How the Light Gets In

by Katy Upperman

  I want him in my corner too much.

  We head for the sand and walk a long time, weaving around families building sandcastles, whacking beach balls, flying kites. It’s a while before I can manage breathing without reminding myself to inhale and exhale, and even longer before I’ve loosened my viselike hold on Tucker’s hand. I’ve reviled the ocean for a year; it’s a daunting notion, forgiving an entity so powerful and destructive.

  Finally, we find a quiet spot and sit side by side on the sun-toasted sand. I pull my knees up, digging my toes deep to find the damp, cool grains beneath. It’s quiet here, but for the rhythmic cresting of waves. Tucker and I are still at odds, which is wrong, like snowflakes in July. I’ve grown so accustomed to him radiating light; the solemnity of his mood, of this afternoon, turns the blunt twinge of my headache into the pounding of a bass drum.

  I’m tired, deep in my bones and head and heart.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, cutting into the silence. “I should’ve heard you out. Shit, Cal. I want you to trust me. You can trust me.”

  I shrug, like none of this is a big deal. And, God, maybe it isn’t—not all arguments have to end in catastrophe.

  “I shouldn’t have stormed off,” I admit. “That’s kind of a bad habit of mine.”

  He cracks a smile. “I kind of noticed.”

  I’m not so pissed anymore—Tucker’s proved himself impossible to stay mad at—but my head’s killing me. I drop my forehead onto my knees, letting my hair curtain around me. I see white spots on the backs of my lids. I draw figure eights in the sand to remain upright, while my skull pulses in sync to the blood pumping through my veins.

  “You okay?” Tucker asks over the ocean wind.

  I nod without lifting my head.

  “Another headache?”

  I nod, again.

  “What’s up with that?”

  I straighten to look at him, wisps of blond streaking across my face. He brushes my hair back, and his touch makes me more alert than I want to be. The shift between us feels profound, a change in the salty air that makes what’s growing between us weightier.

  Better.

  The somber tone of our afternoon passes when his mouth lifts into a genuine smile, one that makes me smile, too. The longing in his eyes says he wants to kiss me. Right here on the beach. After everything that’s happened.

  I want to kiss him, too. I want to taste him and touch him and know the softness of his hair, the fullness of his lips, the caress of his breath on my skin. I want to savor the sensation of my hands on his face, his neck, his back.

  He inches closer.

  My emotions spin circles, discouraging me, mocking me, cheering me on.

  “Let’s see what we can do about your head.” He slides back and over, behind me, and the moment passes. I can’t decide if I’m relieved or disappointed.

  Not entirely disappointed, I decide as he stretches a long leg out on either side of mine and moves forward so we’re touching, his warm mingling with my cool. He grips my shoulders, draws me back, then slowly, so slowly, passes his hands beneath my hair. His splayed fingers run the length of my scalp, from the base of my neck to my crown. He does it again, and the pressure is amazing. I turn to beeswax, softening under the heat of his fingers, melting into the fine sand. Seagulls fly overhead, unaware. The sun dips lower, casting the sky in peaches and plums, and for the first time in eons, I’m swimming in a welcome pool of peace.

  The serenity evaporates the second I acknowledge it. This happiness, on this beach, with this boy—I don’t have a right to it. But then Tucker’s arms come around me, pulling me back until I’m against his chest. Reason tells me to move away, but something unreasonable keeps me still.

  “How’s your head?” he asks.

  “Better.”

  “I’m not so bad to have around, then?”

  “Tucker, I never thought you were.”

  “Yeah, you did. In the beginning. A little while ago, even.”

  “Well, not anymore.”

  I bring my hands up to rest on his forearms, hyperaware of his scent, spice and cedar, the solid feel of his chest against my back, and his even breaths. His skin is as soft as suede and covered in hairs as blond as those on his mop-top head.

  “I really am sorry about earlier,” he murmurs.

