The Hollow Inside

by Brooke Lauren Davis

  That couldn’t have been enough to connect me to her.

  But he’s still looking at me like he’s staring at a ghost.

  I wonder if he’s got me all figured out or if he’s just got a feeling. Maybe he’s trying to get me to say something to prove I know his daughter so he can send the town out to hunt her down.

  But he kept her clothes. After all this time, he’s left her room just the way it was. Like he’s still waiting for her to come back. Maybe—­

  Now isn’t the time for this. We’re too close to the truth.

  But I can’t stop myself from asking, “What would you say?”

  The floorboards in the hallway creak, and Pastor Holland drops my wrist half a second before Melody appears at the door.

  She casts him a wary look—the same one she used to give me when I first got to Jasper Hollow. Except now she’s using it to save me.

  “Can I borrow you?” she asks me.

  With one last glance at Pastor Holland, I follow her out of Mom’s room.

  Chapter 37

  NEIL AND JILL WASH dishes after dinner, and I hear the murmur of their voices while I help Melody stretch a sheet across the sofa bed’s thin mattress.

  She’s already changed into a pair of plaid pajama shorts and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. Pastor Holland went to bed early, so I don’t feel too embarrassed about wriggling out of my jeans in the middle of the living room and slipping on black athletic shorts.

  I climb into bed without another word. Melody switches off the light and then slides in beside me. We twist and turn until we’re settled in. The bed is tiny, but we both do our damnedest to stay at the edges, leaving a sliver of space between us.

  Dishes clatter while Neil and Jill put them away, both of them humming different songs. I smell smoke when one of them blows out the apple-scented candle on the windowsill. Then they switch off the kitchen lights, and Jill leans over the back of the sofa to ruffle our hair and say good-night. Neil flicks both our ears. Then they go to their rooms, and we’re alone.

  I don’t know how long we both lie there, staring at the ceiling, our bodies rigid beside each other.

  I’m too aware of her—the rise and fall of her chest and the way she taps her long fingers lightly against her rib cage. I almost don’t notice the pulse of light in the corner of the room.

  A lightning bug. It found its way in somehow and doesn’t seem too concerned with finding its way back out. When it flashes again, it hovers closer to the bed. Again, and it lands on my arm.

  I’ve lived outdoors for a long time, but I’ve never warmed up to bugs. And ever since that day at the Bowmans’ house, the hissing, stinging, furious cloud of bees overtaking me, I’m even less tolerant than I used to be. I lift my hand, ready to smash it, when Melody whispers, “Don’t.”

  I let my hand drop back to my side. But then the bug crawls along my arm, and I start to squirm.

  “Don’t be scared,” she says quietly, propping herself up on her elbow to peer across my stomach at the slow progress of the little light.

  “How do you know I’m scared?”

  Melody murmurs so softly, it’s like she’s trailing the tip of her finger along the cusp of my ear. “If you weren’t afraid, then you wouldn’t need to kill it.”

  It’s a dare. I can see a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth in the dark. I bite my lip. “Fine.”

  We both watch the lightning bug drift from my arm to my stomach, and slowly, so slowly, crawl up. It trails over my rib cage then in the dip between my breasts, so weightless that I don’t really feel it until it crosses from my shirt over to the bare skin of my chest. Its little legs are a tickle, an itch, and I grit my teeth against the squeal rising up my throat. The closer it gets to my face, the harder my heart pounds.

  I finally lose control of my urge to smash it when it makes its way over my collarbone and starts to climb up my neck. I lift my hand, but Melody gets there first.

  Her palm is a cup against my throat, the lightning bug trapped inside.

  She’s leaning over me now, her other hand braced beside my head on the pillow. Her curls graze my cheeks.

  This is the part where she’s supposed to realize she’s too close and pull away from me, turn her back, and pretend to go to sleep. But instead, she shifts again, and her stomach grazes mine. I can feel her shake against me.

  “Are you scared?” I whisper.

