Isaac showed me how to hold the lighter so my fingers wouldn’t burn and suggested I take it easy at first. I did and coughed so hard my eyes streamed tears. Feeling intensely stupid, I passed the pipe back, bracing for laughter.
But all he said was, “It can be harsh the first time.”
We spent a while sitting on that bench, talking about my approaching finals and his college application experience and how unnecessarily competitive high school can be. I tried a couple of more hits, and by the time we were on our way back from the greenbelt, I was this amazing blend of silly, slack, and sleepy.
Studying, school, swim team … completely manageable.
When Isaac reached for my hand a block from home, I twined my fingers through his and knew: In the space of an hour, in the shadows of the greenbelt, I’d changed.
At home, I had to sneak through the front door, past my dad and my sister and my mom, who’d curled up on the couch with a novel. Upstairs, I showered the smell of smoke away. When I left the bathroom in my robe, hair still damp, I found Chloe in my room, sitting at my desk.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“On a walk.”
“With who?”
“Nobody.”
It was the first time I’d ever outright lied to her.
It wouldn’t be the last.
* * *
Around dinnertime, Lucy knocks on my bedroom door, ducks her head in, and tells me she’s leaving for book club. I make no effort to hide my relief. She attempted a half-assed apology for what happened in the car earlier—after she got home from the nursery with a list of flowers and shrubs to pick up in a few weeks—but I’m still pissed.
As soon as she’s gone, I make a peanut butter sandwich and take it to my room.
Daisy’s curled up on the bed—the queen that continues to rattle me. She barely peeps an eye open when I sit beside her, but I reach out to scratch her head anyway. I appreciate her sixth sense when it comes to the strangeness of Stewart House. I stroke the length of her back while I nibble on my sandwich.
When I finish, I call home. Dad’s happy to hear from me, but when I ask to talk to Mom, he tells me she’s not up for it. I’m disappointed but not surprised. When Chloe and I were in Bell Cove last summer, my mom and I chatted almost every day, but I can count the number of conversations she and I’ve had during the last year on one hand.
I tell my dad I love him, then hang up and pull out my computer, content to poke around online until it’s a reasonable hour for bedtime. I’m looking for an available outlet for the power cord when my skin tightens with goose bumps. The paralyzing certainty that I’m not alone swoops in, accompanied by a rush of alarm. I whirl around and sweep the room.
Empty.
Empty.
I stoop to shove the prongs of my computer’s cord into the outlet behind my nightstand. I will not be afraid in this room. Daisy’s sleeping peacefully on the bed, after all.
But when I glance in her direction, I find she’s vanished through the cracked doorway.
Crouched in the corner, shivering, I give serious consideration to the idea that my overactive imagination isn’t responsible for what I’ve been experiencing at Stewart House. The cold, the curtains, the sounds, the attic window, the eerie stillness. The terrifying sensation of invisible eyes skimming my body.
I’m seconds from ditching my room, the house, when a sudden calm washes over me.
I don’t run.
Instead, I bury myself beneath the covers of the bed. I power on my laptop. I log on to Lucy’s Wi-Fi. I pull up Google and type: signs of a haunting.
My finger hovers over the return key. I stare at what I’ve typed, letting its implications roll over me in alternating ripples of uncertainty and interest.
Am I admitting—even to myself—that I’m suspicious of a haunting at Stewart House?
I press return.
Google spits back more than a million results, and I sit up a little straighter, validated by these masses of hits.
I click on the first link, Twenty Signs Your House Is Haunted. The list is sort of predictable: strange noises, lights turning off and on, feelings of being watched or touched, strange animal behavior, unexplained sickness, cold and hot spots, disappearing and reappearing objects.
I let my mind turn unrestricted. Assuming hauntings are real and possible, it’s conceivable that my sister is trying to connect with me. She died just south of Stewart House, and the circumstances leading up to her passing likely left her with business unfinished. But it makes sense to consider past Stewarts as potential haunters, too. They’ve got a century of history binding them to the property.
