by Nancy Bush
“No,” was his short answer, which stopped even bold Genevieve from venturing further.
Coby engaged in small talk with Hank Sainer for a moment. She asked him what his political aspirations currently were and he responded, “You mean after I become governor?” with a wolfish smile.
“Really? That’s where you’re heading?” Coby asked.
He shrugged, but she suspected it was false modesty. Still, he was charming, in his way, and good-looking—his smile engaging and ever present—and she figured no matter what his qualifications, he would make it pretty far just looking like he did.
“How’s Dana?” she asked.
“Married. Happy. Making babies.” Something crossed his face and when he saw Coby watching, he added with a self-deprecating shrug, “I have trouble thinking of myself as a grandfather sometimes.”
Jean-Claude heard that last bit and said, “You’ll get used to it. I’ve been one for eleven years now. Eleven years!” He grinned and looked around for Benedict, who was at the table carefully tasting some antipasto. The look of horror that chased across his face as he sampled marinated olives made Jean-Claude belly laugh and Hank Sainer smile.
The decibel level was definitely increasing, and Suzette came by with another tray filled with shivering glasses of red wine. As Coby exchanged her empty for a full glass of red, Suzette asked, “Did you know I’m engaged?”
“No. Wow. Congratulations!”
“I wanted to tell you earlier, but Galen wanted to keep it secret a little while longer. But now that he’s here, I just thought, oh, hell. What am I waiting for?”
“I’m happy for you,” Coby said.
Suzette grew surprisingly sober as she shifted the tray in her hands. “We’ve talked a little bit about Lucas Moore. Galen told me all about raiding your campout that night, and about Pass the Candle.”
“Did he?” Coby’s gaze touched on Galen, who was with Kirk and Jarrod, and they were joking around and playing air guitars.
“Yeah, and the notes Vic wrote. He still sees Vic, you know, but Vic’s changed a lot. Really.”
The notes. Clearly Galen felt Vic was the perpetrator, but Coby, who’d purposely shoved that memory to a distant corner of her mind because it was stupid, distasteful high school stuff, wasn’t convinced it was Vic’s doing. It just wasn’t quite his style. She remembered him as being up front; loud and obnoxious, sure, but when the notes arrived just before high school graduation, slipping into each of the girls’ lockers who’d been at the campout, with their “I know who you are and I saw what you did” kind of message, it was the work of someone sneaky and meanspirited. Coby remembered hers as reading, “Daddy Dave has a wandering cock.” She’d been disgusted and mad, but when she’d heard the gist of what some of the other girls’ notes had said, she’d swallowed back her anger because her message was one of the least offensive.
Still, they’d stirred up quite a controversy. Genevieve had waved her note for all to see, incensed, offended and ready to fight. “Who did this? One of you assholes!” she yelled at the boys. “And get it right, okay? This isn’t even right!”
“What did it say?” Coby asked her later, to which Gen snapped, “He got me confused with Yvette. Thought I was in love with Lucas. Stupid.” She glared at Vic Franzen.
“You sure it was Vic?” Coby asked.
“Juliet saw someone slipping a note inside Yvette’s locker. She’s sure it was Vic.”
An accusation Vic Franzen fervently denied, apparently to this day.
Some of the other girls wouldn’t even admit they’d received one. Ellen had assured them that she hadn’t gotten one, but then she hadn’t walked at graduation, either. She left school early, so it was hard to know what the truth was.
“When’s the big date?” Coby asked Suzette.
“Haven’t really decided yet. Well, actually,” she whispered, leaning forward, “we have, but we don’t want to step on Annette’s birthday celebration.” She glanced Galen’s way and he caught her eye and smiled. “Maybe we can announce it after she blows out the candles on her cake or something.”
Coby couldn’t help a stab of envy for their happiness. She remembered Galen as being one of the quietest guys, the most serious. Both he and Paul Lessington had been lieutenants to Kirk Grassi, Jarrod, and Vic Franzen, whereas Theo Rivers had kind of moved in and out of their group, a football player more than a musician. Lucas Moore had also done his own thing.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t let Danner Lockwood get away a second time,” Suzette pronounced before walking away.
