“Toward the end, she stopped fallin’. Stopped needin’ to, I think. And I didn’t see her near as much after dat. But we’d still meet out on the dock sometimes. After the town went to sleep. Three, four o’clock in the mornin’. And we’d just sit together till the sun started to come up.”
My heart aches.
I should have been there. I should have been the one to save Elora. To sit with her in the darkest part of the night.
Not this secret stranger.
“Why did you reach out to me?” I ask him. “What is it you want?”
He stares at me for a second.
“Like I said, I think maybe we can help each other.” Zale looks back out toward the distant river. “I saw her dat night,” he admits. “The night she disappeared. I just had this feelin’. Somethin’ about Elora. And then that storm blew in. So I set out in the rain to make sure she was okay. And I found her standin’ right dere on the dock. Just like the very first time I saw her.”
“She must’ve sneaked away.” I’m thinking out loud. “From the others.”
Zale nods.
“Slipped off while the rest of ’em were playin’ flashlight tag. That’s what she told me. Left ’em out dere lookin’ for ’er.”
And that makes sense. Because it sounds just like Elora. She would have loved the drama of it. Everyone worried and calling her name.
“Did she say anything else?” I ask him.
“Just goodbye. She was leavin’, she said. For good.”
“That was something she talked about a lot,” I tell him. “Getting out of La Cachette.”
“It was more than talk dat night. She was waitin’ for someone.” My insides flip-flop, and I grip the edge of the flatbed trailer. “And she was nervous. In a hurry.”
“Who was she waiting for?” I hear the desperation in my voice.
The longing for an answer. Any answer.
But Zale just shrugs. “She wouldn’t say.”
“Did she at least say where she was going?”
He shakes his head. “We only talked a few minutes. Just long enough to say our goodbyes. And Elora kept her secrets close to her own heart. But she gave me dat blue pearl ring as a friendship token. For savin’ her all those nights.”
I look down at the ring on my finger. The little silver band reflects the bright June sun.
“And then everyone was out lookin’ for her,” he adds. “And I was thinkin’, good for her. She fooled ’em all. Ran off. Like she said she was gonna. Only—”
“Only you don’t think that anymore.”
Zale shakes his head. “It doesn’t feel right. Somethin’ tells me she never left La Cachette.”
I think about that bloody Saint Sebastian medal. The ugly picture it paints of Elora’s last moments. With Case. If he found her there—on the dock, waiting for someone else—maybe it doesn’t matter who it was she was running away with.
Maybe all that matters is Case’s reaction.
My breathing changes, and I feel this squeezing pain in my chest. Like my heart is being crushed into dust. But it’s at war with the insistent voice inside my head that’s still telling me this is all impossible. That there’s no way she can be gone.
Dead.
Not Elora.
I know it’s true—some part of me has known it ever since that night back in February when I woke up and felt it, clear as anything—but I still can’t make any sense out of it.
Because if she were really dead, surely I would be, too. How do you go on living with only half a heart?
Suddenly I can’t get enough air. I’m panicking. Gasping for breath. My vision is blurry. I’m trembling.
Zale reaches over to take my hand, and I feel the electric shock of his skin against mine. My whole arm tingles. I pull my eyes away from Elora’s ring. Zale’s hand on mine.
And I find myself in the blue of his eyes.
For a split second, I think about Hart.
Dark curls. Teeth bared against the skin of my neck. Rough fingertips on the small of my back.
That gnawing need.
His.
And mine.
But then I feel the gentle heat of Zale’s touch spreading out through my whole body. It isn’t hot. I don’t feel that burn. Like I did with Hart last night.
But finally, I’m warm again. And I let myself breathe in deep.
I think about something Honey always says when she does a tarot reading.
It may not be what you were expecting, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t what you need.
That reminds me that we’re supposed to go up to Kinter this morning. Honey has a hair appointment. And I’ve totally lost track of time. How long have we been out here?
I don’t have any idea.
“I need to head back,” I say. And Zale nods.
I don’t want him to let go of my hand. But he does.
“Maybe I’ll see you this evening.” Something in his voice sounds hopeful.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I’ll come back out tonight.”
And I’m surprised by how much I’m already looking forward to it, because I know it doesn’t make any sense. I just met Zale. And he still seems only half-real to me. I’m curious, though. About this stranger who loved my twin flame. This secret friend who sat with Elora in the dark of the night when I couldn’t be here to save her from herself.
I cover the ground between Li’l Pass and the boardwalk as quick as I can, hoping like heck I’m not in trouble. When I get back to the Mystic Rose, Honey is already out on the dock getting the boat ready, so I hurry inside to trade my mud boots for flip-flops and grab my sunglasses.
Like most people in La Cachette, Honey has a little flatboat with an outboard motor that she uses to scoot up to Kinter and back. You can’t really take a tiny boat like that out on the river, though. The Mighty Mississippi is too everything. Too fast. Too treacherous. Too full of logs and submerged dangers. Too crowded with enormous cargo ships and barges.
