Dreaming Darkly

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “Farmington,” he said. “That’s where my mom ended up after the divorce. Sometimes when this island feels really small I look at that and pretend I can go out there after high school.”

  “Can’t you?” I said.

  Doyle shook his head.

  “Dad would cut me off, and I don’t exactly have scholarship grades. We’re not Bloodgood rich, but all my cousins get college paid for, cars, living expenses. I can’t just show up on my mom’s doorstep with no college plans and no job skills. Dad made sure she got absolutely nothing when she left him. I don’t want to be a burden.”

  Much as I hated touching people, I kind of wanted to hug Doyle. He looked so deflated, the usual spark burned out in his eyes. “Farmington is nice,” was all I could offer. “I think you’d be really happy there.”

  “Yeah,” Doyle sighed. “Basically, anywhere is better than Darkhaven. But you didn’t come over here to listen to me bitch and moan. Tell me what’s going on with you.”

  I pulled the notebook out of my pocket. “I found my mother’s . . . diary, I guess? I don’t know. It’s literally the only thing I have that might tell me why she ran away. My uncle just keeps saying there were problems, and she left.” I tapped the book against my leg, suddenly irritated. “I don’t know why it’s such a big secret. She sure as hell never tried to protect me from anything. I mean . . .” I tossed the diary on the cot. “It’s clear as day she was already nuts, and she was like what, seventeen?

  Doyle picked up the book and paged through it, scanning the pages of scrawl in the five different colors of ink. “Why don’t we ask her friend?”

  “What?” I grabbed the diary back. “My mother did not have friends. She had people who tolerated her until they realized she was a kleptomaniac con artist.”

  Doyle leaned down and ran his finger along a line of scribbles. “Mary Anne. Says right there.” I leaned over his shoulder as he read it aloud, envious of his ability to decipher Mom’s scrawl.

  Went with Mary Anne to the lobster bake. She brought her dad’s schnapps. My dad won’t stop asking me what Mom said last time I visited her in the latest glorified prison ward he had her locked in. I just want to float away, feel like I did when I was warm and dizzy and standing with my toes in the ocean on the mainland. You can’t go into the water out here on the island. You’ll drown.

  “Even if this Mary Anne exists, I bet she’s long gone,” I said. “This was, what, nearly eighteen years ago?”

  Doyle took the diary and flipped rapidly. “Mary Anne’s dad, the one with the super-sad liquor cabinet, lives in Camden,” he said. “That’s not too far. We should go.”

  I raised one eyebrow. “Are you serious? In case you didn’t notice, we’re stuck on an island and my uncle’s weird little minion is the only one with a boat I have access to.”

  “She’s not the only one,” Doyle said. “Meet me tomorrow morning around six and we’ll take my dad’s cabin cruiser.”

  “Won’t your dad be pissed you stole his boat to go look for a teenage alcoholic who may or may not have been friends with my mom?” I said.

  “Oh yeah, he’ll kick my ass,” Doyle said. “But it’ll be worth it. I don’t like seeing you this worried.”

  “Yeah, let’s go.” I locked eyes with him. “I could pretend I’m not worried, but I am, and I need to know, and I really don’t want to go alone.” I made myself stop talking. Now I was just spilling all my fears and feelings to anyone who’d listen. I needed to get it together.

  “So we’ll go together,” Doyle said. “Six a.m. There’s an old dock on the other side of the lighthouse that nobody uses. I’ll pick you up.”

  I almost thought he was more nuts for suggesting I wake up at 6:00 a.m. than we go track down Mom’s friend, but I nodded. “Okay.”

  “And if you feel the urge to kill, let me know, so I can get a head start running,” he called as I opened his bedroom door and stepped into the hall.

  “I hate you,” I said. Doyle grinned.

  “I’m adorable and you know it.”

  “Now who’s delusional?” I said, and shut the door.

  Chapter 17

  The old dock where Doyle told me to meet him jutted out into the water at a crooked angle, like a broken bone. It must have been there for decades, the boards slowly rotting until I could see the black water lapping through the gaps. It felt like walking into an enormous mouth that only had a few ragged teeth left.

