by CJ Lyons
That gets everyone’s attention. Even Max relaxes his guard. A bit. But I know Ella’s twisted what I told her, colored my facts with her own interpretation. Denial. So powerful a force that people can create entire new memories to shield themselves from pain. Dad taught me that, not Dr. Winston, but it applies just as well to journalism as it does to police investigations.
It’s going to kill her when she learns the truth.
I almost walk away. Drop everything. School, the chance to be published, my need for answers. I would do that, to spare her. At least I want to be the kind of guy who would.
“Really?” Rory asks, gripping my arm as if the killer is waiting in the shadows. Her touch anchors me and earns me a death-glare from Max in the process. “Someone got killed? And they were pretending to be Ella’s mother?”
“Why would anyone do that? Your mother’s been dead for years,” Max says.
I keep my mouth shut. No way in hell am I dragging everything out here. If I’d known that Ella had no clue what the truth really is, I’d never have approached her the way I did. Idiot. So many amateur mistakes. I cringe at the thought of what my dad would say if he knew how badly I’ve screwed things up. Worse, what would Mom think?
The front door opens and Helen appears, waving to Ella.
Ella flushes. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow. Alec can show us his research and explain. Then maybe we can help him.”
“We don’t have school tomorrow. Veteran’s Day,” Rory jumps in, sounding intrigued.
Here’s my chance. Drop the whole thing, tell them to enjoy their day off school, that I’ve made a mistake and Ella’s right, I have the wrong woman.
I open my mouth. Ready to do it. Ready to walk away. Never look back.
But then I see the way Helen is staring at me, her arms crossed over her chest, distrust written all over her face. And Ella has somehow ended up standing beside me, close enough to almost brush against my body. She wants to help, is eager to help—despite the pain I caused her earlier with my clumsy attempt to explain.
Doesn’t she deserve the truth as much as I do?
“We can meet at the student lounge on campus,” I surprise myself by saying. “Ten o’clock, the meeting room beside the computer lab. It’s usually empty that early in the day.” I know because my roommate sleeps until noon—complete with snoring that rattles furniture—and I had to find a place to camp out and get work done.
Ella nods, then looks over at Helen. “I have to go.” Then she turns back to me and flings her arms around me in a hug I am absolutely unprepared for. “Thank you for the gift of the ocean. I hope I can go there and see it myself someday. It was very thoughtful.”
And she’s gone, dashing up the steps to the house.
“Happy birthday,” I call after her, ignoring the looks Rory and Max are giving me. Rory is beaming brighter than the streetlamps while Max looks ready for a fight—he still doesn’t trust me, and why should he?
I reach into my pocket, the one that carried my sand from home. It’s become my touchstone these past few weeks as the weather grew cold and the days short and dreary. Of course, it isn’t there.
That night so long ago was a dark, chilly night, a lot like this one. Fog swirled at my feet as I ran from the fire. And found a scared little girl hiding in the ocean as if it could protect her from the evil behind us.
Ella doesn’t remember any of it. But I do. I remember everything, despite trying my whole life to forget.
CHAPTER 13
Ella
When I get back inside, Helen is nowhere to be seen, but I can hear Joe and Darrin doing dishes in the kitchen. They’re talking—I can’t hear the words, but the murmur of their conversation flows around me in a swirl of wispy color. It always surprises me how much Joe opens up to Darrin—he’s such a recluse by nature, which is why he lives in the house at the lake. Usually when he’s around other people, he does all the talking, mainly so he doesn’t risk hearing a word that will make his face go sour and leave him retching all night.
But he and Darrin have always gotten along, will have actual conversations. Two men with absolutely nothing in common—except me, I guess—and they’ll chatter away for hours. I like that. Like that Joe has a friend. I worry about him all alone up at the lake. Sometimes we won’t see him for weeks. He always claims he’s busy with work, but we all know he’s really just a figurehead at Cleary and Sons, counting down the days until I can take over for him. Lately, every time I see him, his aura sags with loneliness, worn patches of sadness rubbing it thin.