  I shake my head. “I know how it sounds. Outrageous.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay … maybe a little. I mean, a haunted house? A ghost?” He pauses, and I can almost hear the tinkering of wheels rotating in his head. “What if you tell me more? Why’s it so easy for you to believe in this ghost?”

  Because she’s my sister. Because I’ve spoken to her. Because I need her.

  “It’s not easy; I’ve doubted my sanity a thousand times since I’ve been back in Bell Cove. It’s the sounds and the cold and the things I’ve found. I can sense a presence, like when you’re racing in the pool and you’re out in front, but you know the swimmer in the next lane’s gaining on you without ever turning to look? It’s like that—another soul existing in your space. And then…”

  So badly, I want to give him my truth.

  “And then…?” Tucker prompts.

  I shake my head. “Nothing.”

  He drops his chin onto my shoulder. “Callie? Why don’t you ever talk to me?”

  “I do. I just did.”

  “Yeah, but there’s other stuff. You could tell me, but you don’t. How come?”

  Because I’m a mess. I can’t talk about things that matter without tears, and tears would snuff out your sunshine. Because you might turn away.

  These are the things I should say. Instead, I ask, “What do you want to know?”

  “Uh, everything?”

  I giggle, a silly girl who has no idea how to direct this conversation somewhere safe.

  “What’s your favorite color?” he asks.

  “Are you trying to warm me up?”

  “Something like that. I bet it’s black.”

  I glance down at my black tank and grimace. “It’s green.”

  “Favorite food?”

  “Breakfast.”

  He smiles. “Can you be more specific?”

  “Not really. Most important meal of the day and all.”

  “Okay. How many boyfriends have you had?”

  “One. How many girlfriends have you had?”

  “None, really. I mean, there’ve been girls. There was one a few months ago, at school…” He clears his throat, sounding suddenly uncomfortable. “It was a one-time thing.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah. Kind of forgettable. What happened with the boyfriend?”

  “It ended.”

  “Oh?”

  “Badly.”

  He digests that bonus tidbit. “Did he give you that ring you’re always wearing?”

  I look at my hand, diamonds and plaited platinum encircling my finger. “No.”

  He lets me go, scoots back, and drapes his arms across his bent knees. I give my filched ring a twist as the blissful aftereffects of his massage drift away on a breeze. With a palm on my cheek, he urges my attention up. His expression is excruciatingly gloomy. “How about I tell you what I know? Then you can add something new, if you want.”

  “Okay,” I say, only because I’m desperately curious as to what he thinks he knows.

  “I know you were in Bell Cove for a while last summer.”

  My stomach sinks into the sand.

  “I know about your sister.” He finds my hand and holds it in both of his. “I know you’re sad because she died.”

  I sit very still, staring at him while a tornado of anger coils through me. “Lucy told you?”

  He shakes his head. “I heard right after it happened, just before I left for Malibu. It was in the news, but there wasn’t a lot of information, since she was a minor. People talked, but it was mostly hearsay. When I started working for your aunt, when I met you … I put it all together. I asked Lucy
about it last night, when I brought your kitten.”

  I don’t even know what to say. He introduced me to his dad and bought me a scone and chided me for believing in ghosts, all the while knowing about Chloe.

  I slip my hand from his.

  “Cal?” he says imploringly.

  “It was a year ago today.” But that’s all I can get out because my eyes are threatening to spill over with tears. I try to blink them back, like talking about my sister—thinking about my sister—doesn’t open my chest and batter my heart. But they come, the damn traitorous tears I’ve so successfully kept at bay. They come with a vengeance.

  Tucker’s expression twists with distress; he’s seen me a lot of ways, but never this way.

  It’s clear he wants to hear more, but not because he’s interested in the gritty details. He’s willing to take on part of my burden. I know, because he doesn’t ask. He sits next to me, waiting, warm against my side, his patience constant and enduring.