  I stood on the very edge, my toes over the water, and after a minute a motorboat nosed around the point by the lighthouse and drifted in, Doyle at the helm. He helped me in and revved the motor. “Doughnut?” He pointed at a half-crushed box plastered with powdered sugar. I wrinkled my nose.

  “It is way too early for supermarket pastry.”

  “Yeah, if I were really smooth, I’d probably have some croissants and a thermos of hot chocolate, and be like, wearing a scarf,” Doyle said. “And I’d find a way to work a Jane Austen quote or two into our conversation.”

  “And brush the droplets of spray from my lips,” I said as the boat skipped a wave and a welter of salt mist hit me in the face.

  “Good one,” Doyle said. “Remind me to pick your brain for tips some time.”

  “That doesn’t actually work,” I said. “If some creep lured me onto his boat, I’d throw him overboard and it’d be spring before somebody found the body,” I said.

  Doyle shoved half a doughnut in his mouth. “Fortunately I’m a jerk who scares off women before I have any chance of luring them anywhere.” He pointed the boat toward the mainland. The cabin was all wood and shiny metal, and the hull was so varnished I could see the ocean reflected in it.

  “So how many James Bond boats does your dad have anyway?” I said. Doyle snorted.

  “It’s his thing. He has boats and cars and motorcycles, because what you need on a tiny island is twenty different ways to drive in a circle.”

  “How are we supposed to find this Mary Anne woman, anyway?” I said after another bone-crunching jolt over a wave. Doyle huffed.

  “You always ask this many questions?”

  “Only when I’m trying to fill an awkward silence,” I said.

  Doyle pushed the throttle up, and the boat started to bounce across the surface of the ocean in earnest. I took the hint and sat down. I’d read more of the diary the night before, and I hadn’t slept much. Most of what Mom wrote was just babbling or inane “dear diary” type stuff, and scouring through her handwriting for any mention of Mary Anne had left me with a headache that felt like an icepick to the eye.

  Simon doesn’t go to visit Mom like I do. He only goes to spy. He tells Father everything, when we’re forced to visit him and his new wife on the mainland. I tell him nothing. I guess that fits. Mary Anne thinks Father is just worried about Mom’s condition, but I know better. He’s not worried. He’s waiting. Waiting to see if Mom will snap out of it or end up like everyone else in that damp, smelly hospital he calls an “institute,” like that somehow makes it smell less like pee and bleach and takes away the hopeless look in Mom’s eyes after they give her a shot of tranquilizer. He’s waiting to see if she’ll finally give in to the dark thing that’s lurking inside all of us that are Bloodgoods by birth. He never forgave Mom taking Simon and me in the divorce, and taking back her own family name, giving it to us so the Bloodgoods live on and his family tree dies with him. He started calling her crazy way before she actually started acting that way. Joke’s on him. I’ve seen Mom’s will. He gets nothing. Figure I’ll save that news for when he makes us visit him at Christmas. Bloodgoods know how to stick together, if nothing else.

  I didn’t know for sure why my grandmother had been institutionalized, but I could guess. Mom was devoted to her, though. There were more entries about her trips to visit than everything else combined.

  All I’d found that could possibly help me track down Mary Anne were a few lines toward the end of the writing, just before the barren expanse of blank pages that concealed an
ything else I might have learned about her.

  Mary Anne won’t meet me. She’s always busy, like because she has a job she’s now better than me. As if she’ll ever do anything with herself. She’ll be stuck at the Crow’s Nest until she finds some guy to shack up with. I just have to go. I feel the tide pulling me. Go go go. Run until I can’t stop. Run until I drop. Until I die. I’d rather die than be here one second longer.

  We tied up at the Ramseys’ slip in Darkhaven, and Doyle led me to a beat-up Jeep wagon in the parking lot of the marina. “Camden’s about forty minutes from here,” he said. “You want to drive? It’s my car, so if you dent it, you’ll just have to deal with me, not my dad.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t have a license.”

  Doyle grimaced. “You and I can practice if you want. I helped Valerie pass her road test.”

  “I can drive,” I said. “Just not legally.”

