by Erica Waters
But I’m too tired to think through it all tonight. I go to the bathroom to bandage my fingers, wincing each time the fabric touches my skin. When I drag myself to the bedroom, Honey’s in my bed, curled like a little bean at the edge of the mattress. I lie beside her and listen to her breathe, trying not to fall asleep, trying not to think about everything that happened, trying not to think about the shadow man. Trying not to think about how I failed.
Because what’s even worse than the shadow man’s attack is what happened before, or rather what didn’t happen. I didn’t find the answers to Jesse’s freedom or gain any real clues to help prove his innocence. I only unearthed more questions.
Twenty-One
I wake to pain. My shoulders, my arms, the tips of my fingers. My back, my neck. I don’t think there’s a part of my body that doesn’t hurt. But it’s my insides that suffered the most damage last night. Everything Jim said, and then all the shadow man put me through, it all pulls at me. I don’t know what to think, what to do. I’m never going to be the sort of person who lets life happen to her, who coasts along with events, accepting what comes. But today I want to be.
I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, pretending its pebbled white surface is an early morning beach, the sand fresh from the receding tide, unmarred by feet or tires. Today waits for me like that flawless stretch of sand, untouched by my decisions or mistakes. If I stay in bed, it can remain perfect, a clean plane of possibility.
But then I hear Mama rattling around in the kitchen, talking in a low voice to Honey, who is singing the alphabet song in between bites of her breakfast.
So I drag myself out of bed and kick the imaginary sand under my feet. If I don’t get out there, Jesse will be stuck in prison forever. I might not be much, but I’m all he’s got.
“Mama, I want to visit Jesse,” I say once I work up the courage to enter the kitchen. “Why haven’t we been yet?” I know why I haven’t asked before—because I’ve been afraid he’d see the doubt on my face, or that he’d give me even more reason to lose my trust in him. But why has Mama stayed away?
She blinks at me tiredly from behind a steaming mug of coffee. She’s still wearing her fluffy blue robe. “He said he didn’t want to see me.”
And now I know why. He’s been angry at her all this time about her affair with Jim. What would Mama say if she knew I raised Jim’s ghost last night? If she knew all he told me? I’m not sure if anything he said about Jesse was true, but I know he wasn’t lying about him and Mama. I should probably be mad at her, too, but with how tired and grieved and lonely she looks this morning, the thought of her cheating on Daddy only makes me sad.
“I bet Jesse’ll see me.” I use my uninjured hand to pinch pieces off a powdered doughnut on her plate.
“You can’t go alone. I have to be with you.” She sets her coffee down and smacks my hand. “Quit picking at my breakfast. There’s a box on the counter.”
“What about Aunt Ena?” I ask, dusting off my fingers.
Mama tilts her head and gives me that “don’t kid yourself” look. “Your aunt Ena can’t even go to the grocery store.”
“Let me ask her. Is she on the visitor’s list?”
“No, but we can get her on it.”
“Will you, please?”
“All right,” Mama says, pushing her bangs off her forehead. “Now leave me alone until I have my coffee. And eat some breakfast. You look like hell.”
I guess she’s decided not to ask me about last night. Or maybe she’s too tired now and she’ll launch into it once she’s caffeinated. I’m not waiting around to find out.
I kiss the top of Honey’s mussed head and retreat down the hall to do something about my own wild hair.
When the bus pulls up to school, I look for Cedar, and instead find Sarah. She’s leaning against the wall outside the office, one blue high-top Converse flat against the bricks. She’s got on a T-shirt from a kids’ summer camp, which seriously detracts from her moody expression and crossed arms. I can’t help but smile at the sight of her, though it also makes my stomach rumble. She saved me last night, saved me when no one else could, and that has to mean something.
“Hey,” I say.
“Cedar will be right back,” Sarah says in a rush.
“Oh. You guys . . . talked?”
“A little,” she says, and shrugs.
“About last night . . . thank you for coming,” I say, meeting her eyes. Sarah looks tired and worried. But whatever stronger emotion I saw in her last night is gone today.