  I take a shaky breath, and then the words are buzzing over one another, teeming in the air like a locust swarm. “We came to help Lucy. It was supposed to be the three of us, taking on all these projects. It was supposed to be fun. It was fun, sometimes. But Chloe and I had a lot going on—sister stuff. One night was particularly shitty. She did something she shouldn’t have, and I said terrible, terrible things. Things I’ll never be able to take back.” Tucker’s face has gone ashy, his mouth pressed into a grim line. Hot tears sear my cool cheeks as my dam of silence comes crashing down. “She went down to the beach—she liked to swim in the ocean—but she shouldn’t have gone in the dark. She shouldn’t have gone by herself. If I’d known, I would’ve followed. But I didn’t know, and I didn’t follow, and she didn’t come back.”

  He cradles my face in his hands, whispers, “It couldn’t have been your fault.”

  “I should have been with her.”

  “She shouldn’t have gone into the ocean alone—you just said so.”

  “If I hadn’t been so mad at her.” I’m choking on sobs, short of breath, trying to draw air and speak at the same time. “She was my little sister. I should’ve been looking out for her.”

  “Callie, if you’d been with her … Those currents are crazy strong. You wouldn’t have been able to help.”

  “But at least she wouldn’t have been by herself.”

  He folds me into his arms and holds me while I cry, tracing warm circles over my back, laying his cheek to the top of my head. His silence feels like commiseration, like empathy, like he knows, and when I’m able to gather my misery and stuff it back into the darkness it escaped from, I unwrap myself from him, surprised to see it’s officially dusk.

  He presses his hands to my cheeks, looking me over. My face is hot, and my eyes feel swollen, raw. Embarrassment rushes in. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “That never happens.”

  “Jesus. Don’t apologize. Do you feel any better?”

  “A little.” Lighter, somehow.

  He smiles, tentative. “See? I told you I’m an okay listener.” He presses a kiss to my forehead, tender and innocent, then pulls back to gaze at me. “You know, you’re beautiful even with your eyes all red and puffy.”

  I laugh, the sound still foreign and wrong-sounding, but it feeds Tucker’s smile. Thank God his sunlight managed to outshine my tears. “You’re so full of shit.”

  He stands, brushes sand from his shorts, and pulls me up. “Let’s go get some dinner.”

  32

  Tucker pulls onto Stewart House’s gravel drive after dinner at Bell Cove’s only fast-food restaurant, a small, old-fashioned drive-through called The Beach Bum. While the name was kind of a turnoff, the food was greasy and delicious; we stuffed ourselves with burgers and malts. It’s dark now, but rays of light stream from the windows of the house, like Lucy’s trying to make the place visible from space.

  “What the hell is she doing in there?” Tucker asks, coaxing the Woody into park.

  “Refinishing the hardwood on the floor while jamming to her beloved eighties music, probably. She’s bananas.”

  “Says the girl who hangs out with ghosts.”

  I give him a teasing watch it look because joking with him is a thousand times better than bickering with him, and he’s trying. “A ghost,” I clarify.

  He stretches an arm across the back of the bench, making the barest contact with my shoulders. He’s being suave about making a move or I’m reading too much into what’s going on between us, but either way, my head’s in a tailspin. And just how experienced is he anyway? There’ve been girls, he said earlier. I’d be willing to bet he’s got more going for him than the one night I spent with Isaac, that ill-conceived attempt at feeling something.

  I’m still searching, but I’ve stumbled on a sliver of contentment, one that has everything to do with Tucker Morgan.

  He grins, bathing the dark interior in the light that seems to burn within him. “So. We should do this again sometime, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.” I flash him a smile, one that comes effortlessly. It feels good to be this girl again, capable of flirting and fun, willing to say yes. It feels so good I refuse to think of all the reasons I shouldn’t be this girl.

  He runs his hand over my hair, lazily twisting the strands around his fingers. My eyelids flutter. I have half a mind to stretch out across the seat and request another massage.

  “I should go in,” I say, though my voice is seriously lacking in conviction.

  He leans forward, drawing me closer with a hand on the back of my neck. “I’m gonna see you at the pool tomorrow, right?”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  His mouth curls into a lopsided smile. “Oh, that’s how it is?”

