“The woods. The poppy meadow.”
“Was she alone?”
“I didn’t see anyone else.”
“Do you think someone took her there?”
A pause. One of them pulls the sheet over me, right to my chin.
“I don’t know.”
“I should call her father.”
“Her father? We need to take her to the hospital.”
This. This is what brings me back. They’re hovering over my bed. Tucker’s driving a hand through his hair, and my aunt has her fists planted on her hips. “No hospital,” I say, “and please, don’t call my dad. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” Lucy says.
“Sleepwalking,” I say, too tired to attempt a full sentence.
“Sleepwalking?” Tucker repeats, his tone hardened with skepticism.
“I have a headache.” I close my eyes.
I want both of them to go.
“Let’s let her rest, Tuck. If she hasn’t improved in an hour, I’ll take her to a doctor.”
He sets his hand on my forehead. His palm is warm and calloused, so comforting I want to cry. He pulls away. Footsteps travel across the hardwood. The door closes.
* * *
When I wake, my headache has faded to a blunt rapping. Buddy’s curled up on my pillow. I’m not sure how he got into my room, but I’m thrilled to see him. I kiss his little face all over before noticing ice water and two Motrin on my nightstand. I swallow the medicine and all the water.
I force myself out of bed and into the bathroom, where I gulp down another glass of water. When I finish, I sit on the closed toilet lid and stare at my filthy feet. I trampled through the woods barefoot in the middle of the night.
I lost myself.
Because of Chloe.
I stand too quickly; wooziness nearly takes me back down. Last night, this morning—there’s no way allergies are to blame. There’s something else to my symptoms. Something otherworldly, something unknowable, and that scares the shit out of me.
How much am I willing to risk to see my sister? To excavate her secrets?
I reclaim my equilibrium and strip out of my dirty clothes. I turn the shower on as hot as it’ll go, letting the spray splash over me, then soap up, scouring my skin with a loofa. I scrub my hair and think of Lucy—how she must’ve felt not knowing where I was this morning. And Tucker—how he must have suffered seeing me weak and confused amid the poppies.
I am horrible.
Lucy’s changing my bedding when I pad back into the bedroom with a towel wrapped around my middle. She tucks a sheet beneath the mattress before shaking out the down comforter and laying it back on the bed. I dress in a clean pair of leggings and a tank top while she fluffs pillows. I try to come up with a reasonable explanation for my behavior, but I have no idea how to justify disappearing in the middle of the night.
“You’re taking the day off,” she says, slipping a pillow into its case. She chucks it at the headboard and turns on me. “I want you to rest.”
“Okay,” I say, running a brush through my wet hair.
“You gave me a hell of a scare, Callie. What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know.”
“Not good enough.”
“Aunt Lucy, I’m sorry. The truth is, I wasn’t thinking at all.”
Her expression is more imposing than anything I’ve ever seen out of her. Still, her voice wavers when she says, “I need to know where you are, all the time—especially at night. What if something had happened? What if…?”
What if I died.
I wonder if she regrets inviting me to stay this summer.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
What I want to tell her is thank you. Thank you for everything.
She pulls back the bedcovers. “Buddy’s in the kitchen with Daisy. Don’t worry about him.”
I slip into bed and lie back on pillows that smell of fabric softener and home. Lucy bends to kiss my cheek and whispers, “Don’t ever make me worry like that again.”
She leaves me, quiet and alone.
43
I’m not sure how much time has passed when the door opens again. Heavier footsteps tread across the floor. My mattress shifts. Warm fingertips brush my cheek.
I open my eyes to Tucker and a surge of emotion foreign and powerful and good.
I’m not sure where we stand, though. He hurt me yesterday, and recalling what I put him through this morning makes my stomach roil.
Worry swirls in the celadon of his eyes. The only thing keeping me from bursting into tears is his hand on my cheek.
I push my mouth into my best imitation of a smile. “Hi.”
His expression thaws, thank God, and he dives headfirst into an apology. “Callie, this is on me. Yesterday … if I’d stayed, if I’d talked to you, if I’d let you talk—”
“Hey, stop. Please don’t feel bad about any of this. If it weren’t for you…”
He opens his mouth, considers, and closes it again.
“Tucker, what?”
“I drove here this morning when you didn’t show up at the pool. Lucy didn’t know where you were. I couldn’t find you anywhere. I was fucking terrified.”
Blood courses through my veins, a sound like thunder in my ears. “Thank you,” I say. “For coming. For helping me.”
“Are you kidding? You were all I could think about.” He takes my hand and threads his fingers through mine. He’s nervous, I can tell, and he’s stalling. Probably because he’s about to poke new holes into our already-leaking boat. He takes a breath and says, “I need you to tell me, Cal. Were you in the woods alone?”
I trace a finger over the stitching in my comforter, avoiding his eyes.
Chloe, last night, waning and waxing as truths emerged.
“Shit, Callie. Who’d you go out there with?”
Not the ghost, he’s thinking. Tell me you weren’t with the ghost.
“I just—I needed fresh air.”
“In the middle of the night?”