“I’ll always . . . come,” she says haltingly. The promise doesn’t sound as fervent as it did last night, but I can tell she means it. “You’re my best friend.”
Her best friend. I should be grateful to have her as a friend at all, but it’s hard to let go of what we might have been, if things had been different. Even with the weight of the shadow man dragging me down, my fear for Jesse, all of it—knowing I’m losing Sarah still manages to feel like a punch to the gut.
Then Cedar comes around the corner, followed by Rose and Orlando and Kenneth. I eye my stepbrother, feeling awkward about seeing him after raising Jim’s ghost, and more uncertain than ever if I can trust him. I wonder if Cedar told him what happened last night.
Orlando bumps his shoulder against mine, a simple touch that means all is forgiven. Rose is scowling, but I wouldn’t expect anything different. She stands next to Sarah and says something to her, but Sarah steps away and looks at the ground.
Cedar slips an arm around my waist and smiles at me. “Hey. You all right?”
I look from him to Sarah, and then to the others. “I’m fine. Why’s everyone here?”
Rose rolls her eyes. “For you, dummy. So you don’t get yourself killed or lost in hell or whatever the fuck happened last time. You obviously can’t handle this ghost crap on your own.”
“But I already raised Jim’s ghost. I already talked to him,” I say, glancing at Kenneth. I expect to see fear and guilt in his eyes, but he only looks uncomfortable. He crosses his arms and clears his throat.
“Cedar already filled me in,” he says. “Maybe I should have gone, but I . . .”
Sarah, of all people, puts a hand on Kenneth’s arm. “Trust me, Kenneth, you’re better off leaving things as they are. It’s not like you think it would be.”
But I’m still upset at Kenneth for lying all this time, and he also hasn’t done anything to convince me he shouldn’t be a suspect too, so I don’t really care how he feels about it. Maybe I’m being unreasonable, maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference if he’d told the truth, but it would have been something. It would have been the right thing to do.
“I was just trying to get information to help Jesse. That’s the only reason I did it.”
“And?” Kenneth says, his voice expectant. “What—what did Dad say?”
Everyone’s staring at me, waiting for an answer, but I’m not sure what the answer is. “Jim . . . he wasn’t really clear. I don’t think he wanted to tell me the truth.” Cedar cocks his head at me, like he took away very different information from Jim last night.
I can’t tell if Kenneth is relieved or disappointed. “You could . . . you could bring him back again,” he says, his voice wavering, “to ask him more when he’s ready.” Is Kenneth bluffing now, trying to make himself seem less afraid of being accused?
“I don’t think he’ll come. He’s not interested in helping me.”
Sarah’s voice catches my attention. “Do ghosts have a choice? Can they choose not to come?” she asks, her voice throaty, heavy. I know she’s thinking about her mom.
I nod. “Some of them can, especially the ones who have been around a while. Daddy said the fiddle just sort of opens a door, and ghosts have to decide whether to walk through it.”
Sarah’s eyes go bright with tears she won’t let spill, and she looks away, toward the PE fields.
A bell rings, and Orlando looks at his watch. “We should get to class.” But instead of
going, he turns to Cedar. “What’s the plan?”
“Let’s meet and play tonight,” Cedar says to the group. “Seven o’clock.”
“Why?” I ask. “I already—”
“Just bring your regular fiddle this time,” Rose interrupts.
Cedar smiles at me. “We’re your band. We want to support you. Make sure you’re okay. A band practice will be a good chance for us all to talk.”
I look to Sarah, and she nods. “We can’t play at my place though,” she says hurriedly, crossing her arms again.
I don’t know that I can play again after what the shadow man did to me, but I offer up Aunt Ena’s house for the meeting. I can call her after school to make sure she doesn’t mind, but she’ll probably be thrilled to meet my friends. Besides, I need to talk to her. After she helped me, she deserves to know what happened. And I want to be in the place I feel closest to Daddy. After last night, I’m longing to hear his voice again.
As the others file away, I pull Kenneth to one side. “Hey,” I say.