I clear my search and type: Stewarts, Bell Cove.
There are several articles about the earliest Stewarts and their move to the coast. I skim one detailing Joseph Stewart’s contributions to the town, the money he donated, the plans he helped draft. There’s another, more recent, that speaks of Clayton Stewart, the last to occupy the family home. The article mentions his death—heart attack—and the house’s subsequent real estate listing by Dr. Hannah Stewart.
There are a few other Stewart-centric headlines, but one, from June 1999, grabs my attention. Filled with anticipation and foreboding, I click it, honing in on the paragraph that appears.
The disappearance of nineteen-year-old Annabel Tate has been declared a probable suicide by authorities. Bell Cove Police began to investigate Tate’s disappearance after a sole witness claimed he had seen her jump from the cliff on the Stewart property last Saturday evening. Due to suspicious circumstances, police could not immediately rule out foul play. After interviewing Tate’s family, friends, and the witness (who has been cleared of wrongdoing), it was determined that Tate was likely lost to suicide. Though Tate’s body has not been recovered, a memorial service will be held Friday, 2:00 p.m., at Our Savior Lutheran in Bell Cove.
Annabel Tate. Not a Stewart, but connected to the family in some way. Nineteen. According to this article, she was claimed by the Pacific.
I envision her in silhouette, leaping from the cliff outside my windows, limbs extended, hair whipping wildly behind her.
My breath catches and, shuddering, I blink the image away.
I’m freezing, suddenly, and freaking disturbed. These sorts of intrusive thoughts barge into my consciousness sometimes, and once they exist, they’re hard to banish. Usually they’re linked to Chloe and her death, but Annabel Tate’s possible suicide has supplied my brain with new and upsetting material to obsess over.
Hunkering beneath the covers, I twist the looted ring on my finger, trying to send my thoughts elsewhere. Except, I can’t stop mulling over Annabel and her end. My sister and her end. Chloe’s passing was an accident, while Annabel’s might not have been, but their deaths are linked by proximity.
Both girls were so young, with whole lives ahead of them.
I keep asking myself: Why?
To clear my head, I abandon my Stewart research and pull up a series of videos featuring swim races, something like white noise or comfort food when despondency gets to be too much for me. I’m watching the first, fifteen-year-old Ye Shiwen kicking ass in the Women’s 200 Meter IM at the 2011 World Championships, when the bedroom door hurls shut.
The room reverberates with a thunderous bang.
I startle, slapping my hands over my heart so it doesn’t come crashing through my ribs.
When the door opens again, slowly, and with a screeeech that makes me shrink physically away, I pray my aunt will be standing on the other side.
She’s not.
There’s nothing there at all, save an invisible voice, softer than a whisper of wind.…
“Callie.”
13
I hardly slept last night.
I kept hearing my name, Callie, cold and quiet.
Anguished.
Even after Lucy came home, I kept climbing out of bed to walk circles around my room. I spent the earliest dawn hours on the front porch, trying to mak
e sense of who, and how, and why.
It was there, curled up in a rocking chair, the sky fading gradually from black to gray to blue, that I heard a different sound: tiny squeals—sad, little whimpers—emanating from the trees on the eastern side of the yard. They carried on constantly, persistently, until I went back inside, to my room, so I could pretend to have spent the night there.
After breakfast, Lucy invites me to Portland to shop for furniture. I pass. I’m over our fight, but I’ve got investigating to do. Those early-morning noises were different—corporeal, not spectral—and while I wasn’t about to leave the porch before the sun had fully risen, I’m ready now.
From the parlor window, I watch my aunt climb into the Range Rover, turn the engine over, then pause to check her reflection in the visor mirror. She purses her lips and applies a shimmery lip gloss while I drum my fingers on the windowsill thinking, Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up.
Tucker’s Wagoneer is parked haphazardly near where Lucy’s SUV idles. Off in the western section of the yard, far from where the early-morning sounds originated, I spot him working.
I hope he stays put.
