Killer’s Island.
“Dempsey Fontenot’s long gone,” Mackey reassures me. “That doesn’t have anything to do with whatever happened to Elora.”
And it’s true; they never found him. He’d already cleared out. But it’s not really true that he was gone. Not in the ways that really mattered. When we were kids, Dempsey Fontenot was the reason we avoided the dark of the tree line. He was the reason Elora and I ran the distance between her house and Honey’s at night, instead of walking. He was every campfire legend we ever told and every slumber party ghost story we ever whispered. It didn’t matter that nobody ever saw hide nor hair of him again. For the eight Summer Children who were left alive, Dempsey Fontenot was a permanent resident of La Cachette. He walked the boardwalks. Same as we did.
“What if you’re wrong, Mackey?” Sera asks, and for a second I can’t breathe. “What if it does have something to do with Elora?”
I remember what Hart said, about how he went back there that night. To Keller’s Island. Looking for Elora. He must have been afraid he’d find her there, floating facedown in that stagnant drowning pool, out behind what’s left of Dempsey Fontenot’s burned-down cabin.
He must have thought maybe.
We all look at each other, and Sera puts words to what every single one of us is wondering. “What if he came back?”
Hart finally turns around to face us, and I’m waiting for him to say that it’s not possible. That we’re being silly. Like he would have when we were kids.
But he doesn’t.
Behind him, across the pond, Willie Nelson slides into the water without making a sound. Silent. Ancient. Deadly. The kind of predator you would never see coming.
“What if he didn’t come back?” I say. My voice is thin as fishing line, and I feel Evie shiver against me in the steamy midday heat. “What if he never left?”
Slicing rain stings my skin like a thousand tiny knives. The mud is pulling at me. Sucking me down. If I don’t do something now,
this is where they’ll find my body.
4
I take advantage of the silence—everyone caught off guard—to conjure up that little flash of Elora.
That slicing rain.
And the sucking mud.
I try to focus on what she’s running from. What—who—she’s afraid of. Could it really be Dempsey Fontenot, our long-lost childhood boogeyman?
It’s no use, though. I can’t see Elora’s face, let alone the face of whoever is chasing her down through the storm.
If I’ve suddenly become a psychic, I’ve become a really shitty one.
Sera turns to Sander and whispers something to him in Creole. I wonder what she said, but I don’t speak much Creole. Just a word or two I’ve picked up from the twins over the years. Curse words, mostly. Evie speaks some French, but it’s not quite the same. Case, too. But what he speaks is Cajun French, so it’s a little different.
And that’s when I realize that Case isn’t here.
“Where’s Case?” I ask, and everybody gets really interested in the cypress needles scattered around the bottom of the boat. Evie sits up and pulls away from me. She’s watching Hart again, twisting that white-blonde hair around her finger and chewing on her lip.
“He’s around,” Mackey tells me. “We just haven’t seen much of him lately.”
“Why not?” I ask, and they all exchange looks.
“Case won’t come around if I’m here.” Hart’s arms are crossed in front of his chest, and ropy blue veins stand out against his skin. “The two of us got into it a while back.”
That’s nothing new, really. Hart and Case run up against each other from time to time, like dogs fighting over territory. Their little pissing contests never last long, though. And then they’re friends again.
Sera is the one who spells it out for me. “Hart thinks Case did something to Elora.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No way.” Case is a hothead. We all know that. But he wouldn’t hurt Elora. He’s head-over-heels for her. Has been since we were kids. I find Hart’s eyes, but I can’t read what he’s thinking. He’s turned off the lights and pulled the shades down. “Case loves Elora,” I say.
Mackey reaches over and lays his hand on mine. “We all loved Elora, Grey.”
Nobody corrects him.
We all love Elora.
Tourist sounds drift down from the boardwalk, and it’s like some kind of spell has been broken. Sera gets to her feet. “We need to go,” she says, and Sander stands up, too. “Time to make some money.”
“Me too,” Mackey says, and he seems grateful for the excuse. On busy weekends, Mackey and his brothers take paying customers out on airboat rides. “Swamp Photo Safaris,” they call them. Turns out the ability to see death coming isn’t a psychic talent that people really appreciate. Or pay for.
The three of them say their goodbyes, and Mackey gives me a hug. Then they hurry up the ladder and head off down the boardwalk, leaving Evie looking back and forth between Hart and me. She stands up, but she doesn’t follow the others.
“I could stick around,” she offers. And there’s something hopeful in her voice. “I mean, if you guys want company.”
“That’s okay,” I tell her. “I need to get back and spend some time with Honey.”
Hart nods. “I gotta get to work.”
Sometimes he hangs around the river dock up in Kinter making a little money here and there helping guys off-load cargo. It’s backbreaking work, but nobody bothers him. And they pay him in cash. I figure he makes just enough money to keep himself in cigarettes.
But Hart doesn’t head toward the ladder.
And neither do I.
Evie hesitates another few seconds, shifting her weight back and forth to stand on one long leg and then the other, like some kind of flamingo.
