I needed Collette to be my other half again, but it looked like she was never coming back. I needed Ben to be some dumb boy who threw rocks at us again, and nothing else. I needed my daddy to be innocent and Elijah to stay dead. Most of all, I needed somebody to notice I’d shattered.
Plodding through my waking hours, I did my chores automatically and tasted nothing when I ate, until I suddenly burst into tears over supper. The salt didn’t improve the peas much, but Daddy finally moved.
“Sugar, what’s wrong?” He pushed his plate aside and slid his chair close to mine, wrapping me up in his arms.
Surrounded by the scent of his aftershave and the warm, strong cage of his hug, I cried harder. How could I tell him anything? How could I say I was being haunted? How could I explain kissing my best friend’s boyfriend?
How could I look him in the face and tell him I knew what he’d done?
My belly hitched with hiccups, and I had to fight my own throat to answer him. “I don’t know.”
Through my gulps and whimpers, I could hear him whispering nonsense promises, reassurances that everything would be all right, but that just made me cry harder. Nothing would ever be right again; that was one thing I knew for certain.
When I’d settled down to ragged gasps, Daddy pushed me back and reached for a napkin. He studied me, like he could read my mind, concerned as he mopped up my face. His touch was soft under my eyes but hard beneath my nose.
Balling that napkin up, he reached for another and handed it to me. “Blow your nose, baby.”
I was glad he didn’t hold it for me. Between honks, I apologized. “I didn’t mean to ruin supper.”
“We can have peas any day,” he said, taking my dirty napkins and throwing them away. Turning on the tap with his wrist, he washed his hands but watched me over his shoulder. “You know you can talk to me, Iris.”
“Uncle Lee gave me Mama’s memory book,” I said. I turned in my chair and stared at him, trying to look into him. “How come you didn’t have it? How come I had to get it from him?”
Daddy slumped slightly, drying his hands on an old towel. “Because he’s the only one with any sense.”
“Daddy, what are you talking about?”
“I wanted to throw everything away,” he said. “After her funeral, it was just too hard. Lee took the important things home instead. He thought you might want them someday.”
I looked toward the living room. “Then how come you kept the couch?”
“Sofa’s too heavy to throw away in a fit,” Daddy said.
His shamed smile softened my heart. Already heading for the stairs, I said, “You should look.”
“Iris, I . . .”
“I’ll be right back.” I tore up to my room and nearly broke my neck coming back down. Pushing my plate to the middle of the table, I spread the book out. I wanted him to look at it with me. I needed him to.
He hesitated, then leaned in, framing the book with his arm. “It’s been a long time.”
“You went a lot of places,” I said, stopping at the camping pictures.
Daddy worked a nail under the plastic sleeve to pull out a photograph of Mama sitting on his lap by a tent. “Actually, that was Eddie Lanoux’s backyard. They lived a ways out and had a good piece of land. We never brought enough matches. Half the time we ended up sneaking into the house to make supper.”
I turned the book a little to get the glare of the lights off the plastic. “Did Mama take this one?”
“Yes, ma’am, and all the ones with her in them, too. She had a timer. She wouldn’t let anybody else mess with her camera, not even a little.” Daddy shook his head at himself and sighed. “I never told you about Katie and her pictures.”
That hit a hollow place, one I wanted filled up so badly it ached. “Huh-uh.”
“She said she’d have a gallery someday. Me and Eli planned to build her a darkroom. . . .” Daddy trailed off thoughtfully. “Damned if we knew what belonged in one.”
Thumbing over another page, Daddy frowned at the empty spot he found, his eyes darting over the handwriting left behind in the margin. “The parish fair should have been right here.”
For a moment, I kept my silence, then admitted, “I’ve got it up in my room. I like it.”
He gazed at the empty page as if he could see the picture that belonged there, his lips twitching with an odd smile. “We all started off together, but by midnight, Nan threw Eli over for some carnie, and I’d asked your mama to marry me.” A pleased glimmer colored his eyes again, and he glanced at me. “She told me no.”
