Then, in the length of one stroke, the day was gone, and I was in darkness with not even the moon above me. The water turned suddenly cold, the waves slapping my face as I tried to swim, knocking the breath from my lungs. My body felt heavy. The current moved faster and faster, pulling me below the surface. I struggled to keep my head up, but soon the darkness was everywhere, and I could no longer tell when I was under the water or above it. The current dragged me down, deeper into darkness, and my chest ached as I tried to breathe. When I inhaled, it burned, and when I exhaled, there were bubbles. I panicked, trying to kick my way back to the surface, but which way was it? I couldn’t see anything in the black that had swallowed me.
Then something twined around my ankles, tickling like weeds. My arms thrashed, but I couldn’t pull away from what was holding me. There was movement next to me, then a shaft of dim light, and my mother was there, her arms floating out by her sides. She was suspended in the dark water, her hair floating around her face like a cloud. She raised her hand toward her face, her palm facing me as if in greeting. She had a hint of a smile, like the Mona Lisa, her tight lips still holding a secret. The darkness covered her again, but not before I saw her mermaid’s fin.
I jerked up in bed, clutching my chest. It still felt like it was burning from the cold water of the Trinity. I took deep breaths, willing my heart to stop hammering in my chest, not wanting to wake Kate. Tears stung my eyes as I thought of the cold pull of the water, and I remembered: eight minutes. Eight minutes was how long doctors said it took someone to drown. It wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t peaceful. It burned to breathe water. It would be excruciating, they said, to feel your chest expand with the weight of what was not meant to be there.
I’d looked it up when I’d first learned my mother had drowned. I couldn’t believe she would choose that for herself, that she would choose that kind of hurt after all the other kinds she’d already felt.
It had to have been an accident.
Kate was right. I couldn’t destroy myself with imaginings and half-truths. I had to believe all the reports were true if I ever expected to let her go.
Chapter 18
When I left Texas, I knew I had to find a way to say goodbye to my mother. There had never been a funeral, and it was clear from Vergie’s diary that had left her with a hollow feeling—the kind Kate said would eventually devour me.
“You should have a little service for her,” Kate said. We were just past the state line, back in the cypress groves of Louisiana. “You could do it at your house.”
“We could do it tomorrow,” I said. “Will you stay long enough to help me?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’m in no hurry to leave.”
“You’re spending all of your vacation time down here.”
“Where else would I go?” she said. “It hardly feels like vacation if I spend it in Raleigh.”
I laughed. “You can’t tell me the events of last week felt like vacation to you.”
“Are you serious? It had all the drama of every trip I ever went on. I feel sufficiently separated from work now.”
She winked at me, and I thought that somewhere, there was a nugget of truth in that statement. Judging by the way Kate described her family, this was probably exactly like the time they spent together.
“But it’s hardly relaxing. Someday we’ll take a real vacation. We’ll go someplace tropical where every drink has a little umbrella.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with myself,” she said. “Tranquility is so very boring.”
She had her giant Jackie O. sunglasses on, so it was impossible to tell if she was one hundred percent serious. I couldn’t quite see the laugh lines at her eyes.
“I was getting used to it,” I said. “I was OK with a little boring.”
A smile touched the corner of her lips as she said, “You and I weren’t cut out for boring.”
~~~~
When we got to the house, it was empty. Jack’s truck was gone, but I walked through every room of the house anyway, thinking he somehow might still be there. The living room was just as we’d left it, with the Scrabble game boxed up but still on the coffee table. The dishes we’d used at dinner were all washed and put away, some leftovers still in the refrigerator.
In the bedroom, one of Jack’s shirts lay on the rocking chair in the corner. I opened the dresser drawers and found most of his clothes still folded neatly inside. His boots were still in the closet, but a few of his shirts were missing. The room seemed emptier and bigger already. I hated the feeling. The bed was made, just as it had been when I left. It looked as if he’d left for the day, like usual, but when I checked his schedule taped to the refrigerator, it showed he was off today.
Bella wasn’t in the house, either. She was usually on the porch at this hour, pretending she wasn’t waiting to be fed. That’s it, I thought. He’s really left.
Without another word, Jack was gone.
Kate took her bag upstairs, and I lay back on the bed, holding a pillow close to my face, but it didn’t smell like Jack. It didn’t smell like anything.
I stayed there for a long while, thinking not of Jack, but of Lucille. I wondered what had happened after I left, wondered if she was all right. I thought briefly of calling Josie, but I was sure I was the last person she’d want to talk to. Jack would have told her everything, and she’d likely never want to hear from me again. I hated the thought of her and Buck hating me. They’d become my family, too, in these short months, and it had never occurred to me that I might lose them so quickly. Kate might be right. As much as I loved it here, I might need to leave this town all together and start over again in Raleigh.
The thought made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t want to leave Bayou Sabine. I didn’t want to leave this house, this lake, this yard, these people. Despite all of the holes in my memories of Vergie and my mother, this place felt more like home to me than any other place ever had.
~~~~
The next day, after stopping by Duchess’ shop, I had everything I needed for the ceremony. It wouldn’t be elaborate, but it didn’t need to be.