  She dips her face toward mine, and I feel the soft tip of her nose trail over my burning cheek. Her breath mists against my ear when she whispers, “Always. But I’m trying to be brave.”

  I make a sound when she touches me, a little gasp, before I can stop myself. My hands itch to reach for her, but I clench my fists and keep them at my sides, because—­

  I can’t remember why, just now. Her lips are grazing my jaw, and without my permission, my back arches, and I suck in air between my teeth. My pulse flutters against my throat, but then I realize that it’s the wingbeats of the lightning bug under Melody’s hand, and an intoxicating mix of fear and want and heat surges through me so hard, it leaves me dizzy.

  Still, I won’t let my hands pull her closer. I’ll control myself, and she’ll chicken out, and we can go back to the way we were.

  She draws back, and I hold my breath, waiting for her to avert her eyes, to go back to her side of the bed, to let me stare at her shoulder blades, moving with her slow inhales and exhales, so I can want her all night from a safe distance.

  Melody takes her hand off my neck, and the lightning bug floats up above our heads, flickering and weaving around the ceiling like a drunken star.

  And then she dips her head again and presses her mouth to mine.

  She’s terrified. I can taste it on her lips, but she kisses me anyway, and God, it makes every wall in me crumble. Every door fly open. Every tether snap.

  She breaks the kiss for half a second, and I breathe her name before I clutch her around the waist and crush her to me.

  We go slowly at first, getting used to the warmth and shape of each other. I’ve imagined holding her like this more times than I’ll ever admit, but really holding her is another thing altogether. Then Melody slips her tongue tentatively between my lips, and I open them to her, and there’s no going back after that.

  I can’t do everything that I want to do with her, not right in the middle of Pastor Holland’s living room. But just kissing, just feeling the silk of her bare stomach under my hands—it’s enough to drown in.

  This moment with her isn’t like the stars aligning—it’s more like they’ve been knocked out of place, like they’re ricocheting against each other and spinning out to infinity.

  And it might keep me reeling forever.

  -

  Hours later, Melody and I sit on Pastor Holland’s front steps with mugs of coffee, wrapped in a blanket and leaning against each other, watching the dark sky lighten to a gray dawn. Clara Mountain looms cold and beautiful to one side, and the town sleeps to the other.

  My whole body aches, in a good way. Melody’s hair is soft against my cheek when she leans her head on my shoulder. She yawns and seems content just to be here and not think.

  I want to lean into this moment, too. But the guilt is too much to ignore—that I’m lying to her, and if she knew the truth, she would hate me. I let myself lose sight of that last night.

  My mind goes racing through scenarios. Maybe the plan could change. Maybe there’s a way to get Ellis’s confession and show my real self to Melody without scaring her away forever.

  Maybe there’s a future where I can make Mom and Melody happy at the same time.

  I go over and over the possibilities. But I keep coming up empty.

  I could have more, I tell myself, trying hard to believe it. I could have them both.

  But I know it isn’t true. Because Melody knows who she is, even when the world tries to tell her over and over again that she doesn’t. Melody knows what’s best for her, and once she finds out who I am, she’l
l know that it’s not me.

  Mom has so many memories about better times, before she got involved with Ellis. I’ve listened to her agonize over her choices, obsessing about how if she’d done things differently, she never would have had to leave Jasper Hollow.

  And even as it’s happening, I know that this morning with Melody will be one of the moments that I’ll come back to. Dwell over. Wish I could relive so I could make the right choice.

  You would think that having this awareness would mean I had the power to change it. To choose Melody now, instead of spending the rest of my life regretting that I let her slip away.

  Maybe if I were as sure of myself as Melody, I could.

  When people talk about loving someone, they only ever tell you about moments like this, sitting on the porch with someone warm at your side, watching the sun come up. But that’s never been what love is like for me. Because in my experience, love cares a lot less about what I want and a lot more about what it needs to keep breathing. It’s never felt like a choice to me. It’s always been a demand—a pair of blue-black eyes asking a question that isn’t a question, knowing that yes is the only answer I’ve ever been able to give.

