Dark and Shallow Lies

by Ginny Myers Sain

  “Wrynn told me she saw da rougarou go after Elora dat night. Now, maybe dat’s true, and maybe it ain’t.” Case shrugs. “But she said she picked up dat medal. After.” He points a swollen purple finger in my direction. “And den she got scared. She’s just a kid, right? So she went and hid in Miss Roselyn’s shed. And dat’s when she dropped Saint Sebastian. Only she didn’t tell me till later.”

  “So you came back for it,” I say, and Case nods.

  “Been lookin’ for it all summer.

  “Because you knew if anybody found it, it’d make you look guilty.”

  Case shakes his head. “I came back for it ’cause Wrynn wanted it. Little Bird loved Elora, too.” He stares us all down. Like he’d just as soon throw us in the river as look at us. “And dat medal is the only thing of Elora’s she had.” His voice quivers, and he turns his head to spit more blood. Then he struggles to his feet. “You all ain’t gotta believe me. But I swear to God, I didn’t kill my girl.”

  “She wasn’t your fucking girl,” Hart snarls through clenched teeth.

  Case puffs up like a pissed-off bullfrog, but then he deflates right in front of our eyes. Like somebody stuck him with a pin. “I didn’t kill her, Hart,” he says. “I never touched a hair on her goddamn beautiful head. I swear dat on my mama’s life.”

  The two of them stare at each other for a long, silent minute while the rest of us stand there holding our breath. Waiting for one of them to throw the next punch.

  “He’s telling the truth.” Hart’s voice is so quiet, I almost don’t hear him.

  “But—” I start.

  “Dammit!” Hart turns and kicks an old wooden crate as hard as he can, sending it skittering across the dock and crashing into the river. We hear the splash. “I said he didn’t do this. I feel it clear now.”

  “Hart—” I reach for his hand, but he flinches away from my touch.

  “Don’t,” he growls.

  Then he stalks off down the boardwalk toward his house, leaving the rest of us reeling. And he doesn’t look back.

  Evie wails and tears herself away from Sander to take a few steps after Hart, but Sera puts out a hand to stop her. “Let him go, Evie. He’ll be okay.”

  And I’m relieved. Because it’s not Case. He isn’t the one. But I’m also lost, because . . .

  if it wasn’t Case . . .

  and it wasn’t Dempsey Fontenot . . .

  and it sure as hell wasn’t a swamp werewolf . . .

  then who killed Elora?

  “Hart’s been wastin’ all dis time talkin’ shit about me.” Case’s voice is low and wounded. “And I ain’t never hurt nobody. Y’all shoulda know’d dat.” He looks at us, one by one. But nobody meets his eyes. “Hell. Hart shoulda know’d dat.” Case turns and spits. More blood. “That asshole got one thing right, though. Elora wasn’t my girl. Not anymore.” The bitterness drips out of his mouth like the blood drips from his swollen nose. “I told you dat, Grey. You find whoever it is she was runnin’ around on me wit’, and I bet you find who killed ’er.” He turns to go.

  “Case, I’m sorry, I—”

  His words cut me open. “I don’t need your fuckin’ sorry. I need to know what happened to Elora.”

  “Me too,” I tell him.

  And then I let him go. Because there’s nothing else to say.

  The five of us who are left look at each other. Evie’s wind chimes are whispering again.

  “Who was Elora in love with?” I ask.

  But all I get are blank stares and shrugs. I look around the little group.

  “Was it you?” I ask Mackey.

  “Me? Nah.” Mackey shakes his head. “It was never like that between Elora and me.”

  “Who, then?” I turn to look at Sander. “You?”

  He looks at me, surprised, and shakes his head. Then he pushes those sand-and-copper waves out of his face, so I can see his eyes, and he blinks at Sera like there’s something he wants her to tell me.

  “Sander likes boys,” she says, just like she’s telling me the sky is blue. And it’s clear I’m the only one out of the loop on that.

  Why are there so many holes in what I know about the people I’m supposed to know best?

  Why haven’t I been paying attention?

