Dark Secrets: A Paranormal Romance Anthology

by Colleen Gleason

  Finn had talked to her, read to her, even sang to her (only when he was sure Jon was sound asleep), and told her stories. Lots of stories. He told her embarrassing tales from his youth. He talked about Jon... his father’s practice... his mother’s patient instruction... the people they grew up around. He talked about his books.

  Sometimes, forgetting that their conversations weren’t interactive, he’d laugh at parts of the story where she should be laughing, or pause for reactions. When he realized a response wasn’t coming, he’d chuckle and keep going.

  He even told her about his “first” (Andrea McElroy, sister to Jackson McElroy, the co-owner of Mr. Jenkins downstairs). After that rolled off the tongue with relative ease, he actually told her about Tara, his college girlfriend. Tara was the only girl that Finn had ever used the word “love” with, but she was also the one who opened his eyes to what his future love life would be: a series of casual encounters. What was it she had said when they broke up? That Finn going to college for a degree in literature was like putting a pig in a tuxedo. Tara thought he was trying to be something he was not. He never understood this point of view. His mother had taught him he could be, and have, anything he wanted.

  Finn talked a lot about what they would do when she woke up. He was going to take her out on his boat and show her the sea; how to set the traps, buoy the trawl. He wanted to take her all over the island and show her the hidden spots visitors normally missed; take her to the old mill and the granary, and the forgotten lake. Up to the old, haunted lighthouse. He would make plans, saying, “And then on Friday we can…” as if stating it out loud would make it happen; would make it real.

  And what if she woke up and wanted nothing to do with him? He didn’t allow that passing thought to occupy his mind for more than a heartbeat.

  Finn continued to plow the path. Scoop, lift, backup, dump, down again, scoop, lift, repeat. Even through his protective winter gear, he was chilled to the bone, shivering. Finn knew he would have to do this job in shifts or risk getting sick. The storm was over, and the air was still, but it was a biting cold. The snow had a thin layer of ice on top from the freezing rain that came at the tail end of the storm.

  He wondered if Ana had family they should call. He had mentioned it to Jon, but his brother had rejected the idea, reminding him that until Ana woke, they would have no way of getting that contact information.

  Jon had been very attentive to her medical needs, and was diligent about keeping her fed, hydrated, and her wound dressed, even if he was unnecessarily methodical and cold about it. Finn laughed to himself, imagining his brother, upstairs, awkwardly staring at the wall while sitting by her side.

  Off to the east, past Ana’s house, Finn could see the Auslander home, and what looked like Hans standing on the porch, looking his way. Although the house was a good quarter-mile away, the view was clear, and Finn waved. Hans did not wave back, but continued looking in Finn’s general direction.

  “Such odd people,” he muttered to himself.

  He didn’t think about it for long. His mind kept wandering back to Ana. When would she wake up? When she did, what would happen?

  * * *

  26- JONATHAN

  Day eight of Ana’s long rest came and went without ceremony, but the elapsed time was not lost on Jon. The longer the girl remained in her deep sleep, the potential for things to go wrong increased.

  Though the phone lines had been down for days, it would not be long before Whitman could get his truck across the island. The only reason Jon thought the Auslanders hadn’t found a way over, was their lack of mobility in their older years. Alex had been taking care of their errands for several years now, and they hardly ever left the house except for town events. Gertrude only allowed Alex to help begrudgingly. Grocery shopping was a chance to chat with the other busybodies about the latest town gossip. She may have given up weekly marketing, but she’d never give up the chance to socialize in larger settings. Even so, she and Hans hardly got out of their chairs regardless of where they were.

  Jon wondered how much her desire to be nosy and “helpful,” could or would overcome her better sense. Finn seemed to think there was another storm coming, and for the first time in his life, Jon welcomed it.