Clasping the edge of the table, I twisted in my chair to look up at him. “She changed her mind, though!”
“Only after she spent spring break in New Orleans.” Flicking to the next page, he glanced at it briefly, then closed the memory book softly. “She’d been planning on moving there after high school. She wanted her gallery to be right on the water, and I liked Ondine just fine.
“She went for two weeks, and when she came back, she marched up to my front door and said, ‘All right, Jack, what did you do to ruin my city?’ And I just looked at her and said, ‘I stayed here.’ ”
Daddy leaned his chair back, smoothing a hand over his hair. “She didn’t plan on taking me back, but I think it scared her when Eli died.”
I forced myself to stay still, but God, it was hard. My daddy had just told on himself.
Trying to be all nonchalant, I picked up the memory book and held it to my chest. “How do you know he’s dead?”
Daddy clamped down on his memories and started to clear the table. “I guess I don’t. Why don’t you put that book away before it gets ruined?”
How could he mourn Elijah if he killed him? He should have looked guilty or scared or maybe both or something, but not heartbroken.
“Do you miss him?”
He looked right into me; he crackled with possibility. And then he nudged me gently. “I said go on.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and stole upstairs with my thoughts.
After a couple of lonely days, Daddy tapped on my door and told me to get my shoes on. I did as I was told, but I asked, “Where are we going?”
Holding up a covered plate, Daddy said, “I’m going to play cards with Eddie, and you’re making up with Collette.”
In the dusk, we walked over to the Lanouxs’ with an offering of thick brownies, all with nuts because that was how Daddy liked them and he wouldn’t bend on that, even for me.
Shoving my hands in my pockets, I smiled up at Mr. Lanoux when he opened the door, and I asked, “Is Collette home?”
“Upstairs, peaches.” Winking at me, he plucked an exposed walnut from the brownies to pop into his mouth.
Music rolled out of Collette’s room, just loud enough that it was pointless to knock. Opening the door a crack, I snuck inside and closed the door by leaning on it.
She’d made a couple of changes since the last time I’d been in: she’d replaced her pink covers with wine red ones and had grown a collection of overstuffed pillows in shades of gold and bronze. The colors matched a new robe I’d never seen her wear before. She lounged on her belly in the middle of the bed, her bare feet waving in the air, stilling when she realized she wasn’t alone. Looking up from a magazine, Collette let me see a brief, scathing frown, then turned back to her article. “What do you want?”
“I found out some more stuff,” I said, my feet pinned in place. Sliding down to sit, I squeezed the rock in my pocket, willing Collette to look at me again. “My daddy messed up when he was talking to me about Mama.”
“What, did he tell you he personally cut off Elijah’s head?”
Strangled by big gulps of pride, I shrugged. “I think I was wrong about that part.”
Thin magazine pages crinkled, then the bed groaned as Collette shifted to look back at me. “You think?”
I tugged my knees to my chest. “You don’t have to be ugly.”
Collette grabbed the edge of the bed and pulled herself do
wn to sit on the end. Leaning forward, she curved her mouth into an icy smile, one that didn’t have any humor to it at all. “You went too far, Iris. He was already your ghost. You didn’t have to make your daddy kill him, too.”
A flare of heat rose in my chest, threatening to become a blush. “I said I was sorry.”
“No, you said you were wrong.”
“Fine, I’m sorry, all right? I thought it made sense!” Then I cut myself off. “Why am I apologizing to you, anyway? You’re the one who got nasty with me!”
Collette stood up, her crimson robe falling like waves all around her. “I didn’t, either. You did lie about the witchboard! Probably none of it’s true. Ben told me he threw the rock at the séance.”
“He did not.”
“Yeah, he did.” She graced me with another cold smile.
Unsteady, I wavered. “Did he do the knocking, too?”
“I figured you made up everything else.”
“I didn’t, though!”
Showing off another flash of the whites of her eyes, Collette sank down to ignore me some more.
My lower lip trembled, and I bit it hard to keep it still.
