Dark and Shallow Lies

by Ginny Myers Sain

  And then I open my eyes.

  Zale doesn’t move. He doesn’t talk. I don’t even hear him breathing.

  I wonder if he’s still there. I hope he is. But I can’t turn my head to see, because I’m staring at my mother. Not inside my head, like a dream. But standing right there in front of me. Flesh and blood.

  She isn’t looking in my direction, though. Her green eyes are fixed ahead. Focused toward the cabin. She’s beautiful. Young and slender. Radiant in the gray predawn light. But the look on her face is fierce. Determined.

  There’s an explosion of light, and my mother smiles.

  Satisfied.

  I see the orange glow of the fire reflecting off the little silver hummingbirds clipped in her long hair.

  Two of them.

  And then I feel the heat.

  I smell the smoke as real as anything.

  But it’s all silent. No voices. No crackle and snap of flames.

  Dead still.

  The smoke fills up my nose and burns the back of my throat, so I turn away.

  Away from the cabin.

  Away from my mother.

  Away from the other woman. The one who runs right by me as she slips unnoticed out the back of the inferno, clutching a little blond boy to her chest.

  My eyes come to rest on the stagnant pond. The drowning pool. Two small shapes float side by side in the center of all that black water.

  Firelight on white dresses.

  Blue ribbons like the strings of a kite.

  And just for a split second, I hear voices. Like someone turned the radio up.

  All the way.

  Angry shouting.

  The noise of a crowd.

  One person is sobbing.

  Someone else is screaming.

  The next thing I know, that’s all gone and I’m on the ground. Zale is holding me. Calling my name. Hugging me to his chest. Everywhere our bodies touch, there’s that tingle. He helps me to my feet, but I’m unsteady, so he keeps a hand on my elbow.

  I open my fingers to stare at the little silver hummingbirds, and I know I have to tell him the truth. Even though I don’t want to. Because we’re all bound up by our secrets.

  And that has to stop with me.

  “My mother,” I whisper. “She’s the one who started the fire.”

  Overhead, there’s a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning so loud and so bright that I’m temporarily deaf and blind. My ears ring and I see spots. A surge of electricity rips into my elbow and up my arm to slam straight into my chest. It’s a white-hot burning. Immediate and violent. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I cry out in pain, and the force of the jolt knocks me backward. I land in the mud at the edge of the drowning pool, and I just sit there with my hand over my racing heart, gasping for breath. My muscles are cramping, and my vision is blurry. Everything tingles. And there’s a strange metallic taste in my mouth. Thunder rolls again. The power in it makes me shake.

  “I’m sorry,” Zale tells me. “I didn’t mean—I’m so sorry, Grey.”

  “I need to go home,” I whisper.

  Zale holds out his hand to help me up, but I hesitate. I’m still struggling for breath. “It’s okay,” he tells me. “I promise.”

  So I let him help me to my feet, but I’m too weak to stand. He scoops me up like I don’t weigh anything at all, and I wrap my arms around his neck. Zale’s skin is warm and soft. Alive with energy.

  It’s fully night now, but he never stumbles. He carries me out of the woods and down to the edge of the water. But he doesn’t say a word. And then we’re in the boat.

  Killer’s Island fades to black behind us.

  Zale is taking it slow because of the dark, navigating the shallow channels with a sureness that Hart and Case would be hard-pressed to match. Like he’s lived here all his life.

  Like he belongs.

  “Are you sure?” he finally asks me.

  “I saw her.”

  “What about my father? Did you see—”

  “No,” I say, and I reach out to brush my trembling fingers through his blond hair. “I’m sorry.”

  We leave the boat at Holbert’s Pond again, and I don’t bother to go back to Li’l Pass for my flip-flops. I’m not as weak as I was, so I insist on walking. But Zale keeps his arm around my waist, and the buzz of that contact keeps me warm. He walks me all the way back to the boardwalk. Right up to the steps this time. He refuses to leave me alone in the dark.