Finally, Lucy clicks her seat belt and cruises down the drive. As soon as she disappears down the hill, I’m out the front door. The sun sprays me with heat, its light too bright, and I’m sure—sure—I’m becoming a hermit as I hustle, shielding my eyes, squinting toward the tree line. I slow as the grass transforms into thicker underbrush, scratching at my ankles, making me itch. A wall of forest looms ahead, but I know: This is where the sounds came from.
Crouching down, I tilt my head and listen.
There they are again—a muted rustling … pitiful, little squeals.
Not scary.
Concerning.
I reach forward, nudging the weeds back, giving way to a bramble of flowering blackberry bushes. Carefully, I push a thorny branch out of the way. Beneath … kittens. Gray and white and black, wriggling, making that doleful, little mewing sound. Their eyes are open. They’re tiny, dirty, and obviously underfed, but very cute.
I watch them for a few minutes, hungry and squirming in their little nest. Their helplessness, their longing for comfort, makes my chest ache. They’re making enough noise to summon their mother. Between early this morning and now, she should’ve come running.
She must be lost or sick.
I think of my own mother, lost and sick.
How sad.
In the distance, a tree limb snaps.
Tucker.
I straighten, backing away from the kittens, out of the shade of the woods. I scan the yard until I find him, breaking dried branches, throwing them into a growing pile that’ll probably become kindling this winter.
I call out to him.
He looks up. Even from a distance, I can tell he’s surprised to see me outdoors.
I summon him with a wave, and he comes jogging over.
“What’s up?” he asks, dragging a forearm across his sweaty forehead.
“Can I show you something?”
He quirks an eyebrow. “Yeah.”
I walk back to the kittens, confident he’ll follow. When I squat down next to the blackberry bushes, he matches my posture, his face full of questions. I push a barbed branch back, and he leans in to peer at the kittens.
“Whoa,” he says. “How’d you find them?”
“I heard them early this morning.”
“You were out here early this morning?”
I ignore this inquiry and think again of the mama cat. Lucy said she rescued Daisy from these woods months ago, and now a stray’s been spooked away from her babies.
But why?
“Cal?” Tucker says. “What do you think we should do with them?”
I tear my gaze from the kittens to look at him. He called me Cal, like my dad sometimes does. Like Chloe almost always did. “I’m not sure.”
“I don’t think we should leave them out here. They’ll starve.” He gives me a teasing grin. “You don’t want dead kittens on your conscience, do you?”
My expression must darken, because his smile disappears. He looks different without it, older, and even though his benign comment landed like a hammer to the chest, I miss his glow.
“I think we should help them,” he says, his voice softer now.
I paddle out of an ocean of sadness—be normal, Callie. For once, be normal. “We could take them to a shelter.”
The corner of his mouth lifts hesitantly. “There’s one in town.”
“Okay.” I reach into the clearing to pick up a kitten.
Tucker takes hold of my wrist, his palm warm and a little rough. My cheeks catch fire. I pull in a sharp breath and look pointedly at where his tanned fingers wrap around my fair skin.
He lets go in a hurry.
“I don’t want you to get scratched up,” he says, chagrined, making a great effort to avoid looking at my scar. Because, what are a few scratches in comparison?
“I would’ve been fine.”
“I know, but…”
I sigh and then, to spare us another awkward second, say, “Maybe you could you find a box or something?”
He rises to his full height. “Yeah. There’re some old milk crates in the shed. I’ll grab one.”
“I’ll get a towel from inside. So they’re comfortable.”
We rush off in different directions, and I’m relieved. Tucker Morgan is too beguiling, and I nearly had a moment. I can’t do closeness, because closeness is the same as honesty. As vulnerability. I especially can’t do closeness with Tucker, the one person who doesn’t look at me with judgment or pity.
I find a plush bath towel in Lucy’s linen closet. There’s a hot water bottle, too, which I fill at the sink.
