by Meg Collett
K E E P E R S
A Canaan Island Novel
Meg Collett
KEEPERS
A Canaan Island Novel
Meg Collett
Copyright 2016 Meg Collett
Cover Design by Najla Qamber Designs
Editing by Arrowhead Editing
Smashwords Edition
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Dedication
To those who struggle with whispering demons.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
About the Author
Other Books by Meg Collett
1
All of Stevie Reynolds’s best memories bore a hazy film not even the best Instagram filter could fix. And she’d tried. Most of the memories in question were actually on Instagram, and every time she scrolled through the app, she had to go quickly or risk seeing pictures of her sloppy grin plastered on her freckled face and her red-rimmed eyes peeking out from beneath her curly auburn hair, because in every single picture, she held a drink in her hand.
During her court-mandated rehab—rehab she’d willingly gone into after wrapping her car around a telephone pole with a blood alcohol level that had scared even her—Dr. Clemens had made her count the pictures. Stevie was a photographer. She knew pictures didn’t lie; they were insights into a person’s soul, and looking through her Instagram, Stevie’s soul looked ready for a liver transplant.
Nearly two months had passed since her time with Dr. Clemens, but her nerves still flared raw every time she thought about that night and the people she’d put at risk.
Why had she opened Instagram? It only reminded her of all the bad things she’d done. She sat her phone aside, every inch of her feeling ashamed, and glanced out her kitchen window.
She loved Canaan Island, but she imagined hell was probably southern Georgia in August. She wasn’t brave enough to face the heat, but her best friend and neighbor, Kyra Aberdeen, was often outside, surfing, gardening, or, you know, being way too freaking productive and shit. Honestly, it was disgusting at times.
Stevie scanned Kyra’s back garden, but the tidy, blooming space was empty, the white hammock swinging in the breeze coming off the ocean. She searched the beach, thinking Kyra and her boyfriend, Hale Cooper, might be surfing. The waves were small and broke over the sand with barely a splash. No one was out there, meaning they were probably out antiquing, or at Hale’s camper-house shack, or doing a million other things without Stevie, because they were a couple and couples did couple things. When you were the odd man out, the single best friend, there was nothing you could do about it.
Stevie used to sit at home and drink when no one was around. She would have gone onto the front porch of her navy and white Victorian home, an iced whiskey condensing in her hand, to watch the people of Gardenia Street, where the average age was somewhere between ancient and one foot in the grave. The wide-palmed ceiling fan would oscillate warm air down on her, and she’d wave at Mrs. Walker walking her Goldie-What-The-Hell-Ever-Poo down the street. The old woman would scowl at her and hurry away, not bothering to return the wave. It was always around then that Stevie’s wave would turn into a middle finger. She really hated the old women of this street, but she also felt sorry for them. The quiet neighborhood had seen more excitement in the past few months than it had during its entire existence. Between Stevie’s drunk driving arrest and Kyra’s drama, Stevie was almost worried her neighbors’ pacemakers couldn’t handle the load.
But going onto the front porch and mocking her neighbors as she got buzzed didn’t work anymore. Now she had a pricey DUI ticket and a fresh-out-of-rehab smell to her that said she’d emptied her house of alcohol for a reason.
Instead, she went to her back garden with her phone and a warm bottle of water she’d forgotten to put in the fridge. She sat on her white wicker sofa with the bright yellow cushions and put her feet up on the glass table. The ocean made the air damp and salty and sent her hair into its Shirley Temple impersonation. Seaweed dotted the white beaches and seagulls dropped bombs from the blue sky. It should have been perfect, but Stevie felt the hollow ache in her back teeth and the simmering burn in her stomach that never went away. Not since rehab.
She forced herself to take a drink of water. At least back here, no one could see her from the street, so she didn’t have to pretend to ignore their judging faces. She’d had to do a lot of ignoring lately, and it wore on her. She could only take so much. Being a C-list celebrity of little infamy from her reality television days had prepared her for a certain level of attention, but getting arrested in a small town had led to a different kind of status altogether. Everyone’s eyes on her skin were a hundred spotlights beaming down on her, blinding her with her own imperfections. She was overexposed and under-medicated for this type of scrutiny. She couldn’t take it, so she’d gone into hiding, and when Kyra was home, she hid in her house as well.
Kyra was one of the only people who never judged Stevie because she had her own issues she was recovering from. Stevie had spent the better part of her summer in rehab, but Kyra had followed close behind, after relapsing back to her cutting tendencies. She was better now, which was all that mattered. Stevie spent most of her evenings at Kyra’s house with Hale and his brother, Cade, when he wasn’t working late at the office of Cooper Bros. Contracting.
Being around those three eased the tightness in her chest. She didn’t have to force herself to be funny or crazy or the Stevie everyone else expected. It came naturally. The feeling was almost as good as a full drink and the fizz of a buzz in her blood.
