How the Light Gets In

by Katy Upperman

  By the time they got to the porch, she was laughing. Isaac had defused the situation, and maybe I should’ve been grateful—maybe she really didn’t see—but I was fixated on his arm around my sister and the way she was looking up at him, enchanted.

  I hated her for assuming his interest, and I hated him for leading her on.

  Now, I hate him for trying to keep me from moving on.

  He’s a black hole—inescapable.

  Meanwhile, Tucker is the brightest star, twinkling incessantly. His heat will thaw the cold, hard thing that’s settled in the pit of my stomach.

  I change into flannel pajama pants and a sweatshirt, then gather my hair into a ponytail. In the bathroom, I give my teeth a brushing and wash the smeared makeup from my face. When I tiptoe back to the parlor, I find him standing in front of the bookcase, regarding Lucy’s collection of books and photos.

  “Hey,” I say quietly.

  He twists around, then crosses the room and circles his arms around my waist. Leaning down, he murmurs, “Jesus, Cal. Why do you look so cute in pajamas?”

  I let myself cozy up to him for a second, but his shirt is still damp. I hold out the dry one I dug up. “You can change if you want. This is too big on me, so it should work for you.”

  He steps back and peels off his shirt. He’s topless for all of three seconds; not nearly enough time for me to admire him the way I want to, but God … I’ve seen him without a shirt more times than I can count, but this is different. Bare skin out of the context of the pool is bare skin I want to run my hands over.

  I’m ogling him, degrading him, probably, but if he’s noticed, he doesn’t mind. He tugs the shirt over his head, then rakes a hand through his hair to return it to its state of perfect disarray.

  I sink down on the settee, and he slips behind me. Curling against him, I close my eyes. I consider, for a half second, telling him about Isaac. About the recent calls and our muddied history, but he’ll have questions and I’ll end up flustered and that’s no good.

  Isaac doesn’t matter. Not anymore.

  Tucker tugs on the elastic holding my ponytail, releasing it. He combs his fingers through my hair, again and again, until I’m nearly rapturous.

  “You have the softest hair,” he whispers, wonderstruck.

  Time passes. Minutes. Hours. Days, maybe, while we sit in contented silence. I breathe him in, knitting my fingers through his. His heart beats beneath my ear, a steady, quick thrum, thrum, thrum that’d lull me to sleep if I let it. How lovely it would be to drift off in his arms. But I like him so much now, I worry about wasting our time together. In just over a month, I’ll be headed north to Seattle. He’ll go south, back to Malibu.

  “Tucker?” I whisper, mostly to keep myself awake.

  His fingertips glide across my neck, back into my hair. “Hmm?”

  “I can hear your heart.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s beating so fast.”

  He shifts, and I raise my head to look at him.

  “Because I’m with you,” he says.

  I smile, then I press my mouth to his.

  39

  I woke up alone in the parlor, beneath a soft throw. It took me only a second to notice the single poppy set purposefully on the side table.

  I missed Chloe.

  Now, I’m walking the sidewalks of Bell Cove with Lucy. To free myself from Stewart House—from the shame of ditching my sister for a boy, again, the worry of a squandered opportunity to gather information, and the stress of wondering if I’ll get another—I suggested we go shopping. My aunt was all too happy to take me up on my offer. She treated me to breakfast at The Coffee Cove, and now she’s grilling me about last night.

  “It was good,” I tell her for the dozenth time.

  “Just good?” she asks as we duck into a shop full of decor made of driftwood and seashells.

  “Fine. Really good,” I say, indulging her. “We watched the fireworks. I met some more of Tucker’s friends. He came in for a while, after, and we hung out in the parlor.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

  I run my fingers over seashells lining a picture frame. “It wasn’t like that,” I mumble, even though it sort of was.

  “Speaking of boys, did you see the note I left on your bed?”

  “Ugh. Yes.”

