Bay Song

by Noelle Adams

  Cade couldn’t say anything.

  Evidently his mother understood. “Okay. Call me in a couple of hours so I know you’re okay. I think it’s going to be okay. And either way, come by and get the cinnamon bread later on.”

  He laughed over the pain in his throat. “I will.”

  When he hung up, he sat and stared at the road in front of him for a long time.

  He’d been a fool. A selfish fool. He should have told Holly the truth long before this.

  At first he hadn’t because he thought he might be able to write that book. And then he hadn’t because he hadn’t wanted her to see who he really was.

  That skinny little boy who no one had liked, who’d been too weak and shy to earn anyone’s respect.

  His mother had been right. And Holly had been right. He’d kept back from her as much as she’d kept back from him. Even more.

  He pulled out his little notebook and stared down at the scribbled pages. It was almost full now. He’d started this notebook when he’d first met Holly, and he hadn’t filled the pages as quickly as he normally did because he’d gotten so wrapped up in living life, experiencing every moment with Holly. But he’d written out enough. It told the whole story in broken fragments and scrawled words.

  He got out of his car and walked back up her driveway.

  “Go away, Cade!” she shouted from inside the door when he started up the front steps. She must have seen him approach through a window.

  “This is it,” he said, his voice rough with feeling. “This is everything. This is… my soul. You can read it. You can have it.” He took a ragged breath and added, “It’s already yours anyway.”

  He laid the little notebook in front of her door, and then he turned and walked away.

  He collapsed into the front seat of his SUV and panted heavily for a minute, trying to pull himself together.

  That one gesture probably wouldn’t change anything. He’d probably lost Holly anyway. He was tempted to go pound on her door, plant himself on her front steps, make her listen to him.

  But that would be a violation, and he just wasn’t going to do that to her.

  He turned off his car and stared at her driveway, most of it hidden from this angle by the thick trees of the woods.

  Somewhere in those woods were the deer and the fox and the birds that she loved.

  She’d shown them to him. She’d invited him into her sanctuary.

  He wasn’t going to violate her privacy, her boundaries, but he also wasn’t going to go away.

  So he just sat in his car and waited.

  Fifteen

  Holly was so upset when she slammed the door on Cade that she ran over to the far wall in the kitchen and pulled off the panel to the hiding place.

  She climbed into the small space, pulling the panel up afterward.

  It was absolutely dark except for the thinnest sliver of light coming through where the panel closed. There was room in the hole for both her and her mother. They’d hid there for hours sometimes—when something had spooked her mother and she was particularly scared.

  The nameless threat that had always dogged their steps hadn’t been able to find them in here.

  Neither would Cade.

  She stayed curled up in the hiding place in the dark for a few minutes, trying to figure out what was really going on, what she should do, what everything meant.

  She came up with absolutely no answers.

  Finally she felt kind of silly, hiding the way she was. She liked to think she was better adjusted than her mother, but she obviously wasn’t.

  For so long, her mother had been convinced that Holly’s father would come after her, but he had never come.

  And for so long, Holly had been waiting, hiding too. For the same reason.

  Fear.

  But she wasn’t trapped by her past, by her fears, by the ghost that walked the woods. She wouldn’t let it trap her. She climbed out and took a deep breath, closing the panel back over the dark space.

  She filled a bottle with water and drank it all down as she stood by the windows, staring out at the yard, walkway, and empty beach.

  Several birds were circling in the distance, so there must have been something dead there. She wondered what it was. She hoped it wasn’t any of the animals she knew by sight. She didn’t go to check, like she normally would have. She wasn’t in the emotional condition to leave the house right now.

  When she heard a sound from the front door, she went to look out and saw Cade approaching.

  She heard the words he said through the door. They made her cry.

  She leaned against the door for a long time. Then she finally couldn’t stand knowing his precious little notebook was lying by itself on her step.

  So she opened the door, leaned over, and picked it up, locking the door behind her again.

  She wondered what Cade was doing now.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have sent him away.

  He’d lied to her, tried to use her to get a scoop on a book. But she knew all of what happened between them wasn’t a lie.

  He’d fallen for her for real. She’d known it, even as she’d closed the door on his face. He’d sounded so broken as he left and even more broken as he’d left the notebook for her.

  Everyone had secrets. She had more than most.

  But how many people would have given her his secrets like this, all scrawled out in a little notebook.

  She wasn’t foolish or naïve. She hadn’t imagined what existed between them. Maybe it was new, untested, just beginning—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real.

  She wanted him back.

  She stared down at the cover of the notebook. Maybe she hadn’t lost him for good.

  After several minutes, she inhaled deeply and let out the breath, taking enough courage to open the notebook to very close to the end.

  She opened to a page on which was written only one line in a small, scrawled cursive. It started midsentence: dusk, the stars glint faintly, like candles about to be snuffed by the wind.