“Yeah?” He glances at me with nervous, wary eyes. His face is built for honesty—wide and freckled, with that shock of red hair. But he said himself that people aren’t ever who we think they are. Maybe he’s not either. I still can’t help but wonder if his resentment of Jim finally broke open on his daddy’s head. If he’s not speaking up for Jesse because he’s the guilty one.
And yet he’s not acting like someone who’s guilty. I search his face for the truth, but I don’t see anything except sadness and weariness. The only person acting guilty is Frank, I realize—drinking alone in the place Jim died, railing into the night.
The thought pushes whatever I had planned to say to Kenneth from my mind. Instead, I ask about Frank. “Before I raised Jim’s ghost last night, I saw your uncle Frank there at the construction site. It was midnight and he was drunk and yelling at no one. Do you think maybe he might be—”
Kenneth recoils, his pale skin flushing red. “Now you think Uncle Frank killed my daddy? What the hell, Shady?”
Before I can respond, Kenneth shakes his head and stalks away, but then he turns at the last second. “You know, Uncle Frank has always talked to me a lot about forgiveness. He was always telling me I needed to forgive Dad for not being there for me, that I should give him another chance. Uncle Frank said he forgave Dad even though he was the reason their daddy died. Did you know that? My dad was supposed to watch Granddaddy when he was so sick, and instead Dad took off to buy a bottle of Jack and Granddaddy died. But Uncle Frank forgave him and gave him work, no matter how bad Dad treated him, and he made sure I was always taken care of. Uncle Frank’s a good man. You could take a page from his book.”
“I wasn’t accusing Frank—I just thought you should know how he was that night—so you could check on him.” My cheeks flush with the lie.
“Yeah, right,” Kenneth says. “You gonna accuse me next?”
I square my shoulders. “Why shouldn’t I?”
Kenneth’s mouth twists. “You’re not the person I thought you were, Shady.” He spins on his heel, and I practically sink to the ground under the weight of his anger. Under the weight of my own shame. Maybe he’s right, and I’m just looking for anyone to blame, anyone except Jesse.
I thought getting the fiddle would solve all the mysteries and make clear all the secrets, but instead it’s like a letter opener sliding under an envelope’s flap. I’m half afraid to know what’s going to come springing out of the unsealed paper. I still don’t know who killed Jim or why, but I’m more unsure of Jesse than ever, and nowhere feels safe—not the woods, not Mama’s trailer, not even my dreams. Aunt Ena’s house feels like my last refuge.
I get to Aunt Ena’s half an hour early, and before I’ve even turned off the engine, the knot of anxiety in my belly starts to loosen. The house looks bigger than usual in the deepening twilight, the azaleas faintly glowing in the gloom of the oaks and hanging moss. No one passing by would see safe refuge here, but as I walk up the steps, my protective walls fall down, one by one.
When Aunt Ena pulls me into a hug, I finally let go of the burden of unshed tears I’ve been carrying around since last night. Ena holds me and croons into my hair the way I do for Honey when she’s sad.
After I’ve gotten all the tears out, I tell her everything—about raising Jim, what he said, the shadow man, Sarah’s rescue. Her eyes light up when I talk about Sarah, but I quickly change the subject to what I came here to ask.
“Will you take me to visit Jesse on Saturday?”
“To the jail?” She leans back. “Why?”
“The juvenile detention center. It’s just teenagers there,” I say. “I need to talk to Jesse, to find out if all the stuff Jim said about him is . . . if there’s any truth in it. Look, I was wrong to use the fiddle. I see that now. I should have tried to talk to Jesse first, to see if I could get him to tell me what happened. That’s what I want to do now.”
“I don’t know, Shady . . .”
“Please, Aunt Ena. I know it will be hard for you, but he won’t see Mama, and anyway I wouldn’t want her to hear what we talk about. It’s important. Please.”
Aunt Ena’s eyes fill with dread, but she nods. “All right.”
“Thank you,” I say, wiping away the last of my tears. “And thank you for letting us play here tonight. I know it was short notice.”
Aunt Ena waves away my thanks. “You know this is still your home. You can always bring your friends here. But are you going to play again . . . so soon? Look at the state of your hand.”
