How the Light Gets In

by Katy Upperman

  After paying, I wave to Shirley and step out onto the sidewalk, where I run smack into the ample midsection of Benjamin Morgan.

  “Callie?” he says.

  I take a step back, excusing myself, working to wipe the shock from my face—he’s supposed to be on a fishing boat with his son. “Hi, Mr. Morgan. How are you?”

  “Benjamin,” he reminds me. “I’m okay. Running errands.” He holds up a Green Apple Grocery tote.

  I shift, uncomfortable. I spent the last half hour discussing the tragedy he was unfortunate enough to be mixed up in, and now, here he is.

  “I thought you were out on the water?”

  “You did?”

  “With Tucker?”

  His sandy brows knit together. “I didn’t go anywhere with Tucker.”

  “But my aunt said you guys were on a fishing trip—” Sluggishly, I realize what’s going on, what an idiot I am.

  Benjamin recognizes his mistake at the same time. “Oh, the fishing trip!”

  My face flushes hot. “It’s okay. You don’t have to lie.”

  He squints up at the sun, then looks back to me. “He’s at home, if you want to head over. I’ve got a few more stops to make, so now’s a good time.”

  “He doesn’t want to see me. He’s upset.”

  Benjamin sighs. There’s a barren sadness in his eyes, probably the same sadness that’s been lingering since the summer of 1999. “He’s been upset with me for a long time.”

  “Then I guess we’re in the same boat—though, not a fishing boat.”

  He chuckles. “Whatever the type, you have time to bail before it capsizes.”

  “So do you.”

  “I don’t know about that. Tuck’s got a stubborn streak, especially if he feels wronged.” He smiles sheepishly. “Not that you did anything wrong. Whatever the case, go talk to him. His moping’s becoming tiresome.”

  I could go to the Morgans’. Hash things out with Tucker. Admit to how much I’ve missed him. I should. I owe him the courtesy of my effort, if nothing else.

  “Do you really think he’ll see me?” I ask Benjamin.

  He shrugs. “I think if you leave him no choice but to hear you out, at least you’ll know you’ve done all you can. And since you’re asking for my input, I’ll tell you this: He’s been different since he met you. In a good way.”

  I smile. “I’m going to go, but I’m holding you responsible if he turns me away.”

  “I’ll take that gamble,” Benjamin says. “Good luck.”

  46

  I arrive on Beech Street, park my bike, and drag my feet up to the Morgans’ front porch. I raise my fist to knock, but the door swings open. Now, after a week of nothing, I’m face-to-face with Tucker.

  I’m struck by how tired he looks: eyes overcast, posture wilted, mouth set in a deep frown. He’s wearing jeans and a faded baseball tee, white, its collar and sleeves royal blue. He smells of fresh soap.

  My heart lunges for him.

  “Hey,” he says. He’s holding a stack of clipped papers, and he’s wearing shoes.

  “Going somewhere?” I ask.

  “Yeah, actually. I was coming to see you.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  “Drew called. He said he and Brynn ran into you.…” His voice fades, leaving me to wonder what else Drew told him. He holds up his assemblage of papers and pulls the door wide open. “I’ve been wanting to show you this stuff. Come in?”

  I nod and follow him inside.

  The house is quiet. The blinds are low, and the TV’s off. I trail him down the hall to his room. It’s tidy and sparse, a full bed covered with a gray-and-white plaid comforter, a tall dresser, and a desk with a closed laptop. The closet door is shut, but I imagine it holds a dozen pairs of shorts and innumerable T-shirts. There are no posters of women in bikinis, no sports pennants or band flyers. Just a few black-and-white prints of the ocean, pleasant and peaceful.

  “You can sit,” he says, gesturing to the bed.

  I do. He sinks down beside me.

  “How was your fishing trip?”

  He gives me a side-eye.

  “You didn’t fish,” I say.

  “I needed time away from work.”

  “You needed time away from me.”

  “No, Cal. I just—I needed to think.”

  “You could’ve called.”

