Dark and Shallow Lies

by Ginny Myers Sain

  “Oh, God. You can’t tell, Grey,” she begs. “Not anybody.” Her voice is a tightened piano string. “Please!”

  And then, before I can say anything else, she whirls around and hurries down the steps and across to her house. I hear the screen door slam.

  I manage to get to my feet, but I keep my hand on the wooden railing. I don’t trust my legs. They’ve turned to mush.

  I look around for my mud boots, so I can head out to Li’l Pass. I need the warmth of Zale’s electric touch.

  But just then, Honey calls me in to help her fold some laundry.

  A lot of laundry.

  And then it’s too late. Too dark. So I take the tarot deck and crawl up onto my bed. I’m hungry for answers. But over and over, I pull the blue-robed High Priestess.

  The keeper of secrets.

  Guarder of mysteries.

  Ruler of a future as yet unrevealed.

  Honey says the High Priestess is a sign that things around you are not what they appear to be.

  Eventually, I end up falling asleep with the cards scattered across my sheets and Evie’s wind chimes still whispering in my ear.

  I manage to get up at a reasonable time the next morning to help Honey in the bookstore, but I can’t focus on anything except Evie’s revelation. And Zale’s gift. My mother’s hummingbird come home to the nest. So I make a million little mistakes. I drop a whole tray of tiny glass bottles, and they shatter into a zillion pieces. I forget how to make change and get the cash drawer all screwed up.

  Honey keeps the radio on all day, and late that afternoon someone breaks in over the music to tell us that Elizabeth is now officially a hurricane, about to make landfall north of Miami. Seventy-five-mile-per-hour winds. Category 1.

  The news makes me look up, but it’s still not my problem.

  I’ve got a category 5 shitstorm on my hands right here at home.

  By five thirty, when Honey flips the sign on the door to closed, I’m a complete mess. I make it through dinner, and then I help Honey clean up before I escape outside.

  I figure I’ll head out toward Li’l Pass. Toward Zale. But I don’t. I can’t.

  Something stops me.

  All day I’ve been thinking about the tender honesty in Zale’s eyes. The flicker of his lips against my cheek.

  And about his twin. Aeron. Lost in the fire.

  How he swears his father couldn’t have murdered Ember and Orli.

  My mother’s hummingbird hair clip cradled in his hand.

  It’s all too much. I don’t know what any of it means. I don’t know what anything means anymore.

  So I choose the devil I know instead and swing toward the downriver end of the boardwalk. In the direction of Hart and Elora’s house. And the old pontoon boat. I don’t really expect Hart to be there. I don’t even know if I want him to be. We’ve hardly spoken in over a month, not since the night he almost killed Case.

  He is there, though. And I know it before I get to the end of the boardwalk. His cigarette is like a smoke signal. I freeze and consider turning back. Because I don’t know if I want to have this conversation. But it’s too late. My feet on the boards have already given me away.

  “You might as well come on down,” he says. “I fixed the ladder.”

  I sigh and slip off Elora’s ring before I climb down into the boat. Then I take my usual spot on the broken seat, and the two of us just sit there in silence. Trying not to look at each other.

  “Well, Greycie,” Hart finally says as he stubs out his cigarette on the heel of his boot. “I’m glad we had this little talk.”

  And that sounds almost like the old him. It makes me smile. A little.

  “You been okay?” I ask. But his only answer is a hollow laugh. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Yeah,” he says, and lets out a long breath. His voice is full of rusty hinges. Like these are maybe the first words he’s spoken in days. Or weeks. “I guess I missed you, too, Shortcake.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Case’s medal,” I offer. “I should’ve told you as soon as I found it.”

  He looks up at me then, studying me with those familiar hazel eyes. It’s startling how much weight he’s lost just since the beginning of the summer. His cheekbones are sharp, and he looks paler than I ever remember seeing him.

  “So why didn’t you?”

  I shrug. “I guess I couldn’t stand to see you hurt anymore.”

  His jaw hardens, and I realize I’ve said the exact wrong thing.

  “I don’t need you to protect me, Greycie.”