Finally she gives up and says, “Okay. I’ll see you later, Grey.” We share a hug before she turns toward Hart. “Bye, Hart,” she tells him, and I feel a tiny twinge of jealousy when he smiles at her.
Evie has always worshipped the ground Hart walks on. Ever since she was born. But there’s something new about the way his name sounds in her mouth this year. Something that’s different from last summer. And all the summers before that. Something about the way her eyes linger on his face—and the rest of him—a split second longer than they should.
I guess she really is growing up.
When she’s gone, Hart lets out a long, ragged breath, then he leans against the boardwalk piling.
“She has a crush on you,” I tell him. “Evie.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I know.” Of course he does. I wonder what that must be like, to actually feel someone’s heart beat faster when they look at you. “I helped her out with something. That’s all it is. Evie’s a sweetheart. But she’s just a kid.”
I let go of that jealous feeling, because I guess he hasn’t noticed the new boobs.
“You really think Case could have done something to Elora?” I ask him.
“It isn’t just me who thinks it. Sheriff must have questioned Case a dozen times. Investigators from the state police, too. They never officially named him as a suspect, but it was pretty clear they were looking hard in his direction. Probably still are.”
“But do you really think it could be him?” I can’t wrap my brain around the idea, because Case is one of us.
“I don’t know.” Hart shrugs. “He was out there that night. If she pissed him off bad enough. Or if he had some reason to be jealous . . .”
Case has a jealous streak a mile wide. That’s not exactly a secret. But he’s never hurt Elora before. Or anybody else, really. Punched holes in a few walls, maybe. Slashed some guy’s tires once at a party up in Kinter. That’s about it.
“I don’t think he’d do anything like that,” I say. “Not Case.”
Not to Elora.
“Yeah. Well, I’ve seen a lot of people do shit you wouldn’t have thought they’d ever do.” Hart goes to pull out another cigarette, but there aren’t any. He growls in frustration, then he crumples the empty pack in his fist and drops it in the bottom of the boat. “I never thought my mama would blow my daddy’s head off in our kitchen.” I grit my teeth against the pain in his voice. The shock of that sentence.
We were only five years old that summer when Hart came knocking on my bedroom window in the middle of the night, eyes wide and face pale as a ghost. I remember sliding open the window to let him crawl in. The two of us curled up in my bed together under one of Honey’s thick quilts.
His daddy was dead, he told me.
Blood and brains all over the wall.
Hart’s father was an abusive bastard. Everybody knew it. And it was self-defense. No question. Elora’s mama had died when we were babies. Cancer. So when Becky married Leo a year later, Hart and Elora became brother and sister, and everybody agreed that a little bit of good came out of an awful situation.
Hart’s never gotten over that night, though. I don’t see how anyone could. He still carries it with him. It’s not just that he witnessed it with his eyes. He felt it, too. It soaked into his soul, the way the blood soaked into the wallpaper.
The stain is still there.
“What about Dempsey Fontenot?” I ask. “Do you think—”
He shuts me down. “That’s a bunch of nonsense. I only went back to Keller’s Island that night ’cause I was half outta my mind.” He lays a hand on my shoulder. “You don’t need to be afraid of Dempsey Fontenot, Greycie. Don’t get yourself all spooked.”
But it’s too late. Suddenly I need to be with Honey.
“I should go,” I tell him. “Seriously.”
Hart takes my hand and helps me up the ladder, then he climbs up behind me.
We walk back toward the Mystic Rose together, dodging tourists on the way. I notice Miss Cassiopeia’s sign is flipped to closed, and I wonder if she’s been open at all these last three months. I guess maybe nobody wants a reading from a psychic who can’t even find her own missing stepdaughter.
When we stop to say goodbye in front of the bookstore, Hart digs something out of his jeans pocket, then he takes my hand and folds whatever it is into my palm.
I open my fingers to reveal a necklace. Part of a set I gave Elora last year in honor of our golden birthdays. Sixteen on the sixteenth. A delicate silver chain with a single blue pearl.
Pearl because it was our shared birthstone.
Blue because the regular white ones had seemed too plain for Elora.
It’s one of the few good memories I have of us last summer. The way she gasped when she opened the little box. “Oh, Grey,” was all she said.
“I wanted to find the ring that goes with it,” Hart tells me. “I looked all over. But I didn’t see it anywhere.” One corner of his mouth twitches up a little. “You know what a disaster her room is.” Then his face turns serious again. “She probably had it on that night, though. She wore it all the time.”
She wore it all the time. Even after what happened between us at the end of last summer.
I need that to mean something.
I shake my head. “I don’t want this.”
“Come on,” he pleads. “Take it. Please, Greycie?” Hart puts a finger under my chin and tilts my face up toward his, so I can’t avoid his eyes. “For me?”
Jesus. How am I supposed to say no to that?
“It’s hers.” I feel tears creeping up on me, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to start sobbing. Not with all these stupid tourists milling around.
“She’d want you to have it. What you guys had—have—that connection . . .” Now it’s Hart’s turn to get choked up. “You two were—” He stops. Flustered. Looks down at his boots.