  “Yeah…”

  It’s satisfying to know he has no justification for his behavior. “What did you want to show me?”

  He pulls the clip from his papers and passes them to me. Bold letters are splashed across the top of the first page: Physical Afflictions and the Paranormal. “I’ve been doing some research. Your headaches? I think spending time with your sister is causing them.”

  I skim the first few paragraphs, a lot of scientific mumbo jumbo that’s hard to understand. Stuff about currents and the transfer of energy. There are charts and graphs detailing studies on tension headaches and migraines, all angled lines and thick bars. There are control groups and participant testimonials. Mostly, subjects speak of pain when they feel they’re in the vicinity of the paranormal or after an encounter. There are photographs, dark and gritty, but vague human figures are detectable. Ghosts.

  “Where did you get all this?” I ask.

  “Online. There’s tons of stuff about it, but this study is the most comprehensive.”

  “You think it’s legit?”

  “I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t seen what’s been going on with you, but yeah. It adds up.”

  I set the paperwork on the bed between us. “Lucy thinks my headaches are related to allergies—pollen in the air.”

  He hikes an eyebrow up. “I call bullshit. Does she know about Chloe?”

  “No. And, also, I haven’t had a headache in a week.”

  “Have you seen your sister?”

  “Not since the poppy meadow. Since the night before—” you left.

  Awkwardness swings between us like a pendulum, threatening to sever the remaining threads of our friendship. I hate that I can’t reach for his hand or push his hair off his forehead. I hate that he hasn’t smiled, not once, since I walked into his house.

  “Are you going to see her again?” he asks.

  “I have to.”

  “Even though she’s making you sick?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I have to help her remember, Tucker. You were right: Being here, stuck in the in-between, it’s not good for her. She needs closure. She needs to move forward. I do, too.”

  He lets out a breath. “I thought you were gonna be pissed.”

  “Why?”

  He gestures to his research. “All this … I didn’t think you’d be open to it. You’re protective of Chloe, of what you guys have, and I get that it means a lot to you, seeing her again. Plus, you don’t seem to like it much when people get in your business.”

  “You’re not exactly ‘people,’” I tell him.

  He looks away, nudging my bookstore bag with his foot. “What’s this?”

  “Oh … I went to talk to Shirley about some stuff I found in Lucy’s attic.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  I hesitate, remembering how upset he got the last time I brought up his parents. But I don’t want to keep things from him—not today, not ever. I pull the envelope out of the bag and hand it to him. “Before you look inside, you should know that it’s full of pictures. Pictures of your parents and Nathan Stewart. So, if you want to open it later, or not at all…”

  He’s already pulling the contents out. He sets Annabel’s letters aside and rifles through the photos, silent. When he gets to the engagement announcement, he stares at it for a long time, his expression indecipherable. Then he stuffs everything back into the envelope and says, “Other than the letters, I’ve never seen any of that. My grandparents had pictures of her, but none of her with my dad. None of the three of them together.”

  “You can keep them. Show them to your dad, if you want.” I slip Annabel’s ring off my fi
nger and hold it out to him. “This, too. It was hers.”

  He’s looking at it like it’s a scorpion sitting atop my palm, not a ring of platinum and diamonds. “I don’t know.…”

  “I don’t feel right hanging on to it, not considering its history. Put it away for now. One day, you might be happy to have it.”

  Warily, he takes the ring. He spends a moment inspecting it, brow drawn, before dropping it into the envelope. He sets it on the bed between us, on top of his research, then lets his gaze drift across the room, where it settles on the beige wall—on nothing. He stares, looking lost in the most wretched way, like he has no idea where he is or how he got here.

  I think, maybe, I should go, but I can’t make myself get up off the bed. Not while he’s so shaken. Not while there’s so much left unsaid.

  I touch his arm. “Tucker, why didn’t you tell me what really happened with your mother?”

  “It’s … complicated.”

  “I told you about my sister.”

  “Lucy told me about your sister.”

  “I’ve poured my heart out to you. I’ve cried in front of you.”