  Maybe that isn’t love. Maybe one day, I’ll know how to choose a lifetime of moments like this for myself.

  But today, all I know how to do is choose wrong.

  Chapter 38

  JILL IS UP BRIGHT and early, even though she took the day off from the Watering Hole. Today is the day Ellis comes home.

  The whole family piles into the car while I watch from the kitchen window. I lied about having a headache to get out of it at the last minute. I keep the heating pad Jill warmed up for me pressed against my temple until her van is completely out of sight.

  Pastor Holland stayed behind with me. He said he was feeling a little tired. At first, I thought it was an excuse not to leave me alone in his house, that he’d pegged me for a thief—which I can’t be all that offended about, because he wouldn’t be wrong. But when I walk past his room, I can hear him snoring softly.

  After everything Mom told me about him, and getting to know him a little myself, I figure that Pastor Holland isn’t normally the type with the patience for naps. She told me he used to wake up before the sun every morning, reading his Bible by lamplight and scratching out notes with a pencil for his sermons. When he wasn’t planning for Sunday, he still kept busy, praying over sick parishioners in the hospital, officiating their weddings and funerals, and counseling them through their divorces and their grieving and their doubts.

  Aside from the cane and the dark circles always under his eyes, he’s hidden his sickness well. But when he sleeps, he can’t hide the toll it’s taken on him—the way his skin hangs from his gaunt cheeks, the way the lines on his face have deepened so much that there’s more shadow than skin. His dry, cracked lips are parted, and his breath wheezes through. The movement of his chest under the blanket is barely perceptible.

  I’m glad Mom doesn’t have to see him like this up close. But at the same time, I’m angry, so unbelievably pissed off, that whatever precious time he’s got left, she doesn’t get to spend it with him. All because he was too thick-skulled to listen to her.

  I turn away from the cracked door and head to the guest room, where Jill slept last night. And just like I’d hoped, her laptop bag is with the rest of her things that Pastor Holland brought from the house. I sit on the bed and power it on. I remember the password from when she let me borrow it a few weeks ago.

  Melody didn’t give me much to go on to find the boy who emailed her a year ago claiming to be her brother. But I have to try, because if it’s true—if he is Ellis and Mom’s son—then we don’t need Ellis’s confession. All we have to do is get Bailey’s DNA tested, and then there won’t be room for any doubt.

  And then maybe the stubborn man asleep in the next room will have no choice but to admit his daughter was telling the truth.

  The boy who emailed Melody said that he was determined to reveal that he was Ellis’s son. Maybe he did but no one believed him, so the story never caught traction. It’s a long shot, but I search Ellis Bowman son.

  Hundreds of pictures of Neil come up. Videos of him playing football, and articles about how proud of his dad he is, and how he can’t wait to follow in his footsteps. He never got a chance to finish a season with the Buckeyes, so I’m really excited for the opportunity. It feels like I’m carrying both of our dreams on my back. And it’s an honor.

  I scroll through page after page. The media likes Neil—the way his good looks match Ellis’s so well and how bashfully charming he is on camera. There’s a lot to sift through.

  But then a link catches my eye. A video.

  It’s titled, Chillicothe Woman Claims Ellis Bowman Killed Her Son on Purpose.

  With a glance down the hall to make sure Pastor Holland hasn’t woken, I press play.

  There’s a woman sitting on a couch. The caption underneath identifies her as Mother of boy killed in Bowman accident. The clock on the wall behind her head says that it’s noon, but she’s still wearing her pajamas. The pants are striped pale-blue and white and covered in stains, like she’s had them on for a few days. At first, I thought her hair was wet, but then I realize it’s slick with grease, matted on one side, like she was just sleeping on it.

  The man interviewing her believes she’s crazy. I can tell by the pitying look on his face—he’s only here to get a headline, not the truth.