Juliet, who was standing near Coby, her gaze on Kirk, now glanced Coby’s way. “But he came here with your sister. . . .”
Chapter 7
Coby watched Danner head down the hallway toward the bedrooms and the den. She said something to Juliet, but her thoughts were chaotic and a moment later she followed after Danner. The den door was ajar as she neared. Pushing it open with her finger, she found him standing in front of the picture of Annette that covered a good portion of the south wall, flanked by oil lamp sconces. Annette was wearing a dark blue dress, the skirt artfully spread around her as she sat on a dark brown velveteen-covered settee, her arms folded over a curved wooden scrolled edge, her beautiful, if slightly frozen, face gazing out at them, smiling faintly.
“It wasn’t always this picture,” Coby said. “Dad had an old sailing ship on that wall for years.”
“I wonder whose idea it was to change it,” Danner said.
“Annette’s,” Coby said with conviction. “And Dad’s.”
“Faith has a real problem with their marriage.” His blue eyes searched her face and Coby fought the sudden speeding up of her pulse.
“It’s just always been weird. You know that.”
“Yeah.”
“Why did you come here with Faith?” Coby heard herself asking, both appalled and thrilled at her own reckless courage.
“To see you,” he said.
“You couldn’t just call?” she asked a bit breathlessly.
“Not really.”
He smiled and she smiled back. Good . . . God. It took so little to make her feel this way.
And then the lights flickered.
“We’d better eat soon or the power’s going to go out and we’ll all be stumbling around looking for candles and flashlights,” she said.
“I’d say we’ve only got a matter of minutes before we’re rounded up.”
“I’d say you’re right.”
“Can we talk later?” he asked. “After all this is over?”
“Sure.”
“Tomorrow? When we’re both back in Portland?”
“I’d . . . like that,” Coby admitted.
“Danner?”
They both turned toward the voice that sounded from outside the den. Faith’s voice. She might not be romantically involved with him, but she was his date for the evening and Coby couldn’t help but feel slightly guilty.
For an answer he headed toward Faith’s call, brushing by Coby on the way out, squeezing her hand briefly before going to find her sister.
As soon as he was gone Coby collapsed onto the navy blue love seat, which still had the same corduroy cover from twelve years earlier; that hadn’t changed. She’d sneaked into this room as soon as she could get away from the campfire, her head swimming from vodka and shocking secrets, and laid her sleeping bag on the love seat and crawled inside, shivering.
Like she was shivering now.
With a feeling of annoyance she rubbed her arms hard, lost in pleasant thoughts of seeing Danner the next day. Danner. Without Faith or Jarrod or anyone else around.
It was amazing.
Feeling absurdly happy, she glanced around the den, noting how little it had changed since that night she’d sneaked away from the campfire to its safe warmth. The giddy smile that had been on her lips since meeting with Danner slowly fell away as her thoughts, as ever, returned to that haunting night.
She hadn’t been ab
le to sleep. The couch was too small and she was suffering the effects of too much alcohol. Her mind ran in circles, constantly running over the same unsettling snapshots of the whole evening, returning again and again to review them once more. She’d had enough to drink to only recall snippets of the evening, but she definitely remembered kissing Lucas. But Lucas had also made out with Genevieve; she’d seen that, too. And then he was really supposed to be Rhiannon’s boyfriend and it was wrong to cheat on a friend. But was Rhiannon even a friend? And there was cold sand beneath her feet as she ran to the water’s edge and threw up. And then Lucas was there . . . no, that was before . . . and someone—Jarrod?—came and broke them up. It was all swirled together, and as soon as she ran it through her mind, she ran it through again. A never-ending, low-grade bad feeling. An anxiety hangover that vied with the real one.
Just before she fell asleep that night, she came back to being with Jarrod. He’d definitely been the one who’d interrupted her and Lucas. Definitely, maybe. But she recalled him asking her if she was all right. “Fine,” she’d assured him, swaying a bit on her feet, and there was a dark stain on her pant leg, just below her knee, and a jagged hole in her jeans. She then sensed something trickling down her calf. Blood? Vaguely she remembered slamming her leg into something on the beach, and that reminded her that she’d seen Ellen and Theo humping away behind the huge driftwood log.