You have to go the back way.
Up through the bayou.
I think about my friends in Little Rock and their sweet little grandmothers. Delicate, gray-haired Southern belles with strings of pearls and pastel sweaters dyed the colors of Easter mints. I bet not one of them could pilot a flatboat through the thick of the swamp. But Honey makes it look easy. One hand on the tiller and the other hand on her head to keep her bright blue scarf from blowing away.
On the ride up to Kinter, Honey plays wildlife guide, pointing out the big swamp rabbits grazing in the Bermuda grass and the pink spoonbills feeding at the water’s edge.
I can’t really hear her, though. My mind is too full of Elora.
And Hart.
And Case.
And Zale.
The things I know.
And all the things I still don’t.
I’m so lost in my thoughts that I don’t even realize we’re there until I feel the boat bump against the wooden pilings.
Most everyone in La Cachette pays a few bucks a month to keep a car parked at the bayou dock up in Kinter. So once Honey gets things squared away with the boat, we haul ourselves into Eliza, a dented old Toyota pickup with faded red paint and no air-conditioning.
“This is the truck I bought your mama when she headed off to college,” Honey tells me. Like she does every single time. “Good ol’ Liza Jane.” She pats the steering wheel. “Your mama drove her up to LSU in Baton Rouge that fall. Only eighteen years old.”
And only twenty when she got pregnant and dropped out to come home so Honey could help raise me. Before my mom died, I’d met my dad a handful of times. I can’t complain about him, though. We talked yesterday. On my birthday. And I told him everything was fine.
Dad does the best he can by me, but—even half my lifetime later—Little Rock is just Little R
ock.
La Cachette is still home.
Honey parks Eliza outside the Kut and Kurl, and I wander across the street to the tiny public library to pass the time. It’s only been a couple weeks, but it seems like forever since I’ve seen civilization. Not that two-stoplight Kinter really counts. Still, it feels weird to be in the library. The lighting is too bright and the AC is too cold.
I wander through the fiction section for a while, but I already have too much summer reading to do for school. I’m supposed to be slogging through The Tempest, and I haven’t even started. So I can’t commit to anything else. I make my way over to the periodicals section, just to see if I can find something worth flipping through, but I’m not really into Field & Stream or Southern Living.
Then I notice a newspaper tucked down in between the magazines. It’s a copy of the Advocate Times Picayune from up in New Orleans. I figure that’s better than nothing, even if it is dated almost a month ago, so I pull it out.
And there it is, right at the top of the page.
as thirteenth anniversary approaches, still no justice in psychic town double child murders
I gasp so loud that some old lady across the aisle shushes me.
My legs are shaking something terrible, so I sink into an ugly orange chair to stare at the color photo under the headline.
I was only four years old when Dempsey Fontenot did what he did to Ember and Orli. I don’t have any memory of ever having laid eyes on him. Definitely not in real life. Not even in a picture, either. In my imagination, he always looked like a monster.
Here he is though, staring right through me in the Plaquemines Parish library. Looking almost normal.
A long, slender neck.
Sun-blond hair.
And the most striking, unmistakable eyes.
They’re ice blue.
Backlit with fire.
I cover my ears. Tell myself this is the worst of it. Even though I know it isn’t. I close my eyes and try to breathe. While I still can.
14
My heart stops beating in my chest.
The face is slightly different. But those eyes? They’re the exact same.
When I glance up, Honey is waving at me from the entryway, so I stuff the newspaper back where I found it before we head down the street for lunch at the Lagniappe Café.
Lagniappe is one of my favorite Cajun words. It means “a little something extra,” and the café’s owner is famous up and down the river for her pies.
But all through lunch, it’s like I’m not really there. I’m hovering above myself, watching some other girl eat my food, while I can only wonder what it tastes like. I hear myself say things, but I couldn’t tell you what. And I manage to make my arms and legs work, but I couldn’t tell you how.
Because the whole time, I keep thinking about those eyes.
Dempsey Fontenot’s eyes.
Zale’s eyes.
On the ride back down toward La Cachette, I finally ask. “Why didn’t people like Dempsey Fontenot? I mean before.”
Honey sighs, and at first, I think she isn’t going to answer me. But then she does.
“There were stories. That’s all it takes, sometimes, to get people riled up.”
“What kind of stories?”
“It’s been a long time, Grey.” Honey slows the boat so we can hear each other better. “But people said he could . . . do things.”
“Everybody down here can do things.”
“What they said Dempsey Fontenot could do was beyond anything we’d ever seen.”
“What do you mean?” I press.
She sighs again. And hesitates. “They said he had the power of the sea and the sky. That he could bring storms. Lightning and rain. Hail.”
“Was it true?” I ask. It sounds so unbelievable.
Or at least it would in Little Rock.
“I imagine there might have been some truth in it,” Honey says.
“And people didn’t like that?”
“Even in La Cachette, there are things beyond imagining. That kind of power frightened folks.”
“Why?”