A sea of silence churns between us. He’s still holding my hand—I’m clinging to his—and he’s staring me down, daring me to, for once, be transparent.
“Tucker,” I whisper. “She needed me.”
“Who needed you?”
I can’t say it aloud.
I cannot force her name free.
He wrenches his hand from mine, and all I can I think, over and over, is Don’t tell me we’re done.
“I’m trying,” he says. “I’m trying so hard to be straight with you. To be open with you. I want to give you time. Earn your trust. But this morning? You can’t disappear in the middle of the night. It’s not fair to Lucy, and it’s not fair to me and, shit, if you got hurt, what would that be like for your parents? People care about you. I care about you.”
“I know. I care about you, too.”
He shakes his head, disbelieving. “If we’re never gonna get to a place where we tell each other important stuff, then I’m not sure I should keep coming around.”
I close my eyes and see white spots. Cold creeps in, caressing my shoulders, leaching through my pores. Tucker sighs, rueful; I don’t even realize I’m shivering until he tucks the comforter around me. He moves beside me, his back against my pillows, then loops his arm around my shoulders, charitably.
I dissolve into his warmth.
He rubs my neck, kneading tension away. “Am I being an asshole?”
“No. You’re being passionate.”
“Yeah, that happens sometimes, especially where you’re concerned.” He pauses, his hand still on my neck. His voice is quiet and heartbreakingly uncertain when he says, “There’s something between us, right? I mean, I think there is, but maybe I’m assuming too much. Maybe you and me … Maybe we’re just a distraction from what you’ve got going on at home.”
A spark of indignation flickers inside me. I sit up and look him square in the eye. “It’s impossible to distract me, Tucker. My sister is dead. I’
m dangerously close to failing out of school. My mom’s on her way to rehab. My dad wants everything to be okay—” I inhale and finish, wobbly—“but nothing is okay.”
He gathers me against him, and I cry, but it’s not so tragic this time—nothing like yesterday’s breakdown at the pool.
Tucker’s here. I’m not alone, and I’m grateful.
When it’s over, I’m rinsed clean, like the shore at low tide.
I ease back, feeling better, stronger, to find Tucker’s bottomless gaze trained on me. His mouth sags in a frown; he looks deeply troubled, like my welfare agonizes him to the marrow of his bones.
“Chloe,” I whisper. “Last night, I went into the woods with Chloe.”
“Your sister is your ghost,” he says. Somehow, he doesn’t sound surprised. “Tell me how it works?”
“There’s a connection between us,” I say. “An energy. It’s hard to explain.”
“You talk to her?”
“All the time.”
“And she talks back?”
I smile. “Yes.”
“She knows? She understands she’s…?”
I nod. “At first, she didn’t remember details. But she’s recovering parts of the story. When she has it all, when she remembers, when we confront what happened, that’s it. She’ll have no reason left to stay.”
He touches my neck, then lets his hand slip to my collarbone. Lower. It comes to a rest on my chest, a slight pressure against my ribs. He leaves it there, fingers spread, as if he’s caging my heart inside. “You want her to stay.”
He speaks with such tenderness, such empathy. I can’t fathom having this conversation with anyone else.
“Of course. God, Tucker. It’s been amazing, having her back.”
He scans my face, hunting for clues. “But…?”
I look at his hand, still pressed to my chest. “It’s different now,” I admit. “She’s different. There’s a wall between us—not a wall, maybe, but a screen. She’s Chloe, but she’s not. And when I’m with her, I lose part of myself. Last night, walking into the woods … I never would have done that if not for her asking. It’s scary, surrendering like that.”
“Cal, you probably don’t want to hear this, but … You could stop seeing her.”
“No, I can’t. She waited a whole year for me to come back to Bell Cove—I can’t disappear on her now. And anyway, I need her help. Something happened the night she died, something I don’t understand, something she was a part of. I need her to remember. I need her to tell me about it.”
“So help her remember.”
“If I do, I’ll never see her again.”
He swallows, holding my gaze, and then, so gently, he says, “Is it fair to expect her to stick around, haunting a place she has no real tie to? I mean, does she want to be here? Is it good for her? Is it good for you?”
I’ve agonized over Chloe’s well-being my whole life, but never more than these last couple of weeks. I run a hand over my face, grumbling, “Why do I feel like you’re leading me to an answer I already know?”
He gives me a chastened smile.
“God, Tucker. I wish you could have met her. She was so much fun. Such a brat, but in the most endearing way.”
His eyes go wide with realization. “Hang on—did she lock me in the shed?”
His exaggerated indignation sends me into giggles.
He grins, taking my face in his hands. “You have the best laugh,” he says, as if laughter is a sound I’ve worked hard at, a sound I’ve refined just for him.
Something like love bubbles up in me, new and thrilling and magical. “You make me happy,” I tell him, the absolute truth.
If I’ve spent the last year lost in a forest of grief, he’s the long, winding road out.
I’m leaning toward him before I consciously realize it. Our eyes meet. We share a warm breath. The strain, the weirdness, the doubt … forgotten. In this moment, Tucker and I are exactly as we should be.
