“Whatever,” Mary Anne said, slamming a kettle onto an old wood-fired stove and poking at the embers under the burner. “What did you want to know?”
“Can you just . . .” I swallowed, my throat tight from more than the dust in the air. Just get a grip, Ivy, I commanded. “I don’t know much about Mom before I was born. You were her best friend, I thought maybe you could just tell me a little bit about her.” So I chickened out on the real question. I was working up to it, I told myself. First a little color about Mom as a teenager, then I’d start interrogating Mary Anne about my paternity.
“Not much to tell,” Mary Anne grunted, wiping her hands on a filthy towel. “My family came here from Bosnia. We were refugees. I was the new girl, no English, no friends. Your mama was kind to me. Even started calling me my English name, Mary Anne, so the others would stop picking on me.”
“That’s it?” I narrowed my eyes.
“What more you want?” Mary Anne replied, glaring at me in return.
“Look, I know my grandmother died in a mental hospital,” I said. “I know my mother was struggling with a lot. I just want to know why she left Darkhaven.” I cleared my throat and tried to smile. “Anything you can tell me would be really helpful.” Come on, Ivy, I chided myself. Suck it up and ask what you really want to ask.
Wanted to ask, sure. Wanted to know, maybe not so much. While my father was still a blank space, he could be anyone, maybe even somebody who wasn’t totally horrible. Once I’d asked, I’d opened the door to certainty, and any grifter could tell you that the certain truth was a dangerous thing to have in your grasp.
Mary Anne cut her gaze at Doyle, who had picked up a rotund stone figure from one of the overcrowded windowsills and was turning it in his hands. “Put that down!” she snapped. “I may tolerate zla krv in my house, but I do not have to tolerate rudeness.”
I glanced between her and Doyle. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t realize your, uh, rock was so important.”
“Why are you dragging yourself through the gutter?” Mary Anne snapped. “An innocent boy going around with a girl of tainted blood.”
So much for any more questions. “Hey, lady,” I said. “You don’t want to tell me anything, just say so. I don’t need to be lectured, and I’m full up on crazy.” I waved off the chipped mug she handed at me. “Thanks anyway.”
“Wait!” she hollered desperately as I started to walk out. “Your mama, she died . . . she was murdered? You know who the killer is, or no?”
I turned back on her. Suddenly I felt monumentally stupid for reacting so strongly. She was just a lonely hoarder, stuck in her smelly little house, and I was an idiot to think finding out anything new about Mom would make the past two weeks easier to deal with.
Mary Anne watched me, mug gripped so hard her knuckles were white.
“She killed herself,” I said, making sure to enunciate each syllable. It was still weird to say it out loud to a stranger. It was surprisingly easy. “Nobody hurt her. Nobody killed her. She was weak, and she took the easy way out. That what you wanted to know?”
Doyle put his hand on my shoulder, and I shoved it off. Mary Anne’s face twitched, like I’d reached across the distance and slapped her.
“No . . . ,” she whispered. Her eyes went wide, and it was like she was seeing me for the first time. “You did not come here for Myra,” she breathed. “You come here for your father.” She put a hand to her mouth, fingers shaking. “The darkness around you . . . Myra told me then, and I didn’t believe her. . . .”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Doyle said. “Come on, Ivy, we’re really leaving now.”
“You!” Mary Anne shrieked. The mug dropped from her hand and shattered as she pointed a finger at Doyle. “You run while you can, boy. Myra knew the sickness, knew it was in her bloodline. Knew it would come for her!” She let out a sound like a wounded animal and crumpled to the floor, shaking.
Doyle guided me firmly to the door. “She doesn’t know anything,” he muttered. “Let’s just go, okay?”
“Oh yes,” Mary Anne spat from the floor. Her eyes were alive and gleaming like twin oil slicks, and she pointed a finger with a ragged, bloody nail at me. “Go with him. Your mother knew, and I should have listened. Your coming to be, it drove her past the edge. She should have killed you the moment you drew breath.”
Rage boiled up into my words before I could stop it, and I turned around, starting for Mary Anne. “What did you say?” Doyle caught the sleeve of my jacket, hard enough to rock me back on my heels.
“Don’t, Ivy,” he murmured in my ear. “We don’t need the police coming over here.”
“You think you know anything about me?” I shouted at Mary Anne. “You don’t know shit! You have no idea what it was like to put up with her all those years. The drinking and the fights and her beating on me whenever she was fed up with her own crappy life!”
I picked up one of her stupid rocks and threw it to the ground. Something under the layers of newspaper and junk on the floor shattered, and Mary Anne screamed.
“I’m not bad!” I also screamed, outpacing her. “I’m just trying to deal with this shit as normally as possible, which is more than she ever did! I am not like her!”
It was like I couldn’t stop myself, like the few times I’d let myself get really drunk at some barn party back in the Midwest. I picked up another rock, poised it over a cluster of glass figurines on a table near the door. “Say something else about me!” I shouted. “I dare you!” I didn’t care that I was scaring Mary Anne. I was glad. She was going to taunt me and call me names? I was going to break all her dusty crap.