  I’m about to reply, Yes, Yard Boy, that’s exactly how it is, when he cuts me off with the press of his mouth against mine. It’s tantalizingly drawn out, and it comes with the mind-blowing, holy hell! realization that Tucker Morgan is kissing me—kissing me as I’ve never been kissed before. When he pulls away, I’m breathless and giddy, a new kind of high.

  With an expression part awestruck, part triumphant, he climbs out of the car and unloads my bike from the back while I look on, wishing I could kiss the smirk off his face. But before I can summon the courage, my bike is safely inside the shed and he’s walking me to the porch.

  “Tomorrow morning?”

  “Sure,” I say, still a little dazed.

  He waits a second, then: “I thought you had to go inside?”

  I set off to look for my aunt.

  * * *

  I can’t find Lucy, which is odd because with every light in the house on, there aren’t a lot of places to hide. The kitchen’s a mess, the counters cluttered with stainless steel bowls, a hand mixer, and various baking ingredients. A bitter, burnt odor hangs in the air, and a heap of charred cookies lies in the sink. Daisy and Buddy play beneath the kitchen table, batting around a bit of wadded-up paper towel. It’s not until I step into my room and glance through the wide windows that I spot my aunt in the backyard.

  She’s standing near the cliff, facing the black emptiness of the ocean. She’s wearing a sundress, pale pink, rippling gently in the wind. Her copper hair is bigger and frizzier than usual.

  She’s smoking.

  I hurry through the backdoor, traipsing across the grass toward her. As I get closer, I spot cigarette butts speckling the ground around her shoes. “Aunt Lucy?”

  She whips around, hand to her heart. “Callie!”

  “Hey. Are you okay?”

  She draws a stream of smoke and flashes a smile that doesn’t touch her eyes. “Sure,” she says, nodding like she’s trying to convince herself. “How was your afternoon?”

  “Okay.”

  Her flitting eyes settle on my face. “I’m glad. Did you see Tucker?”

  “Yeah, we just finished dinner.” Honestly, I was ready to lay into her for talking to him about Chloe, but it’s easy to
set my anger aside. Something’s not right, the way she’s chain-smoking, fluttering around so close to the cliff’s edge. She talks a big game about opening up and sharing, but in truth, she buries her feelings almost as deep as I do. “Aunt Lucy, are you sure you’re all right?”

  She glances toward Stewart House, looming over us, lit windows like gaping eyes. “I was making cookies,” she says, “and it hit me all at once. Today—how hard it must be for your parents. For you.”

  “For you, too.”

  She shakes her head, eyes bright with tears. “I keep thinking about that night. The beach.”

  We went down together, my aunt and me. After I sent Isaac away. After I told Lucy what I’d witnessed. As soon as we realized that Chloe was missing and that she’d taken her wet suit. We’d gone in the Range Rover, me in the passenger seat, seething with anger, Lucy flying down the roads like she was leading a high-speed chase. I thought she was being melodramatic; we’d arrive at the beach, see the bike Chloe favored parked near the dunes, where she and I’d left our bikes every time we’d gone together. Lucy and I would spot her bag and her towel, and then we’d see her, in the distance, navigating the waves.

  The moon had been nearly full. The sand glowed under its white light, and the water glittered. As I predicted, we found Chloe’s bike. We found her bag. We found her towel.

  We didn’t find her.

  “I know,” I say now. “I’ve been thinking about her all day. All the time.”

  “I keep going over it,” Lucy says. She’s crying—weeping. I’m so shocked, so panicked by her uncharacteristic display of heartache, I’m frozen where I stand. She didn’t cry last year, not that night or the day after, not the afternoon of the wake. Except, maybe she did, in private. Maybe she put on a show of strength for me. For my parents. She says, “I keep wondering what I could’ve done differently. How I could have stopped her from leaving. Saved her before it was too late.”

  “You couldn’t have,” I tell her.

  It was me who should have stopped her. Despite Tucker’s reassurances, I might’ve been able to save my sister. But Lucy … Lucy is blameless.

  “If only—” she starts.