  “Like so many good things in life,” Doyle said. The Jeep took a few tries to turn over, but soon we were on the twisting coast highway, passing tiny antiques shops, lopsided barns, and restaurants with giant lobster statues waving us in from their parking lots.

  “You know, whatever we find,” Doyle said after a few miles, “I won’t tell anyone. Not Valerie, not anyone in my family. Certainly not your uncle.”

  I leaned my forehead against the cold window glass. “I trust you, Doyle. Much as I trust anyone.”

  He sighed. “I get the sense that isn’t very much.”

  “You’re not wrong,” I said quietly.

  “I get it,” he said. “People who should protect you don’t, and the ones you should trust aren’t worthy of it. Believe me, Ivy. I get it more than you know.”

  I sat up and looked over at him, but he was staring at the road. I felt really shitty—I was dealing with a lot of stuff right now, to be sure, but that didn’t mean I had to be self-absorbed when it came to my friends.

  “You want to talk about it?” I said, knowing the answer.

  “No,” he said, and that was it until we started seeing signs for Camden.

  I told Doyle about the Crow’s Nest, and he handed me his phone to look up the place. “It’s a bookstore,” I said, showing him the search page as we slowed down at the Camden town line. A Maine State Police car sat to one side, the trooper glaring at everyone who passed. I reflexively sank down in my seat.

  “You got warrants?” Doyle smiled as I shrunk away from the window.

  “Cops usually meant us having to pick up and move before one of them called CPS,” I said. “I’m not their biggest fan.”

  The trooper didn’t pull out after us, though, and we crept along behind tourists with out-of-state plates and locals in rattletrap pickups until we spotted the bookstore and parked.

  The Crow’s Nest was tucked into a small building with a sagging roof, covered in gray shingles and those spiny climbing roses that seemed to be everywhere in Maine. A small brass bell jangled when I stepped inside.

  This was not the kind of bookstore you found in a romantic comedy, where you ran into your crush in the philosophy aisle and pretended to be smart by grabbing some esoteric book in French, or the sort where you could curl up for hours, wear cute vintage glasses, and be that quirky girl everyone teased except for the new boy in town, who was of course also hot and super into you for your brain, not your stunning looks. This place was more the kind of bookstore you’d go to if you needed a handy one-stop tome for casting spells and summoning the devil.

  Shelves ran all the way to the ceiling, and across the rafters ancient bundles of dusty herbs hung. I think they were meant to combat the smell of mildew and rotten paper, but they’d given up a long time ago. Every table was piled high with books—books that nobody would ever want to read, or had, by the look, even opened. A thick layer of dust sat on everything, and I felt my throat start to tickle.

  The counter was made of rickety plywood, also stacked all around with books, newspapers, and magazines so old people in the ads were still wearing suits and smoking. A guy my age leaned against it, reading a dog-eared copy of Snow Crash. He looked about as musty as the rest of the shop—his hair was stiff and black, shaved around the ears to show off a collection of studs and rings. He had two more in his lip, and alternating black and white nails. He was wrapped up in a black hoodie and a striped purple-and-black scarf, like Tim Burton’s geeky kid brother.

  He looked up from his book, gave me a once-over, and let out a long sigh. “I doubt I can help you.”

  “Funny, I was about to say the same thing,” I muttered. Somewhere behind me, a stack of magazines collapsed, sliding to the floor with a slithering rush.

  “If you need school books, try Amazon,” said the kid, seemingly oblivious to the poltergeist-like movement of his clutter piles. “We only do used and rare here.”

  More like moldy and ancient, but whatever. “I’m actually looking for a woman who used to work here. Mary Anne?”

  The kid sucked on his lip ring for a second, rolling his eyes. “She’s not an employee,” he explained, as if I’d asked him how pants worked. “She’s the owner.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Do you know where she lives?”

  He scrutinized me again. “Does she owe you money?”

  “Does she owe a lot of people money?” I asked.

  “No. Business is slow, but fortunately we’ve got this stash of Nazi gold in the office safe,” he said.

  “She and my mom were friends a long time ago,” I said. “I just wanted to ask her something.”