  We stand there staring at each other for a few seconds, then Zale pulls me to his chest. I feel his lips brush the top of my head. It’s so good. That tingling closeness. And his heart beating against mine. There’s so much I want to tell him, but I can’t find the right words. I don’t know how he can even stand to touch me, after what my mother did.

  When he knows what she took from him.

  “Grey,” he whispers, “look at me.” And he tilts my face up toward his. “Whatever your mother did, you’re not responsible for it.” I nod, but I’m not sure I believe him. His eyes are dark blue now. Like the night sky. “Did I hurt you bad? Before?” I shake my head, and he lets out a breath of relief. “I’m glad.” He lays a hand on my cheek. Little zips and zaps. Harmless. “I’d never mean to hurt you, Grey.” His eyes flash in the dark. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” I tell him. “You’d never hurt anyone on purpose.”

  He’s so gentle. More summer rain than lightning storm.

  “I know,” he says, and the wind picks up. “But sometimes people get hurt anyway.”

  Thunder rumbles low across the bayou.

  Zale leans in close, and I think maybe he’s going to kiss me.

  Really kiss me.

  But he doesn’t. He just whispers in my ear. Four words of absolute truth.

  “There’s a storm comin’.”

  Then he disappears into the shadows, and I climb the wooden steps to the boardwalk. But before I go inside, I stand on the front porch of the Mystic Rose and watch the river for a really long time while I listen to the night singing of Evie’s wind chimes.

  Elora is standing right beside me.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I can just almost glimpse her dazzling smile. That long dark hair. If I just turned my head a little . . .

  But I don’t turn my head. Because what if I’m wrong?

  Across from me, on the dock, someone has put up more safety ropes. The rot has been spreading all summer. One whole side is blocked off now.

  I turn and pull open the front door of the bookstore. Not locked. Of course. It’s never locked. There’s no crime to speak of in La Cachette. Never has been.

  Unless you count arson, I mean.

  And kidnapping.

  Murder.

  I close the door as softly as I can and twist the bolt behind me.

  All the lights are off in the house, but I hear the radio playing in the kitchen. “Louisiana Blues.” I tiptoe in to get a glass of milk, and Sweet-N-Low stirs on his pillow. His collar jingles, and he whimpers in his sleep.

  I open the fridge, and light spills across the linoleum floor. A weather update breaks in over the music, and I pause to listen.

  “The National Hurricane Center is predicting that Elizabeth will become a major storm by the time it reaches the central Gulf of Mexico.” The voice on the radio is almost breathless with excitement. “The eye is now four hundred and sixty miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River. Everyone in the listening area is urged to prepare for an extreme weather event.”

  The announcer goes away, and the harmonica comes back. Blues guitar.

  And that’s when I hear my name. I freeze, afraid that—somehow—the shadow of my dead mother has followed me home from Keller’s Island.

  But when I turn around, Honey is sitting at the kitchen
table, all lit up in the refrigerator’s glow. She has on her old pink robe. Curlers in her hair. And I wonder what she’s doing down here. Sitting at the table. Listening to Muddy Waters moan “Louisiana Blues” into the dark.

  But then I see the picture in her hand. The one of me and my mom. The one I left on the table beside my bed.

  The one with the haunted eyes.

  Honey looks down at the photo, then back up at me.

  “Sugar Bee,” she says, “we need to talk.”

  My chest aches and I can’t scream anymore,

  even if I wanted to. Not that there’s

  anybody to scream for.

  20

  I close the fridge door and start to flip on the overhead light. Then I remember I’m barefoot. With mud up to my thighs. So I leave the light off and sit down across from Honey at the kitchen table.

  “Didn’t you want some milk?” she asks, but I shake my head. She’s quiet for a second, staring at the photograph in her hand. “Lots to do tomorrow,” she eventually says. But she doesn’t take her eyes off the picture of me and my mom. “Gotta get the plywood up on the windows. Move everything from the bookstore up to my bedroom, in case the water gets high.”