“Facts are facts. Elijah really did go missing, and Daddy said he’d died like he knew it for sure. If everybody else thinks he disappeared, and my daddy knows he died, then—”
“Don’t you get it? I don’t care!”
I grabbed the doorknob and hauled myself up. I’d had just about enough of her, and I was starting to get mad that I was the one apologizing. Maybe Collette did think she was right, but I thought I was, too, and that hadn’t stopped me from saying sorry. “You used to before you went all boy-crazy!”
“At least the boys I like aren’t dead!”
“At least the boys I like like me back,” I snapped.
Before Collette could figure that one out, the door shoved open enough to knock me in the head.
Rooster flung himself into the room, dancing like a rodeo clown. “Y’all in trouble—we could hear you yelling downstairs!”
Grabbing Rooster by the shoulders, Collette pushed him into the hall and slammed the door. “I told you to stay out of my room!”
Instead of going away like a sensible person would have, Rooster stood in the hall and knocked on the door. He knocked loud and soft; he knocked “Twinkle, Twinkle” and belched out every star before starting over again.
Cutting a glance at me, Collette set her jaw. “See what you did?”
I gritted my teeth and whispered through them. I knew if I started with Collette, we’d never make up again. “I wasn’t the only one yelling.”
“You started it,” Collette hissed, bracing her shoulder against the door when Rooster realized knocking wasn’t annoying enough and decided to bounce off it instead.
Forcing myself to give up just a little, I helped her lean against the door. “We both started it. I’m just trying to finish it.”
“I see London, I see—”
Rooster cut off with a yelp when heavy footsteps came down the hall. The doorknob jiggled again, and me and Collette jumped back to let her mama in.
Already shaking her head, Mrs. Lanoux crossed her arms over her chest. “Do I even want to know?”
I didn’t say anything. Collette looked me over, then spread her hands out helplessly. “We were just doing a play, and dummy Rooster wouldn’t leave us alone.”
Weary, Mrs. Lanoux craned down the hall, ignoring us for a minute to yell out a warning. “Boy, get in there and take your bath like I told you to!” Answered by a thump, then the sound of running water, Mrs. Lanoux turned to us again. “Try to keep it down to a dull roar.”
“We will,” Collette said, all but pushing her mama into the hall and closing the door on her. Whipping around to face me, she lifted her chin. “You owe me.”
Considering she had kept us both out of trouble, not just me, I didn’t see how. But I wasn’t gonna argue with the offering of a peace branch.
Pulling my hands from my pockets, I looked at her. “Do you really not care anymore?”
Collette rolled her shoulders in a great shrug, her robe shimmering all the way down her arms. “I don’t know. What did you find out?”
“Well, for one, Miss Nan lied to us.”
The dark sparkle came back to Collette’s eyes, both brows rising until they disappeared beneath her curls. “About what?”
I opened the door for a minute, listening for voices around the house. Rooster warbled from the bathroom, and after a minute, I heard my daddy laughing downstairs. Comfortable that they wouldn’t notice us again, I locked the door and nodded at Collette’s radio.
“Turn that up.”
Drowned out by the music, I told her my plan.
chapter thirteen
We jimmied the screen loose and jumped off the sloped roof, carrying our shoes to keep from making too much noise. The trees attacked us, their gnarled twig fingers reaching out to snatch our hair, and we tripped more than once on the uneven ground.
I felt giddy and Collette must have, too, because she couldn’t stop giggling. It was our best escape ever. When we poured into Ben’s backyard, she turned to me with a drunken smile. “I can’t believe we just snuck out like that.”
“Me either,” I said, trying to keep myself from bouncing.
The way I figured it, we had about a half hour before anybody came looking for us. The CDs played just loud enough to hide the emptiness of Collette’s room, and the locked door would keep Rooster from barging in to find out otherwise.
I loved my plan; I felt like a genius.
Since we were being wicked anyway, we threw pebbles at Ben’s window instead of going to the front door. He didn’t have to be in for his curfew for another couple of hours, but what good was sneaking out without acting up a little?