  He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, they reflect his pain. “I wanted to tell you,” he says. “About a thousand times I almost did—that day in the yard when you showed me the letters, at the pool, on the beach, last week in your room—but you didn’t look at me the way everyone else does. You didn’t feel sorry for me. To you, I was normal.”

  I understand. I’m the girl whose sister drowned, after all.

  “This summer,” he says, “working at Stewart House, I thought I could solve the mystery. Figure out exactly what happened to her. Because the thing is, I want to believe she’s alive. I want to believe she left because she couldn’t take the stress of a baby and a life she hadn’t planned for, and, like some fucked-up fairy tale, she’s gonna come back one day and be a real mom. Or maybe she did die, but it was an accident—she fell and that’s so, so shitty, but it’s better than the alternatives.” He clasps his hands, but not before I notice how they shake.

  Fissures split my heart like tributaries. “What alternatives?”

  He takes a breath, recovers, and meets my gaze. “Maybe Nathan Stewart killed her. He could’ve shoved her. He had it in him—he hated her for what she did with my dad. Or, maybe he had nothing to do with it. What if she jumped? She was overwhelmed and she was depressed and she was desperate. Maybe she thought death would be better than life with my dad and me.”

  “Tucker. If she went over that cliff intentionally, she was unwell, and that has nothing to do with you. She must’ve loved you so much, no matter how she was struggling on the inside.”

  “My dad’s always thought Nathan was involved. I didn’t understand why until you showed me those letters. I didn’t know my mother was still in touch with him. He must’ve been furious. He opened his wrists a week after she disappeared. As far as my dad’s concerned, that cemented his guilt. Doesn’t matter, though. She’s gone. We’ll never know what really happened.”

  “Can you understand, then, why I have to see my sister again? I need to know what happened, and only she can tell me.”

  He studies my face for a long moment. I hope he sees strength, and resolve, and compassion. I hope he trusts me.

  He must, because he says, “I can help, if you want.”

  My first impulse is to jump at his offer, but I’ve heard his words—I’m not gonna wait around like my dad, hoping to be chosen first—countless times since he stepped out of my room. I can’t pretend that fight didn’t happen.

  “I thought you couldn’t keep doing this?”

  His face falls. “Cal, I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it.”

  It’s so quiet in the house that when the air conditioner kicks on, its hum resounds like a roar.

  “It’s over with Isaac,” I say. “It has been for months. What happened between us was messy, though, and there were a lot of repercussions.” I touch the scar on my arm before lifting my gaze to his. “Isaac was there the night Chloe died. He’s part of the reason she left for the beach. My guilt, my grief, a lot of it’s tied up with him. So even though I don’t have feelings for him, there are feelings—feelings that are hard to let go, even now. I should have told you about him, though. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

  He lifts the envelope and papers from between us, sliding it all onto his nightstand before moving closer. “I get it,” he says. “And you should stay in touch with him, if you want. I was such a dick last week—jealousy’s not a good look for me. But I’ve got a handle on it.” He touches my face, tentative, and my pulse leaps. His voice is low, gravelly, when he says, “I hated not seeing you. I only stayed away because I didn’t know how to make things right.” He leans in, resting his forehead against mine. “I want to be with you, Cal. Beyond this summer.”

  As I tip my chin to find his mouth, my doubts trickle away, until it’s just him and me in the small space of his room.

  Beyond this summer, he said.

  I want that, too: a whole lifetime with him.

  He nudges me back, until my head finds his pillow, then stretches out above me. His kisses are insistent and unrestrained, and I’m dissolving into his mattress. He runs his palm up my leg, over my hip, along my ribs, and I inhale unabashedly, slipping my hands beneath his shirt, smoothing them over the warm skin of his back.

  I’m buzzing inside and out, wondering if I make him so uninhibited, so euphoric. When he sighs and murmurs, “You have no idea how often I think about you like this,” I realize I do, and then it’s easy to surrender to the longing that’s building inside me.