  She frowned, remembering the words from when Cade had spoken them more than a week ago, when they’d been lying on the beach after swimming.

  She flipped the pages forward, but the last few pages were blank, so she closed the notebook and opened it again from the beginning.

  Cade obviously didn’t write his whole books out longhand. There weren’t many complete paragraphs scrawled out here—just random lines and sometimes just words by themselves on lines of their own.

  The first few pages were obviously just book ideas, things he’d read in the newspaper, random crimes he’d heard about. Then there was a page with a phone number on it and then a few lines. Slim. Strong. Delicately pretty. Eyes like silver c Silver-gray eyes.

  That was obviously her. He’d been planning to write about her from the very beginning. She could see now that was why he’d taken the vacation house next door to her.

  It wasn’t really surprising. It had even crossed her mind at the beginning. But when they’d gotten closer and he still hadn’t said anything, she’d assumed she’d been wrong.

  It hurt though, seeing his notes for what he’d been going to write about her in his new book.

  Every Tuesday, she rides her old bike (Schwinn?) into town, going through a routine of errands—library, grocery store, drugstore grill to get a cheeseburger—like a postman doing his rounds.

  The second page was filled with mostly questions, some of them nothing more than names. Margaret Chaney. Meg? Rosie Meldon? Mason?

  Librarian falling in love with the visiting bad boy. Getting pregnant. Disappearing?

  He’d had it mostly worked out—her mother’s painful, tragic backstory.

  Holly flipped through several pages of notes, questions, and drafted sentences until she found a page that was almost entirely scratched out.

  There was no obvious reason for it being scratched out like that—it looked like similar content as the rest of the notebook. After that, the rest of
the page was blank.

  She turned the next page and saw writing start again. And what she read there made her freeze in surprise.

  There’s an old man who limps out to the pier every morning, carrying a rod but never casting it out into the bay. Maybe he’s lived too long to believe there’s anything left to catch.

  She couldn’t even breathe, staring down at what Cade had written.

  It was what she’d suggested—just an idle notion, a story that had never been told—and evidently he had taken it seriously.

  Maybe he was considering it. Not writing about her, no matter how dark and juicy her story was. Instead finding another story—a collection of human lives that would never otherwise be told.

  Her eyes burned as she read over the next few pages. After his notes on the old man, he’d started to describe the funny red-haired lady who hung out at the drugstore every day. And then the gray man who worked at the hardware store—the one she liked because he never tried to say anything to her.

  Her throat closed up with emotions when she finally put the notebook back down, closing it gently, as if it were fragile, precious.

  She had been right after all.

  No matter what he’d been planning to do at the beginning, sometime during the past month, he’d changed his mind. He’d changed his heart.

  He wasn’t going to take advantage of her after all. And, even more, he was trying to do what she wanted for him, for his writing.

  Reaching for something new, good, incredibly hard.

  She stood up abruptly, understanding a truth that was only now coming to her fully.

  A truth that ached in her throat.

  She wanted to do the same thing. She wanted to reach for something new, something good too—no matter how incredibly hard it was.

  She just didn’t exactly know how to do it.

  She didn’t know where Cade was, but she suddenly knew she needed to talk to him. She’d been wrong to send him away.

  Her mind spun with the realization as she left the house and walked down the walkway to the beach and then over to the property next door.

  She never did this. Never ventured off her land if she could possibly help it. But Cade was more important than anything else right now, and she wanted to find him.

  She trudged over the sand dunes until she reached the little shack. She knocked on the door and called out, but no one answered.

  Cade’s car wasn’t here. He wasn’t at the house.

  Which meant she had no idea where he was.

  Feeling flustered and let down, she returned to her own house, realizing she was going to have to go into town.

  She was tired. She didn’t have a lot of energy to face other people. And she didn’t even know where Cade might be. Maybe at his mother’s, but she didn’t know where that was.

  She had no choice, though, if she wanted to talk to him. She was going to have to go to town to find him.

  She went to get her purse, locked the house behind her, and climbed onto her old bike. Then she pedaled down the driveway to the road.

  She stopped at the bottom to look for oncoming cars before she pulled out.

  What she saw was Cade’s SUV, parked across the street.

  Then she saw Cade himself, getting out of his car, staring at her with a mixture of surprise and guilt and hope on his face.

  “Were you looking for me?” he asked, walking across the road to her bike.

  She opened her mouth but couldn’t make her voice work. So she just nodded.

  His expression softened as he gazed at her, and he raised one hand to cup her face. “Are you okay?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “I’m so sorry, baby. I was going to write about you at the beginning, but then I met you and started to fall for you, and there was no going back for me after that. But I should have told you the truth. I never should have tried to hide it from you. I’m sorry.”

  She nodded, her eyes burning with tears. She believed him, knew he was telling the truth.

  “Thank you for showing me your notebook,” she managed to say at last.

  “Did you read it?”