“No,” Mary Anne was wailing. “No, no, no . . . not me. I’m no threat to you. That’s why he let me live. I’m no threat to either of you.”
Just like that, when she spoke, the surge of adrenaline that had led me to lose my shit on this poor old crazy woman thudded to a stop. I realized that I was having a total meltdown for reasons that had nothing to do with Mary Anne. I dropped the rock, and it thudded on the carpet.
“Who?” I said, feeling my heart thudding like I’d just finished a cross-country race. “Who let you live?”
Mary Anne pulled her knees to her chest. She looked like a little girl who was scared of the dark. “No . . . I can’t . . .”
“WHO?” I thundered. Even Doyle jumped at that. I glanced over and saw that his brow was furrowed and his eyes were wide and almost all pupil. Great. Not only had I lost my temper on a pathetic woman who probably needed a heavy dose of lithium even more than Mom had, I’d done it in front of the one tolerable person I’d met since I came to Darkhaven.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I’m really sorry, okay? Please tell me who said that.”
Mary Anne let out a small sob. “The devil,” she whispered, staring up at me, her whole body quivering. “Your father.”
Chapter 18
Doyle drove us down to a parking lot at the public beach, and we sat in the car for a long time, watching the waves roll in and out without speaking.
“You wanna talk about it?” Doyle said finally. He leaned over and flipped the passenger heating vent toward me, gesturing for me to put my hands on it as warm air billowed out. I felt a sharp tingle in my palms and realized the beds of my nails were blue.
“Not really,” I said. Doyle looked back at the ocean.
“I’m sorry that wasn’t what you were looking for,” he said. “I know how it is when you go looking for something you think will help you understand, and it all goes wrong.”
“I just feel stupid,” I muttered. “Stupid for thinking anything Mom was involved in wouldn’t just be a massive ball of screwed up.” I hesitated. “And really stupid that you saw me lose my shit like that.”
“Don’t,” Doyle said. “As far as berserker rages go, you can’t hold a candle to my brothers and cousins after about twenty beers.” He shifted, leaning back against the seat and staring at the ocean, letting out a sigh that mingled with the blasts of l
ukewarm air from the heater.
“It’s not even that,” I muttered. “I don’t know why I thought finding out anything about my father would do the least bit of good.” I sighed. “And I didn’t find out anything new, other than he’s apparently the devil and I’m the devil’s kid.”
“That old bat was way far gone,” Doyle said. “People like her love to yell about the devil.”
I was glad he was looking out at the ocean and didn’t see me flinch. Flippant remarks about crazy people were hitting close to home these days.
“I’m sorry I wasted your day,” I said. “Let’s just go home and forget I was ever this stupid, okay?”
Doyle rubbed a hand over his face, then turned to look at me, arm on the back of the seat. “Look, I don’t tell people this, but about a year ago I ran away and went to live with my mom’s extended family up in Canada. Ass-end of the Yukon, all survivalist and shit. I thought if I left, I could get away from all the small-town politics and all of my dad’s crap.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “It sucked. They were these überconservative, insular rednecks who treated me like shit because my mother had left the family and married an Irish Catholic. Then divorced him and moved to a blue state. Between the ultraright screeds and having to field-dress more deer than any one group of people should be able to eat in ten years, I had to admit I screwed up and came home. Then my dad was pissed at me too.”
I knew it was just the shock and the general awfulness of the day talking, but I started to giggle.
“What?” Doyle demanded.
“The Yukon,” I snickered. “Doyle, you’re half Canadian.”
“Yeah, so?” he grumbled. “Not the good kind.”
“Hey, so, I’m the school bad boy, eh? So sorry about your mom, eh?” I said, trying to bite back laughter.
Doyle grunted, but then he smiled. “And you Hulk out when you get mad.”
I felt like shit again. Mary Anne’s words wouldn’t leave me alone. The devil. Your father.
Doyle turned on the radio while we drove back to the marina, and I was glad we didn’t have to talk anymore. I thought I’d be relieved to know anything concrete about Mom. Instead, Mary Anne had left me with ten thousand new questions.
You didn’t start referring to the father of your friend’s unborn child as the devil unless something seriously messed up had happened between them, so bad that Scary Anne back there clearly thought there was some dimension of actual supernatural evil to the man. I didn’t believe in God, so the devil was also a nonstarter for me, but knowing Mom’s taste in guys, the chances were good that my father was a grade A scumbag at the very least. Was he doing something so bad—stalking her, beating her, threatening my safety—that she’d had to run away?
I dismissed that idea. Mom may have taken stupid risks and picked shitty men, but it would have taken more than an evil ex-boyfriend to drive her out of her home. It was just like I’d always thought—she’d left because she wanted to. That was the only reason she did anything.
