“You’ve given this some thought,” she said in a tight voice.
Excited, nodding still, Sheldon said, “An Affenpinscher. They have faces like monkeys, but I like them. I like them a whole lot. They’re small terriers but they’re tough like a bigger dog.”
“What I was actually asking—”
“Or a Bullmastiff,” he said excitedly. “They’re strong. Their coats are either red, fawn, or brindle.”
“Listen, Sheldon, I—”
“Or a…an English Foxhound. They’re great hunter dogs.” Slobber dribbled from his mouth. He wiped at it with the back of his great big hand. “Or maybe a tan or red golden Pharaoh Hound with white markings on its tail, chest, and paws. Pharaoh Hounds are noble, you know. Like kings. Or…or…queens. Ain’t nothing wrong with women puppies.”
“Sheldon?”
“And they actually blush—nose and ears turn a deep rose when they’re happy or excited.”
“You know your breeds,” she said, frowning.
Sheldon stopped. Why was Shepherd’s wife frowning? He swallowed, and asked, “You don’t like dogs?” afraid of how she was going to reply. He couldn’t imagine anyone not liking dogs. He didn’t believe that he could like such a person.
“Dogs are fine,” she replied.
Sheldon exhaled. “Then…”
“Who’s in the shed, Sheldon?”
He shook his head. “I can’t say. I was told I can’t say.”
“Let me at least look. A quick peek. That won’t hurt anyone. You don’t have to tell me anything. You can keep your promise.”
“I can’t say,” he said. “Shepherd’s wife shouldn’t be asking about the shed. I can’t say. I was told I can’t say.”
“I know you can’t say,” she said, clearly frustrated with him. “I’m not asking you to say anything,” she continued in that tone. “I just want a quick look.”
“No one can look in there.”
“You’ve looked in there,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but…” Words failed him.
“Logic is a beautiful thing isn’t it?” she said. There was something hateful growing in her voice to piggyback the frustration. “Do you have a proper retort?”
Sheldon frowned, and looked around helplessly. “I don’t know what you’re saying. What it means.”
“Let me look in the shed.”
“Can’t.” Shaking his head. Poking out his lips. Suddenly he’d turned into a petulant child.
“You can’t?” she said. “Why do you continue to say that? Do you know who I am?”
“Shepherd’s wife.”
“You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my husband,” she reminded him.
“No one ever thanks me for what I do here,” he replied. “No one is gonna thank Mr. Merritt for the bass, perch, blue marlin—”
“Stop it,” she yelled.
“—grouper, tuna, Spanish mackerel—”
“I said stop it.”
“—crabs…mercury.” He looked at her then, a frown knitting his brow, his own frustration blooming. “Maybe this isn’t such a nice place.”
Lemon fumbled, as he had done a moment before, for a response.
Couldn’t come up with a suitable one.
“Oh, this is just…” she started, and then took off in the direction of the shed. Sheldon nearly toppled over while pivoting. He managed to right himself and catch up with her, to head her off.
“Get out of my way,” she barked. “I’m taking a look in that shed.”
“Please,” he said. “Shepherd’s wife shouldn’t be looking in the shed.”
She juked right—but Sheldon mirrored the step—and then left. An object dropped from the back pocket of his shorts; a small rectangle of something landing softly on the ground. They both reached for it, Lemon’s fingers grasping it first.
A paperback book.
The Encyclopedia of Dog Breeds.
Pocket professional guide.
“What are you doing with this?” she asked, her voice rising, something bad happening in her eyes, a narrowing, a sudden darkness taking them hostage. Her anger made his tongue feel dry and thick.
“This is Candace’s book,” she said.
“Please,” Sheldon said. “Give me that back.”
“I want to know why you have Candace’s book. Can you even read?”
“I can read,” he said softly, hating himself at once for the lack of conviction in his voice.
“Is that so?” she said, thumbing through the pages. “Belgian Sheepdog. Here, you want to read this to me?”
Sheldon shook his head, his gaze on his feet again.
She thumbed through more pages. “How about the Finnish Spitz,” she went on. “I would just love to hear about them.”