  “I know,” I tell him. But I’m not sure he’s right about that.

  “Is that what you came down here to tell me?” he asks. “That you’re sorry for keepin’ secrets?”

  “Not just that.”

  Hart raises one eyebrow at me and pulls out another cigarette. “Then you might as well spill the rest of it.”

  “She talks to Evie,” I blurt out. “Elora. She whispers in her ear.”

  “Shit.” Hart flicks open the lighter, but his hands are shaking too bad to get the cigarette lit. “What does she say?”

  “I don’t know. Evie won’t tell me. But whatever it is, it’s got her all freaked out.” I look down at my empty finger. Where Elora’s ring should be. “I wish she’d talk to me instead.”

  He flicks the lighter closed, and his flame goes out.

  “What if she said things you didn’t wanna hear?”

  I don’t know how to answer him, so I change the subject.

  “She’s in love with you, I think.” Hart stares me. “Evie.”

  “Nah.” He shakes his head. “She thinks she is. Maybe. That’s all. ’Cause of what I did for ’er.”

  “What you did?”

  “To Vic.” Hart grimaces, then he runs one hand over his face and sighs. Deep. He sounds as exhausted as he looks. “That piece of shit was beatin’ her black and blue.”

  “Oh, God.” My stomach turns. “Evie told you that?”

  “She didn’t have to. I could feel it, Grey.” Hart puts the cigarette to his lips. Then remembers it isn’t lit. “I could fuckin’ feel it. That fear of hers. And the pain. Thinkin’ nobody in the world cared if that bastard killed ’er.”

  “Jesus, Hart.”

  One more wound that wasn’t his, but that cut him just the same.

  “And this whole town knew it, too. Not just me. You didn’t need a psychic gift to see those bruises.” Hart tries to light the cigarette again, and this time he makes it work. He sucks in smoke like oxygen. “Only nobody said a word about it.”

  Psychic Capital of the World or not, people down here still live by a certain kind of code. You don’t get mixed up in what goes on behind closed doors. That’s the way it’s always been. Honey used to tell me, Worrying about other people’s business is just one-man gossip.

  “You have no idea how messed up she was last winter,” he says. “Evie. She was comin’ apart at the seams. Poor kid. And there’s Bernadette, too damn scared of her own shadow to say a word to her own asshole brother. Probably thought Vic’d start in on her again if she did.” I just stare at him, openmouthed. “Fuck, Greycie. Everybody knows how he’s always treated her.”

  I think about Bernadette. Her downcast eyes, and the shawls she wears, even in the summer heat. Hart’s gone dark, and I know he’s thinking about his own mama. How she suffered all those years at the hands of his daddy.

  “If Vic had started in on Evie,” he goes on, “maybe Bernadette at least figured she’d get some peace. Or maybe she was just afraid.” He twists his neck, and I hear the bones crack. “Either way, she sure as shit wasn’t ever gonna put a stop to it. And I couldn’t really blame her for that.”

  “So you did.”

  For the first time in my life it occurs to me that, while I’m up in Littl
e Rock most of the year, their lives all keep going on down here. In ways I’ll never really understand.

  Hart shrugs. “I went over there one night back in January. Took the shotgun. Same one my mama used. Pinned Vic up against the wall. Right in his own livin’ room. Told him I had a killer’s blood flowin’ through my veins and that I’d blow his goddamn brains out if he ever so much as laid a finger on Evie again. Or Bernadette, either.” He takes a long drag off that cigarette. “I said they’d be pickin’ bits of his skull out of the wallpaper for the next ten years. Like we did my old man’s.”

  “Oh, Hart,” is all I can think to say. No wonder he’s Evie’s hero.

  He rakes his fingers through dark, tangled curls and breathes out smoke like a dragon.

  “I don’t think he’s touched either one of ’em since.”

  “You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you,” I tell him. Vic keeps a bunch of old guns lying around, and he almost always has a pistol on him.

  Hart smirks. “He was drunk as a skunk. Never saw me comin’.”