  He was in a constant state of anxiousness, between Ana’s continued sleep, her miraculous and medically impossible healing, and the growing concerns regarding fellow residents. Constantly restless and feeling helpless, not knowing when she would wake up and if she did, would she be all right. And the dread at every sound the house made… wondering if someone was on their porch, be it Alex, or Gertrude, or Sheriff Horn...

  He couldn’t resist the urge to continue studying her wound. The pink scar tissue was fading, and if he could believe what he was seeing, she might not even have a scar in a few days. I am losing my mind. Finn doesn’t see it, so I must be going crazy. There’s no other explanation, because it’s medically impossible.

  Finn spent the entire day prior plowing. Unfortunately, his efforts were for nothing, as he discovered the storm had blown the doors down, and spilled the tanks. Most of the lobster had perished, rendering them inedible.

  “Weeks of fishing, gone.” Finn was angry, and in one of his rare melancholy moods.

  Jon had no words of comfort for him, but he silently mourned for Finn’s wasted efforts. “How many days of food do we have left?”

  Finn ran his hands through his hair, blowing out a deep breath. “A week, maybe? More? The roads might open up in a few days, but I think the next storm coming in is going to close them back down again.”

  “But we have the canned food, right?” Jon pressed.

  “I took most of it over to Gertrude and Hans two weeks ago, remember?” Jon did remember. Finn had done it out of kindness, when Alex had been remiss in his grocery duties.

  “Yes, but you were supposed to replace it.”

  Finn sighed, shifting in shame at his obvious and unforgivable miss. “I meant to, but time got away from me.”

  “Seriously, Finn?” Jon stopped, forcing himself not to chastise him any further. Recent days had been taxing on them both. “So what are our options?” he asked, realizing he already knew.

  “Get across town somehow to the food storage…”

  On the other side of the island. “Christ.”

  “Well, there’s Dad’s old snowcat…”

  Jon laughed. “That old beast has been sitting out in the driveway for a decade. Dad never even bothered to cover it.”

  “I know, and I have no idea how to use it. I mean, the damned thing is for commercial use for god’s sake. Dad said people go through months of training to operate equipment that large…” Finn’s voice trailed off. “But it can’t be that hard, right? And it’s unlikely there will be anyone else on the roads.”

  Jon paused, honestly speechless. When had this situation gotten to the point where he would allow his little brother to risk his neck going across town in an oversized vehicle that no one knew how to drive, and hadn’t been started in over a decade? Why had he not used the phone to call for help, when it was still an option? How had they let it get this far?

  He could see Finn sharing the same thought process. Before Finn could speak, Jon said, “I’ll go.”

  Finn laughed. “No way. You might break a nail.”

  “Hilarious. But either way I won’t have you risking your neck.”

  “The only neck that might be risked is yours. You won’t even get on the quads in the summer.”

  “That’s different. It’s because I don’t actually enjoy riding them,” Jon protested, only half-lying.

  “And you’re scared as shit to crash in one. You’ve never manned Forbia. You don’t run the plow. I’m not saying you’re a pussy Jon, but…. you’re kind of a pussy.”

  “You are no more qualified than I am to drive it,” was the best Jon could come up with.

  “And you’re no more qualified to fly a plane than I am, but who would you rather trust your life to if
the pilot suddenly died?”

  “Fuzzy logic, at best. Besides, it might take a while, and if Ana wakes up, she’s going to want you there.”

  “You can be there, right? You did it before with no problem,” Finn teased, both of them remembering Jon’s discomfort. He had sat there, hands in his lap, staring at various things in the room off and on for hours. He would get up for a drink, come back, fidget some more. Jon supposed talking to her would have been a better way to pass the time, but he could think of absolutely nothing to say. His awkwardness apparently extended even to unconscious women. And yes… maybe that was also a part of why he offered to go.

  Before he could say anything, Finn was already out the door, apparently off to see if he could get the snowcat fueled and fired up.

  * * *

  27- ANA

  College graduation. Everyone was there: her family, fellow students from the past four years, good and bad; her friends and sorority sisters. Everyone who was anyone in her life was packed into the crowded stadium.