I kiss him like my existence depends on his reciprocation. It’s hard to focus when he pulls me closer, impossible to form a coherent thought when he deepens the kiss I started, and then he’s everywhere: my head and my heart, running his fingers across my skin, teasing my mouth open with his. A girl I hardly remember, a girl who’s spirited and alive and overflowing with passion, moves over him, straddles his waist. He smooths his hands up my back and kisses me hard, and I’ve never felt such fervor, such unbridled emotion in my life. My senses are on overdrive; I’m impatient and needy and hot, like he’s shifting his sunshine to me, and just when I think I’m going to ignite, he slows us down, drawing back to shadow my cheek with his fingertips.
“I came here to check on you,” he says. “To talk to you. I didn’t expect this.” His mouth twists in a devilish grin. “Not that I don’t like this.”
I smile. “I like it, too.”
“We’re good together, Cal.” He traces the lines of my face: the slope of my nose, the bow of my upper lip, the curve of my cheekbone. I watch his eyes as they follow his fingers’ path; his expression is worshipful. “Tell me you feel it.”
“Tucker.” His gaze finds mine, suspending time, unraveling a long thread of truth from my fragile heart. “I feel it,” I say. “I feel it, too.”
He kisses me again, and I kiss him back because being with him is something from a reverie, one where sisters aren’t dead, futures aren’t difficult, and ghosts don’t haunt the living.
That’s what I am in his company—alive.
“Callie.” Like he can’t help himself, he presses his mouth to mine, then breathes, “The door.”
It’s ajar, the way he left it when he came in. My aunt’s a floor away at best, free to wander in as she pleases. She’s the founder of the Tucker Morgan Fan Club, but I doubt she’ll be down with him and me together in bed.
I slip away and hurry across the hardwood, then close the door and slide the lock into place. When I face him again, he’s grinning, that infectious ear-to-ear grin I adore. He gives me a get-over-here nod. I’m crossing the room when my phone starts to ring, vibrating against my nightstand.
Dad, I think, preoccupied. Worst timing ever.
But what if he’s calling about my mom?
What if something’s wrong?
I make a grab for my phone, but Tucker’s glanced at it, and I can see, now, that it’s not Dad.
It’s Isaac—his name is illuminated against the screen, bright and white, like a freaking marquee.
“Who’s Isaac?” Tucker asks as I put an end to the ringing.
“No one.”
He sits up. “Seriously?”
“Just someone I know. From before. I’ve mentioned him.”
His brows pinch together, cutting fissures across his forehead. “Your ex?”
“The one and only,” I say, making a poor attempt at laughing the whole thing off.
“I thought it ended badly?”
“It did.”
“Then why’s he calling?”
I sigh, sitting down. Tucker shifts away. The movement and its motivation sting. “He just does sometimes. I don’t want him to. I’ve asked him not to.”
“Was it serious between you two?”
“No. I don’t know.… I thought it was.”
“Huh.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
He shakes his head, giving me a weary look because here I go again, holding back details that matter. “It must be a big deal,” he says, his voice grating with hurt. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be talking around what happened between you and him.”
Pressure is starting to build in my head, though this time its catalyst is different. It’s pain borne of frustration, of my inherent failure to choose the right words at the right times. “Tucker, I’m trying. I swear I am.”
“If he hadn’t called—if I hadn’t been sitting here—would you’ve ever brought him up?”
“Probably not,” I say truthfully, and to my detriment. “I hate talking about him
. I hate thinking about him. But he and I have a history, one I can’t erase because I’ve met someone new.”
“I’d erase my history if I could.”
“This is different,” I say with more heat than I intend. “There’s a hell of a lot more to Isaac and me than the one-night stand you had your freshman year of college.”
He rears back, like I hit him. “Then tell me. What is it about him that’s got you so hung up?”
Why aren’t I enough? is what he’s asking, which flays me.
“It’s complicated.”
He huffs. “Well, let me simplify it. If it’s important to you to stay in touch with him, fine. I’m not gonna tell you who you can and can’t talk to. But if you’re not cool with giving me anything more than it ended badly, that’s on you. I know two-timing—I’m the product of two-timing. I’m not gonna wait around like my dad, hoping to be chosen first.”
Heat scales my neck. “Tucker, please—it’s not like that. It’s not about choosing.”
I know immediately that I’ve said the wrong thing; he deflates like a punctured balloon. I choose you—those are the words that should have come out of my mouth.
Those are the words I mean.
He slides off the bed, takes a step toward the door, then turns back. So softly, so miserably, he says, “I can’t keep doing this.”
Yesterday he stormed off, but today he shuffles out of my room, shoulders slumped, head down. I’m clutching the duvet with shaky hands, crushed, when I hear him close the front door with insufferable restraint.
I don’t want to live without him in my world.
A moment later comes the petrifying realization that I might have to.
44
Days pass.
According to Lucy, Tucker’s taking time off.
“He didn’t tell you?” she asks before launching into an explanation about a vacation he’s taking with his dad, a random fishing trip he never mentioned. He can’t call, Lucy claims, because they’re on a boat miles offshore. And she’s not sure of the exact day he’ll return, either, but he said he’d try to bring her fresh salmon when he does.
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