Three is a sacred number. It’s the number of the Trinity. Vikings used three triangles intertwined as a symbol for the dead. Past, present, future. Birth, life, death. Death comes in threes.
Ugh, so much about death.
Three is the number of riddles to be solved or the presence of three characters in fairy tales and nursery rhymes. “Three Blind Mice,” “The Three Little Pigs,” “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” The explanations go on and on, but nothing relevant to my brother.
A lightning flash draws me away from my cell. I count the number of seconds until a roar of thunder vibrates the windows. Ten seconds. Divide by five. It’s two miles away. A trick Connor taught me. After a second flash, the pattering of ice pellets changes to a downpour. Typical weather for Tilford Lake this time of the year: morning fog, afternoon sun, evening snow, sleet, or rain, warm winds, and cool breezes.
The temperature fluctuations mark that human mating season is just around the corner. When the women in Tilford shave their legs and the men trim their beards. Or vice versa.
The weather also brings to mind an anniversary song my parents played every spring. Connor and I would giggle at their clumsy dance steps—no grace—like a couple of drunken penguins. But more so, I recall the love that radiated in their faces. I flip through my music and find their song, “With or Without You.”
U2, or at least this song by them, is like a soft breath against the ear. I press my hand to the window, disappearing into the music as water streams down the glass.
Three teeth, three feathers, three fossils, and our three keys: work, life, death, and family. Good things come in threes? That’s what my granddad used to say. It could be as simple as that.
Ollie continues to snore through the thunder, not even waking for the front door chime. I listen. The melodic jingle is similar to a wind chime. Can’t be Joss and Jim, they’d be talking, must be Nate.
The lodge is still for a few seconds. Then footsteps grow in intensity until his reflection is upon me in the glass. I pretend not to notice, fixated on the outdoors, not wanting to seem overly excited.
“Hi,” he whispers.
I turn, one hand kept on the glass, not sure if it’s him or the thunder that’s making me shudder. Our eyes meet and two smiles dawn.
Nate—devastatingly beautiful Nate—with wet hair and water dripping down his face, slips off his waterlogged boots and pulls off his hoodie and T-shirt, dropping them in a pile on the floor. He saunters over and places a cold hand over mine. I close my eyes to keep from staring at his abs. It’s unreal to fall for to a man I barely know, but considering the solitude of being on the outskirts of Tilford Lake, it’s likely I’d fall for anyone who knows I exist. Men in these parts don’t give women like me a second glance, or even a first. No tats, no enormous boobs, no high heels or flirty ways.
“Look at me.” The backs of his fingers graze my cheek, his breath smelling of rum.
I open my eyes. “Did you go back there?”
He nods. “To the hill above the cabin.”
“It’s too dark to see anything.”
“I wasn’t looking. I was listening.”
I don’t ask what he was listening for. I know he won’t answer. His wanting expression tells me so. He’s here for me, not to talk.
I lean into his hand, my heart jack-rabbiting against my ribs. He presses his body to mine, stiff, proud, lips hovering closer, provoking my mouth to take the bait.
“I want you,” he whispers. He tilts his head and traces my lips with his tongue, sharing the earthy taste of liquor. My lips part with his. Flashes of light streak under my eyelids, but diminish like the death of a sparkler when the kiss fades.
I want more. More kisses, a touch, his hands under my shirt cupping my breasts. Anything. More Nate.
His finger touches my lips, liquored eyes matching a secretive moon behind a low-hanging shroud of haze. He drops his hand and steps back to gather his clothes and boots.
“Night, Salem. Maybe I’ll turn up in your dreams.”
I can’t formulate a response. His kiss erased everything from my mind. I’m lost in a racing pulse and a shiver crawling up and down my spine.
He closes the door to my private quarters. But even after he’s gone, I can still feel him slick between my legs. It’s at this moment that I know we’re going to fuck.
ten
“Salem, get up. Mom and Dad are yelling out back.” Connor tugs at my mermaid sleeping bag then pries one of my eyelids open. “Get up.”