  Something horrible occurs to me. “Do you think Victor could have had something to do with whatever happened to Elora? Maybe as a way to get back at you?”

  That would make so much sense. What if the secrets Elora is whispering in Evie’s ear are all about Victor? Evie’s own uncle. What if that’s what she can’t stand to hear?

  Hart shakes his head. “I thought about that, believe me. And I sure as shit wouldn’t put it past him. But Vic was up at bingo in Kinter that night. Came back on the same boat as Mama and Leo. And that was after midnight.”

  He gets up and moves toward the front of the boat to stare out at the gator pond. Hart’s shoulders are slumped. And in the fading light, I barely recognize him.

  “It was a good thing,” I tell him, because it seems like he needs to hear it. “What you did for Evie.”

  He’s quiet for a minute, then he says, “It wasn’t just the bruises. Vic got busted last fall up in Kinter. Parked at the bayou docks. Had a girl in his car not much older than Evie, even. She was barely seventeen, I think.”

  “Jesus.”

  Hart sucks in smoke again. “I just wanted the bastard to know I was watchin’ him, you know? That I was watchin’ Evie. And that I’d fuckin’ kill ’im if he ever . . .” His voice trails off.

  “You did a good thing,” I say again. “You’re good, Hart.”

  He turns back to look at me the way he used to sometimes when we were kids. So tender it could kill me. This is not the Hart that put a big old bullfrog in my bed the summer we were ten. Or the Hart that teased me relentlessly for being afraid of spiders. This is not even the Hart that kissed me once when we were both thirteen.

  Or again when we were seventeen.

  This Hart is the one that picked me up and carried me back to Honey when I tripped on a tree root out at Li’l Pass and nearly split my head open the summer we were both eleven. The Hart that used his favorite T-shirt to soak up the blood and told me awful knock-knock jokes the whole walk home, just to keep me calm.

  “I’m so sorry, Shortcake,” he tells me. “I’m sorry for this whole goddamn summer. You shouldn’t be mixed up in any of this.” He drops his cigarette butt and grinds it out in the bottom of the boat. “Elora didn’t want you anywhere near all this shit. The kind of stuff that goes on down here. That’s why she pushed you away last year.”

  “Because Victor was beating the shit out of Evie?” That doesn’t make sense. As awful as it is, that kind of stuff happens everywhere.

  Hart shakes his head. “She didn’t even know that then. Besides, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The part that’s visible.” It’s dark now, but there’s enough moonlight for me to see the look in his eyes. And it scares me. “There’s so much more. This whole town is . . .”

  Poison.

  Hart squats down and reaches for my hand. “You shouldn’t be here, Grey.” He wraps his fingers around mine and squeezes hard. “If anything ever happened to you, Elora would never forgive me.” His voice breaks, and I watch him struggle under the weight of unbearable grief. And guilt. “I’d never forgive myself.”

  He doesn’t say anything else. But he doesn’t stand up and move away, either. And I feel that old pull. So strong. So familiar. It’s such a deep part of me, that longing for Hart. I know it so well. Like the feeling of the boardwalk under my feet.

  Or the sound of Elora’s laugh.

  There’s a kind of comfort in the timeless ache of it. Something about it that makes sense.

  I reach out and run my fingers over his cheekbones and his jawline, like I’m trying to memorize the map of him. I see him flinch. But he doesn’t pull away from my touch.

  All I want in the whole world is for him not to hurt anymore. And for me not to hurt anymore.

  Hart shuts his eyes and leans in closer. I can feel his breath on my lips.

  So I kiss him. And he kisses me back. We kiss each other so hard and so deep that it’s like we’ve both been snakebit and we’re trying to suck out the poison. Like we need to draw out each other’s pain.

  We kiss each other like it’s a matter of life and death.

  Tongues and teeth.

  Hands.

  I hear him moan my name, and the sound of it vibrates against something deep inside me. I try to speak his name out loud, but it gets all tangled up on my tongue.

  Hart presses his lips against my ear, and the heat of his mouth makes me half-wild. “Shhhhh,” he murmurs. “You don’t have to talk, Greycie. I feel you.”

