Shadowed Summer

by Mitchell, Saundra

  Slowly, I pushed my chair back and wandered to the kitchen door. “Daddy?”

  Daddy looked back at me, blank and calm. “Go on upstairs, Iris.”

  I knew better than to argue with him. I took my time going up, though, and I stopped three steps from the top to sit and listen.

  The detectives had musical voices, rolling like water, with upstate accents that made me wonder how they’d ended up in Ondine. Mr. Lanoux hadn’t said a thing, that I could tell.

  “I can make some coffee,” Daddy said, his voice moving from the living room toward the kitchen. The detectives said that wasn’t necessary, their footsteps following Daddy’s.

  Sliding down one stair, I strained to hear. Billie Jo had told us to keep our mouths shut, because that was our right. I didn’t understand why Daddy let the police in, let alone why he’d offered them coffee.

  One detective sounded bored, the sound of flipping paper punctuating his words. “We’d just like to ask you a few questions about the Landry boy.”

  My eyes went wide, and I slid down another step. I knew Daddy knew things, stories he’d never tell me, secrets he planned to always keep, but if the police asked, he had to tell the truth.

  A second later, worry took over my curiosity. Daddy had known Elijah was dead all along. It came to me just then that I still didn’t know how. If he’d done something. If he’d seen something.

  Panic squeezed me; my thoughts ran fast and hot. The newspaper said murder over and over. No matter my visions, no matter what I knew in my bones, my daddy had known Elijah was dead, and everybody was calling it murder.

  A cry caught in my throat. Because of me, my daddy could go to jail.

  Kitchen chairs scraped, cutting the silence, and after a long time, Daddy cleared his throat. “We didn’t mean any harm. We were young and stupid then, and I reckon we’re old and stupid now.”

  My breath faltered. Daddy was going to confess something, something horrible Mr. Lanoux knew about. Snuffling on tears, I missed some of it but shut myself up in time to hear Daddy finish another sentence.

  “We were trying to help a friend, sir. That’s all.”

  “Well, you can see how we’ve got a problem, Mr. Rhame,” one of the men said. The other one coughed like he wanted to call Daddy a liar but didn’t dare out loud.

  The chairs squeaked again, and I heard them heading for the stairs. I yanked myself up by the rail and bolted for my room, closing the door as quietly as I could before throwing myself on the bed. They startled me by opening my door instead of Daddy’s.

  “This one, Eddie,” Daddy said, drawing Mr. Lanoux to one of my bookshelves. He didn’t once look at me and neither did Collette’s daddy. The police huddled in the doorway, watching them with sharp eyes.

  I wanted to ask what they were doing, but I was afraid of getting Daddy in more trouble. It felt wrong to have all those men in my room, rifling through my things.

  Daddy took handfuls of my books down, stacking them neatly at his feet. Mr. Lanoux helped him, and soon the shelves were bare again, as if I hadn’t just spent three days putting my room back together.

  Then, with Daddy on one end and Mr. Lanoux on the other, they lifted my great big shelf—the one Elijah’d torn up first in my dream—and pulled it back from the wall. Cottony brown cobwebs clung to the back of the shelf. The paint behind the shelves was an unfamiliar shade; I couldn’t remember my room ever being green, but there was the evidence of it, in a tall, rectangular patch.

  Setting the bookcase down, Daddy shoved it around and nodded toward an envelope taped to the back of it. The paper had gone yellow.

  “Think we ought to get pictures?” one of the detectives asked, but the other one shook his head and pulled the envelope free. He snapped on latex gloves; then, with careful fingers, he spread the flap and let his partner pull a sheet of paper from it.

  They seemed to barely glance at it before folding and tucking it in the envelope again. Skeptical looks ran through their eyes, and as one detective drew a plastic bag from his pocket, the other offered my daddy a business card. “We’re not finished.”

  “I didn’t figure,” Daddy said, and slid the card into his back pocket. Speaking a silent language of nods and gestures, he and Mr. Lanoux turned to put my shelf back the way it belonged.

  Confused, I just bit my tongue and waited for somebody to explain something, but nobody did.