Almost.
She cued up some country music on her phone and sat back against the sofa’s cushions as the music unspooled from her Bluetooth speakers. The notes carried across her entire back deck and soothed her with its warm, dripping-like-honey drawl. She was almost asleep when her phone went off, interrupting the music with a ringtone that sounded like a tornado siren.
“Answer This And DIE” flashed across the caller ID. Stevie groaned. It was a testament to her loneliness that she answered her mother’s call.
“Hello,” she said, her voice a mixture of suspicion and detachment.
“Stephanie! There you are.” Her mother sounded just chipper enough to nauseate Stevie. Edith Reynolds must have been in public, because she rarely talked to her daughter like this.
“Here I am.”
“You’ll never guess who I’m sitting with—”
“I’m not actually going to guess, you know.”
“—Shepherd Caldwell! Can you believe it? I’m glad I finally caught you on the phone, because we wanted to talk to you about something.”
“No,” Stevie said instantly.
Because she knew better. Shepherd was the scum of the earth and her ex-boyfriend from whe
n she lived in Los Angeles. He was a mercenary showrunner for whatever network paid him the most. He liked spending thirty minutes gelling his hair into casual disarray and wore J. Crew like a suit of armor.
“You’re on speakerphone,” her mother warned.
“Hello, Stephanie,” Shepherd said, his voice making Stevie feel as slimy as an ankle-deep oil spill. “Glad you haven’t lost your charm.”
Any snappy retort she might have had dried up in her mouth. He still terrified her.
Her mother rushed in to fill the silence. “Shepherd wants to pitch our show to the RealTV network! Isn’t that exciting?”
“Not really.”
“Excuse me, Shep, dear,” Edith said, her voice muffled like she’d covered the phone with her hand. A chair scraped back, followed by the clack of heels and the rustle of the phone as Stevie’s mother pressed it back against her ear. “Why are you acting like this? Do you know how huge this is for your father and me? Why can’t you be supportive?”
“Why are you calling me?”
“You know why. Shep needs to promise the network you’ll participate.”
“But I’m not in rehab anymore. You can’t film a television show about me in rehab if I’m not in rehab.”
“Well, maybe you can relapse,” her mother hissed.
“That’s so sweet, Mom. Thanks.”
“Your father and I need this. You owe it to us.”
Rory Reynolds acted more like a sperm donor than a father, and Stevie didn’t owe him shit. “Do you actually want me to get better or not?”
“Oh, come on. You don’t have a drinking problem. You’re fine, Stephanie.”
“I totaled my car. That’s your definition of fine?”
Her mother tsked into the phone. “You need to move back home. The police in that hick town probably can’t even spell alcoholic.”
“Can you?”
As the phone rustled some more and her mother’s rapid-fire footsteps came over the speaker, Stevie pictured Edith moving through L.A.’s latest brunch spot to the bathrooms, where she could yell at Stevie in private. But, of course, she wouldn’t move fast enough that the paparazzi outside couldn’t catch a few images to run in tomorrow’s tabloids under headlines like “Dangerously Skinny Has-Beens” or “Another Boob Job for Failing Reality Star, Edith Reynolds.” A door slammed and Edith launched into her well-worn tirade.
Stevie sat the phone down on the cushion beside her. The hollow ache was back. It always returned during these calls, which had gotten more and more frequent. When her parents pressed the idea of a rehab show on her in the hospital, on the day of her accident, she hadn’t thought much of it. They’d practically begged her to do a show with them every other month since she’d fled Los Angeles, but for some reason, they wouldn’t let this one go.
“Stephanie!” her mother screeched. Stevie picked up the phone in time to hear, “Are you listening? I mean it this time.”
Stevie frowned, realizing she’d missed something important. “Mean what?”
“The money! Your father and I won’t be sending you any more until you reconsider the show with RealTV. It’s not fair to us. We can’t keep carrying your weight if you refuse to be on the shows we get.”
They’d threatened this before, but they’d never actually cut her off. This time, though, her mom sounded different. She sounded serious.
“So you’re just going to leave me stranded?” she asked, feeling out the situation.
Her mother sniffed, likely adjusting a piece of her platinum blonde hair in the bathroom mirror. “Maybe your photography can pay the bills.”
Stevie heard the laughter in her mother’s voice. Her parents knew the only paying photography gigs she got were the ones they sent her way. Even though she managed to pick up a few local jobs here and there, she didn’t make much, but it had never mattered because her parents paid for everything.
“You’re not serious about this,” Stevie said.
“We are. Very much so. When you see reason, call Shep. He’ll pay for your ticket back to L.A. It’s time to get back to work.”
Click. Her mom hung up on her. Stevie stared down at the phone’s screen as it faded to black and reflected her blank expression back at her.
Her chest tightened. It was probably just another threat, especially since her mother was meeting with Shepherd Caldwell. How many times had her parents tried to control her through money? Too many to count.