“Lit from the same match,” I finish, and Hart looks back up at me. “It’s something Honey used to say. About Elora and me. That we were two flames lit from the same match.” I’d reminded Elora of that when I gave her the ring and the necklace last summer. Our very own magic words.
Hart and I study each other for a few seconds. I let him fasten the chain around my neck, and he gives me the very beginnings of a grin before he turns to go. “Later, Shortcake,” is all he says. But his fingers brushing against my skin and the low, throaty sound of his voice are enough to remind me that I’ve been on the brink of falling in love with Hart for basically my entire life. And occasionally, I trip.
I watch him walk away. There’s the kiss of a breeze. The musical laughter of wind chimes. When I look toward the little house Evie shares with her mama and her uncle, Victor, I see the homemade chimes hanging right outside her bedroom window. Colorful bits of hand-strung glass and metal. A flash of white-blonde hair lets me know that Evie has been watching me from behind her pale blue curtains.
Watching us.
And it makes me sad for her.
If our little Evie has a crush on Hart, she’s really barking up the wrong tree. In that way, Hart is the most solitary person I’ve ever known. He’s never dated anyone, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t imagine him ever falling for a girl.
Not shy, nervous Evie.
And definitely not me.
I turn and run. I run like I have someplace to run to. Even though I don’t. I run like there’s somewhere to go. Even though I know there isn’t.
5
Inside the Mystic Rose, Honey is showing two girls not much older than me a collection of carnelian stones that are supposed to enhance sensuality and boost passion.
“Now, this little beauty,” she says, holding up the darkest red one, “this one is guaranteed to get a fire going.” She winks at the taller of the two. “If you know what I mean.”
The girls are giggling quietly, heads close together as they examine the stones and make their selections. They communicate in the secret language of best friends. Nudges and raised eyebrows. Embarrassed smiles half-hidden behind hands. And watching them is like peeling off a scab.
I head back to my tiny bedroom off the kitchen and find Sweet-N-Low, Honey’s ancient wiener dog, asleep on my bed. I lie down next to him and scratch his belly. He’s deaf in one ear, mostly bald, and noxiously gassy. Honey says he reminds her of her third husband, Eldon—one of the dead but not entirely departed.
I look around the familiar room—everything just where I left it last August—but my eyes keep wandering back to a framed photograph that sits on my bedside table. Elora and me at our tenth birthday party. We’re holding hands, both of us sunburned and happy, leaning over a pink-frosted sheet cake. Cheeks puffed out and eyes closed tight. Caught in the very moment of making a wish.
Our birthday is just a few weeks away, and the idea of turning seventeen alone settles on my chest with a suffocating weight. I close my eyes and find the little blue pearl hanging around my neck, then I try with everything I have to pull up one of those images of Elora. One of those terrifying flashes. Maybe if I can conjure up some clue—
But there’s nothing. At least at first.
And then it’s there. Just for a split second.
Elora is running—
I’m running—
for my life.
Rain.
And howling wind.
Moonlight on dark hair.
My stomach lurches and I feel sick. I’m sure I’m going to throw up.
I suck in a breath and open my eyes, and Honey is standing in the doorway watching me. She comes to sit on the edge of my bed and smooth my hair.
“Not everyone is born into their gifts,” she tells me. “Some people have to develop them over time.”
“Just a dream,” I lie. “I fell asleep for a second. That’s all.”
But Honey doesn’t give up. “Your mother was still c
oming into herself . . . into her abilities . . . when she crossed over. And she was a lot older than you are.”
My mother killed herself. But Honey never says it like that.
I was eight years old when she did it, and after, I remember asking Honey if she could talk to my mother for me. If she could ask her why. But Honey says the dead are picky about who they talk to. They get to choose who they communicate with, if they choose to communicate at all. And my mother has never reached out to Honey from the other side.
She’s never reached out to me, either.
Since my mother died—or crossed over or whatever—I’ve spent the school years up in Arkansas with my dad and the summers down here with Honey.
That’s one of the things Elora and I went round and round about last summer. She couldn’t wait to turn eighteen and get the hell out of here. And I couldn’t wait to turn eighteen and finally come home. Full-time. I imagined myself helping out in the shop, then running it on my own. Someday.
Honey is still watching me. She tucks a piece of hair behind my ear, and I somehow find the courage to ask the question I couldn’t ask her earlier.
“Has she reached out to you?” I hear the fear in my voice. “Elora’s ghost? Or spirit or whatever?”
Honey chuckles a little. “Oh, goodness, no, Sugar Bee. Why would Elora want to talk to an old lady like me?” Then her voice turns serious. “Besides, if Elora has crossed over, she may not have the energy to reach out to anyone yet. Sometimes it takes a while for spirits to gather themselves. And even then, they may only have the strength to communicate with one person, so they have to be choosy about which channels they open up.” Honey is quiet for a moment before she goes on. “It would make much more sense for Elora to contact someone she was close to in life. Someone she already had a deep connection with.”
Dark and Shallow Lies Page 4