  But I don’t think she’s crazy. I think her grief has driven her to the brink, kept her from showering or doing laundry or cleaning her house. Her eyes are clear when she tells the news crew, “Anderson wouldn’t have snuck out without a reason. And he had no reason at all to be in Jasper Hollow.”

  In the interview she did that I read a few weeks ago, her son had just died. Her responses were numb. But this video is from barely a month ago. She’s had time to think.

  “He got good grades. He stayed out of trouble. He was smart, and he had plenty of friends, but not a one in Jasper Hollow that he ever told me about. He didn’t even have his learner’s permit yet, so he had to break the law to drive my car over there alone. And anyone who knew Anderson could tell you he was a rule follower down to his bones.”

  “Why do you think he went to Jasper Hollow?” the interviewer asks her.

  “Ellis Bowman lured him there,” she says, matter-of-factly.

  “But what reason would he have to do that?”

  She shrugs. “That’s my question. What’s a good reason for killing someone’s son?”

  “What makes you think he did this on purpose?”

  “You’ve seen the video,” she says. “The video speaks for itself.”

  The feed on the screen changes—suddenly, I’m looking at a grainy, nighttime video of the Circle. By the angle, I’d say it’s security footage from Annie’s Market.

  It’s mostly deserted, only a few people closing up businesses for the night. I can just make out Tim at the bakery across the street, sweeping the floors.

  And then I see a shadow move beneath Harriet’s Oak. I can’t make out his face in the dark, but it has to be her son, Anderson. He walks toward the road. Steps into it.

  Then the street is flooded by headlights, and he turns toward them, almost as though he’s expecting them.

  “The car speeds up,” his mother’s voice says in the background.

  It all happens so quickly, it’s hard to say for sure.

  “Ellis never even swerves,” she says, more quietly.

  She’s right. The nose of Ellis’s SUV never changes course, up until the final moment—­

  The video cuts out just before contact. Too awful for TV.

  Ellis probably argued that he just didn’t see Anderson until it was too late. That he didn’t even have time to think of swerving. That it was dark, that the rain reflecting off the pavement played tricks with his eyes.

  When the feed switches back to Anderson’s mother, she’s holding something i
n her hands. A picture frame, with a photo of her son.

  “I adopted Anderson when he was just a baby. After my divorce, I wasn’t sure I’d ever have children, so he was an answer to so many prayers. He was my absolute—” She swallows. Closes her eyes for a moment. “My absolute favorite person. And nothing is ever going to bring him back. But he deserves the truth. Everyone deserves the truth.”

  I pause the video. And I stare at the photograph in her hands.

  It looks like a school photo. He’s wearing a collared shirt, trying hard to sit up straight, smiling self-consciously.

  He has black hair.

  A tiny birthmark on his left cheek.

  And blue-black eyes that I would know anywhere.

  The room swirls, and I have to grab the sheets of Jill’s bed to steady myself. To get a grip long enough to figure out what all of this means.

  Anderson was Mom’s son.

  He’s the one who contacted Melody.

  Ellis found out, somehow, that Anderson was planning on revealing the secret he’d worked so hard to keep.

  So he killed him. Murdered him. His own kid.

  And now I have to tell Mom that the child she thought died years ago actually died years later, while we were far away, plotting our revenge.

  Bailey took his last breath long after we gave up on looking for him.

  Chapter 39

  I’M SITTING ON PASTOR Holland’s front porch when Jill’s van turns into the driveway, gravel popping under the wheels.

  I’m ready to pretend that nothing has happened. I took time to splash cold water on my face over and over again to compose myself. To remember that I already knew Ellis was a monster and it’s the reason I’m here in the first place. Time to focus on what I can do to make him pay.

  Ellis gets out of the car, slowly, but he’s steady on his feet. If I didn’t know he almost died yesterday, I would have thought he was just tired. He grins when he sees me, walking toward the porch steps with open arms.

  I walk down them to meet him. And as I stand in his embrace, time does that cruel thing where it slows down when all you want is for it to move along, the seconds sounding off in my head like the maddening drips of a leaky faucet. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.