  “Why’s he still calling, Callie?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “I’m serious—I want you to let me know if he keeps it up,” she says, like she’s a mob boss with connections. She picks up a hurricane glass with a sterling silver base. It looks expensive. “What do you think of this? For the Theodore? I could sit it on the secretary with some sand in the bottom, and a pretty candle.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll get one for the kitchen, too. Come help me pick out the candles.”

  We spend a long time standing in front of a shabby hutch lined with pillar candles. Lucy chooses a clean cotton scent for the Theodore, and I pick vanilla for the kitchen. When we’re done, I wander outside and wait in an Adirondack chair while she pays for her finds. It’s so nice today, and I’m headache-free thanks to last night’s rain showering away the pollen. I close my eyes and sit, absorbing the sun until a shape passes in front of it, casting me in shadow.

  I open my eyes, shading them with my hand. A small form stands silhouetted before me.

  “Callie? I thought that was you.”

  “Shirley,” I say. “Nice to see you.”

  “You, too, sweetheart. How’s Lucy?”

  “Good. She’s just inside if you want to wait for her.”

  “I think I will.” She eases herself into the chair beside me and says, “I saw you last night with the Morgan boy.”

  “Yeah, we’ve gotten to know each other since he started working at Lucy’s.” Yard Boy. I hide a smile.

  “Such a nice young man. I taught his parents third grade. Did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I knew their friend Nathan, too. Those three used to be cute as can be.”

  My interest is piqued. “Tucker doesn’t talk about his mother a lot.”

  Her mouth sinks into a frown. “Not surprising. The rumors about her last days have probably caused him a lot of suffering. Not to mention his father.”

  I sit up, leaning right into her personal space, spilling over with questions, the most imminent being, What rumors?

  Lucy breezes through the door, holding a paper shopping bag. “Shirley! What a nice surprise!”

  Shirley pushes out of her chair, politely refusing Lucy’s offer of a hand. The two of them make small talk for a few minutes, but I can’t follow.

  What rumors?

  What rumors?!

  After a century, they wrap it up. Shirley pats my arm. “Come see me in the shop, anytime.”

  She hobbles down the sidewalk. I follow my aunt to the Range Rover.

  The questions I didn’t get to ask gather like a flock of birds, frantically flapping their wings.

  * * *

  The next day, I spend a while in the Abigail, making the queen-size bed with linens Lucy ordered from an online boutique. The room is pretty much done, walls a dramatic ruby red, antique furniture, and a mishmash of books and candles placed atop flat surfaces. The curtains are my favorite, a striking red-and-white paisley that sets the walls off. Buddy and Daisy love to sneak in and play with their long-tasseled tiebacks.

  A breeze wafts through the open window as I slide a pillow into its case, still warm from the dryer. The scent of the fabric softener my aunt uses is familiar now, homey, and I’m not sure whether to be calmed by that fact or unnerved.

  Just as I’ve finished fluffing countless other pillows, a strange sound blows in from outside. A shout, muffled, maybe distressed. I go to the window and look out over the yard. I don’t see Tucker or Lucy. The yard is quiet, still, and serene.

  I go back to work, folding a knit throw to lay over the foot of the bed, lost
in thought. My sister’s elusiveness is bothering me. I waited out on the porch last night, but she never showed. Our last conversation was strained, she’s frustrated by her missing memories, and I’m sure it looks like I ditched her for Tucker on Independence Day.

  She’s hurt. Or pissed.

  Outside, a loud thud resounds.

  I hurry to the window and scan the yard, listening hard.

  Another shout … the shed. The door’s closed but rattling on its hinges.

  I run down the stairs, through the front door, then race across the lawn to the outbuilding, purposeful but rickety.

  “Hey!” a voice calls from inside.

  I press my hands to the wooden door. “Tucker?”

  “Cal?” he shouts. “Finally—I’m trapped!”

  I jiggle the handle; it’s definitely jammed. “The door’s stuck!”

  “No shit. I’m gonna push. Pull as hard as you can, okay?”

  I widen my stance and wrap both hands around the rusty handle. “I’m ready.”