  Suddenly, I wonder if Zale was telling me the truth this morning. When he said he and Elora weren’t in love. The thought makes me nauseous. Because I believed him so easy.

  But what if he’s the one?

  “If Elora was in deep with anybody,” Sera is saying, “it was probably some guy from upriver. One of the Kinter boys she was always messin’ around with. Somebody like that.”

  Great.

  That could be any of a hundred guys.

  I turn my attention to Evie. She’s burrowed into Sander’s chest. Her hair covers her face, and she’s still crying softly. “Evie,” I tell her. “If you know something. Or if you’re hearing something. Voices or—”

  “I don’t,” she sniffs. “I’m not.”

  “If you’re hearing Elora—”

  “Stop it!” she wails, and Sera shoots me a dirty look. “I’m not!”

  “Please,” I say. Evie looks so much younger than almost seventeen. She looks like a little girl. Terrified and lost. And it makes me feel awful. I make my voice as gentle as possible. “I need you to tell me the truth.”

  She pulls away from Sander and looks at me.

  “Just leave me alone, Grey. There isn’t any truth to tell.” Her arms are wrapped tight around her chest. “Why can’t everybody just leave me alone?”

  Victor’s voice slices through the fog. Thick and slippery with alcohol. He’s calling from their front porch. “Evangeline! Where you at? Git yur ass in here, girl!”

  I see Evie flinch at her uncle’s words.

  “It’s okay, Evie,” Sera soothes. “Everything’s gonna be okay. Come on.” She slips her arm around Evie’s shaking shoulders. “Let’s get you home, sè.”

  Sera and Sander practically carry a still sobbing Evie back toward the boardwalk with Mackey trailing behind them. He looks back over his shoulder to give me a sad smile.

  “You get on to bed, Grey.” Mackey’s voice is kind, but his eyes are worried. “It’s not safe out here this time of night.”

  Then the dark gobbles them up.

  And I’m all alone.

  I head back across the boardwalk to the light of Honey’s front porch. I’m still clutching Elora’s good luck charm. Case’s Saint Sebastian medal. I sit down on the steps, slick with damp, and stare at that rust-colored smudge on the back.

  My best friend’s blood.

  Evie’s wind chimes start to sing again, soft this time. And I think maybe I hear my name whispered in the fog.

  “Grey?”

  I should go inside. The whisper comes again, over the tinkling of all those chimes. “Grey?”

  The hair on my neck stands on end.

  “Elora?”

  But it’s Wrynn who steps out of the shadows. She comes to sit beside me on the steps. Mosquito bites dot her skinny legs like a bad case of measles, and her long red hair is heavy and wet. She’s still wearing that dime on the CheeWee-stained string around her neck.

  Her face lights up when she sees the medal in my hand. “You found it!” she squeals. “I wanted it back so bad. And Case couldn’t find it for me. But you did.” I let her take the little silver charm from me. If Case didn’t kill Elora, then I guess the medal doesn’t mean anything. Besides, I figure Elora would want her to have it.

  Wrynn notices the splinter in my palm. It’s raised and angry-looking. Bright red and hot as fire. She runs her finger over it, and I suck in air through my teeth.

  “It hurts,” she says, and I nod. Tears prick at my eyes, but I blink them back.

  Everything hurts this summer.


  Wrynn takes her own palm and lays it over mine. Her touch is soft and cool. And when she pulls her hand back, the splinter is gone. I trace the spot where it should be, and the skin is unbroken.

  Perfect.

  I remember Honey telling me once that people used to call on Wrynn’s grandmother—Ophelia’s mama—when they were sick or hurting. Because she had a gift for easing a fever or making broken bones whole, just by laying on a hand.

  Psychic healing.

  I stare at my palm in wonder.

  “I tried to do it to Elora,” Wrynn whispers. “But she was already gone. And I cain’t fix gone.”

  “She was dead,” I say, and Wrynn nods. Her eyes are solemn. She rubs at the little saint’s medal. Elora’s good luck charm.

  “When I came back, she was.”

  “What do you mean, when you came back?”