Duchess had gathered a basket full of herbs, candles and stones that had been blessed by a priestess. They were all supposed to aid in the passing of a loved one. Standing in the shop, I thought of the first time I’d taken Jack there, how he’d scared the big orange cat and told me Duchess was having too easy a time separating me from my money. But she’d helped me half a dozen times and hadn’t let me down yet.
At the dock behind Vergie’s house, I laid the herbs in a circle around a purple candle Duchess had given me. Lavender and vertivert were mixed in the bundles, along with some fragrant sage. Kate stood next to me as I arranged the flowers and lit the candle. I placed a small framed picture of my mother when she was a teenager that I’d found in Vergie’s room in the circle of flowers and arranged the three painted stones as Duchess had told me. When I sat, Kate sat next to me. The breeze on the river died down. The afternoon sun hung low in the sky.
“Now what do we do?” Kate asked.
I pulled a folded piece of paper from the pocket of my jeans. “I was supposed to write a letter to her,” I said. “Things I’d want to tell her.” I’d scribbled through three drafts and finally settled on this short note, written on a blank yellowed page from one of Vergie’s journals. In the end, the things I needed to tell her amounted to this:
I love you. I miss you. I carry you with me.
None of the rest mattered.
I folded the paper in half and held it over the candle. The flame licked at the corner, then quickly spread over the page. The paper burned away, turning as dark as the ink until I could only make out a single lingering word. I held the page until the flames lapped at my fingers, and then dropped what remained into the water.
“I wish I’d known her,” Kate said.
“Me too.” I picked up the stones and held them in my palm as I stood. Each one had been hand-painted in bright colors: a bird, a flower with yell
ow petals, a chevron-like pattern in green and white. I tossed the first one in, as far as I could throw, thinking of my mother as she’d painted in the yard. I tossed the next one, a little farther, and it almost skipped. The third stone felt heavier in my palm. It had the birdlike figure painted on it, white dots around the edge. I said one last silent goodbye and tossed it, too, listening for a sound that did not come.
Most memories of my mother had faded, and I might never know why she’d left us, why she’d never tried to find me again. Kate said you had to forgive people because it took away the power they held over you, and I wanted to believe that was true. But right now, forgiving my mother felt too much like excusing what she’d done.
Now, though, imagining those stones sinking to the bottom of the lake, I knew I’d find a way to move ahead. It would be hard to leave this place after just getting settled again, but I would find a way. Maybe leaving here would let me leave behind the parts of my mother I wished I could forget.
“I’m supposed to let the candle burn out. It could take a while.”
“You should probably be alone for this part,” Kate said. She squeezed my shoulder and walked back to the house. I lay back on the dock, listening to the water lap at the bank, the shorebirds calling to each other from the cypresses. The candle had nearly burned itself out, but I was following Duchess’ instructions to the letter. “Let it burn completely,” she’d said. “That’s the way you get all of the remnant stale energy to leave you. That’s the way the sadness leaves.”
I had a feeling it would take a lot longer than the burn time of one taper candle for my sadness to vanish, but this might at least help it dissipate. As I lay there, I played through the visions I had of my mother, and for the first time in years, spoke as if she might actually be able to hear me.
“I wish I’d been able to find you sooner,” I said. “I wish you hadn’t left me twice.”
When I opened my eyes, the candle was out. I gathered it and the herbs and walked out into the soft mud of the bank and dug a hole with Vergie’s old garden spade. I placed the candle and the herbs in the hole and covered it, pressing the mud down with my shoe. I didn’t feel much different, but when I looked up, a blue heron was standing on the corner of the dock, not far from where I’d been sitting. It cocked its head toward me and stretched one spindly leg in front of the other, pausing in mid-step.
A shout from the house startled me, and I turned toward the noise. The screen door banged shut, and Kate emerged. “Enza!” she yelled. “Come here!”
When I turned back, the heron had leapt into the air, its enormous wings propelling it over the water, gone in just a few wingbeats.
Kate called my name again, frantic, and I ran to the house to meet her. That’s when I saw the car—the silver Audi, flashier than anything else in the whole parish. It was parked right by the porch.
Chapter 19
“It’s Toph,” Kate said, breathless. “He said he was looking for Lucille and pushed past me into the house.”
As we crept inside, I heard the heavy footsteps in the back of the house.
I followed the noise and nearly crashed into Toph as he stomped out of the kitchen and into the hall. “Where is she?” he asked. His shirt was wrinkled, like it had been balled up in a suitcase. His hair was matted against his forehead, as if he’d been wearing a hat for days on end. The dark circles under his eyes and stubbly beard made him look ten years older. He wasn’t stumbling around and tripping over his words like he’d been the last time we saw him. Now he was focused, and there was only rage.
“She’s not here,” I said. I reached out to lay my hand on his arm, thinking I might be able to calm him down.
He wrenched his arm away and stalked up the stairs, his footsteps like bricks falling from a crumbling house.
“I’m calling Andre,” Kate said. As I started up the stairs, she shouted, “Enza, wait!”
