Volition

by Lily Paradis

  The sun hadn’t quite set yet, and the orange light on the trees made the drive in front of the plantation look magical. I skipped down the front steps of the house and followed a trail under artfully overgrown trees that made a tunnel over the road. Small amounts of light filtered through, and I felt like I was walking into another world.

  I stopped when I reached the cemetery almost on the edge of the property line. The gate was already open, so I swung it shut behind me as I entered. There were headstones that dated back hundreds of years, and most of them were so weathered the inscriptions were unreadable. In the very center, two headstones stood out, gleaming bright white in newness compared to the archaic Hales of the past.

  Denny Aidan McKenna.

  Margaret Evaline Hale McKenna.

  I brushed my hand over the words on my mother’s headstone, tracing each letter with my index finger. It was our standard greeting instead of what it should be.

  My father was the first non-Hale to ever be buried inside the Hale pomerium, and it wasn’t without difficulty from Lara. In the end, I wasn’t sure how it happened, but I was grateful they had not been separated.

  It could have been worse. There was a mausoleum that was built first before anything else because my ancestors had to worry about hurricanes washing all the dead out. For some reason, that wasn’t relevant anymore since no one expanded on it or built another when it was full.

  I nodded to my father’s headstone and sat down in between the two plots. This was a strange custom for Denny, no doubt. His ancestors would have built him a boat, set him along the river, and fired flaming arrows that would have taken him to his watery grave. Here, I knew he would be listless, but he had Maggie. He would endure anything for her.

  I looked to my left at my mother’s plot and then to my right at my father’s.

  It annoyed me to no end that they were across from one another instead of side by side. This was no doubt Lara’s last act of vengeance against Denny. I could just imagine him trying to reach across to Maggie, never quite able to get there.

  That pulled at my heart, and I couldn’t stand it.

  The dark and twisty part of me saw an opportunity in a shovel leaning against the far side of the gate.

  It was a lot heavier than I expected it to be, so dragging it back to my parents was more difficult than it was supposed to be. I lifted it and dug in deep, expecting to move a lot of earth.

  Not much budged, but I had time.

  Denny would want to go to Maggie, not the other way around.

  “Here goes, Dad.”

  I plunged the shovel deeper into the ground, disturbing the grass that grew on top like little strands of green hair.

  I wasn’t making much headway, but after ten minutes, I had a small pile of earth dug out, and I was feeling satisfied with myself. It wasn’t like Lara was going to come find me to say good night, so I could stay out until dawn if I wanted to. The sun had mostly set, and I could feel the darkness creeping in with the chill of night.

  The metal of the shovel was getting cold, too, and that was creeping into my hands.

  I let it.

  I braced myself to scoop more dirt when I heard a voice from behind me.

  I didn’t move immediately because I was trying to decide whether it was real or a figment of my imagination. No one ever came out to the cemetery, except for me. Well, I knew the gardeners came to groom the shrubs and cut the grass, but I never saw them do it.

  “What are you doing?”

  This time, I stuck the shovel in the ground in front of me and turned around as I wiped the dirt that had crept up the handle and onto my dress. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  The figure approached, and I could see him more clearly as he stepped into one of the last patches of light the dying sunset provided.

  He had shaggy dark hair with even darker eyes. His skin looked tan in a way that mine would never be even if someone sprayed me with chemicals.

  He cleared his throat. “It actually looks like you’re digging up a grave, but I might be hallucinating.”

  “You’re not,” I told him flatly, pulling the shovel out of the ground.

  I didn’t have to look at him to know his eyes went wide, and his brain alerted him to my fifteen shades of crazy.

  He lingered for a few moments, and then I heard his footsteps retreating. The telltale clang of the gate told me I was alone again with a hundred Hales and two McKennas.

  What I wasn’t expecting was to hear the clang again a few minutes later and the crunch of his feet as he approached me.

  When I looked up, it was my eyes that went wide this time.

  He was carrying a second shovel.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him, wiping the moisture off my brow with the back of my hand.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” he asked, mirroring my words.

  “It looks like you’re going to help me dig up this grave, but I might be hallucinating.”

  He buried his shovel in the ground above Denny, much deeper than I was able to. “You’re not.”

  I swallowed the basketball-sized lump in my throat.

  After a few minutes, he interrupted our silence. “Do you remember me?” he asked, tilting his head to look at me.

  I didn’t meet his gaze. “No,” I told him, except I did.

  Of course I did. How could I not? He was asking such a silly question, and because those words left his lips, he gave it away that he didn’t know how important he was to me.

  I didn’t care for many people in this world, but I cared so much for Jesse Elliott. Something inside my soul recognized something inside his and not because he was helping me dig up my father’s grave. There was something wrong with him, and I wanted to know what it was and what had made him that way. I had never known what it was.

  I hadn’t forgotten him, but he didn’t know I was the one who got him this job. He hadn’t left rocks on my window, and we hadn’t spoken for years. I wondered if this was the big plunge, the big event that would finally put the broken pieces of us back together.

  The only sound for a few minutes was that of our shovels.