And then her mind traveled back to Lucas and circled around again until it returned to her bloody leg. Vaguely she remembered Jarrod sitting her down onto the cold sand once again, pulling up her capris to reveal a gash just below her knee. It was black and ugly in the dim light, but Coby swept Jarrod away from her. She ignored the cut that night, instead going back to the campsite, grabbing her sleeping bag and hauling it back to the house and the den, crashing onto the love seat, and that’s when her mind began its incessant circling. Close to dawn she stumbled to the bathroom, puked her guts out again, then returned to the sleeping bag and fell into an exhausted slumber that lasted well into the next day.
It wasn’t till after she was back home in Portland that she’d treated the injury to her leg, which had left a small scar just below her kneecap, for when she got up that morning she learned that Lucas Moore was dead, and that stopped everything else.
In this very den, that day, she’d awakened to the sound of high-pitched female voices and strong male ones and loud crying and the phone ringing and ringing and ringing.
“Where the hell is Coby?” Her father’s hoarse voice was loud.
“I don’t know. I don’t know! I told you!” Wynona wailed in response.
“No one’s asking you,” her father, Donald Greer, stated flatly. “Just stop a moment!”
“And where’s Yvette?” Jean-Claude asked in a voice threaded with fear.
“I don’t know.” Genevieve. Sober and scared.
“They’re both missing!” Dana declared, and it was an invitation for more crying and wailing.
Then Ellen said in a quavering voice, “They must be here. They can’t be hurt, too.”
Hurt, too?
That’s when Coby staggered out of the den, feeling flat-out ill, and gazed around the room, lost. “I’m here. I’ve been in the den. Why? What’s happened?”
“Thank God!” Dave cried, running to her, throwing his arms around her, as if she’d been resurrected from the dead.
“What’s wrong?” Coby asked, fear skimming through her veins.
“You’re all right. You’re all right,” her father said, pulling away to look at her, then seeing the gash on her knee. “Your leg!”
“I cut it on the beach. . . . It’s nothing. I want to know what happened!” she insisted.
A moment of silence, as if no one had an answer.
It was Genevieve who spoke up, her voice heavy with pain. “It’s Lucas,” she said. She was standing by the kitchen and Rhiannon was on her right, swaying, her doe eyes huge and staring. “He’s . . . dead.”
“Dead.” Coby recoiled. “What do you mean?” She couldn’t process. “No . . . no . . . that’s not true. . . .”
“He fell off a cliff,” Dana said. She pointed out the window to the surf. “He’s out there right now. Down on the beach.” Her voice quavered.
“Where are the guys?” Coby asked.
“What guys?” her father demanded.
“They all left,” McKenna said, then explained, “The guys from our class.” She was sitting on the living room couch, hunched over, her hands dangling between her knees. “They drove back, I guess. They crashed our party.”
“They drove after drinking?” Wynona demanded, shooting a look toward her father, the vice principal. Donald Greer’s thin lips grew even thinner.
“I don’t know,” McKenna murmured and her father, Big Bob, came over to sit beside her.
Hank Sainer, looking like he’d aged ten years in one night, walked to his daughter and put an arm around Dana’s shoulders. She leaned into him and started gently crying. Coby looked at Jean-Claude, who was standing in front of the fireplace with his daughters flanking him, Annette and Juliet on one side, Suzette on the other. Nicholette wasn’t at the campout and Yvette was nowhere in sight.
“You think something happened to Yvette?” Dana asked tremulously, gazing over her father’s shoulder to them.
“No,” Hank assured her. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
“My dad’s out there with Lucas,” Rhiannon said, looking through the window, her voice barely audible. She seemed fragile and weak, her eyes huge but far away as if she were seeing some other reality.
“Mine, too.” McKenna went to stand beside Rhiannon and placed a light hand on her shoulder as they both stared toward the Pacific.
