Zale looks just as surprised as I am, and I blush. Flustered and embarrassed. But then he grins. Doesn’t let me pull away.
And that little zing makes me giddy.
“I was hopin’ you’d come out tonight,” he says, and he nods toward the river. “Look at that.”
In the distance, the lights are coming on along the boardwalk, and La Cachette looks like an ocean liner sailing the vast, flat sea of the bayou.
“I remember comin’ out here with my mama sometimes,” Zale tells me. “When I was real little. Just this time of evening. To see the lights.”
His voice is washing me clean. That flash of Elora that came to me earlier is fading. I can’t feel those squeezing fingers on my neck anymore. I need him to keep talking, so I ask a question.
“What was your mama like?”
This incredible light comes over Zale’s face, and I feel all my worries blow away in the evening breeze.
“My mama was the softest soul. Folks called her Elsie. But her name was Elsinore. Her people were from Tennessee. Snake handlers. She used to tell me that my granddaddy could charm an angry rattler just by looking him in the eye. Soothe him so peaceful you’d think that snake was drunk. He’d stand up to preach a sermon wearing two or three of ’em draped around his shoulders like neckties. And none of ’em ever bit him.”
It’s the most I’ve ever heard Zale say at once, and I let his words roll over me in waves.
I realize now that I can hear a little bit of Tennessee drawl mixed in with that slight Acadian echo.
Sweet tea and gumbo.
The music of it is intoxicating, and it melts into the night air like the calling of the birds and the wind through the tops of the cypress trees.
“My mama’s dead, too,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve mentioned my mother to him, and I feel the ache of her loss in a way that I haven’t for a really long time.
Zale squeezes my hand, and the hurt eases some. He waits. Leaves me an opening. But I’m not ready to tell that story just yet.
“My mama had the same talent as my granddaddy,” he goes on. “A gift to quiet the nerves and calm the soul. Only with her, it wasn’t just snakes. She had that same way with people.”
Zale is still talking. Telling me more about Florida. And about his mama. But I’m still thinking of my own mother. And her gift. Whatever deep magic she might have possessed.
I wish so much that I could remember her more clearly. I’ve tried so many times to conjure up the sound of her voice. Or the way she smelled. And sometimes I can, just for a few seconds. My memories of her are all so sketchy, though, because my mother might have died when I was eight years old . . . but she was gone a long time before that.
It scares me, not being able to remember her.
“You know the magic way Elora laughed?” I ask, and Zale turns to look at me. His ice-fire eyes burn so bright in the almost-dark. “What if I forget that someday?”
Zale lets go of my hand, and I miss that electric connection. But then he slips his arm around my shoulders and pulls me against him. I’m not expecting that, and the tingle makes my heart beat faster.
“Tell me something you want to remember,” he says. “About Elora.”
I have no idea where to start, so I pick the first memory that pops into my head.
“When we were in eighth grade, we both picked out the very same dress for our schools’ homecoming dances. Me up in Little Rock, and her down here. And we never even knew it until we exchanged pictures that next summer. And there we were dressed just alike. The same shoes, even.” Zale smiles, and I go on. “That sort of thing happened all the time. We’d give each other the same book for our birthdays. Send each other the same card for Christmas.”
“Tell me something else,” Zale says, and he holds me a little closer.
“When we were seven, we made up our own language. Just for the two of us. We spoke it most of a full year. Created a written alphabet and everything.” I laugh out loud, for the very first time all summer, and it feels good. But strange. “Everybody said it was annoying, us talking gibberish all the time. Only it wasn’t gibberish to us. We knew exactly what we were saying.”
I like thinking about how much fun Elora and I always had together.
Instead of how much I miss her.
Or how she died.
I look up at Zale, and he’s just watching me. “There’s magic in your laugh, too, Grey. You know that, right?”
“No.” I shake my head. “Elora was the special one.”
“That’s exactly what she told me about you,” he says, and the thought of that stuns me. “She said you fed off each other’s light.”
Two flames lit from the same match.
Zale tightens his arm around me again. That constant hum is making me feel a little drunk. So I lay my head against his shoulder. Just to see what happens. I almost laugh again when that tingle moves across my scalp, like fingers through my hair. I can’t help wondering what it would be like to kiss him, the way I kissed Hart. How would that buzz feel against my lips?
Frissons.
The good kind.
“I wish I could put into words what it’s like,” I say. “Being that in tune with another person. Never having to explain what you’re thinking or feeling, or what you need, because the other person just knows you inside out. Being able to have a whole conversation without saying a single word.” I sigh and settle in closer to Zale, let myself lean deeper into the throbbing ache of Elora’s absence. I don’t push the hurt away. I just let it come. “That feeling of having half your soul walking around inside someone else’s body. It’s the most powerful thing in the world, that connection.”
I want him to understand that kind of love.
And that kind of unfathomable loss.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he says. “I know.” I look back up at him, confused. “I had a twin, too. A brother.” He takes a deep breath, like someone about to dive deep underwater. “His name was Aeron.”
Was.