“I haven’t learned those dogs yet,” Sheldon whispered.
“You haven’t learned them? What does that even mean?”
“I will, though,” he told her. “Miss Candace reads them to me. She’s very patient. It takes me a while, but I will learn all those dogs. Miss Candace reads them to me. She’s very patient.”
Lemon Potter pushed the small book into Sheldon’s chest. “Forget everything. Forget the shed. Forget whoever is inside. Take your silly little book. You’re pathetic.”
“I’m what?”
“Candace is dead, fool. Ask Mr. Merritt. She’s dead.”
“Don’t say that,” he stammered, shaking his head back and forth, covering his ears and flailing his arms. “Don’t say that. Miss Candace reads to me. She’s very patient. Don’t say that.”
“She’s dead,” Lemon repeated, her eyes tearing. She seemed to realize the vulnerability she was showing and took a deep breath to quickly settle herself down. Squared her shoulders and skulked away without another word.
Sheldon watched her go, a feeling of helplessness and despair squeezing the air from his lungs. He wanted to learn about the Belgian Sheepdog and the Finnish Spitz, but he knew that he never would. He knew, without understanding exactly how he knew, that Shepherd’s wife was telling him the truth. She wasn’t lying like so many did when they spoke to him. He understood that things were about to change in a major way.
Miss Candace read to him.
She was very patient.
But as Shepherd’s wife said, she was indeed dead.
✽ ✽ ✽
Lemon trampled through the brush, working her way back toward the tents, breathing wildly through her nose, tears painting streaks down her face. She ached all over—emotionally and spiritually as much as physically. Sheldon had Candace’s puppy book. And she was certain that Merritt had intimate knowledge of Candace’s last moments alive. What did Lemon have?
A mind cluttered with worst-case scenarios.
A shattered spirit.
A worn body.
Sheldon hadn’t given chase, but something dogged Lemon’s trail nevertheless. She started to trot, trying her best to keep ahead of whatever it was. After a minute, she broke into a full-out sprint, nearly tumbling over a stubborn, deep-rooted bush in the process.
Only it wasn’t a bush.
He was the only child on the island, and didn’t quite reach the height of Sheldon’s compost pile. He had skin the color of congealed tree sap. Tight black curls clinging to his perfectly oval head. His dark eyes were always large with wonder. His nose seemed to run snot like a sieve—allergies and youth the culprits, she supposed. And today, as usual, he wore swimming shorts with a mesh lining and a small T-shirt that was impossibly free of wrinkles. Flip-flops revealed the toes on his clean feet. A bracelet of temporary tattoos encircled his right wrist. Sail boats, it looked like. Last time Lemon had seen him it had been dolphins.
“Are you running around here by yourself, Noah?” Lemon smiled and reflexively reached for the Boy-Stubborn Bush. He didn’t lurch away from her. Nor did he return her smile or speak. He just looked at Lemon with those wondering eyes. Her fingers settled on his head. She was about to muss his hair.
<
br /> “Noah, get over here,” a soft and yet firm voice called.
Noah hustled over to his mother, as obedient as an elevator. Deborah’s skin was darker than her son’s, her hair lustrous and flowing down to her waist. Lemon had wondered about her background and settled on allowing her the distinction “a woman of color.” They were both women of color. And Deborah was the only other person on the island, besides Candace of course, who was close to Lemon in age.
“I almost ran him over,” Lemon said, smiling. “I apologize if I startled him.”
“You keep away from my boy,” Deborah said, her eyes narrowed, her hands on her son’s shoulders while Noah looked at Lemon with something akin to sadness.
Lemon’s stomach did cartwheels. “I didn’t mean to upset anyone. It’s just that—”
“Keep. Away,” Deborah barked. Then mother and son turned and disappeared into the grove of trees.
Lemon stood there for several beats, dumbfounded, biting her lip. She’d stood in front of Sheldon, wearing no underclothes beneath her thin dress, and hadn’t felt nearly as naked as she did at the moment. Whereas Lemon had fallen into an easy comfort with Candace, her relationship with Deborah had been contentious from the beginning. After each failed encounter Lemon promised herself she would stop trying to forge a connection, a bond, and yet, here she was again, smiling, and feeling miserable after Deborah pushed aside the smile and the friendship it offered.