But she deserved their money. She called it blood money because every payment on her house or car or insurance was her freaking right. Every dollar spent on her credit card was owed to her. She relished the thought of draining her parents dry like they’d drained her. She spent their money like she was wielding a dagger, slicing at her parents’ flesh and whittling them down. After the endless stream of vampiric producers in her face as she grew up, the countless spin-off shows of spin-off shows, the overrunning bullshit that had consumed her childhood, the fakeness, the never enough, the too much, they deserved it.
Still, her breaths came quicker and quicker. Normally, she would have reached for a glass of wine to calm down and reassure herself she wasn’t some lecherous user, but she had nothing to stave off the panic attack. It pressed down on her, crushing her chest. Her phone clattered onto the deck boards. She leaned over and hung her head between her knees.
When she could breathe again, she did the only thing she could think of to calm down.
2
Stevie breathed in light and vitality and breathed out negativity and toxins. At least she imagined she would be if she were into that voodoo shit the yoga instructor back at rehab had tried to teach her. Today, she only managed to make herself bored and a little dizzy.
Her back gate squeaked open. A moment later, footsteps slapped across the deck before a soft knock sounded at the screen door.
“Stevie? You in there?” Kyra called. Even her voice sounded like it belonged to a hot blonde surfer girl with a tight butt and perfectly proportioned boobs. Stevie might have hated her best friend if she didn’t love her so damn much.
“In the kitchen.”
The door opened and eased shut. Kyra never let a door slam. Stevie didn’t look up when Kyra’s flip-flopping footsteps screeched to a stop in the kitchen.
“Oh my goodness gracious, Stevie!”
Stevie lifted her head in time to see Kyra cover her eyes and spin away. “What?”
“Why are you naked?”
Stevie glanced down at her naked body. She was lying on top of her dining room table, putting her a couple feet closer to the ceiling fan and air-conditioning vents. She was, indeed, very much naked.
“I was stressed.” She swung herself upright and faced Kyra. “I needed to get naked to calm down. Clothes make me claustrophobic.”
Kyra darted a quick look over her shoulder. “Why are you holding your hand like that?”
“I’m pretending I’m holding a wine glass.” Stevie took an imaginary sip and smacked her lips. “An eighty-four Sauvignon Blanc. Very good. Want some?”
Kyra turned around fully at that, her face slipping into the worried “oh shit, she’s losing it” look Stevie had seen all too often of late. “Are you okay? Do I need to call Dr. Clemens?” Kyra’s hand went to the stack of bracelets on her wrist, as it often did when she was nervous or scared. Above the stack, the numerous inch-long pink scars on her forearm caught the midday sunlight streaming in through the kitchen windows.
“I’m fine,” Stevie said. She hopped off the table and started pulling her clothes back on. “It’s just my imagination. It makes me feel better.”
“But should you, like, even be thinking about drinking?”
Stevie paused as she pulled up her shorts and leveled a stare on her best friend. “I think about it every minute.”
Kyra’s face crumpled. “Oh.”
Stevie buttoned her shorts and tugged on her tank top. With a spare elastic band from her wrist, she tied up her wild hair. She hated the silence between
them. It tasted serious, like a splash of aged scotch over ice.
“I was looking for you earlier,” she said to lighten the mood. “I guess you and Hale must have been busy bangin’ all morning.”
A laugh sputtered from Kyra’s mouth, and she instantly blushed. Stevie had been joking, but she’d guessed right.
Stevie wrinkled her nose. “Eww. The visual, though.” She paused and pretended to think about it. “Never mind. Hale’s pretty hot with all those tattoos and piercings, I guess. Oh yeah. That’s a good visual. Can you leave?”
Kyra darted across the kitchen and swatted Stevie’s arm. “Quit fantasizing about my boyfriend, you dirty cow!”
Stevie poked Kyra’s side. “Whatever. I’m glad one of us is getting laid.”
“So vulgar. Do you want to run into town with me? The boys are coming over for dinner tonight.”
“You mean Hale hasn’t gotten enough to eat already today?” she winked.
“STEVIE!”
* * *
Stevie had a jaded L.A. heart, but damn if the quaint little town of Canaan didn’t get her every time she saw it. She and Kyra cruised down Main Street in Kyra’s Jeep, the ocean air whipping through their hair. Brightly colored buildings lined the road on either side, their windows and doors open to tourists and locals strolling down the street in cut-offs and flip-flops. Everyone had a sun-dazed sheen to their eyes and the sunglasses tan lines to match. People jaywalked at a leisurely pace, and everyone waved.
People like them would’ve gotten mowed down in L.A., with a middle-finger farewell and a nod to Darwinism at its finest. Culling the weak. Only the strong survive.
But Stevie was growing out of her cynicism. She almost found Canaan’s main street charming.