“Connor, stop it.” I swat his hand away. “I’m still asleep.”
“You can’t be asleep if you’re talking to me.”
“Yes, I can.”
He climbs over my legs and jumps on the bed. “Get up. Get up.”
“Tom, I’m calling the police,” Mom shouts.
“Give him another five minutes to come out. He just wandered into the forest is all,” Dad calls to her.
I sit up and listen.
“No,” Mom says, “something’s wrong. Something’s definitely wrong.”
Connor looks toward the door. “Told you.”
“Where’s Eli?”
“Haven’t seen him.”
Eli is always the last to wake up, sometimes in bed till ten. And Mom and Dad never yell. Never-ever.
I scramble out of my sleeping bag and swing my legs out of bed. My belly tosses and turns like the time a spider crawled under my pillow, scaring me so much that I couldn’t sleep in my bed for a week.
“Salem, guests are up. Put on a shirt!”
I pick up one of Dad’s dingy T-shirts from the laundry pile in the hallway—the one with Fred Flintstone and the slogan “Say No To Drugs”—and slip it over my head. It fits like an oversized nightshirt, a handicap when I try to sprint. Connor races past. He holds open the door to the lobby as I catch up.
I’m disoriented. Have I slept for an hour or through the night? “Is it still bedtime?”
“No, the sun is in the front window. It’s morning.”
We hurry to the escape hatch. I touch my chest to feel for the key, remembering it’s still hanging on my bedpost. Connor’s wearing his, but the door is already open when we reach the back.
“Who left it open?”
“I didn’t,” he says.
“Eli Thomas Whitfield, get your bottom out here right this minute. I’m not amused by this game,” Mom pleads, her eyes darting back and forth through the dewy yard. Footprints are everywhere, but none small enough to be Eli’s.
Dad steps out of the forest. “Eli,” he shouts, “you win. I give up finding you. You can come out now.”
Guests are gathering, searching the grounds, comforting Mom.
“What happened?” I ask her.
“When was the last time you saw your brother? Did you hear him get up this morning?”
I shake my head.
“Connor, did you go out the hatch this morning?”
“I just got up.”
“Salem?”
I shake my head again.
“He’s not anywhere,” she cries. “He’s not here.”
“I’ll check inside again,” Dad says.
“No, he’s not here, Tom. It’s time to call. What are we waiting for?”
“Okay.” He grabs a chunk of his spiky hair. “Okay.”
Mom cries much harder. I hug her waist and nuzzle her side, taking in her warmth to ease my sick belly. The wobbly emotion in my parents’ voices startles me even more.
Eli will come home when he’s hungry. He will. He has to eat grape jelly on toast every morning, or he’s a grump until his afternoon nap. He’ll come home to eat. I look up to tell her this, finding it hard to make out her features. She looks more like Grandma than Mom.
“Connor, you stay right here,” she says.
Despite her warning, he heads into the forest without looking back. I can’t picture his face or Dad’s. Everyone is blurry.
<
br /> “Connor!” she persists.
I slip away and run to catch him.
“Salem, don’t you dare leave me!”
“Connor, wait for me. Wait!” I could blame the oversized tee and my bare feet for slowing me down, but I know he runs faster than the rabbits, much faster than any of us. “Wait up!”
I’ve lost sight of him.
I hear the cheep-cheep of tiny birds, buzzing bees, and croaking frogs, the rustling brush—all familiar sounds—but not a whisper from my brothers.
Avoiding pine needles and sharp rocks, stopping every so often to rub the bottom of my feet, I make it to the top of the hill overlooking the back part of the property. Fragmented sunbeams cascade through the branches of the tall pines, blinding me like a strobe. I have to raise my hand to shield my eyes from the harsh light.
“Connor?”
Eli’s teddy bear, Hank, is propped alongside a tree at the bottom of the hill. His head hangs low, his tubby, tan legs spread wide, set in that position after years of Eli’s crushing hugs. I step clumsily toward the bear, over moss and gooey slugs, eyeing a cardinal tracking my every move.