Honey shrugs. “People fear what they don’t understand. That’s human nature.” She glances at me, then she shifts her attention back to the water again. “He didn’t come to town much, but when he did, he made people uncomfortable. That was the real truth of it, Grey. He had these strange eyes. He made people nervous, the way he watched them. And that was enough to put folks on edge whenever he came around.”
“Did he have a family?”
Honey nods. “I knew his mama and daddy a little. They were bayou folk. Good people. Kept to themselves. But they both passed on a lot of years before that business with Ember and Orli.”
“Did he have anyone else?”
“What does it matter?” Honey asks. “He’s been gone a long time now.”
I’m trying to make sense of that photo. Those familiar eyes.
“What about a wife?”
“Not that I knew of.” Honey keeps her focus on the river.
“Kids?”
She shakes her head. “Let it go, Grey. No sense in dragging all that hurt up.”
Honey slows the boat to a crawl as we creep out of the bayou and skirt along the edge of the river toward the dock.
“You don’t believe Dempsey Fontenot killed Ember and Orli,” I say. She’d told me as much on my first afternoon home. Hadn’t she? Why hadn’t I paid more attention?
“I never believed he did. No.” Honey pauses for a second as the waves from a passing tug rock our tiny boat. I listen to them slap against the muddy shoreline. “And he didn’t kill Elora, either, if that’s what you’re really wondering.”
“Is that what you think?” I ask her. “Or what you know?”
She motions for me to toss her the docking rope. “That’s what I know.”
Once we get the boat tied up, Honey sends Bernadette home and asks me to watch the store for the rest of the afternoon, so she can go lie down. She says the heat is getting to her. Making her light-headed. But Honey’s lived here her whole life. She doesn’t notice the heat. I’ve never even seen her break a sweat.
I wander into the kitchen for a glass of water, but I end up trapped by my mother’s haunted eyes. I can’t stop thinking about them lately.
Her green eyes.
My green eyes.
Zale’s blue ones. Like ice on fire. And Dempsey Fontenot’s. Staring out at me from that newspaper article.
I spend the rest of the day waiting on customers and trying to read The Tempest. But I don’t get anywhere. The story just doesn’t hold my interest.
How could it?
Prospero’s magic island has nothing on La Cachette.
Honey makes smoked sausage and corn bread for dinner, and she says she’s feeling better. But she keeps looking at me like there’s something she wants to say. Or something she wants to ask. She never gets around to it, though. The two of us spend the whole meal treading silence like deep water.
By the time we clean up, the sky is changing colors. But there’s still a little bit of daylight left. I think about heading out to Li’l Pass. Like I told Zale I would.
I don’t, though.
Because I keep seeing that newspaper photo of Dempsey Fontenot.
Instead I end up sitting at the kitchen table, trying to read some more of The Tempest.
And failing.
It’s just about dark when I decide I need some fresh air. So I push open the kitchen door and step out onto the boardwalk behind the house. Something about the night makes me uneasy. It’s too still. Too empty.
But I’m not afraid. Not really.
Not until I feel the goose bumps come up on my arms. That static charge in the air that tells me he’s close.
“I didn’t me
an to scare you, Grey.”
Zale is walking toward me out of evening mist. I see him in silhouette, backlit by fireflies. He’s wearing a T-shirt this time. Faded yellow, the color of butter. Still no shoes.
“You didn’t scare me,” I tell him. But that’s not quite the truth.
Fear licks at my insides. And my stomach is full of rocks.
His thrumming electricity pulses through my brain like a drumbeat. It starts my whole body tingling.
“You didn’t come,” he says. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
His eyes are so beautiful. Warm. And kind. That easy, relaxed feeling rises up inside me.
But then I think about those other eyes. The ones in the newspaper. And I tense up again.
Zale is watching me.
“You know you don’t need to be afraid of me, right?”
I nod.
But I don’t know that. I don’t know that at all. How could I know that?
Suddenly I wonder what I’m doing out here.
There are things out here. In the almost-dark. Everybody says so. Why the hell am I standing here talking to a strange boy? A boy I don’t even know.
A boy with Dempsey Fontenot’s ice-fire eyes.
I should play it safe. Head inside. Lock the door.
I should. But I don’t.
I can’t.
“I found a picture,” I whisper. “Of Dempsey Fontenot. And he—his—”
The night steals my words.
Zale is still standing down below me. Bare feet planted in the soft mud.
“It’s okay,” he promises. “You don’t need to be afraid of him, either, Grey.”
“He was—” I can’t think straight.
“He was my daddy,” Zale finishes for me. “But he’s been dead a long time. Since dat summer.”
I wish I could make sense of what he’s saying, but it’s all so fuzzy.
My fear is crumbling away like the edges of the riverbank, and all I want is to sink into that warm, peaceful feeling. But instead I struggle back to the surface so I can find the words I need.
“What he did—”
Thunder rumbles long and low off in the distance, and Zale corrects me.
Dark and Shallow Lies Page 13