  Collette stood at my window, holding the curtain aside. “There’s only one reporter there now.”

  Lying on my bed, I nodded. “Yeah, the other night, Rennie slit their tires and set off a whole strip of Black Cats right behind ’em.”

  “So he’s good for something,” Collette said. She smiled and let go of the curtain. My room darkened with hazy shadows. Shuffling to my desk, she sat down, wrapping her arm around the back of the chair. She looked at me for a long time; then she said something I never expected. “I’m sorry, Iris.”

  I sat up. I shrugged. “What’s to be sorry about?”

  “I don’t know. Everything.” She traced her brow with her nail, lost in thought. “I feel like I shoulda been in the graveyard with you.”

  Teasing, I said, “You’re just jealous I got arrested and you didn’t.”

  “Well, yeah,” she joked back. “I look awful fine in orange. Way better than you.”

  I crossed my legs, sitting in the middle of the bed and just looking at her. Collette’s face was still, but there were all these hints of sleek sharpness. Her cheekbones were almost high; her chin had a faint edge to it. She really was beautiful, and we really were about done with childish things.

  Suddenly nervous, I asked, “We’re always gonna be friends, right?”

  Collette gave that all the seriousness it deserved. She reared her head back, looking at me like I was a fool. “Duh. We’re getting out of here when I get my license, remember?”

  I nodded and smiled, because I did remember. I was just glad she did, too.

  The silence in my house got heavier as the sun went down. Daddy made sandwiches and soup for dinner and let me eat in front of the TV. He never did that, and I watched him instead of the programs, waiting for him to say something about the envelope or the police or anything at all.

  He didn’t, though; he was stone, holding an untouched plate of food in his lap.

  Chasing bread crusts around my plate, I glanced at the TV, then at Daddy, wondering if I should let out any of the questions that had piled up in my head.

  When I saw Daddy swallow like he was choking something back, I reached out to touch his hand. “It’s all over now.”

  He kept nodding, tipping his head back a little farther each time until he stared at the ceiling. He looked even older than he had at the police station, and exhausted.

  “You can tell me,” I said.

  “He killed himself, Iris.” Daddy looked over, wearing a bitter, broken smile. Southern men didn’t tell secrets; it was a matter of honor. Daddy probably would have kept this one until he had his own grave if I hadn’t gone and dug it up.

  “He killed himself, and he asked us not to let his mama find him like that, so we didn’t. That’s what that note was all about.”

  I hurt when I heard that, and it made Old Mrs. Landry human again. Strict as she was, Elijah had loved her, enough to spare her the shame of a suicide in the family. Suicides couldn’t even be buried in the regular cemetery; in a sick way, it was kind of funny he’d ended up there, anyway.

  Squeezing Daddy’s hand, I asked quietly, “But why’d he do it?” He didn’t answer, so I spread my question out a little more. “Was he pining over Mama?”

  Daddy knitted his brows and stared at me. “Where’d that come from?”

  “That’s what Mrs. Thacker said. It was either love or money, and he was too young to worry about money.” A chill ran between my shoulder blades when I repeated her words, because it brought to mind all the other ugly things she’d had to say.

  “Adelaide Thacker talks too much,” he sai
d.

  “Well, was it?”

  Daddy turned to look at me. “It wasn’t your mama.”

  I tried to puzzle that out but it didn’t make sense. It was love; Daddy’d just said as much, and I felt like I deserved to know. “I don’t understand.”

  Daddy’s eyelids fluttered closed, and he shook his head slowly. He took a breath, then looked up with an expression that told me this was the last he’d have to say about it, ever.

  “I tried to make it up. I tried like hell. I did what that damned note asked me to, and I made sure Lee got out, so he wouldn’t end up the same way. I—”

  “Daddy, you’re not making sense.”

  He looked over at me, broken. Final. “It was me, Iris. I was in love with your mama, and Elijah was in love with me.”

  chapter sixteen

  When Ben came to the door, Daddy narrowed his eyes but let him in anyway. Ben shuffled around, stammering, until Daddy said we could go to my room to talk.

  “Leave the door open,” he warned.