I close the front door and lean against it, listening to the house, checking, in a weird way, to make sure its aura is unchanged after everything that happened tonight. It feels solid, steady, no alarms except the one in my mind wondering how I suddenly ended up juggling so many things—no, not things, people—and which one I will drop first.
I reach into my pocket, but it isn’t the Paris brochure I slide out. Instead it’s Alec’s sand. I still can’t believe he gave it to me—or understand why it stirs such powerful emotions inside me. I’ve always longed to see new places, been drawn to the ocean even though I’ve never been, but this feels like so much more. Emotions tangle inside emotions to the point where I can’t decipher them. Joy collides with dread, anxiety drowns beneath hope, fear dances with sorrow.
Sighing, I reach for the brochure. The mystery of Alec’s sand and what it means will have to wait. Right now, I have to deal with a bigger problem: what to do about Paris?
I want to go, it’s the chance of a lifetime. But there’s no way I can leave Helen and Joe. And no way I’d ever be able to enjoy the trip if I did. The thought of leaving home fills me with a sick feeling that churns my stomach until I’m sweating and shivering. I can’t explain how, but I know something awful will happen if I leave my family. It’s crazy, I realize, but I cannot deny this feeling. It’s as if it’s already happened, it’s that certain, written in stone.
They’ll ask why when I tell them I can’t go to Paris and I won’t be able to answer. Helen and Joe will feel mortified, blame themselves, and they’ll all ask me about college, because surely I’ll be leaving to go to some big school in some big anonymous city. Then I’ll have to share my plan of staying here, taking classes at Cambria College. Which they will disapprove of. I deserve a world-class education, they’ll say. My parents would want that for me, they’ll tell me.
The dead parents guilt card—it gets played more often than expected. For something big like my future? Oh yeah, they’ll slap it down for sure.
And then there’s this dead woman who stole my mom’s name. I’m not sure why, but she haunts me. I know it’s just a weird coincidence, but I feel compelled to help Alec find her killer.
Or maybe, if I’m honest with myself, I’m just compelled to spend more time with Alec. It’s been a long time since I’ve liked a guy, felt this nicely nervous flip-flop in my insides. Falling in crush, Rory calls it, and she ought to know since she does it as regularly as she brushes her teeth.
I leave the men to the cleanup—it is my birthday, after all—and head upstairs to my room. Helen is waiting, sitting on my bed.
“You can’t hide from me, you know,” she says, patting my comforter. It’s a patchwork quilt made of recycled saris; she bought it for me last Christmas and it’s one of my favorite things. Not solely for its beauty, but because each square radiates the excitement of faraway lands and adventures.
I swallow my sigh and sit down, pulling my knees up and hugging my fluffy faux leopard-skin pillow that Rory bought to give my tranquil, pastel bedroom “an edge.”
As I stroke its plush fur, Helen touches my arm. Not condemning, rather questioning. “You’d think we gave you an all-expense paid trip to Siberia instead of the artistic capital of the civilized world. What’s up?”
“I can’t go.” There, it’s out. In an almost inaudible murmur, but I’ve finally said the words I’ve been holding inside of me ever since last spring when the school counse
lor looked at my grades and portfolio and told me she could find me scholarships to places like the Rhode Island School of Design or NYU or even SCAD in Savannah if I wanted. The offer had at first made me float with joy that my work was good enough, that I might be able to make a living doing what I loved.
But that balloon deflated and crashed to earth when I walked outside the school and felt the weight of possibility crushing me. I could do anything, go anywhere, the counselor had beamed, her aura blindingly bright. She couldn’t imagine anything more exciting—and I couldn’t dream of anything more terrifying. She didn’t know that I had family that needed me, had a responsibility to my dead parents and the business they loved. She just didn’t know.