“Shoo,” I tell it. “Stop following me.”
It swoops down and lands on Hank’s shoulder, presenting a head tilt as if to ask me what the hell I’m doing in its territory. Its head tips to the other side and a flurry of flaps erupts into an urgent warning to stay back.
“Eli,” I holler.
“What?”
“Eli?” I turn.
“Over here.” The response comes from the opposite direction. The voice is deep, familiar, but not his. I can’t quite place it … Dad’s maybe? It’s hard to get my bearings with sounds ricocheting off the trees, crisscrossing from every direction.
“Where are you?”
A teenager wearing Connor’s Boy Scout cap steps out from behind a tree. The key to the lodge dangles on his chest. My eyes are tricked to see an older Connor, my gut tells me it’s Eli, but my heart knows it’s neither. His clothes are wet, hair slick, lips the color of a blackberry, swollen and trembly. It’s summer. The morning heat is already making my throat dry. He can’t be wet and cold.
“Mom and Dad are looking for you,” I tell him.
He shakes his head. The action seems like a burden. “It rained.”
I look up. Branches divide the sunlight. “No, it didn’t. Follow me home, would you? Everyone’s waiting.”
His eyes protrude, wrought with fright when my hand reaches out to him. His mouth drops open in a soundless scream.
“Eli?” I step forward. He makes a quick turn and bounds between the trees. I take chase, hurdling over fallen branches, but lag behind due to thistly bushes. The dry pine needles that blanket the ground prick my legs and feet. “Stop!” He looks over his shoulder, defiant as a teen full of angst. His face softens, sharp only when I focus on specific parts—eyes, lips, nose—but never completely intact. “Please stop!”
He finally listens, taking an easy jog before ending his flight. I stop a few feet away, bending forward with my hands on my knees to catch my breath.
“Salem.”
I lift my head to meet hollow cheeks and raven-black pupils that have leaked through gray irises like an oil spill. My words knot between mind and mouth. Not even a grunt will form in my throat.
Please, please, let me talk to him!
He senses I’m troubled and comes closer, raising three fingers inches from my eyes. They change into cardinal feathers, a brilliant red, slowly molting to the ground. I ask if he’s alive and when he’s coming home. But every question is repressed.
I kneel in the grass, no longer in the forest, but on the side of Grady Murphy’s house, in tears that he can’t hear me.
“Salem.” He knocks on the cabin window, his nose against the glass to see if anyone’s home. “Salem?”
I’m here. I’m behind you.
“Salem?”
Eli, I’m here!
He opens the window, pulling himself up and over the windowsill.
Don’t go in. Don’t go!
He looks out from the inside, young again, with cute baby cheeks and icy-gray eyes identical to mine.
“Salem”—but that voice, that deep voice isn’t his—“you’re dead.”
• • •
I wake with a gasp for air, drenched in sweat.
3:33
The only light in the room comes from the glowing red numbers on my bedside clock.
3:33
I pull my comforter to my neck and stare at the ceiling, hearing a creaky floorboard overhead.
3:33
The voice in the dream wasn’t Eli’s—it was Nate’s.
eleven
Low clouds smother the property. The day is cold and drizzly. Ollie runs free, sniffing every tree in the forest. He needs a bath when we get back to the lodge. Maybe two since his tan fur is painted dark brown from rolling in syrupy mud. And after cleaning Olls, I have an endless list of housework to face before the next train of guests arrives. I can’t stay out with Nate for long. It will be a full house with Virginia staying an extra day, and four rooms reserved for people I believe are in town for the Tilford Lake Quilt Festival. I can’t think of much else that would bring in a group of older women for two nights. It’s not like Tilford Lake is a draw for seniors.
“Dregs of the day, that’s all it was. I have dreams like that all the time.” Nate assures me that my nightmare isn’t a sign of impending doom. “The fog, keys, feathers, my voice, and being at the cabin … your mind sorts through what you saw during the day. Then it discards all the junk it doesn’t want to store. Dreams are like cleaning up a desktop or trashing photos on your cell. You know?”