  “I saw dat rougarou snatch her by da arm and open up wide, like he was gonna eat Elora right up. All dem sharp teeth showin’.” She shivers. Scoots closer to me on the step. “So I got scared and took off. Hauled for home. ’Cause I sure didn’t wanna see dat. Left Elora dere all alone with him.” Wrynn sniffs. “And I’m awful sorry I did it. But den I got to thinkin’, maybe I could help ’er. So I went on back.”

  “But she was already dead.”

  Wrynn nods again. “I was too late, Grey.” She points a skinny finger toward the dock. “Elora was layin’ right dere all bloody. And no heart beating in her chest. Not a bit of life in her no more.”

  I close my eyes against the image, and Wrynn goes on.

  “I tried to fix ’er. Only I couldn’t.” She shakes her head. “Cain’t fix dead. But I found dis lying dere beside her.” She holds up the little medal. “So I kept it.”

  “Then what?”

  She frowns. “I heard him comin’ back.”

  “To get her body,” I say, and Wrynn nods.

  “So I went and hid. In Miss Roselyn’s shed. Only . . .” She stops, too afraid to go on. But I know her story isn’t finished.

  “Only he came in there, too, didn’t he?” I ask her, and Wrynn nods again. Her whole body is shaking, and she’s chewing at one dirty fingernail.

  “I stayed hidden way back in one corner till he was gone. And I was so quiet, Grey. More quieter than a mouse. I didn’t even breathe.”

  “He took something, didn’t he?” I suggest. “From the shed. He took a big old trunk. A black one.”

  Wrynn nods one more time and closes her eyes tight against the memory of whatever she saw that night. Her words come out in a terrified whisper that makes me wonder how I could ever have believed she was just making up stories.

  “Then I took off. But I dropped my medal somehow. Couldn’t tell nobody, though. Not for one hundred and one days.”

  “Because of the curse,” I say.

  “I don’t wanna be no rougarou.”

  “Then you told Case.”

  More than three months later.

  Wrynn nods and opens her eyes. “Only he couldn’t find it for me.” She lays her head on my shoulder, and I feel her sticky little hand in mine. “But you did.”

  “Wrynn,” I tell her. “Listen to me. This is really important. You have to tell me who killed Elora. Who did you really see that night?”

  She sits up to look at me, confused. “You know who it was, Grey. I told you.”

  “Who killed Elora, Wrynn?” I grab her by her skinny shoulders and give her a hard shake. “Tell me the truth!”

  The sound of my own voice scares me, and I guess it scares Wrynn, too, because she stands up and pulls away from me. When she steps out onto the boardwalk, the moon illuminates her big eyes and her pale skin so that she almost glows. Goose bumps cover her head to toe.

  “Just tell me!” I beg her. “Please!”

  “I already told you,” she whispers. “It was da rougarou.”

  Whatever she knows, I’m not getting it out of her. At least not tonight.

  “You better get on home,” I say. “Case is hurt bad. He might need you.”

  Wrynn stares at me. “Daddy and the boys are out night fishin’. Way down at Sawdust Bend. Nobody but me and Mama home tonight.”

  She starts off down the boardwalk, but before the darkness swallows her up, she turns back to look at me.

  “Dat ol’ rougarou? He’s a shape-shifter, sure enough. So you be careful, Grey. He may come right up on ya. Might sit down real close. Maybe even hold your hand. And you won’t ever know it till you see dem teeth.”

  Wrynn turns and disappears into the night, but her words float back to me like the sound of wind chimes.

  “And by den, it’s too late. You’re already dead.”

  My head bounces against his shoulder as he carries me through the storm. And I stop fighting then.

  I turn my face up toward the sky and wait for the rain to drown me. Death in the water. Like Mackey said. What does it matter if the water swirls and bubbles up from below or if it falls from the sky? Water is water. And dead is dead.

  16

  The next day is Friday, and I make Mackey bring me his high school yearbook.

  “I thought she killed herself,” he tells me when he stops by the Mystic Rose that morning to drop it off. “Threw herself in the river, maybe.” Mackey glances over his shoulder, nervous. “Hart doesn’t like us to say it. But that’s what I thought.”