She bypassed her own tent, still thinking of Deborah, and settled outside the tent of the island’s eldest woman. Inside, Miss Amelia swayed back and forth on an old wooden rocking chair that squealed like faulty car brakes. Her flawless white hair was tied back with a blue bandanna to keep it from falling into her austere eyes. Her forehead was lined in deep concentration. She ran a gnarled finger over the text of the battered old Bible spread open across her lap, reading each word out loud like a child in school. It was impossible to miss the urgent right angles that composed Miss Amelia’s jaw, the lack of gentle curved edges that were typically found in a woman’s face, and still there was something as stunning as a sinless world about her appearance.
Lemon called up some spit and licked her lips.
“You waitin’ on the moon to kiss the sky or something?” the older woman asked without taking her eyes off her Bible. Standing up, Miss Amelia was slightly stooped over, her bony frame overwhelmed in whatever sun-faded house dress she chose to wear. But today, sitting down, her back was nearly straight and she seemed to fill her cotton dress like water in a balloon.
“I didn’t want to disturb your reading,” Lemon said.
“I see. You’d rather stand there breathing like a rabid dog. Nothin’ disturbin’ ‘bout that.”
“I’m sorry,” Lemon whispered. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
The older woman slowly looked up from her Bible. “Oh my, oh my,” she said, her severe eyes taking in Lemon from head to toe. “Look at you. You tryna catch a whole nest of bees with that dress, ain’t you?”
Lemon dropped her gaze to her feet, scolded. “No, ma’am.”
“Don’t go studyin’ your feet now, chile. Head up.”
Lemon raised her head but said nothing.
“Forgive me for what I said ‘bout your dress,” the older woman said. “Prob’ly would have worn one just like dat myself, back when I had the figure for it. Old folks get to thinkin’ sometimes that nothin’ they ever say is foolish or wrong.”
“It’s fine,” Lemon told her. “I’m sorry for bothering you. I’m okay.”
“Okay?” Miss Amelia clucked her tongue. “Anybody lay their eyeballs on you can see plain as day you’re carryin’ a mighty heavy weight.”
Lemon sighed.
“Come on in,” the older woman said, indicating the seat next to her chair—a thick stack of yellowed newspapers bound together with gray duct tape. “Let me finish this passage and we can talk.”
Lemon hesitated.
“Come on, chile. Ain’t no paint dryin’ you need to be waitin’ on.”
Lemon ducked her head and stepped inside the tent and took a seat. Miss Amelia nodded and refocused on her Bible, trailing another line of text with her gnarled finger. At the end of the line she licked the finger and turned the page. She quietly mouthed the words of Scripture, the finger moving line by line across the text as she read. When she reached the end of the second page she ripped it out, crumpled it, and softly tossed it into a growing pile in the corner.
“Why do you do that?” Lemon asked.
“Pardon?”
“Rip out the pages.”
Miss Amelia smiled, her teeth too perfect and too white to be real. “Somethin’ as powerful as this good book, I’m neva gonna have to need to read it again,” she explained. “Don’t even wanna tempt myself. If it don’t stick to my bones the first time, I ain’t fit to get a second chance.”
Lemon shook her head in bewilderment. “What could you have possibly done, Miss Amelia? Why are you here?”
The older woman grumbled but didn’t answer.
“I’ve done some awful things myself,” Lemon offered. “I did something awful today, in fact.”
“They say there’s been turkeys looked up in the sky for so long when it was raining they drowned.” Miss Amelia grumbled again. “It’s probably some old foolish untruth, but it struck me and I haven’t been able to forget it.”
“I don’t understand,” Lemon said.
“Perspective, chile,” Miss Amelia replied. “We think the turkey is dumb. And maybe it is. But that turkey is focused on something it considers beautiful. I’m sure you ain’t done nothin’ more awful than the next person, it’s just your perspective that you have.”