“No, not really.” Hard to tell if I missed something in my high school classes, or I’m lost because I didn’t go to college. Most of what I know I learned from Connor. “How do you know?” I ask.
“Dream Interpretation 101,” he says, matter-of-fact. “One of those easy A’s, like my art and communication classes. GenEd requirements. Boring as shit.”
Nate’s the ultimate tonic for the below average men I’ve dealt with. The guys my ex-husband brought to our house were proof that evolution can go in reverse. Their silos were lacking grain. Conversations centered on wrestling and reality TV, beer and breasts, never anything of substance, never dreams or family.
“How about the Fred Flintstone shirt? My dad didn’t own anything like that or have spiky hair. And why were the faces blurry?”
“I don’t know about the shirt. Years back you could’ve seen someone wearing one. Vague faces are common though. Aggravating, isn’t it? Hard to focus on a face in a dream.” He uses his flannel shirt sleeve to wipe raindrops off his forehead. “My dad died when I was a kid, and I can’t see his face when I’m dreaming or awake, doesn’t matter which. But I remember we have the same eyes and nose when I look at photos. Same chin.” He stops and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Can you picture your family now?”
I think for a moment. “No.” A frown. “Details, a mouth, a nose, but not an entire face all at once.”
“Good thing we have photos then.” He keeps walking.
“Yeah, good thing.” I keep walking.
I lower the umbrella closer to my head as a gust of wind puts a significant slant on the rain. I regret wearing chunky-heeled rain boots. It’s hard enough to walk through the muck in hiking boots, but far worse in boots without a treaded sole. The mud glues to my heel with each step, making me second-guess my outfit.
On the other hand, Joss gave the black dress and boots two thumbs up before she left for work, asking if I was going to a fancy brunch or I had finally gotten laid. “It was only a kiss,” I said. A kiss that lingered on my lips for hours, meaningful enough to awaken something that’s been dormant for years. One of those kisses that kept me licking my lips throughout the night, clinging to his taste. But still, “Just a kiss,” I told her.
Joss knows better. She saw the spring in my step, the glow on my cheeks, the fire in my eyes—all the romantic after-the-first-kiss clichés that happen to me. She knows what it means when I dress up. This outfit screams fuck me. Not a bad thing, just stupid when it’s in the low fifties. Tights, pants, even a pair of sweats would’ve been better than letting the rain run down my pale legs. My Sparrow hoodie over the dress helps to shake off the chill in the air. Without it, I’d feel naked. But I could’ve done better. Skintight jeans or leggings would’ve been fine. Just as sexy. Except, I thought my short cotton dress … well, easy access.
I step over Nate’s empty rum bottle from last night, never asking why we’re heading to the cabin. No need. It was a given we’d be out here today, even if neither of us knows what for. Any clues are likely gone, buried in mold and mouse shit, washed away or lifted by the gusty, Tilford Lake winds. But even with all the rot, maybe there’s something only I might recognize, something everyone else missed.
Years back, my dad said the only witnesses to Eli’s disappearance must have been the pines. But Grady was out here. He was in these pines. There’s always a slight chance we’ll find something. It’s not necessarily a waste of time. And Nate. Nate’s kiss convinced me that spending the afternoon with him isn’t a waste of time. Daydreaming about slipping my hand under his gray flannel to unbutton his jeans and reach my fingers down low isn’t a waste of time, surely.
“Not talking much today?” He squeezes my hand.
“Sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“No kidding.” His piercing blue eyes look down at me, causing my stomach to flip-flop like a shored fish.
“I’m worried about leaving Jim alone at the lodge.” True. It’s another thing to fret over, even if it wasn’t what I was thinking a second ago.
“Don’t be. Joss was walking crooked this morning. No question what they were up to all night.”
“And?”
The Release of Secrets: A Novel Page 8