  He has on basketball shorts and worn-out tennis shoes, and he reaches down to slap away a huge fly that lands on his shin.

  “I figured that’s why she ignored my warning about death in the water.” His eyes settle on the stack of flyers by the register. The ones with Elora’s picture. “Because she already knew she was gonna die.”

  When he leaves, I flip through the yearbook and try to compose a list of every boy I ever heard Elora mention.

  Dalton Guidry

  Jamal Tilman

  Evan Richard

  Matteo Arredondo

  And on and on.

  But it feels hopeless, because there were lots of older guys she ran with, too. And I don’t have all the names. Besides, who’s to say she didn’t meet someone totally new since last August?

  I know she had at least one new friend.

  I add Zale’s name to the list.

  Erase it.

  Add it again.

  Cross it out.

  The truth is, it could have been any boy south of New Orleans and east of Lafayette.

  After lunch, I step out on the porch for some fresh air. Evie’s put up a bunch of new wind chimes. I hear them ringing, even though I can’t feel any breeze to speak of.

  I wave when I catch her watching me from her bedroom window. But she pulls the curtains. So I don’t get to ask again about what happened last night.

  Why she freaked out. Whose voice she’s hearing.

  Not that she’d tell me anything.

  We stay busy in the shop all afternoon, and after dinner I try to sneak out to meet Zale, but Honey wants to start teaching me the tarot. Now that we know I have the gift, she says, I might as well learn how to use it.

  “Don’t fear the Death card,” she tells me when the bone-white face shows up in my first reading. “It doesn’t represent physical death. The skeleton riding horseback foretells the end of something less concrete.”

  But I can’t stop staring at those hollow eyes set deep into a grinning skull.

  “You know, Sugar Bee,” Honey says, “as spiritualists, we celebrate life by embracing death as a natural part of the cycle.”

  “What happens when the death isn’t natural?” I ask her.

  “Ah.” Honey reaches over to pat my hand. “That’s another thing altogether.”

  That night, when she goes to sleep, I take the tarot deck and sit on my bed for hours. Shuffling. And reshuffli
ng. Sorting the thick deck into three equal piles.

  Past.

  Present.

  Future.

  Just like Honey showed me.

  But I don’t find any answers in the cards.

  The next day is Saturday, and Honey gets Bernadette to mind the store so the two of us can take a day trip up to New Orleans. I know she’s trying to distract me. But it doesn’t work. Because I keep seeing Elora.

  On Basin Street and Canal Street and Toulouse Street, beautiful girls catch my eye. Girls with long dark hair and mirrored sunglasses and laughter that sounds like improvised jazz. I see Elora in the crowd at Café Du Monde and among the street artists in Jackson Square.

  But when I look again, it’s never her. And my heart squeezes.

  On the drive back down to Kinter, Honey tells me family stories about my great-grandparents and my grandfather. Great-aunts and great-uncles. Some distant cousins.

  But she doesn’t tell me about my mom.

  She doesn’t tell me any more about Dempsey Fontenot, either. Not even when I come right out and ask.

  She just sighs and says, “Our eyes are on the front of our heads for a reason, Grey. Let the past stay where it belongs.”

  Then, when we get home, she goes straight into the kitchen and starts chopping up the holy trinity.

  Onions.

  Green peppers.

  Celery.

  A time-honored Louisiana recipe for ignoring hard questions.

  The evening heat is unbearable. But the weather isn’t nearly as oppressive as the silence.

  Or the secrets.

  So I pull on my mud boots and head out toward Li’l Pass, almost without realizing where I’m going.

  When I get there, Zale is already waiting for me on top of the old trailer. Just like he knew I was coming. I think about what Case said after that fight out on the dock. About Elora’s murderer.

  You find whoever it is she was runnin’ around on me wit’ and I bet you’ll find who killed ’er.

  Fear tickles at me like a little spider walking across my skin, and I wonder one more time whether Zale was telling me the truth about him and Elora being just friends.

  But then he looks up at me, and there is so much honesty in his eyes. I don’t see any shadowy corners where he could hide a lie like that. So I pull off my boots and crawl up to sit next to him in the purple light.