  I nod.

  “Leo said he’d help us out. Hart, too,” Honey tells me. “Soon as they get their own place ready.”

  I haven’t seen Hart all day. Not since he crawled in my window late last night. And the mention of his name makes me anxious.

  “Your dad called this evening,” she goes on. “I told him I’d take you up to Shreveport with me when I leave day after tomorrow. He’ll pick you up there.”

  So that’s it, then. One full day left. Not nearly enough time to untangle all this mess.

  I stand up and push my chair back.

  “Grey. Wait.” Honey finally looks at me. “Sit a minute. Please.”

  Heavy dread settles in my stomach, and it pulls me back down into the chair.

  “I know you have questions,” she says. “Now that you’re growing up, I know there are things you want to know.” She looks down at the picture again and sighs. “Need to know. About your mama. And I haven’t been great about giving you real answers.”

  “My mother could start fires, couldn’t she?”

  Honey stares at me like I hauled off and slapped her. I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that. But everything seems so urgent now.

  “Your mother could do a lot of things, Grey. I don’t know what all talents she had. I don’t even think she knew. She was still figuring it out.”

  “But she burned down the cabin back at Keller’s Island. Didn’t she? Dempsey Fontenot’s cabin.”

  Honey nods reluctantly. “She did.”

  “Did she know about the little boy? Aeron?” The stricken look on Honey’s face almost makes me back down. But it’s too late for that. “The one she killed?”

  “How do you know about that?” Honey’s voice shakes. But she holds that picture steady in her hands.

  “Does it matter?” I ask. “What kind of person does that?”

  Honey wilts right in front of me. “She didn’t know he was in there,” she says, and it’s like she’s aged ten years in ten seconds. “She didn’t know.”

  “Why did she do it?”

  “You don’t know how angry this whole town was, Sugar Bee. The grief. How it tore us all to pieces when those babies went missing.”

  “Ember and Orli.” I whisper the names like an old prayer.

  “You weren’t old enough to know how deep it shook people,” Honey goes on, and I see her shudder. “Finding those sweet girls out there. Like that.”

  “But that little boy . . .” I say. And Honey nods.

  “But that little boy,” she repeats.

  “How could she live with it?” I ask. “Knowing she killed a child?”

  And when Honey doesn’t answer, I realize that’s a stupid question.

  Because, obviously, she couldn’t.

  Honey looks down at the photo again. Then she hands it to me, and I stare down at those haunted eyes.

  “She tried to do the right thing, Grey. After.” Honey pauses to look at me. “She went back and buried him. Did you know that?”

  I shake my head. “Where?”

  “Back at Keller’s Island. There’s a big old two-trunked cypress tree that grows off to the edge of the clearing. She put him there. At the base of it.”

  “You should’ve told me,” I say, and suddenly I’m so angry at her. Honey sighs. Her sadness fills up the whole kitchen.

  “You’re right, Sugar Bee.” She reaches for my hand, but I pull it back. I’m not ready to forgive her for keeping all this from me. Not yet.

  “Did she kill Dempsey Fontenot, too?” I’m making wild leaps with nothing to back them up. But we’re short on time, and I’m getting desperate.

  The radio station signs off for the night, and the harsh buzz of static sets my teeth on edge. “No, Grey.” Honey sighs. “Your mother didn’t kill Dempsey Fontenot.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask, and I feel relief wash over me like floodwater. At least I won’t have to break that news to Zale.

  “I am,” she tells me. “That’s a thing I can say for certain.” Honey gets up and turns off the radio. No more static. But the tinkling of wind chimes moves in to fill the silence.

  “Who did, then?” Honey doesn’t answer me. “Somebody here did. Didn’t they?”

  “It was a long time ago,” Honey starts. And I am so sick of hearing that. I push myself to my feet.