“Well, where the hell is Yvette?” Jean-Claude demanded of Hank, moving restlessly around the room. “Where is she?”
Hearing that Lucas was out there, Coby had walked to the window, as if pulled by an invisible string. She followed McKenna and Rhiannon’s gazes and saw, far up the beach, tiny dots of people milling along the beach and surf.
“Looks like the sheriff’s department has arrived,” Dave said to the girls, coming up behind them.
“Where the hell is she?” Jean-Claude demanded more forcefully.
McKenna muttered suddenly, “I’m going,” and headed fast for the front door.
“Stay here!” Dave ordered, but McKenna had flung open the door already and was clambering around the house to the stairs that led to the beach. Rhiannon was on her heels, and Coby, after a heartbeat, took off after them, hearing her father yell at her to stop, too.
“Coby! Coby! Damn it! Get back here!”
But she was outside, glad for the rush of cold air that slapped her face. She gulped it like a liquid. Her stomach was unsteady and she didn’t know what she was doing but she couldn’t stay at the house.
Lucas . . . Lucas Moore . . . no. She didn’t believe he was gone!
McKenna bounded down the sandy wooden steps at the side of the house to the beach below. Rhiannon was behind McKenna and Coby caught up to her at the bottom step. They ran across the sand as if in a footrace, catching McKenna only when she started to slow down a half mile farther, where the group of men waded in the water, their dark green coats glimmering with moisture from the surf and a faint rain. Prisms of color floated through the haze of a shrouded sun.
They were just covering Lucas Moore’s body but Coby caught an image, a picture that had been burned into her brain ever since: blue face, blond ocean-soaked hair, purple hands, glassy eyes, torn pants and shirt, ravaged skin.
She turned away and her stomach heaved again but she only threw up bile, holding the back of her hand against her mouth afterward, hearing McKenna’s dad, Big Bob, growl, “Get the hell out of here!” and seeing Rhiannon faint dead away, face-first into the tide.
Big Bob and Rhiannon’s father, Winston Gallworth, grabbed her and flipped her over. Rhiannon was breathing, dragging air into her lungs while her limbs twitched an
d her eyeballs moved rapidly back and forth beneath their lids.
“Rhee. Baby,” her father whispered brokenly and her eyes snapped open. She looked confused for a moment, then memory rushed back and her face turned red and she began to cry. Big Bob took her from Winston and started carrying her down the beach and back toward the house. McKenna caught Coby’s gaze.
“You girls need to head on back, too,” one of the deputies told them sternly. Coby shot another glance toward Lucas, but his body was now covered. With a shiver, she and McKenna straggled back together, trailing Big Bob, who was carrying Rhiannon, and Winston Gallworth, Rhiannon’s father.
At the beach cottage they were met by an anxious and half-angry Dave, a frantic Jean-Claude, and some of the guys who’d shown up at their door: Jarrod, Vic, and Kirk. McKenna had been mistaken when she said they’d all left, and they looked as stunned and disoriented as the rest of them.
“Lucas was in our car,” Jarrod was saying, sounding like he’d already said it more times than anyone wanted to remember. “We were supposed to bring him back. He was in our car. But he wasn’t there this morning.”
“You were drinking,” Jean-Claude snapped. He was normally so calm and relaxed, the one parent they all felt they could go to in times of trouble. But his face was white and tight today.
Where is Yvette?
“We weren’t going to drive last night,” Kirk said sullenly. “We were going to wait to go back today.”
“We slept on the beach,” Vic put in, swallowing hard.
“And you didn’t see Yvette. None of you have seen Yvette!” Jean-Claude demanded.
They shook their heads and Coby wondered seriously, for the first time, if something had happened to her. Yvette was just so . . . indestructible-seeming. Fear settled like a rock in her chest.
“And Lucas? Where was he?” Jean-Claude demanded of the group as a whole.
“He wandered off,” Jarrod answered. “It’s what he does. He’s kinda that dude, you know? A surfer. Like a loner. Ask Rhiannon.”
Everyone turned to look at Rhiannon, who was awake and leaning against her father on the couch. “I wasn’t with him,” she said tremulously.