  “One, two … three!”

  I yank with all I’ve got. The door flies open, unchallenged. I reel backward and fall to the ground, hard, on my ass. Tucker materializes in the doorway, hunched, sweaty, winded. I expect him to laugh when he sees me sprawled in the grass, but he doesn’t. He just stands there, hands on his knees, panting.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, righting myself.

  “No, not really.”

  He reels around and heads toward the house. I scamper after him, baffled and sort of offended; I just rescued him. I follow as he climbs the stairs to the porch and falls unceremoniously into a rocker, still breathless. I take a tentative seat in the chair next to his. He fixes a stare on me, his eyes a dull gray that’s startlingly wrong.

  He says, “I think I met your ghost.”

  Air whooshes from my lungs. “What?”

  “I went into the shed to grab a shovel, and I swear to God, out of nowhere it got cold. Then the door slammed. Slammed. All on its own.”

  I nod, hoping that if I stay calm, he’ll chill out, too.

  “It wasn’t the wind,” he says. “It wasn’t the wind.”

  “I know.” It was Chloe—it must’ve been. But why? “Did anything else happen?”

  “Beside the fact that I couldn’t get the door open? There’s no lock, Callie. Something was keeping it shut.”

  “How long were you in there?”

  “I don’t know.” He shudders. “Too long.”

  I reach for him. His skin is clammy, and there are scrapes running the length of his arm. They’re fresh, painful-looking. I twist his wrist for a closer look.

  He glances at his wounds, then brushes my hand away, offering a startling explanation: “I tried to take the door down.”

  In life, Chloe was playful. Sometimes she was surly.

  She was never mean.

  Tucker gets up and stalks into the yard. The rigid slant of his shoulders makes me unsure about whether to follow. I loiter on the top step as he marches back and forth across the grass. Just when I’m certain I can’t stand to watch him pace another second, he stops, looks at me, and says, “I should’ve believed you—the second you told me.”

  God, he still looks so shaken. “It’s okay, Tucker. Seriously.”

  Time stretches long. The sun gleams overhead. Waves crash distantly. His face relaxes, and he opens his arms. I walk down the stairs and into them. He smells of wood shavings and freshly cut grass, deodorant and, faintly, sweat. He exhales, and I do, too.

  “Distract me,” he says into my hair.

  I press my cheek to his heart, foraging for the right topic, settling on, “Lucy and I are almost done decorating the Abigail.”

  He laughs. “Thrilling.”

  “We painted the walls red. It looks good, actually.”

  “I bet. What else?”

  “Oh! I ran into Shirley yesterday. From the bookstore? She mentioned you.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yep. Your parents, too. She said she taught them third grade.”

  “That, she did.”

  “And she mentioned someone else. Nathan?”

  The muscles of his back tighten beneath his damp T-shirt. “What about him?”

  “Just that your parents were friends with him.”

  He pulls away, putting a rift of space between us. His expression is impenetrable.

  “Is that bad?” I ask.

  “Remember what I told you the other night at the beach? About my mother?”

  I stand in the grass, thrown by his shifting mood, trying to link what he shared on the Fourth of July with what Shirley told me yesterday. “You said she knew one of the Stewarts? Nathan … Stewart?”

  He nods. “My dad was tight with him, too, until they graduated from high school.”

  “You said your mom went to visit a friend. That she never came back.”

  He nods again, impatient now.

  “That friend was Nathan Stewart?” As his name leaves my mouth, it hits me hard, how familiar this saga is. Tucker’s mother went to visit her friend Nathan Stewart and was never seen again. Annabel Tate never returned from the Stewart property, either. And then there are the letters I unearthed, signed with an A, speaking of loss and regret and a terrible mistake.

  … don’t even get me started on his mother, Brynn said.

  … caused him a lot of suffering, Shirley said.

  … until they graduated from high school, Tucker said.

  I touch his shoulder. “God, Tucker … Was Annabel Tate your mother?”