“Tell him to hurry,” I said over my shoulder.
Upstairs, Toph was searching through rooms, flinging doors open and looking under beds and in closets as if he expected to find Lucille hiding like a fugitive.
“Toph,” I said, as calmly as I could muster. “She’s not here. You need to leave.”
“I know she’s here somewhere.” His voice was ragged. “This is the only place I haven’t looked.” He thrust open a closet door and shoved the hanging clothes aside. When he found it empty, he rushed over to me and grabbed my arm. “Where is she?”
His breath was hot against my face. His fingers squeezed until my forearm stung. Only then did I notice the bruise around his eye, the cut high on his cheek. His split lip.
I thought of a dozen curses to fling at him and wanted to tell him to fuck right off. But instead, I said, “Let me go, and I can help you find her.”
His eyes were wild. Still gripping my arm, he yanked me toward him, then pulled me along behind him as he went down the stairs. I struggled to stay on my feet as we crashed down the stairs into the hallway.
“You need to leave,” Kate said, stepping into the hall. She glared at him with more fury than I’d ever seen in her, but her voice was calm and even.
I twisted my arm until I was free of Toph’s grip and stepped next to Kate. “Get out,” I ordered. “The sheriff’s on his way.”
His face reddened. “The sheriff, huh? I should have your boyfriend arrested for what he did to me. Where is he anyway?”
“Just go,” I said. “This doesn’t have to get any worse.”
He smirked in a way that sent a ripple of fear through me. “There are a lot of ways I could get him back for that,” he said. He gave me a hard stare, but I refused to look away, glaring right back at him.
Jack must have given him that black eye. Lucille might have told Jack even more than she’d told me. My stomach lurched as I thought of what could have happened in the days we were away.
Kate grabbed his arm and said, “Get the hell out of here.” Her voice was cool but rigid.
Part of me wanted Toph to be there long enough for the police to show up and take him away again, but the better part of me didn’t want him standing in my house one more second.
He jerked his arm away from Kate and trapped her wrist in his hand. He stepped closer, so he was inches from her face. “Don’t you touch me,” he said.
I thought for sure he’d hit her, but he turned and brushed past her, his shoulder colliding with hers as he stormed out into the yard. He clambered into the car and slammed the door. The engine roared as the car lurched backwards and spun out on the gravel drive.
Kate turned to me, biting her lip.
“Did you really get Andre?” I asked.
“He’s on his way.” She shut the front door and locked it, leaning against the frame.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed the number for Josie’s house. She likely didn’t want to hear a word from me, especially about Toph, but I had to call and let her know he was looking for Lucille.
The phone rang a dozen times with no answer. I hung up and tried again as Kate peeked out the front window.
“Still no answer,” I said. I dialed Josie’s cell, and it went straight to voicemail. I dialed Lucille’s number. It rang half a dozen times before going to her voicemail.
“Lucille,” I said, “Toph just came here looking for you, out of his mind. Get somewhere safe. We’ve called the police.”
I ran into the kitchen and grabbed my keys. “I have to go tell them,” I said.
Kate’s jaw went slack. “But Andre’s on his way here.”
“You talk to him. I have to go to Josie’s.”
She followed me into the yard. “No way I’m letting you go over there alone.”
“I’ll be OK.” I climbed into the Jeep, and she ran around to the passenger side and slid into the seat before I could argue. She was already dialing her phone again.
“He might be headed over there,” Kate said, then into the phone said, “Hey, it’s me again.”
“He’
d have gone there first. Tell Andre to meet us at Josie’s,” I said, stepping on the gas. I dialed the number for Josie and Buck’s store as I pulled onto the main highway. After a dozen rings, I felt a knot in my chest, in the soft place behind my heart.
This is the only place I haven’t looked, he’d said.
I whispered the closest thing I knew to a prayer, hoping my worst fears wouldn’t be confirmed, wishing one of these people would just answer the phone.
When at last Josie picked up, my voice came out in a squeak.
“Josie,” I said. “It’s Enza. Is Lucille with you?”
“Hi, sweetie,” Josie said. “No, she’s over at the house.” Her voice sounded sweeter than I’d expected, and it felt like a knife in my side. Had Jack not told her?
“Toph was just over here looking for her,” I said.
“Goddammit,” she said. “I knew they should have kept him locked up.”
“We called Andre, and he’s on his way to your house. He should be there in a few minutes.” I glanced at Kate, and she nodded, still talking to Andre.
Josie cursed. There was a clatter on her end of the line.
“Josie?” I said. “Are you OK?”
“I begged her to get that boy out of her life,” she said.
“I’m just a couple of minutes away too,” I said, and hung up.
“Andre’s almost there,” Kate said, holding on to the door as I took a curve way too fast. The tires squealed, but Kate didn’t flinch.
I dialed Jack’s cell next. After three rings, he answered.
“I was beginning to think you’d never call me back,” he said, his tone cool. “Where have you been?”
“Lucille’s in trouble,” I said. “Toph came to our house looking for her. Are you close by?”
Bayou, Whispers from the Past: A Novel Page 21