  It was strange inviting Ben into my bedroom. I felt like I was letting him look at my underwear or something, which made me feel bad, ’cause I’d actually seen him in his.

  Instead of sitting in the chair at my desk, he held on to it, wobbling back and forth as he peeked at me through his lashes. “Everybody’s talking, Iris.”

  I nodded, trying to find a good place to settle, finally choosing the edge of my bed. “I know.”

  Ben stopped rattling and slowly turned to look at me. “Did your daddy tell you what happened?”

  My stomach dropping, I shook my head. A funny sensation tingled down my arms, and I looked toward my shelf, the one Elijah had torn up twice looking for his suicide note. “Not exactly.”

  Just like Daddy, I knew things now that I never wanted to share; if I was lucky, nobody’d ever make me, either.

  “I heard my daddy talking to Mr. Lanoux,” Ben said.

  I just nodded.

  Twitchy, Ben rocked the chair again, then stopped, like he didn’t quite know what to do with himself or how to talk to me anymore. “He said Elijah told them to come over at a certain time. That he was dead when they got there, hanging from a light fixture. He even tied a bag of river rocks to his legs to make sure he did it right.”

  Pursing my lips, I closed my eyes against a sudden flash of vivid imagination. I could call up every detail of Elijah’s room. It wasn’t a hard stretch to change that picture, to make his body dangle beside the bed, his shadow swaying across a pillowcase dotted with just one drop of blood.

  My chest tightened and I wanted to cry again. I couldn’t let myself slip into the hurt that had dragged Elijah down until he wanted to die. I couldn’t bear to feel it; I didn’t want to.

  I pushed it out of my thoughts. “Do you know what the note said?”

  “Please don’t let my mama find me like this.” Ben laughed, an empty sort of sound, and ran his fingers through his hair. “I guess she didn’t, did she?”

  Forcing my voice to some kind of normal, I looked up and asked, “Ben, do you think they’re going to jail?” I just wanted somebody to say no so I could stop worrying, even if it was only for a minute. Even if it was a lie.

  Ben sighed, letting go of my chair. The wooden feet rattled on the floor, then went silent. “I don’t know. I hope not.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  It was a stupid thing to say, but I couldn’t think of anything else. I’d gone crazy and torn open a grave that my daddy had gone crazy and closed his best friend up in. Two generations of Rhameses had disturbed Mrs. Claiborne’s rest; instead of going to jail, I should have worried about both of us being sent to an institution.

  Neither of us said anything for a minute. I picked lint off my shirt, and Ben coughed a couple times, standing in just the right place to catch an echo in my room. Winding up with a deep breath, he turned to me and said, “So, I vote next summer we don’t look for any more ghosts.”

  I let my feet slip to the floor and stood. Our conversation felt close to over, and I thought I should walk him out. “We won’t.”

  “Hey, Iris?” Shifting his weight, Ben turned recognizable to me again, a flash of brooding in his blue eyes, and I stepped back because I suspected he intended to kiss me.

  It wouldn’t have been unwelcome, exactly. Ben had turned out to be a lot more than somebody in my way; he liked horror comics and making jokes, and that one kiss had been nice. I even thought about it sometimes. Trying to sound friendly, I stepped back again and shoved my hands in my pockets. “Hey, Ben?”

  He opened his mouth, ready to say something, but no sound came out. Instead, his cheeks colored a little, and he shook his head, curling his lips in a smile as he started for the door. “Never mind.”

  It seemed like a good day for telling all of the truth, and I didn’t want him to leave like that. It would have seemed like there was room to talk about it some more, and there really wasn’t.

  “I would have liked you if you hadn’t kissed Collette first.”

  Caught, Ben had the grace to look ashamed. “I wish I’d known that before I kissed her.” Then he shrugged, because that was as simple as it got. He sort of waved as he left. “See you around, Iris.”

  I sighed and rolled back into my bed, staring at my canopy.

  “See you around, Ben,” I murmured when the front door closed downstairs.

  epilogue

  Elijah’s funeral was nice, as far as funerals went. It was a day of breathing lilies and gazing at them—so many white blooms, wreaths of them ringed with green, and bouquets laid in pretty contrast on his dark blue casket. I’d never seen so many flowers in my life.