  Ana sat clutching her degree amidst the laughter, applause, anecdotes, and nervous speeches. She could have been giving the valedictorian speech. No one but Nicolas knew she had intentionally dropped her grade point average by a fraction to avoid standing in front of thousands of people. Her comfort meant more than a silly title.

  She fidgeted, as the familiar wave of panic rushed over her. The sounds around her were hardly loud, but in her heart and chest they were deafening. Her head pulsed with every new round of applause; every name called. She was grateful for her chair because the dizziness was rolling in and out, like the flow of an ocean tide. What she wouldn’t give to use her ability to control her anxiety. She could heal anything physical that afflicted her but she could not soothe her own mind.

  “Just keep your eyes on me, Muffins,” Nicolas had said before the ceremony, using his private nickname for her. It was meant with the irony it suggested. She hadn’t asked him for help, hadn’t said how nervous she was; he had already known. If they didn’t have two very different sets of parents, she would have sworn they were twins.

  She tried to do exactly as he suggested, but she kept losing him in the sea of faces. He had deliberately worn a bright pink shirt (much to the dismay of the family) to make this easier for her, but the crowd seemed endless and not even a loud shirt stood out.

  Ana squeezed her toes tightly into her shoes, one of a half-dozen private ways she controlled her stress. That not bringing relief, she tried thrusting her tongue firmly against the roof of her mouth: inhaling, exhaling. The few times she was called to accept something at the podium were the easiest because it kept her mind focused on controlling each step, one foot in front of the other. When she was idle, it was much harder.

  After the ceremony, her family crowded around her with words of encouragement and pride, but it wasn’t until she felt her cousin’s hand slip into hers that her heartbeat slowed some and the normalcy returned. She accepted hugs and returned kisses in a blur of familial comfort, while holding tightly to his hand.

  “You are normal,” Nicolas said to her once. “And if you’re not, then we’re all seriously fucked because if everyone else is normal and that’s the standard, we might as well start preparing for the zombie apocalypse.”

  “Well, start preparing fucker, because it’s coming,” she had said.

  Oftentimes, she had no idea what point he was trying to get across with the things he said. But it didn’t matter, because she laughed. Reassuring her, not wit or humor, was Nicolas’ real intention.

  Ana was never one to label herself. It was the years of therapy, and her father’s failed attempts to understand, which had done that. She might have allowed a label if any of them had fit, but no one had come close to covering all the corners of her complicated mind. Complicated was not a word she used to flatter herself, and it had little do with the family she came from. She would have always preferred to be simpler, even if Nicolas assured her people like that were harbingers of doom.

  The graduation party was next. Ana mentally steeled herself to exercise yet another social skill she lacked: small talk.

  Nicolas gifted her a few moments of sanity by telling the family he would drive her over. In the car, he didn’t bother telling her how nice she looked, or how proud he was. He knew she didn’t need to hear that from him. He said only, “I’m bouncing tonight if the beer sucks.”

  He had never failed her. Never let her down, never abandoned her; had always been there in the moments she was most afraid. So why, why was he not there now, when she was in the darkest place she had ever known. Why?

  Ana opened her eyes.

  * * *

  28- NICOLAS

  Adrienne called him a couple times to see if he knew anything of Ana’s whereabouts, but Nicolas told her he wasn’t worried. Ana and Adrienne were very similar creatures, except that Ana had never been through anything life changing and traumatic like Adrienne had. Adrienne was healing, but would always be broken. Nicolas and Oz had an unspoken, shared fear that certain stressors would break her again, and this time she would run off for good. He would not trouble her with his concerns… especially considering they were of the potential missing person variety. Too close to home.

  Nicolas met Oz for drinks several days after Oz’s peculiar visit. It was Oz’s idea, and despite how things had gone the last time they hung out, Nicolas was relieved both when Oz suggested it, and also when he acted as though nothing at all had happened. This was preferable for Nicolas, who had bigger things on his mind than his friend’s mood swings.