“I tried to take advantage of Sheldon,” Lemon admitted. “Candace ran off, and I don’t know what happened to her. I suspect she’s dead, but Merritt isn’t saying anything. Sheldon’s guarding the sheds with his life. And there’s talk that someone is being held inside one of them. A prisoner. A white man. I tried to get some answers from Sheldon.”
“Reason for the dress,” Miss Amelia said, no hint of a question in her inflection.
Lemon nodded. “I shamed myself by dressing like a whore and—”
“You’d be wise not to involve yourself in the island’s doings,” Miss Amelia cut her off. “Leave that work up to the Trustees. Lest you wanna find the ugly in somethin’ you could easily convince yourself was beautiful.”
“Convince…” Lemon’s gaze scanned across the landscape around them. Up high in a tree, a colorful bird pecked at the bark. An animal of some sort called out from the distance. “You’ve heard the whispers about me, Miss Amelia?”
“Whispers? All I know, chile, is that Shepherd spoke forcefully when he vowed himself to you as a husband. That man didn’t whisper one word.”
“Still,” Lemon said, “you have heard about me? About what I did?”
“Shepherd is—”
“Forget Shepherd.”
“Chile, I’d watch what you say. Maybe I made a mistake invitin’ you in. I don’t care too much for this conversation.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that…I don’t want to convince myself of anything that isn’t true.”
“Perspective,” Miss Amelia said. “It’s all about perspective.”
“I’ll give you some perspective,” Lemon said, an edge to her voice.
“Don’t need none.”
“I was twenty-four at the time, less than twenty credits left to graduate,” Lemon said. “I’d missed a few semesters to look after my…well, that doesn’t matter.”
“None of what you ‘bout to tell matters, chile. Leave it be.”
“I’d been dating a guy off and on the entire time I was in school. Albert. Really his name was Alberto, but he’d dropped the O to make it sound more American. Albert was good at dropping things. Me, most of all. More times than I could count. But he’d always come begging to get back in with me and I’d always take him. I didn’t have very much b
elief in my worth.”
“Neva takes a motha”—Miss Amelia coughed, cleared her throat. “Neva take ‘em back, chile. That’s my advice. Now, let’s leave this story alone.”
“He claimed we’d grown apart, the last time,” Lemon went on, determined to finish this. “Really our divide was named Michaela Cottle. I’m not even sure that Albert was aware that I knew about her.”
“Love don’t last always,” Miss Amelia said. “Now that’s enough of this talk.”
“It was hardly love,” Lemon said. “On either of our parts.”
Miss Amelia clasped the Bible to her bosom. “You gonna make me act ugly if you don’t stop this talk, chile. I’m tryin’ to be Christ-like. Leave the past in the past.”
“I ran into some trouble and needed a place to stay,” Lemon continued. “Just for one night. I called Albert, for some reason. We hadn’t spoken in forever. But there I was. In his apartment. It was innocent enough on my part.”
“I don’t see the point in all of this, chile. Go unburden yourself with someone else. I’m too old for this…stuff.”
“I took a shower to try to feel clean.” Lemon shuddered. “When I came out he asked if I wanted to watch a movie. I didn’t, but I thought it would be rude to demur. We’d barely passed the opening credits when he leaned over and started kissing me, and yes, I responded to it.”
“Hmm.”
“Then he started touching me,” Lemon said. “That I didn’t respond to.”
“Hmm.”
“With heels on, I might have reached Albert’s shoulders. He was a big boy. I said ‘no’ a hundred times. And then…once he’d started…right there on his couch with an unwatched movie playing on the television…I closed my eyes and said no in my head a hundred times more.”
“None of us here needs to explain nothin’,” Miss Amelia said. “Shepherd made it so.”
“He was so gentle,” Lemon continued. “I kept telling myself afterward that it couldn’t have possibly been rape. He even kissed my forehead once he finished. Went and retrieved a blanket and covered me with it like the perfect gentleman. It couldn’t have been rape. But then there was the problem of how many times I’d said no. I confronted him about it a few days later and…well, it didn’t go well. Albert couldn’t believe I was calling it rape. Couldn’t believe that I would label him a rapist.”
Scared of the Dark: A Crime Novel Page 6