  It seemed like half the parish showed up, out of curiosity or respect. It was strange to see a sea of so much black under such a bright summer sky. I held my daddy’s hand the whole time, pretending not to notice when he wiped away tears. Uncle Lee stood silent and serious, his hand on the back of Daddy’s neck, like he had to hold him up. My eyes stayed dry. I didn’t have any tears left for Elijah, not anymore.

  But Miss Nan did enough crying for both of us. Clutching her tissue, she smeared her mascara around beneath a black widow’s veil. There was all kinds of talk about that later.

  Still swearing that Elijah was a saint, Old Mrs. Landry refused to come to the burial. She told anybody who’d listen that the Prince of Lies put a pile of bones down in that crypt, to blind us to the coming end of days. She stopped going to church; she bought no more prayers with hard candy.

  The mysterious Mr. Landry came. He flew in all the way from Phoenix. He stood stiff and straight until the end, when he leaned down to kiss the casket and whisper private words to his son.

  Then he looked past Daddy but shook my hand and thanked me for coming. His eyes were brown, just like Elijah’s.

  For a while after that, I’d slip down to the cemetery to sit next to Elijah’s stone, mostly just to reassure myself he was still there. I don’t know who chose the marker, but it was perfect: smooth gray granite, with his name and dates etched next to a carved river. I liked to run my fingers across the waves and dig into the letters; it just felt good, the way the stone soaked up the sun.

  When summer turned to fall, I went less, and then only once in the winter, to wish him a Merry Christmas. I kept planning to go all through spring, but when summer came, I gave that up, too.

  That stone was just a place for the living to remember him; there was nothing left of him to miss me. There was no more Incident with the Landry Boy. There was just a sad story that ended with Elijah finally home.

  It was proof that nothing ever happened in Ondine, and finally, that was just fine by me.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A novel may be drafted in solitude, but it’s never finished alone.

  I’d like to thank my agent, Sara Crowe, for sweeping in with precision revisions and a battle plan to find Iris the perfect home against the odds and conventional wisdom. It was a glorious siege. Many thanks to Wendy
Loggia, a rare, wonderful editor who offers critique, encouragement and line edits; it’s so good to have a partner with vision—thank you.

  There are so many wonderful people who contributed to making this book. I’d like to thank Colleen and Carrie for their thorough copyedits, Trish for her brilliant design, and Chad Michael Ward for bringing Iris off the page and onto the cover. Big Deb thanks to Heidi R. Kling and R. J. Anderson for brainstorming titles with me. Thanks also to Chief Deputy Anthony Barcala of the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Department for clarifying ranks and responsibilities, and to the Louisiana Native Plant Society for those little details that are so important.

  I must thank my English teacher Mary Redman, who was a lover of words and who taught me to be one, too. A fresh thank-you to Estlin Feigley for giving me a voice on the screen and for listening to mine behind it. And I owe so much to Doris Egan, an unparalleled mentor, who taught me how to write a killer breakout, and what kind of woman in the arts I want to be.

  My mom, Sheryl Jern, I can’t thank enough—for teaching me the absolute value of perseverance and the beauty of seeing something through to the very end. Great, goddessy thanks to Susan Bettis, who always said “When you write your novel” and never “If.” I owe universes of thanks to my partner in crime, in shining armor, and in all things mystical, Ashley “Arianna” Lockwood.

  So many thanks to LaTonya Dargan, whose advice as my literary attorney I took entirely and whose opinion as my fellow Virgobrain I value immeasurably. Great thanks to Rebecca Sherman for all her hard work in rendering a tight, thin book out of a shamelessly bloated draft.

  Thanks to Rachel Green, who read the first draft and said, “This is a young adult novel,” and to everyone on my manuscript filter, for your faith and support when Iris was nothing but five-hundred-word previews, completely out of context.

  I’d like to acknowledge Blahblahblah, who wants to live forever, and to thank everyone at Metafilter for offering inspiration and procrastination in one convenient location.