Raising his screen, Ben leaned out to squint at us. “What are y’all doing?”
“Come down and we’ll tell you,” Collette said, putting her hands on her hips. She smiled up at him, jutting one hip out and tilting her head.
Ben ducked inside. One invasion must have been enough for him, because he popped out the back door, then looked up at his window in relief. “Where y’all at?”
“We’re fine,” Collette purred. She half yanked my arm off and put me on display. “Guess what.”
“What?” Ben hunched over, his hands searching for pockets his sweatpants didn’t have.
Ben had so much on his mind—his mama, his daddy, what he and his brother had done—I felt guilty for piling a murder on his conscience, too. I hoped taking it back would make things better. A little, anyway.
“I was wrong about my daddy, Ben.” I nodded, sincere. “He knew Elijah died, but he didn’t kill him.”
And I think it did help. All at once, Ben seemed to grow taller. His back straightened, and a smile curved the corners of his mouth. “Well, that’s good to know.”
I nodded. “Yeah. So I don’t know exactly what happened, but he didn’t do it. And”—I nearly knocked myself over when I waved my hand too hard—“Miss Nan lied. She and Elijah broke up before Easter.”
“They could’ve gotten back together,” Collette said, trying to be fair. That didn’t last long, though; she took a breath and then said, “But still, she didn’t say anything to us about running around with a carnie. I mean, she dumped him right there at the fair!”
Rocking back on his heels, Ben considered it. “Maybe Miss Nan killed him and your daddy found out.”
That didn’t feel right to me, and I shook my head. “But then he woulda looked for him. His body, I mean. Or told on her, at least.”
“Oh, I know!” Collette drew a map in the air, trying to put people into position to illustrate her point. “Maybe Elijah ran away and got a new identity, then found out he was dying and wrote a goodbye note!”
Ben kicked at the dirt, furrowing his brows. “But why wouldn’t he tell his mama that?”
Snorting, Collette flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Uh
, because she’s crazy?”
The wind picked up, and I had to curve my hands against my face to keep my hair from my eyes. I looked into the dark, expecting to see somebody watching us. Nobody was there.
“He could have killed himself,” I said. “I think I’d know it if y’all wanted to go off and die somewhere, so maybe Elijah’s friends did, too. I wouldn’t want to go looking and find you dead, you know?”
Collette shuffled from foot to foot, giving my theory a moment of life before killing it. “I think he had a secret identity and cancer.”
Wincing, Ben shrugged. “Maybe.”
Sure of herself, Collette added, “We still don’t know why he was in the hospital.”
A glow of white light poured onto the lawn, and Ben’s mama stepped onto the porch. She was only a shadow, but I could see the wisps of dark hair that escaped her scarf to swirl around her head. “Wind it up, baby.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ben said, caught having a mama who still called him pet names in public. Lowering his voice, he stepped closer. “You wanna go to the cemetery tomorrow and we can work on this some more?”
“We’ll be there.” Collette lingered like she wanted to stay behind for a private minute, but then she looked me over and started toward the woods. “I wonder if we can get old medical records at the library?”
Starting to follow Collette, I told her I thought medical records stayed private forever, and then stopped at the tree line. “I forgot to ask Ben something. I’ll be right back,” I said, ignoring her bothered frown. I caught him right before he closed the door.
Ben put his shoulder between the door and the frame, half inside, half out. Shadows played on his brow. “What’s wrong?”
Tugging on the hem of my shirt, I glanced over my shoulder at Collette. “Did you throw that rock when you were at my house?”
Incredibly quiet, Ben smiled uncomfortably and looked away. “I didn’t mean to hit the glass. That was an accident.”
A sigh rolled out of me. “What about the knocks?”
“No, ma’am,” he said, holding both hands up to swear his innocence. “That wasn’t me.”
Mindful that Ben wasn’t the only one to make things up about Elijah, I summoned as much generosity as I could. “Just don’t do anything else like that, all right?”
Shadowed Summer Page 11