  It didn’t take long before Oz—in his usual quiet, diplomatic way—confronted him and asked if something was wrong with Ana. Oz knows me too well.

  “I think something… has happened, yes,” Nicolas said cautiously.

  Oz eyed him. “Something… has… happened?” he echoed.

  “Ah, fuck, I don’t fucking know,” Nicolas said, dropping his guard. “It’s been eight days. We haven’t gone that long without talking in years, and she called me every goddamn day since she got to Maine. That dumb-fuck overseer told me she was fine, and over at the neighbor’s house or some shit, but his story was really fucking weird, Ozzy, like he was hiding something.”

  Oz leaned over his beer so Nicolas could not see his expression. Nicolas half-expected Oz to try offering a reasonable explanation for what was happening, but he seemed to understand that wasn’t what Nicolas was after. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same question every day for a week, Ozzy. So far none of the answers are working out for me.”

  “Have you thought of going up there?” Oz’s eyes were wild again suddenly, the way they had been the last time they met.

  Nicolas snorted. “Fuck yes, I have. You know I have. I can get a flight into Boston or Portland, but the island is shut down. None of the ferries are running, and I can’t find someone who will charter me over.”

  “Well, that has to change soon, right? People can’t be stuck on an island forever without someone helping out,” Oz said confidently. When Nicolas looked up at him, Oz dropped his eyes, looking back down at his drink.

  “You’d think Ozzy, but you’d be wrong. One of the guys I talked to said there are winters where the ferries don’t run at all after the first storm hits. They prepare for this shit,” he ranted, knocking his fist on the bar. “You know, it’s times like this that make me consider investing in a private plane.”

  Oz gave him a half-hearted smile. “Right, because if you had one, you’d know exactly what to do with it.”

  “That’s what a fucking pilot is for, Ozzy.”

  Nicolas felt better after talking to Oz, even though he was no closer to figuring out what he wanted to do. Subsequent calls to Alex Whitman went unreturned. He knew he should go up there anyway and try to throw his weight around. Even if he didn’t find a way to Summer Island, he would at least feel useless than he felt sitting around here scratching his ass.

&
nbsp; As if reading his mind, Oz ventured, with a touch of nervousness in his voice, “If you want, we could go up there. You and me, I mean.”

  “What about Adrienne?” The rest of the question was left unspoken.

  “She will be fine for a few days,” Oz said, sounding more as if he was trying to convince himself.

  “Hey, you need a few days off. I’m not judging!” Nicolas threw his hands up with a laugh.

  Oz rolled his eyes, but then dropped them again and said nothing. Nicolas had touched a nerve, but this time he didn’t think troubles with Adrienne were what was on his friend’s mind. Oz had been acting weird for a while. Since Ana had left, really. Despite his overriding concern for Ana, Nicolas could not deny his interest in figuring out what was going on with Oz. Especially now when, of all things, Oz offered to join him.

  “If I can help out at all, even if only by being your incredibly handsome and charming wingman, then that’s more useful than I’ve felt at home lately,” Oz answered, still inspecting his beer.

  “Let me think about it,” Nicolas said, but he had already thought about it and decided. Though he was still concerned for her safety, a small part of him had begun to wonder if her elusiveness was not personal. If she wasn’t trying to send him a message, of sorts. If that were to happen—if he were to show up, only to find she had been intentionally avoiding him—then, selfishly, he wanted Oz there to soften the blow.

  You know Ana. She’s always preferred to be alone, Adrienne had said to Nicolas, when he was the one who was supposed to be reassuring her.

  Yes, but she’s always made an exception for me, Nicolas thought, but did not say, to his sister. They had faced everything together, hand in hand, presenting a united front against the world. They had never needed anything but each other, and she had never once shown any indication this bothered her.