Then I’d arrived home, my safe, quiet, comforting nest of a home, and found Gram Helen in the midst of one of her spells after a new engineer had ruined a book she’d been working weeks on. I made her tea, baked her cookies, wrapped her in her favorite fleece bathrobe, made sure she had her lavender bath salts, and never felt so needed. My home. My family. My cocoon, soft and clingy and fitting just right.
That night I realized I had no wings, was no butterfly waiting to be set free, as much as I might yearn to fly. I am a caterpillar. Stuck right here.
My family needs me. Period. My need to stay exactly where I am has everything to do with them . . . and nothing at all to do with my irrational fears that something awful will happen if I leave. At least that’s what I tell myself.
“It’s not that boy, is it? The one you brought home tonight?”
I shake my head vigorously.
“Still, he must be something special to bring him to your birthday party.”
Not special, just bad timing. Well, maybe special, but it’s too early for me to even think that way. “It’s not about Alec. I just met him.”
Her gaze is penetrating, sees right through my skin and bones as if she could pluck the truth from the silence between each heartbeat. Her eyes narrow and she nods. “Then it’s because of me. Because of us.”
She says nothing for a long time, wrapping her arm around my shoulders and holding me tight. “You know, when I was your age, I dreamed of a life on the stage. London. Or Hollywood. I was going to be an actress who would never be forgotten. I’d outshine them all.” She pauses. “Know what happened? First time I summoned up my courage and stepped onto a stage?”
I shake my head. Gram Helen never talks about her past, at least not her past before she inherited me. All I’ve ever learned is that she fled here from Sarajevo with my mother and Joe after her husband was killed. She never talks more about those days. It’s as if her life before was erased once she arrived in America and began a new one.
But now her face turns dreamy as she tells her story. I close my eyes, letting her words wash through me, creating vivid images that flow through my mind like a movie.
“It wasn’t even a performance, just an audition. But, oh how I’d practiced. Hours in front of the mirror. I was going to be the best Juliet our school had ever seen. I walk out onto the stage, the whole world turns to shadow and light as the spotlight finds me, and I’ve never felt so at home. And then . . .” Her voice shudders and shies away. “Some idiot backstage starts rolling out scenery. With one wheel squeaking and the other clanking.”
Two of her worst sounds. I open my eyes, the spell broken. “Migraine?”
She nods. “Didn’t even make it to the bathroom before I started puking. Ended up running out the back door of the auditorium, straight into the arms of a boy I’d never met before, and threw up all over his shoes.”
“You never acted again.” I don’t make her say the words.
“Not in front of an audience. But I’ve played many roles.” She means the books she brings to life as a voice talent. “Not the least of which is being your gram.” She hugs me tighter. “And you know that boy? Ended up marrying him.”
That makes me smile despite my misery. “So you’re okay with me not going to Paris?”
“No. I most definitely am not. Because the point is, at least I tried. I stepped out onto that stage even though I knew how hard it would be, for someone like me, with my limitations. But I at least tried.”
My head is shaking, no, no, no.
“I can’t.” My whisper is so thin I’m sure she can see right through it. “You need me. And Uncle Joe does as well.” Black smoke sweeps over her, curling around her throat, covering her head like a widow’s veil. The sense of dread is so strong, so overwhelming that I clench my jaws against a sudden rush of nausea.
She leans away, her lips pursing in consideration. “We’re adults. We love you. We love having you near. But we would never hold you back. You need to live your life, Ella.”
I flinch before her next words, knowing exactly what’s coming. It doesn’t help, her words still hit their target: my heart.
“It’s what your parents would want.”
And there it is. My epitaph.
There’s no winning. Not against ghosts. Two dead people I can’t even remember, not really, more imaginary than real, and they’re running my life from beyond the grave.
CHAPTER 14
Alec
As Rory and Max drive me to the parking lot where I left my bike, the silence is like one of those soundproof barriers between a limo driver and his boss. Only I’m alone in the back and they’re both up front.
Thankfully, it’s a short drive. Rory waves good-bye and shouts, “See you tomorrow!” while Max simply slouches in his seat.