For a second, I can’t think. I don’t know what to say.
Then it all makes sense.
“There were twelve of us,” I whisper.
And Zale nods.
I should have known it.
Twelve is the number of completion. The closing of a circle. The end of the cycle.
Twelve months in a year.
Twelve hours in a day.
Twelve tribes of Israel.
Twelve-bar blues.
Twelve babies born one long-ago Louisiana summer.
I have so many questions, but I wait. Quiet. My head feels fuzzy. Strange. Like when you wake up from a nap and you can’t quite get your bearings.
“It was early mornin’ when the cabin caught fire. Barely gettin’ to be light out. My daddy was off huntin’. But my mama and me—and Aeron—we were all there. Asleep. And it burned hot. Fast. The whole thing went in a flash.”
The wind picks up, and I hear it moaning through the Spanish moss.
“My mama woke up and grabbed me. But she couldn’t get to Aeron. He was scared. Wouldn’t come out. Huddled up in the corner. Behind a wall of fire. And the whole place was ablaze. Mama knew that if she didn’t get me outta dere, she’d lose us both.”
Thunder rolls, and lightning brightens the sky in a quick burst. Like the fast flicking of a light switch. I shiver against Zale, and I feel the electric current of his memory. It surges through him and flows right into me. I suck in my breath from the shock of it.
The pain.
“So we ran and hid. Didn’t have anything left. Didn’t know what to do. Couldn’t get back to the cabin to find—” He hesitates. “We never even knew if anybody was decent enough to bury him.”
The misery in his voice is enough to break my heart.
It hits me hard how eve
ry single one of us—everyone in the whole wide world—is walking around with missing pieces.
I’m not the only one with holes.
“And then we hid out there for a while, but my daddy never came lookin’ for us. So mama knew dat meant he was dead, too. And it was just the two of us from then on out.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
He shrugs. “Guilt, I guess.” Then he tosses his long blond hair out of his face and looks at me. His eyes are hurt so deep. I look past the aching beauty of them to see the scars underneath.
And it’s almost like looking in a mirror.
“I’ve lived my whole life torn up that I was the one she grabbed that night.” He chokes, and I can’t help myself. I reach up to touch his face. The softness of his hair. Everywhere my fingers make contact, I feel those little zips and zaps that steal my breath away. “So I never told anyone about Aeron.” He looks at me. “Not even Elora. But he’s a big part of why I came back here. I thought if I could find my father, and my brother, it would feel almost like saving them. Like I could put them to rest, finally. And Mama, too.”
There were twelve of us. I’m trying to work out the equation of our lives. Four of us gone.
Dead.
Murdered.
One whole third of our original dozen.
The two of us sit with the silent weight of that for a few minutes. Zale is trailing his fingers up and down my arm, leaving little sparks of pure white energy everywhere he touches my bare skin.
“You ever think maybe they’re connected?” he finally asks. “All our mysteries?”
“Are you saying whoever killed Ember and Orli killed Elora, too?”
It was such a long time ago.
“Maybe,” Zale says. “Maybe not. But what if it’s all tied together somehow? Ember and Orli. My father. Elora.” He focuses those eyes on me, and they pull at my soul like magnetic north. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot.”
It reminds me of a line from The Tempest. Before I stopped reading.
What’s past is prologue.
I think the words inside my head, and Zale’s ocean-deep voice comes right back to me, like an echo. Or a seashell held to my ear.
“We have to go back to the beginning, Grey.”
Later, Zale walks me back to the boardwalk. But he stops me in the shadows. Before I reach the wooden steps.
“I almost forgot,” he says. Then he smiles at me and pulls something out of his pocket. “I’ve got somethin’ for you. Found it in the dirt, back at the island. I saw it winking at me in the moonlight.” He reaches out to touch my cheek, and I lean into that magic tingle. “I just thought it was so pretty.” His eyes glow with that fire that comes from somewhere deep inside him. He grins, and I think maybe I even see him blush a little. “I guess it reminded me of you.”
I feel myself falling. Like I’m riding one of those drop rides at an amusement park. That exhilarating, breathtaking rush toward the ground.
Zale opens up his palm, and my heart forgets to beat. I’m caught. Staring transfixed at the little thing in his hand.
I tell myself it can’t be what I think it is.
A delicate silver hair clip. One single hummingbird.
“It was a little tarnished,” he says. “But I shined it up.” I can’t form any thoughts as he brushes back my bangs and slides the clip into my hair. “It suits you,” he says. “Something beautiful. For a beautiful girl.” He leans in and brushes his lips against my cheek. The barest whisper of a kiss.
And then he’s gone.
I stand there, stunned, until I finally convince my feet to move toward home. When I slip in the kitchen door, I stop to stare at that picture of my mother and me.
There I am with my watermelon-pink sundress.
And there she is with those haunted eyes.
And that one hummingbird hair clip.
In my bedroom, I dig around until I find the one she’s wearing in the photo. The one I’ve always kept. Then I slip the other one out of my hair. The one Zale found in the dirt back at Keller’s Island.