  “Oh em gee,” said the kid, coming to life like one of the vampires he was impersonating at the first whiff of scandal. “Are you, like, searching for your real identity? Did Mary Anne get pregnant and your mom raised the baby?” He grinned at me, showing a bumper crop of adult braces and dispelling my suspicion he was just being an asshole. Small-town Maine was really boring. If I was trapped working at the Crow’s Nest, I’d get excited if we got a pizza delivered. I shrugged. “Yeah, something like that.”

  The guy scribbled an address on the back of a paper bag and slid it to me. “You have to come back and tell me what happened,” he said. “It is so boring here I literally think I will die most days before my shift ends.”

  “You got it,” I said, hurrying back toward the door with the intention to never see him again.

  “Don’t ask,” I said to Doyle when I got back in the car.

  We drove through downtown, more gray buildings with more discreet little signs, and up a winding hill of Victorian homes into an older, shabbier neighborhood that dead-ended at a cottage that was even more ramshackle than the bookstore.

  I opened my door. Doyle started to stay put, but I tilted my head. “You mind? I didn’t expect to actually meet her, and now I’m not sure I want to do it alone.”

  He got out without a word and followed me up the overgrown walk. The house was practically hidden from the road by a thicket of bushes and thorns, and the windows were covered from the inside by newspapers. The screen door was hanging by one hinge, and I gingerly pushed it aside before I knocked.

  I was about to turn around when Doyle perked up. “Someone’s in there,” he said. “I can hear them moving around.”

  I knocked again, harder. “Hello?” I called. “I’m Myra Bloodgood’s daughter, Ivy. Can I talk to you?”

  It wasn’t my best cold open ever, but now that I was standing here, most of my con skills deserted me. What was I supposed to say?

  A lot of locks clicked, and then the door opened a crack. “Go away.”

  “Are you Mary Anne?” I said. I held up the diary. “I found your name in this. Mom—Myra—talked about you a lot.” A tiny lie, but hopefully that would get me in the door.

  The eye at the crack was wide and bloodshot, and I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me that Mary Anne might be as looped as Mom. Like attracting like and all that. “Where is Myra?” she said. Her accent was precise and clipped, definitely not from around here.

  “S
he’s dead,” I said. The door slammed, and Doyle sighed.

  “Want me to try? I can lay on the charm, or something.”

  I listened, heard half a dozen deadbolts rattling, and held up a hand. “Wait a second.”

  The door flew open again, slamming against the wall like a rifle shot. Mary Anne stared at me, at Doyle. She was wearing one of those dresses that looks like a blanket, and her hair drifted around her head in loose waves. “Who the hell is he?” she said, pointing at Doyle.

  “My friend,” I said. “He doesn’t bite.”

  Doyle grinned in response, showing his blindingly white teeth. I elbowed him in the ribs. “Knock it off,” I hissed.

  Mary Anne stared at both of us, eyes narrowed. “Myra is really dead?”

  “Really,” I promised. “We aren’t here to bother you or cause trouble. I just wanted to ask you something.” This was my wheelhouse—lying to nice, average people and talking them into doing things they wouldn’t normally do. Although looking at her stained clothes, bag lady hair, and the slice of hoarder mess I could see behind her, I judged Mary Anne was probably several city blocks away from average.

  Mary Anne sighed. “Poor Myra. Rest in peace.” She went back to glaring at us, then slowly let go of her death grip on the door. “I guess you can come in.”

  The house was at least as crowded as the bookstore. A sour odor blended with the kind of cheap, cloying incense my mother had always loved. Doyle wrinkled his nose as Mary Anne shoved a pile of books and pillows off the sofa. “Sit,” she said. “You want some tea?”

  I nodded, even though I was fairly sure anything that came out of her kitchen would probably poison me.

  Doyle leaned over when she stomped away into the cramped little kitchen. “This is not what I was expecting.”

  “This is exactly what I was expecting,” I muttered. Mary Anne shouted, making me jump.

  “So what did you want to talk to me about, Amy?”

  “It’s Ivy,” I said. I got up, looking around the room. It was cramped, covered in tapestry prints and scarves on all the furniture and lamps. My feet sank into at least three layers of Persian carpet along with a decade’s worth of newspapers.