  He helps me out of my shirt, barely breaking our kiss, before ditching his own. And then my heart beats against his, and we’re a mess of tangled limbs and needy kisses, and I’m obsessing over the softness of his skin and the minty taste of his mouth and the clean smell of his hair. I can hardly breathe, barely form a coherent thought, but when he whispers, “You’re sure?” I nod without hesitancy, because yes, I am very, very sure.

  I’m fumbling with the button of his jeans when I hear a rumble and feel a slight shaking of the house.

  He jerks back with a muttered, “Shit!”

  I scramble to sit up. “What?”

  He gathers our discarded clothing with a quick sweep of his arm. He tosses me my top, then throws his shirt back on. “That’s the garage door. My dad’s home.”

  47

  I’m pretty sure this isn’t what Benjamin had in mind when he suggested I visit his son.

  I yank my shirt over my head and run my fingers through my hair. It’s snarled from Tucker’s hands, from rolling around on his bed. His summery boy scent clings to my clothes, my skin. My face is so freaking hot, and my cutoffs are twisted around my waist. I dash across the room to the mirror hanging on the back of the door.

  I look flushed, wild-eyed, and sloppy.

  Tucker smooths a hand over his comforter as I swing the door wide open, as if that’ll make us appear less guilty. Seconds later, we hear Benjamin walk into the house. It takes him half a second to appear square in Tucker’s doorway, Green Apple Grocery tote in hand.

  He looks in on us with a raised eyebrow.

  I smile from the desk chair, ankles crossed, hands folded in my lap. Tucker’s on his bed, leaning casually against the headboard, like we’ve been chatting about the weather.

  “Glad you made it over, Callie,” Benjamin says, propping a hand on the doorframe.

  “Yeah, we’ve had a nice talk.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Tucker smirking.

  “So I see,” Benjamin says. His attention falls to the envelope on the nightstand and the photographs peeking out from its opening.

  “What’s that?” he asks, intrigue bouncing across his face.

  Tucker glances at the envelope, circles of pink staining his cheeks. “Nothing.”

  “It doesn’t look like nothing.”

  “Dad—”

 
“Tuck. Let me see it.”

  Tucker picks up the envelope, holding it to his chest, and shoots me an inquiring look. I lift my shoulders because, really, what choice do we have?

  Reluctantly, he passes it to his dad.

  Benjamin’s eyes go wide as he looks through the photographs. When he withdraws the ring, I worry he’ll keel over. He looks at Tucker, then back at the ring, then to his son again. “I gave this to your mother,” he murmurs.

  “Yeah. I saw the newspaper announcement.”

  “Where did you find all this?”

  Tucker glances at me, floundering.

  “I brought it over,” I say.

  “Where did you find it?”

  I try hard to read Tucker’s expression. His employer is a secret as far as his dad’s concerned, and it’s possible I’m about to create a problem for him. He shrugs.

  “At my aunt’s house.”

  Benjamin slips the ring onto his pinky finger, and then, eyes glazed, flips through the pictures again. “Why would she have it?”

  “She kind of inherited it with the house she bought last year.”

  At this, he looks at me. “What house is that?”

  “Uh…”

  Tucker comes to my rescue. “The Stewarts’ old place.”

  “Callie’s aunt … This is the woman you’ve been working for?”

  “Yeah.”

  Benjamin looks at the photos, at the newspaper clipping, at the glittering ring that fits only midway down his finger. “Can I have all this?” he asks me.

  “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  He walks out of the room, groceries forgotten on the floor.

  Tucker quirks a brow at me. “Wanna get out of here?”

  * * *

  He must be a Jelly Belly addict.

  He bought a huge mixed bag from a local sweet shop during our walk through Bell Cove, and now we’re sitting on a weathered bench in the town center. It’s late in the afternoon, and the sun’s warm on our backs. He’s schooling me on flavor combinations—a lemon eaten with a coconut will taste like lemon meringue pie—and I’m laughing because he’s weirdly fanatical about his Jellies. He’s already picked out all the black licorice beans because, according to him, they’re foul.