Other Echoes

by Noe Dearden

  *****

  The sun was setting under the Ko’olau mountain range when Charlotte and Emi returned home. The day’s shopping excursion had left Charlotte drained. There was a residual feeling of guilt she couldn’t quite shake. Now she had more clothes than she knew what to do with. So many beautiful things she didn’t deserve.

  She stood alone on the back patio, a sweating bottle of cream soda in her hand, looking out at the darkening lawn. The Kapono’s house was built on the beach, and its proximity to the ocean had a soothing effect. Something about the vastness of the dark water, its tang and its rhythm, seemed to untangle Charlotte’s troubled thoughts.

  She glanced back into the dark house. Emi was upstairs practicing her barre exercises. Uncle Eddie had retreated to his office. Aunt Sheena would be back from work in an hour with take-out for dinner. The house was very quiet.

  Charlotte pulled back the screen door and stepped into the warm evening. Everything was blue, dappled and fragrant from recent rains. The yard turned out to be larger than she had expected, with a swimming pool and an abundance of greenery all strung with colored lights.

  Charlotte savored the heat of the sun-baked stone path under bare feet as she tiptoed to the swimming pool. She crouched to touch the silky surface of the water. It was surprisingly warm, like bathwater. She shucked off her shirt and shorts, placed her soda carefully on the deck and slipped into the pool.

  The reflected porch light created undulating shadows across her pale skin. She moved as far into the deep-end as she could go without losing touch of the slippery bottom. She was not a strong swimmer. The sensation of almost losing her footing sent a warm shiver through her body. One misstep and she would fall under. She would lose control. The idea was oddly pleasurable.

  And then, all at once, they came again – all those hideous memories. Like always, she knew she was powerless to stop the bad pictures from seeping into her mind.

  Him. The gun in her shaking hand. His low voice. Her control slipping. She is taken over, as if by a presence that is not truly a part of her. Her mind is somewhere gone. She is drenched in his warm blood.

  “Hey.”

  The voice filtered through the memories and brought everything crashing back to the present with a jolt. She turned slowly and a little dazed.

  The person she found standing a few feet from the edge was a stranger – a man in his late twenties or early thirties. It was difficult in the darkness to make out his features, but she could tell that his was an average face, not unpleasant.

  There was a long moment of silence as they took each other in. He seemed flummoxed, as if he couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing.

  “You’re the relative from Boston,” he said eventually, slow recognition in his voice.

  “Philadelphia.”

  His gaze dropped to the pile of clothes she had left at the poolside, then back to her bare shoulders. It startled him.

  “I’m sorry. I’m bothering you.” He began to retreat towards the side of the house.

  “Wait. Who are you?”

  The man took an awkward sideways step and almost stumbled over a lawn chair. “Will. My name’s Will Kerrigan,” he said. “Um. I rent out the Kapono’s guest house.” He gestured to a structure that was half-concealed behind some bamboo plants. Charlotte had thought it was a neighboring residence, but now she could see it was an extension of their property.

  “Well,” he said after a long pause. “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  He hurried away, looking back once as if he didn’t quite trust his eyes.

  A breeze fluttered her hair. Charlotte realized with a start that she was shivering despite the warmth of the night. She hoisted herself from the pool, retrieved her drink and clothes from the deck and returned to the house, leaving a puddle of footprints in her wake.

  In the kitchen, she dumped the rest of her soda down the sink drain. There was a bottle of cooking wine left open on the counter. She briefly considered pouring herself a glass but then someone switched on the overhead light.

  “Oh my g– Charlotte!”

  Emi had waddled into the kitchen in her pointe shoes. Both her hands were covering her eyes.

  “Can you please put on a shirt?” Emi said.

  Obligingly, Charlotte pulled her top over her head. It clung unpleasantly to her clammy skin.

  “Are you decent?” Emi peeked from behind her hands. Satisfied to find her cousin clothed, she slowly lowered them. “Jeez, Charlotte. What if I’d been my mom? Or worse, my dad?”

  “Or the guy who rents out your guest house,” Charlotte said ruefully.

  Emi went to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of sparkling water. “Mr. Kerrigan?” she said. “Wait a minute, did you seriously run into him?”

  “I don’t think he saw anything. I was in the pool.”

  “Wow, he’s probably super weirded out right now,” Emi said, shaking her head. “You’re crazy, Charlotte.”

  “I guess I forgot to put my shirt back on.”

  “You forgot you were naked,” Emi echoed disbelievingly. “That’s so… classic.”

  She said this as if she had another adjective in mind.

  “Should I apologize to him?” Charlotte asked. She plunked herself down on one of the kitchen stools.

  “To Kerrigan? Nah. He’s an artist. He probably paints nude people all the time.”

  “Did he paint all these things?” Charlotte was referring to the framed canvases on the walls of the kitchen. She’d noticed there was art in almost every room of the Kapono’s house. Many of the paintings were done on huge floor to ceiling canvases saturated in color.

  “No way. Most of these are my dad’s,” Emi said, amazed at her cousin’s ignorance. “Didn’t you know he was an artist?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “My mom never told me anything about your family.”

  “Yeah, well, my parents haven’t said much about you, either,” Emi remarked.

  She flipped on the spotlights that illuminated the paintings on the kitchen wall. “My dad’s actually pretty well-known in the art world, mostly for his murals and outdoor installations. That big painting is his, but some of these are by other artists.” Emi pointed to one of the smaller pictures at the end. “That one is Mr. Kerrigan’s.”

  Charlotte stood up to study the tiny painting. It was abstract, which was something that usually didn’t appeal to her. But this piece was different. She felt she could completely disappear into the shadowy depth of the canvas.

  “It looks sad. It’s almost like…” She struggled to find the right words and failed.

  “Yeah, I don’t get it either,” Emi said dismissively. She stood next to Charlotte, frowning at the painting. “Dad says Kerrigan has ‘a lot of potential,’ but I’m not so sure.”

  Charlotte couldn’t pull away from the picture. She was captivated.

  “What do you think it’s like to create something like this?” she asked quietly. She ran her index finger along its frame. “To create something so beautiful out of thin air?”

  Emi gave Charlotte a funny look. “Don’t tell dad you’re into art. He’ll chew your ear off with his art-talk.”

  The picture had something. Like a very particular feeling. The longer Charlotte stared at it, the more details she noticed. The darkness around the edges of the canvas had a movement to it, like it was closing in on the center where a solitary slash of light was barely evident.

  “What do you think the painting means?” she asked.

  Emi smiled quizzically. “Who knows, Charlotte? It could mean a hundred different things. Or maybe nothing at all.”