I unlock my bike and somehow manage to avoid any encounters with campus security on my way to my dorm. Thankfully, my roommate is out partying—he’ll wake me around two-thirty after the bars close and he stumbles his way back to the room—so I have a few hours of peace and quiet.
I want to call my dad but simply can’t face him—he won’t say he told me so, but he did and we both know it. Instead, I call Dr. Winston to update him. I’m worried he’ll be upset at my lack of progress and clumsy handling of my introduction to Nora—she’ll be Nora in the book, if I can get the story to the point where it’s publishable. But, instead, he’s excited.
“Wait,” he interrupts me. “So we have an orphaned toddler, two parents—one who killed the other and might have killed the girl if she hadn’t run, a family with synesthesia . . . You definitely need to get into that research. Too bad it’s not the dad’s side, we could play that up with the mental illness angle … Plus amnesia, and a family who’s hidden the truth from the girl all these years?”
I hate the way he sounds almost gleeful. This is a real girl we’re talking about—a girl I’m coming to like. A lot.
“And,” he continues, “all that’s before we get to the boy who saves the girl, then loses her, and spends his life searching for answers to why her parents died, to the point where he leaves home to find her again. Alec, I can’t promise anything, but we might not use this story in my new collection—we might have enough material here for a complete book all on its own. If I can swing it, you wouldn’t get only a byline. You’d have shared credit right on the cover.”
I can’t share his enthusiasm. Funny, because for the past three months, the thought of being published and jumpstarting my career has been the only thing keeping me sane in this strange city I find myself stranded in.
The next day, I get to the meeting room early, reserving it for the entire morning so we won’t be disturbed. I stayed up most of the night preparing my case with the same care my father takes before appearing in court to testify.
You’re not reciting mere facts, Dad would say. You’re telling a story. One that the jury wants to believe. Because if your facts are the truth, then the jury can go home and sleep soundly at night. If you’re wrong, then not only did the system designed to protect them break down, but there’s also a criminal still running free.
I’m sure of my facts. But unlike most juries, my audience doesn’t want to believe me. They’ll twist and turn my words inside out, probe at them with denial a
nd fear, anything to return to the ignorance that sheltered them before I blundered into their lives. Their lives? Her life. Ella’s life.
The thought almost has me gathering my laptop and running all the way back home to South Carolina. What’s the cost of dropping out, losing a semester’s tuition, being humiliated before my parents, compared to destroying someone’s life? Nothing.
I’ve pulled the plug on my laptop, ready to pack it up, when Max appears at the door.
“Where are you going?” His tone is challenging, as if I’ve already proven myself a failure.
“Nowhere,” I tell him, my words driven more by male pride than logic. I jerk the laptop cord to stretch to another outlet, jam it into place. I’ve been taking college classes for two years now, yet I’ve never before felt so anxious. But never before has so much been at stake.
Rory flounces into the room, her bright pink coat swirling around her like a wool cloud. “What’s up?” she asks, eyeing Max and me with suspicion. “You guys doing some male bonding or something? Should I leave, or will there be chest baring and fist pounding?” Her eyes crinkle with delight. “Please tell me there’ll be chest baring and fist pounding. I’ll sell tickets, make a fortune.”
Max frowns her into silence and she slides into a seat at the small conference table. He stalks around the table, ignoring me, and takes the seat opposite her.
“I’ve been thinking,” he says, leaning toward Rory as if there’s no one else in the room. “About what you said last night, about Ella’s auras helping her see lies. I don’t think that’s true.”
“Really?” She pouts as she considers. “How so?”
I stand at the end of the room and listen. Last night I’d stayed up late reading the research on synesthesia, and it’s surprisingly vague for a phenomena so well documented. Scientists can see a person’s brain making the misconnections along their sensory pathways by using functional MRI and PET scanners, but they have to rely on a person’s individual interpretation as to how those misconnections reveal themselves.