  The night is so hot, and we melt so far into each other, that I’m not sure whose arms or lips or searching fingers are whose anymore.

  Hart stops and pulls his shirt off over his head, then he turns and spreads it out over the cushion of cypress needles in the bottom of the boat. I pull my tank top off, too, then he scoops me up off the seat to lay me down.

  For just a second, I think about Elora.

  How she lost her virginity right here in this very spot. With Case.

  And I wonder if the old pontoon boat will be the spot for me, too.

  If my story will be an echo of hers.

  The way it always has been.

  But then Hart is on top of me. And I’m not thinking of anything anymore.

  Not even Elora.

  Or Zale, with his ice-fire eyes and his electric touch.

  All I’m thinking about is Hart.

  How I wish I could press kisses to all the broken places way down deep inside him. All the sore spots I know I’ll never be able to reach. But I can’t. So my mouth finds his collarbone. His jaw. The hollow at the base of his neck.

  Hart decides to pick up the pace, and I don’t complain when he fast-forwards to the part where he awkwardly tries to unbutton my shorts and slide them down my legs. But they get all tangled around my ankles when I try to kick them off. And Hart laughs. It’s a low, genuine chuckle deep in his throat, and when I hear it, I fall absolutely head over heels in love with him all over again.

  For like the ten millionth time in seventeen summers.

  That moment slips away like river fog, though, and Hart presses himself hard against me. I reach down to touch him through his jeans, and he hisses. I feel his teeth at my neck. Sharp. Not kissing me anymore. Biting. Nipping. Pulling at me. Eating me alive.

  Devouring me.

  His breath is ragged and whiskey-thick. He pants in my ear and growls my name as he slides a rough hand under my bra.

  From his side of the pond, Willie Nelson grunts and bellows at us, like maybe we’re the noisy neighbors keeping him awake.

  I fumble with the buttons on Hart’s jeans, but I can’t get them undone.

  His tongue moves over the edges of my teeth, one hand tangled in my hair, as he yanks his fly open. I hear the metal buttons scatter across the bottom of the boat.

&nb
sp; He shoves his own hand down the front of his jeans, and I feel him moving against me as I open my mouth wider for him. Denim rubs at my thighs, and the weight of him steals my breath.

  I tug at the waist of his jeans, trying to pull them down, but he won’t let me.

  “No,” he says. “Don’t. I just need—” But then my mouth finds his neck again, and his words become meaningless syllables as his hand keeps working.

  “Fuck!” I feel all his muscles tighten before he goes limp in my arms.

  And that’s it.

  It’s all over.

  Whatever it was that pulled us toward each other drifts away like mist.

  Or cigarette smoke.

  Hart helps me up. He slings his T-shirt over one shoulder before he shakes the cypress needles out of my tank top and hands it back to me. I turn it right side out and pull it over my head before I tug on my shorts.

  He straightens up his jeans. Mutters something about the buttons. And how late it is. Tries to laugh again.

  Fails.

  Then he walks me home. He doesn’t hold my hand, but he does manage to mumble, “Night.”

  Nothing more than that. And even that is more than I can force out.

  When Hart leaves, I reach for the doorknob. But Evie suddenly appears out of the shadows on her front porch. She looks so small, and she moves so silently in my direction that I mistake her for Wrynn at first. But then the moon catches that white-blonde hair.

  “You lied to me,” she whispers. “You told me Hart didn’t love you.” Her chin quivers, and the misery in her voice is more than I can bear tonight.

  “He doesn’t. Evie—”

  She comes a few steps closer. Her eyes are the color of river fog.

  “Please don’t take him away, Grey.” She reaches for my hand. Squeezes hard. “He’s the only good person left in this whole place.” She bursts into tears. “You don’t understand. You don’t know what he did for me. He saved me, Grey. If he leaves—”

  “I do know, Evie.” She stares at me. Mouth open like a door off its hinges. “Hart told me what he did. For you.”

  “He told you?” Her words are a terrified whisper. Evie blinks. Gives her head a little shake. She lets go of my hand. Takes a step backward. And I see her shiver.