  “Yes. I read it. I know what it took to share it with me. I… It means so much.”

  Cade’s face was openly emotional, wracked by feeling in a way she’d never seen before. “I’m glad.”

  “I…” She paused as a shudder ran down her spine. “I want to share something with you too.”

  “I’d like that. I want to know everything about you, Holly. But I’m not going to push. Take as much time as you want.”

  “I want to do it now.”

  “What is it? What do you want to share with me?”

  She knew the answer to that question. Of course she knew. She’d known it all along. She wanted to share with him the secret buried in the middle of the woods to her right, buried now for six years.

  The answer to his question was her ghost.

  “Can I… can I show you something?”

  “Of course.” Cade looked excited and confused and hopeful and so incredibly tender. “Do we need to drive somewhere?”

  “No.” She got off her bike. “We need to walk.”

  He put his hands on the handles of her bike so he could push it up the driveway for her. He was always doing things like that. Despite his rather jaded lifestyle, his mother must have raised him to be a gentleman.

  She loved that about him. She loved so much about him.

  And everything in her world—in the universe—was going to change if she took him to see her ghost.

  Suddenly the reality of it hit her all at once, and she couldn’t even begin to process it. She was slammed by panic, by fear, by resistance, by so many years hiding herself away from the world.

  She couldn’t be someone different—not even for Cade. Life just didn’t work that way.

  “Are you okay?” Cade asked in a different tone, evidently seeing something in her expression. “What’s the matter?”

  She must have gone white because she could feel the blood drain from her face. For a moment she thought she might actually pass out. When she didn’t, she was hit with a surge of absolute panic, and she ran.

  She ran up the driveway to her house. Then she stumbled inside. Then she crawled back into her hiding place.

  That was where she belonged after all. The boundaries of that hole defined the real boundaries of her life.

  And wanting it to change didn’t mean it was going to do so.

  Not even for Cade.

  She’d heard him behind her, but he was hampered by the bike, so she was in the hiding place before he got into the house.

  She didn’t feel any safer, crouched there in the dark behind the panel. She felt sick and weak and terrified.

  After a minute, she heard a voice from outside the hiding place but inside the house.

  “Holly?”

  It was Cade. He was confused, upset, frightened. “Holly, baby, please don’t hide from me.”

  She’d hurt him. She could hear it in his voice. He’d thought she’d forgiven him and was going to share with him her deepest secret, and then she’d run away like a coward.

  She was a coward. This had always been her.

  “Holly, please!” It sounded like he was walking through the house. “You don’t have to show me anything you’re not ready for. You don’t have to open up to me about anything that hurts too much. I just want to be with you.”

  His voice got so muffled she was pretty sure he’d gone into her bedroom.

  He was looking for her.

  She wanted so much to crawl out and see him, but she couldn’t do it. She was paralyzed. Her mom had always told her never to come out of hiding until she was alone.

  “Holly, please!” Cade must have moved back into the living room now. “Are you in that hiding place you told me about?”

  She couldn’t believe she’d told him about it. She couldn’t believe how much she’d shared with him. She’d never believed she coul
d open up about so many hard, dark things with anyone.

  With anyone except her mother.

  She trembled helplessly and tried to make herself push the panel off, but she couldn’t.

  “Please, baby,” he said. She heard noises, like he was opening doors, opening cabinets. He was searching for her hiding place. “Please don’t hide from me. I’m so sorry I lied to you. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you why I got to know you in the first place. You know that’s not true anymore though. You’re not a book or a puzzle to me. You never were, not since we buried that deer together.”

  She believed him. Her heart hurt so much in her chest that she could barely stand the pain. She wanted Cade, but couldn’t make herself take the last step.

  She couldn’t give up her hiding place, the one place in the world where she and her mother had known they’d been safe.

  If she opened the panel to Cade, there would be no sure safety in the world anymore. There would be nothing but faith. Nothing but the truth.

  “Baby, please tell me where you are.” Cade sounded hoarse, desperate. He was knocking on walls now. She could hear him. “You were right about me. You were right about everything. If you read that notebook, you know I’m going to try for that other one—the one you suggested. Both my head and my heart know that’s the right thing for me to do. I could feel it in my throat.”

  When she realized what he was saying—what he meant—her own throat started to ache. One tear slipped out of her eye.

  “Holly, please. I know we haven’t known each other for long, but I think we’re the right thing too. I know it—I know you—with my head and my heart too.” He must have stopped in the kitchen, not far from where she hid. His voice was cracked and broken now. “I feel it in my throat too, whenever I think about you. Please don’t hide from me anymore.”

  She knew him that way too. She loved him that way. With her head and her heart and her body and every part of her soul. She desperately wanted to see him now.

  And she suddenly knew something else too. The truth. That she’d been living only by her heart—building a life around a ghost, around a bleeding wound, pretending nothing was there at the center—when what she was afraid of had already happened and wouldn’t happen again.