  He takes a swift step back. “What do you know about Annabel Tate?”

  I blink, hurt by the space he keeps putting between us. “I know she went to Shell City High, like you. I know police officers think she jumped from the cliff out back. For a while, in the beginning, I thought she might be my ghost.”

  Something’s wrong—the way Tucker’s glaring, hard as marble, resentment carved in sharp lines and severe angles. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says. “There’s no proof she died by suicide—there’re a shit-ton of people who think she was pushed. Murdered. And there’re some who think she up and left town. Did you know that?”

  “No,” I whisper. “But the article I read said—”

  “Don’t,” he says, his voice serrated. “The articles are wrong. You’re wrong.”

  “Then help me understand!”

  He drags a hand over his face, coming away with a fraction of composure. “My mother was last seen here, in the backyard, with her … I don’t know … her lover.” He nearly chokes on the word. “She was cheating on my dad, jerking him around. She wouldn’t marry him, wouldn’t even settle down with him. He was taking care of me, and she was screwing around with Nathan Stewart. He played my dad and manipulated my mother. A lot of people—my dad, my grandparents—thought he was dangerous. Thought he should’ve been held responsible for her disappearance.”

  “But it really could’ve been an accident.”

  “It was a fucking tragedy. So the next time you find a stack of love letters from her to him, I don’t need to see them.”

  “Tucker—”

  He throws up a hand, cutting me off. “I’ve gotta go.”

  He turns and stalks down the driveway to his car. I watch, speechless, as he climbs in, then slams the door with such force I expect the window to shatter.

  Without a backward glance, he peels off, tires throwing dust and gravel into the breeze.

  40

  In the backyard, I lie on the lawn, watching the afternoon sun slide across the blue, blue sky.

  I can’t believe he left.

  I think, maybe, I should be angry. I want to be angry, but all I feel is a sickening emptiness deep in my gut.

  The grass makes my legs itch, and my cheeks have gone warm with a burn, but I don’t move. I’m backtracking, combing over the facts, circling around to bits of conversation Tucker and I’ve had, thinking about what I’ve unearthed, recall
ing what I’ve read.

  The article I found online didn’t mention that Annabel had a child. I do the math; she disappeared in 1999. Tucker would’ve been an infant. That photograph in the Morgans’ living room, baby Tucker and his mother, must’ve been taken weeks, maybe days, before Annabel vanished.

  His mother …

  I spring up from the grass and run into the house, into my room. I yank open the nightstand drawer. A’s letters are there, secrets folded into pink stationery. I spread them out over my bed and pore over her words.

  I broke what we had … but it was special.…

  With every passing minute, I regret my time with him more.…

  I carry my biggest mistake with me, every day.…

  I’m not sure I can stay with him, trapped in a weak imitation of love.…

  I need to know if we can reclaim what we lost.

  Annabel wrote these letters to Nathan Stewart. Does that mean the person she regretted spending time with—the person she was trapped with—was Benjamin Morgan?

  Was Tucker the mistake she carried with her?

  I’m pushing my feet into shoes, cramming the letters into my pocket. I’m moments from heading out of my room when my phone rings.

  I glance at it; I’m in no mood to deal with my dad, but if I don’t answer, he’ll worry.

  I try to inject liveliness into my voice when I say, “Hello?”

  “Callie. Hi, sweetie.” I’m surprised—it’s my mom.

  “Hey. How are you?”

  “Okay…” She stretches the word out, as if considering whether it fits.

  I wait, easing the inklings of a tension headache by rubbing circles into my temples. Mom does the same thing; when she’s zoned out at the kitchen table with a glass of wine, she presses her fingers to her head and kneads. I find it unsettling—not the movement, but the expression she wears: vacant and detached.

  “Callie, hi,” my dad says. I picture them at home, in the kitchen, with his phone on the countertop between them, set to speaker. “How are you? How’s Lucy?”

  “We’re good,” I say. And then, because the worry corkscrewing through my middle demands it: “Is something wrong?”