  He broke the silence again. “So, who exactly are we digging up today?”

  “My dad,” I told him.

  I stole a glance at him. His dark hair was falling over his forehead. I couldn’t see his eyes. Maybe if I saw them, I could get a glimpse inside.

  “And why are we digging him up?”

  I pointed over to my mom. “Because they need to be together. They deserve to be next to each other, within arm’s reach, not across from one another like they weren’t soul mates. Like they still aren’t.”

  He stuck his shovel in the dirt and looked at me with an expression I didn’t understand. “You are the strangest girl I’ve ever met, Tate McKenna.”

  I stopped shoveling. We were barely making a dent anyway.

  “Shut up, Jesse,” I said, revealing that I did remember him after all.

  Jesse.

  I rolled his name around in my mouth without saying it out loud again. I’d never seen a person fit his name so perfectly before. I couldn’t explain it. He just did.

  He wiped his forehead on the back of his arm. “It’s getting dark,” he said, pointing out the obvious.

  It wasn’t getting dark. It was dark—pitch-black, to be quite honest.

  Southern darkness would scare most people half to death. It wasn’t the same kind of darkness that you saw everywhere else. Strange things lurked just beyond your field of vision, and paranoia was inescapable. Sometimes, I’d put my hands out and feel the energy that radiated off the earth and into the air because I knew it didn’t let go of the things that had happened here. Strange things scarred this land forever, and I loved it.

  Jesse didn’t seem bothered by it. He was simply stating a fact.

  “How about I help you finish this tomorrow when we can actually see what we’re doing?”

  I didn’t want to leave my dad t
his way, but we had only just scraped off the grass.

  “Okay.” I was strangely complacent, and I didn’t know why this boy had always had some kind of power over me.

  “Okay.”

  I let him take my hand because he moved as if he did it every day. Then, he led me back to the warm glow of the house.

  After he left, I heard the clink of a rock against the glass of my window. I didn’t get it until morning, but I couldn’t help but smile.

  For the first night in a long time, I slept the whole way through.

  Now

  “DO I NEED to file a restraining order?” I keep my voice calm and don’t turn around to look at Hayden.

  “Do you?”

  I take a deep breath and steady myself before I speak next. Old Tate would have done something crazy. I try my best to be New Tate.

  “Is it necessary? You’re supposed to be at the Empire State Building.”

  “That’s not your favorite place in New York City, is it?”

  “I’m addicted to the Empire State Building. That doesn’t mean it’s my favorite, but everyone thinks it is.”

  The postcard should have misled him.

  He moves to stand next to me instead of behind me, and I can feel the heat from his body when it brushes mine. I shiver, but only because this small act has made me realize how cool it is in the air-conditioned museum. I almost move to rub my hands over my bare arms, but I don’t want him to think I’m shivering because of him, so I stay as still as one of the statues in the Greco-Roman room downstairs.

  I study him from out of the corner of my eyes, straining them to observe him without him noticing. He’s looking straight ahead at my painting. Ironically, with his looks, he could be turned to stone and fit perfectly into the Greco-Roman gallery.

  Somehow, I expect him to wear a suit and tie for all eternity because that’s what a Rockefeller should do. All the paintings of important men always portray them in suits, and Hayden belongs in a beautiful historic painting instead of standing next to me, staring at one.

  His head turns ever so slowly, and I wonder how anyone can be that graceful in such a small movement. It’s as if space and time exist for him, not the other way around.

  “How can you be addicted to a place?” he asks. He seems genuinely interested in my answer.

  I bite my tongue in my mouth until I taste blood because Hayden is a person that makes me feel like I should censor my answers rather than spit them out rapid-fire like I used to. He makes me nervous in a way that I imagine normal people feel around people they are attracted to. I’m used to something entirely different, and my nervousness makes me into someone I don’t know how to be. I suck in a deep breath and let it back out.

  “It’s entirely possible. I hope you’ll find out someday.”

  I start to walk away because I can see other people clearing out of the galleries as closing time approaches. If Hayden hadn’t appeared, I would be the last one out the door, but I don’t want everyone to leave me alone with him. It’s like they’re betraying me with each footstep, and they don’t even know it.

  I shut my eyes and wait to hear his steps echo mine, but I don’t hear them. He’s not following me, and that is nothing if not surprising.

  I turn ever so slowly as I think about my words. “I do have one question. How did you know I would be here?”

  He laughs as he puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and one side of his smile goes up higher than the other. “A good reporter never reveals his source.”

  “You’re not a reporter.”

  “Lighten up, McKenna comma Tate.”

  I roll my eyes. “Catherine.”

  He nods, and I think about taking a restraining order out on my best friend.

  Then

  I WAS TRAPPED in Colin’s car with him slumped over the wheel, snoring.

  “Wake up, you incorrigible bastard. I need to go home.”

  It was two in the morning, and Colin and I learned that driving around in Charleston really wasn’t the same as driving around near school. Unbeknownst to me, Colin had decided to drive under the influence, and he had passed out a few miles from Hale house.