I hold them in my palms. And they’re perfect twins. Exactly the same, down to their hand-painted eyes.
I bury them both in my underwear drawer, so they can keep each other company.
And I try not to think about what it might mean.
I drag Sweet-N-Low out to do his business, then I take a long shower and try to sleep.
But I can’t.
Because I keep thinking about what Zale said. Back to the beginning.
And no matter what happens with the weather, I figure Evie’s right. There’s definitely a storm coming. Because if we start digging around in thirteen years’ worth of tangled secrets, who knows what we might find?
The sound of his voice makes me wish
the mud would hurry up and do its job.
I want it to suck me down and down and down and then cover me up for good,
so there’s nothing left of me for him to find.
18
When I wake up the next morning, Honey is listening to the radio while she does her crossword puzzle. She points me toward some muffins that Bernadette brought over. The storm that’s now 230 miles east of Miami has strengthened. And they’ve given it a name, the weather guy says.
Tropical Storm Elizabeth.
I see Honey glance up from her puzzle to listen. But she doesn’t seem too worried. Yet. That’s still a long ways off. Besides, people here are no stranger to hurricanes. Even big ones. Every so often, a monster one blows in and the storm surge floods everyone out. Sometimes the boardwalk gets ripped apart and the houses wash downriver. Then they rebuild. And the tourists come back. Like it never happened.
I was two years old when Katrina turned this whole area into part of the Gulf of Mexico. That was the last really bad one. I don’t remember anything about it, but I know we spent almost a year living up in Shreveport with Honey’s sister, waiting for things to dry out, while folks down here pulled fishing boats out of snapped-off trees and La Cachette got put back together from scratch.
It’s a slow day in the shop, so there’s nothing to stop me thinking about Zale. That moment he slipped my mother’s lost hummingbird into my hair. And what he said before that.
How maybe all the mysteries are connected.
After dinner, I open the front door to sneak away for a bit. I want to head out to Li’l Pass before it gets too dark. I need to ask Zale more about that hair clip.
Where exactly he found it.
But Evie is waiting for me on the porch. She’s perched up on the wooden railing, her eyebrows pinched together in a worried frown.
“You’re gonna leave, aren’t you?” she asks me. “Because of the storm.”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I might have to. If things get bad.”
I see her chin quiver. “Are you gonna take Hart with you?”
“What? No,” I say, and I move to sit beside her on the railing. “Of course not. Why would I take Hart?”
She looks down at her chipped toenail polish, and I hear her sigh. “ ’Cause he’s in love with you.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “Isn’t he?”
Her fingers reach for her hair, and she starts twisting a long white-blonde strand around and around and around. Evie’s always seemed so much younger than the rest of us. More immature in a lot of ways, I guess. But this summer, it’s like she’s aging backward. Every time I see her, she seems more like a lost little girl.
She’s evaporating.
Just like Hart.
“No.” I shake my head. “I told you, Evie. He isn’t. Hart barely even talks to me anymore.”
She nods, but she doesn’t say anything. I look over my shoulder at her wind chime collection, and I don’t see any new ones. “You still making chimes?” I ask her
. But she doesn’t answer. “Evie?”
“I guess not.” She won’t look at me. “They don’t really help anymore.” She draws herself up tight. “I hear her all the time now.”
My stomach drops, and I tell myself to go easy.
“Elora?” I try to make my voice sound casual. Like it’s nothing, this conversation we’re having. But I fail miserably. “It’s her you’re hearing, isn’t it? That’s why all the wind chimes. To try and drown her out.”
Evie nods. Just barely. And my heart races inside my chest.
“I’m so tired, Grey. She won’t leave me alone. Not even for a minute.”
I take a deep breath. Will myself not to cry. “Oh, Evie. I know that has to be hard. But Elora must trust you, right? That’s why she’s reaching out.” Evie looks away from me, out toward the river, but I keep pushing. “There’s something she wants you to know, isn’t there? Something about what happened to her.”
“I’m scared, Grey.” Evie’s words are so quiet I can barely make them out. “I don’t know what to do. I’m so scared.”
“Elora needs you, Evie.” My voice is shaking now. “She needs us. Even if what she says is scary, you have to—”
Evie’s creations start ringing and clinking. The tinkling sound of them fills up the air.
“Oh, God.” She clamps her hands over her ears, and I freeze. “Please stop,” Evie whimpers. And I don’t know if she’s talking to me or Elora. But if she’s talking to Elora, it won’t do her any good. Evie’s brain is like a psychic radio, not a telephone. She can hear spirits, but she can’t communicate with them.
“Are you hearing her right now?” I ask, and Evie nods.
I listen so hard for Elora’s voice. I know it better than anyone. But I don’t hear any words whispered in my ear, and it hurts to think that maybe Elora’s still angry at me. That maybe that’s why she’s chosen Evie. Instead of me.
“What’s she saying?” I plead. “You have to tell me. We have to tell someone—”
Evie blinks fast. I reach for her hand, but she hops down off the railing and skitters away from me, like a little crab.
Dark and Shallow Lies Page 17