My fingers are covered in Honey’s cartoon-themed Band-Aids, which will make it hard to play. But more importantly, I’m not sure I’m ready to pick up even my ordinary fiddle again, not after last night, not after my encounter with the cold, insatiable shadow man. But I know I need to be here, in this house full of familiar ghosts.
“I’ll be all right,” I say, but Aunt Ena doesn’t look convinced.
Cedar and Rose are the first to arrive, and Cedar laces his fingers in mine almost as soon as he’s in the door. Aunt Ena raises her eyebrows at me, and I shoot her a look worthy of my mama.
“This house is a fucking nightmare,” Rose says before she notices Aunt Ena. “This is the most haunted-looking place in the whole goddamn South.” Cedar clears his throat, and Rose says, “Oh, sorry, I—”
Aunt Ena laughs. “It is haunted. Very haunted. But I like it here.”
Rose’s eyes widen with appreciation, and she disappears on a tour with Aunt Ena before I’ve even introduced them.
Now that I’m alone with Cedar, I pull him into the living room, onto an ancient couch. He doesn’t let go of my hand, and his other one is already caressing my face, stroking my hair. His thumb settles into one corner of my mouth, which draws my eyes up to his.
“There she is,” he whispers. “My Shady Grove. I was so scared for you last night.”
At his words, I feel the shadow man’s hideous presence again, so I push myself closer to Cedar. God, his eyes are so green, his lashes so black. I want to swim in those eyes, bathe in them, stay there, away from all the troubles of my life. I lean forward and kiss him, breathing in the smell of him. When I pull back, he smiles sleepily, like I’m a drug sending him off to his dreams. “Mmm,” he says.
Someone knocks at the front door, and I reluctantly get up to answer it. Sarah and Orlando stand on the porch in the twilight. Orlando is mesmerized by a brownish-colored moth fluttering around the porch light, but Sarah finds my eyes right away.
“My valiant rescuer,” I say in an attempt at a joke.
She quirks her lips into a shape that could almost be called a smile, then turns to Orlando. “Come on, you can bring the moth if you want,” she says, pulling him by the arm.
“It’s a tulip-tree beauty,” he says. “Quite common.” But all the same he cups his hands around it, drawing it away from the light. He carries it inside, and Sarah picks up the guitar he left, shaking her head with an indulgent smile.
/> We all settle down together in the living room, Cedar and I on the couch, Rose, now returned from her ghost tour, in an overstuffed chair, Sarah and Orlando on the floor. Aunt Ena is in the kitchen, pretending to bake but probably just eavesdropping.
Rose pulls out her little banjo and starts an idle sort of alternating roll, her fingers dancing over the strings. No one speaks.
“Well,” Cedar finally says, but then there’s another knock on the door.
Rose sighs dramatically, rising to her feet. “Will that bastard ever be on time?”
When Rose walks by her to get the door, Sarah starts shifting her weight around, crossing and uncrossing her arms. Just being in the same room with Rose makes Sarah fragile as an autumn leaf. I leave Cedar’s side and sit next to her on the floor, my shoulder close but not touching hers. Orlando is on her other side, watching the moth traverse the back of his hand.
I don’t see Kenneth until he plops down in my place next to Cedar, looks around at everyone except me, and says, “Well, this looks fun. Who needs ghosts when you guys can make a room feel so dead?”
No one laughs, except Aunt Ena from the kitchen. Why did he even come here? He must hate me now. What’s he trying to prove? Maybe he just wants to hear exactly what his father said. I can’t blame him for that.
“Anyway,” Cedar begins, “we’re here because Shady raised her stepdad’s ghost last night, and . . . it didn’t go well.” He settles worried eyes on me, waiting. “I think you should tell us what happened.”
“She doesn’t have to tell us anything she doesn’t want to,” Sarah says. “It’s her business.” You can always count on Sarah to be the defender of privacy.
“It stopped being her business when she dragged us all into this shit,” Rose says, turning her scowl squarely on me. I don’t know why Rose is here either. It’s not for my sake. Maybe for Cedar’s, or maybe Sarah’s. She is clearly no fan of mine. “Spill, Shady. Now.”