  I shook the lump that was Colin, but he wouldn’t budge. He was much too heavy for me to move out of the driver’s seat even if I did want to attempt getting behind the wheel.

  Tears were prickling my eyes, and I had to look up to force them back down. I refused to let them fall. There was enough water falling from the sky, and it reminded me too much of the night when my life changed forever.

  I pried the door handle open and threw myself out into the rain, letting the droplets soak my entire being. If I had to walk home, so be it. I would leave Colin here to rot because he deserved it.

  My dress was completely soaked and clinging to my body, as was my hair. The chill in my bones was nothing compared to the chill in my soul. It was as if the wind was rushing straight through me.

  I wasn’t out of sight of Colin’s car when I saw another coming up the road. I imagined that I was in Psycho, and that my blood would probably be going down a shower drain soon. No one ever drove out on this road.

  Colin wouldn’t even know they kidnapped me. He would just wake up with a hangover in the morning, sans Tate. Poor Catherine. She was going to be stuck for the rest of her life with this ingrate.

  I saw the bright light that everyone talks about and started to walk toward it before my brain registered they were just headlights on the car.

  It pulled over, and I prepared for my doom. I knew I couldn’t outrun a car, so I stood my ground, trying to look as dignified as possible. I really hoped my screams would wake Colin, so he would have it burned into his brain forever as revenge. Normally, I would have crawled into his backseat and slept until morning, but something in me had snapped. I was sick to death of the monotonous driving that used to thrill me.

  The driver’s door opened, and a shaggy dark head was immediately soaked.

  “Tate,” it said, “what are you doing out here?”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  I knew very well it was Jesse, but I made an effort to seem uninterested. I always tried to seem uninterested now that he wouldn’t talk to me. After that night in the cemetery, I thought I was going to get him back, but then he stopped talking to me. He stopped looking at me. He stopped with the rocks. He flat out ignored me, and I hated him for it. I hated the sting of rejection.

  I was squinting because of the falling rain, but I could have sworn I saw him roll his eyes.

  “Get in the car?”

  “No.”

  “Tate, it’s not safe.”

  “Better die out here than in your car.”

  “You think I’m going to kill you?”

  “You do move dead bodies for a living.”

  He scoffed. “I wouldn’t really say I do it for a living. But that last one was at your request if I remember correctly.”

  Two mornings after Jesse found me trying to dig up Denny, I traipsed into the cemetery to find the earth disturbed, and he and Maggie were no longer across from one another. As groundskeeper, he had the necessary equipment, so I was sure he did it for me, but he had never confirmed it.

  I stared at him through the droplets, but I couldn’t make out a clear picture of his face. The rain or my eyes were playing tricks on me.

  “Get in the car, Tate,” he repeated. His voice had an edge that I wasn’t familiar with.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “What am I supposed to do with him?”

  I gestured back to Colin’s car where I was sure he was still drooling on the steering wheel.

  “Who is in the car?” Jesse asked, the edge rising even more.

  “Colin.”

  “Who is Colin?”

  “My friend.”

  “Your boyfriend?” He put unnecessary emphasis on the first part of the word.

  I wanted to scoff because if he thought Colin was my boyfriend, then Jesse
knew nothing about me anymore. We were strangers again.

  “No. He’s just an asshole, but I can’t leave him out here to be eaten by wolves.”

  “Oh, the wolves out here are terrible,” Jesse said sarcastically. “A friend of mine was eaten just last week. Barely made it away with my life.”

  I crossed my arms and couldn’t help but crack a smile. Tate McKenna didn’t smile. I forced it back down inside me and wished I could throw it out instead.

  “I can’t leave him,” I said, starting back toward Colin.

  “Tate, wait.”

  I didn’t look back, but I heard Jesse kill the engine. Thankfully, he didn’t turn off the headlights, or we would have all been plunged into darkness.

  I heard Jesse’s footsteps behind me, and I opened the driver’s side of the car where Colin was just as I expected him to be. He might drown in his drool faster than he could drown in this rain.

  “Colin, wake up. I’m going to murder you and then frame Jesse for it.”

  Jesse didn’t laugh, and I thought back to the bunny incident.

  “Too soon?” I asked him.

  He narrowed his eyes at me.

  Colin didn’t budge.

  “Fuck you,” I said, slamming the door back in his face.

  “Is he drunk?” Jesse asked, concern written all over his face.

  “Yeah.”

  “And he was driving you?”

  “No,” I sarcastically spit the words out at Jesse because I hated Colin, and he wasn’t even awake to notice. “I just put him there after he passed out because it seemed like the right thing to do.”

  Jesse’s eyes narrowed, and I knew I was close to driving him to the edge of his wit.

  “You could have just driven home,” Jesse said, his lips tight. His words came through his teeth as if they could censor the malice rising in his voice.

  It matched mine, and I liked it.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, asshole, I can’t drive.” I had never admitted this fault to anyone before. I simply omitted it by never actually getting behind a wheel. I made everyone else drive me anyway. I looked like a brat because of it, but really, I was afraid to drive since that was how my parents died.