight the acquisition to keep your land.”

  How many times had she thought about that? About running straight to Gregory and having him take this to the mayor? About waving it in front of Ms. Morgan’s face? But then . . .

  “What’s the point? The house will eventually fall, even if I shore up the support beams
and fix the load-bearing walls and all the million other things that need to be done. No, I’ve finally made my peace with leaving. I can walk away now and remember it as it used to be in its glory.”

  Gregory turned his gaze to the house, and his smile shook his elderly jowls. “It used to be really something, Violet.”

  She smiled too. “The Relends had to be half crazy to build it so close to the edge. They must have known it would come to this eventually.”

  Gregory patted her shoulder. The gesture was slightly awkward, a little offbeat, but it was there nonetheless.

  “I think it’s time to move on,” she said, the words quiet. They were stronger now, and they brought a bigger sense of peace. So much had changed since she’d realized she could be more than the scared Ghost hiding away in an old house.

  She felt Gregory’s gaze on her, but she kept her eyes on the house, the bluffs beyond, and the ocean farther out.

  “I’ve been so caught up in this house that I lost myself inside it. I spent more time in its rooms and halls than I did in the world, and I convinced myself I had to be alone to keep people from having a chance to leave me. I surrounded myself with memories until the memories eventually became enough for me.” A piece of her heart broke. “I still carry them with me, but they’re not enough. I need more.”

  “I think,” Gregory said, “that sounds about right, Violet.”

  It did. She knew it did. In her heart, the words felt right. Moving away and taking what she needed from this place was the right thing to do. If she missed the opportunity, she would find herself right back in the same spot she’d been in nearly two months ago, wandering the halls alone and talking to the house as if it would answer her. She would be in there for years, and when the house fell, she would fall with it, and no one would be around to miss her.

  “So you know how to drive this thing?” She pointed at the U-Haul.

  Gregory hooked his belt and hefted up his pants. “I think I can handle it.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll go get the first of the boxes.”

  She started walking away, when he said, “Violet?”