  “I’m not eight years old anymore. You need to stop protecting me.”

  “Grey, please. It’s late and—”

  “I need you to tell me what happened!” I’ve never raised my voice to Honey. Not ever in my whole life. Until now. “Please!” This desperate need to know is threatening to consume me. If I can’t know what happened to Elora—if I can’t put that mystery to rest for myself—then at least let me put an end to Zale’s years of wondering.

  “Grey—”

  Sweet-N-Low is sitting up on his pillow now, looking back and forth between me and Honey. He’s almost deaf, but even he can hear this. I’m not giving up, though. Not this time.

  “You said he was innocent. You told me you never believed he killed Ember and Orli. Now tell me the rest of the truth! Who killed Dempsey Fontenot?”

  “I don’t know!” Honey’s standing at the sink with her back to me. Her hands grip the edges of the counter like she’s afraid to let go. “I don’t know, Grey. I never wanted to know. And that’s the truth. I used to be afraid that I’d hear from him. From Dempsey.” She pauses. “That he’d reach out to me. Tell me who it was. And I didn’t want that knowledge.”

  “He never did, though.”

  Honey shakes her head, and I hear her take a deep breath before she goes on. “What happened to those two little girls—then to that poor boy—and to Dempsey Fontenot, too—it’s like a stain. On all of us. And this town will never be able to wash it off.” Her shoulders droop, and she turns back to face me. It hits me how old she looks. Did that happen this summer? When I wasn’t paying attention?

  “Well, who killed Ember and Orli, then?” I ask. “Can you at least tell me that?”

  Honey sighs. “I don’t know the answer to that. I wish I did. There are a lot of unanswered questions. But most of us have learned to live with the holes.”

  “That’s such bullshit,” I say, and Honey pulls her robe a little tighter around her shoulders. Like she’s cold.

  “None of that has anything to do with you, Grey. I never wanted you to find out about any of it. Ever. That’s why I didn’t put up a fight when your daddy wanted to take you up to Little Rock. I figured the less time you spent here, the better. I wanted you away from all this.” She puts her hand over her heart, like she’s trying to st
op it from bleeding. “I wanted to keep you safe.”

  “Who was keeping Elora safe?” I ask her. “Or Evie. Or Hart. Or any of the others?”

  Who was there to keep Zale safe?

  Or Aeron?

  “Oh, Sugar Bee.” Honey reaches out for me, but I take a step back, and she looks so hurt. “I don’t see how that old business could possibly have any connection to Elora, if that’s what you’re thinking,”

  “Jesus!” I’m crying now. The angry kind of tears that always make me shake. “You don’t know that! How could you possibly know that? What if it does have something to do with what happened to Elora? What if it has everything to do with what happened to Elora?”

  For a second, there’s only the sound of my rattled breathing. And the jingling of Sweet-N-Low’s collar as he scratches his ear.

  And, of course, the damn wind chimes.

  “Plywood’s out in the shed,” Honey finally tells me. “Let’s you and me drag it out first thing tomorrow, so we’re ready when Leo gets here to board up the windows.”

  She kisses me good night and heads upstairs to bed. And I just stand there. Stunned. Because I know Honey loves me. And I know she wants to protect me. Keep me safe. I get that.

  But I’m not like her.

  I can’t live with the holes.

  Not anymore.

  I need answers.

  He squats down next to me. “Don’t run!”

  he shouts. “There’s no point.”

  21

  When Honey wakes me up before sunrise the next morning, I’ve barely slept at all. And the first thing I hear is the ringing of wind chimes.

  But the first thing I see—feel—is that flash of Elora. Someone squatting low beside her.

  Don’t run.

  I can’t see a face.

  There’s no point.

  I feel the weight of the words on my chest.

  And I can almost hear the voice.

  Almost.

  But not quite.

  I know I’m getting closer to whatever happened to Elora out there in the bayou, though. I just need a little more time. And that’s something I don’t have.