Tucker is waiting, sitting on top of an upturned crate. He stands and rights it when he sees me coming. I drop the hot water bottle in, then spread the towel over it, folding the edges to make a soft bed for the kittens.
“How about I reach in for them,” Tucker says, “then pass them off to you.”
The kittens resist rescue. Tucker’s struggling, his arms quickly crosshatched with cuts thanks to the blackberry thorns, but when he at last manages to capture a kitten, he hands it off to me. I tuck it into the crate, fluffing the towel before turning to wait for its siblings.
Movement in the woods catches my attention.
A flash of white, a glint of golden light.
I stare into the trees, trying to track it, to make sense of it, but the disturbance is gone as quickly as it came.
14
We recover six scrawny kittens. One is particularly cute, the runt, mostly gray and barely mewing. I want to hold him, but before I have a chance, Tucker lifts the crate and carries it to the Wagoneer. He balances it on his hip, pulling his keys from his pocket.
“My aunt should be home soon,” I say. “I’ll tell her where you went.”
“You’re not coming?”
I have no desire to climb into his hippie wagon, much less spend an extended amount of alone time with him. I sense he’s curious about what’s going on with me, why I’m in Bell Cove, and why I’m so irritable all the time, and I already feel too exposed. “I’m sure you can make it to the shelter and back on your own.”
“Yeah,” he says, shifting the weight of the crate. “But it’d be cool if you could hold this. Otherwise, it’s gonna go sliding around when I turn corners.”
“Drive slowly.”
“Oh, come on.”
He’s pushing.
I’m weakening.
“Tucker.”
“Callie. The kittens need you.” His tone, so earnest, sands the sharpness from my edges. He gives me a hopeful smile, and now I’m not sure I believe he wants me to tag along just to hold the crate steady.
Also, I can’t believe we’re bonding over stray kittens.
“All right,” I say, giving in only because I don’t want his smile to fall.
I climb into the passenger seat, relatively clean, save
a few empty Jelly Belly packages strewn about the floor. After I buckle up, Tucker sets the kitten crate on my lap and heads around to get in.
“This is quite a ride you’ve got here,” I say as he rotates the key in the ignition. The engine turns over with a roar.
“The Woody’s older than you, so please, be respectful.”
I tighten my grip on the crate as he descends the hill. “How far is the shelter?”
“Few miles. It’s right behind Bell Cove Elementary.”
“Your alma mater?”
He laughs. “Yeah, actually. I went to high school in Shell City, though. Bell Cove’s not big enough for a high school of its own, so they bused us fifteen miles up shore.”
“When did you graduate?”
“Last year.”
Same as Isaac. The only commonality I’ve detected between them, though. Isaac is dry, serious, comfortable with quiet. His past and his family and his interests are all out in the open. Tucker is warm and charmingly self-deprecating, cheerful almost to a fault, but he hasn’t given me anything personal.
“If it makes a difference,” he says, “I sometimes bounce back to the maturity level of a guy in high school.” He glances at me as we slow for Sitka Street traffic, raising his eyebrows in this exaggeratedly suggestive way that makes him look absolutely ridiculous.
A strange bubble, effervescent and irrepressible, rises in my chest. The stirring is so foreign, so long-dormant, it takes me a second to recognize it—it’s laughter. It escapes, and I don’t know who’s more surprised—Tucker or me.
“Holy shit—City Girl laughs?”
“Rarely,” I say, biting my lip. The lightness funnels away as quickly as it arrived, and my expression falls back into the sulk that fits like a favorite sweater.
Tucker lets me brood in silence a minute, until he brakes at another stop sign. “What about you? Still suffering through high school?”
“One more year.”
“Then what?”
“Good question.” Once upon a time, my future was planned in detail, the blueprint stamped with my parents’ approval. Swimming scholarship, Pac-12 university, history degree, like my dad. It all went out the window when Chloe died and I quit swimming and let my grades fall to hell. Last summer haunts me, but the hours and weeks and years ahead are worse; I have to live them without my sister.
How the Light Gets In Page 6