“Thanks,” I said to Doyle when we were on the boat, cruising out of the harbor and toward the island. The sun was going down, and a thin line of orange ate away the horizon, burning through the cloud layer. “I’m sorry it was such a bust.”
He shrugged and then reached inside his jacket. “This might help make up for it.”
I looked down at the leather-bound book in his hands. It was oversized, like a Bible, hand-stitched with thick, rough thread. I took it and turned the pages. Every one was full of scrawled, blurry handwriting and detailed pen drawings, lines so dense that they soaked through the paper and blotted out the text on the other side.
“What the heck is this?” I said.
“It’s a journal,” Doyle said. “Entries start around 1998. I saw it on Mary Anne’s side table when you started throwing stuff, so I grabbed it.”
“Doyle . . . ,” I started, then tucked the book inside my own jacket. “Thank you.” I wasn’t about to lecture him for stealing—more impressed he’d been so cool and light-fingered.
“I figured it at least might tell you something about your mom,” he said. “Or what they were up to right before she ran off.”
“This means a lot,” I said. Doyle grinned.
“I don’t usually have to resort to burglary to impress girls, but whatever works.”
“First of all, that’d be petty theft at most,” I said. “Second of all, you have a girlfriend, and if this were a date, it would be pretty fucked-up.”
“I told you, Valerie and I aren’t anything serious,” he said. “I just don’t want to break up with her right before the Halloween dance. That would be a dick move.”
I felt a flare of heat just under my heart and tried to keep my face neutral. “Yeah, that would be. Cheating your significant other out of a dumb couple’s costume is just the worst.”
“Look who’s jealous,” Doyle purred. I hated the way I knew I should tell him to knock it off, stop trying to play his flirt game with me, but I didn’t want to. I liked that he was interested in me. I liked that my crazy didn’t faze him, just pulled him in closer, like metal to a magnet.
“I’m not jealous,” I said. “I don’t have a jealous bone in my body. I’m just that awesome.”
“And who’s your date to the dance?” Doyle said. “Betty?”
“Oh, stop,” I said. “She’s not that bad.”
Doyle winced. “Okay, if you say so.” The island loomed large in the windscreen of the boat, and he turned to take us around the point and back toward the old dock at the manor. “Good luck,” he said as he cut the throttle and glided up to the dock. “Call me and let me know you survived the walk home, okay?”
I nodded, hopping onto the dock with his help. He didn’t let go of my hand, and I stayed suspended for a moment, with him looking up at me. His eyes were slightly luminous in the impending dark, and he gave my fingers a warm squeeze before he let me go. “See you later, Ivy.”
I watched until the boat disappeared around the cliffs by the lighthouse, then turned and climbed the stairs back to the manor house. The book was a heavy weight inside my jacket, even heavier than my thoughts.
Nobody noticed that I’d been gone all day, which would have irritated me if I wasn’t so relieved. It was like Simon and Mrs. MacLeod only noticed me if they wanted something or I was in their way. I didn’t think Simon had a job—certainly not one where he left the house—but I had seen a lot of letters and packets laying around his office from brokerage firms and a money manager, so I figured he spent his days being nerdy with numbers, minding the Bloodgood fortune. I’d never been rich, but I’d helped rip off enough actually wealthy people to know managing old family money could be a full-time job.
I heard a vacuum whining somewhere upstairs, which I hoped meant I was free of Mrs. MacLeod for the evening. I microwaved some leftover sludge in the fridge with my name scrawled on the Tupperware, which turned out to be beef stew, and ate it while I looked through the stolen diary. Mary Anne’s handwriting was even tinier and more inscrutable than Mom’s, and to top it off, the book was in what I assumed was Bosnian. Certainly nothing I could read. There was bad art too, scattered among the crazed spider-track handwriting. The largest drawing showed two figures standing face-to-face, one dark and one light, with lines of text between them in an alphabet I didn’t recognize.
If I’d had a computer, I could have translated the writing, or tried to at least, but the only laptop was in Mrs. MacLeod’s room, and I didn’t even want to try to think of a lie elaborate enough to cover why I needed to use her internet connection to translate pages from a journal I stole from a stranger.
My mother had had a similar book for a while, probably a sequel to the diary I’d found in her room, but she lost it somewhere along the way. I’d always thought it was a leftover from one of the few times she’d tried to be a street artist, selling paintings and drawings of fairies and elves and demons—things that weren’t real. This book of Mary Anne’s was almo
st too real, dripping with the sort of thick insanity you usually only saw in exhibits at a murder trial.
I fell asleep fast after supper, which surprised me, and managed to not only not dream but to sleep through my alarm. Mrs. MacLeod pounding on my door snapped me awake.
“Breakfast has gone!” she shouted when I grumbled I was awake. “Get dressed or you’ll miss the boat, and I will not be writing you an excuse note.”
“What’s your excuse?” I muttered, putting on the same clothes from yesterday and stumbling downstairs. The book was in my backpack, hidden inside a folder. I wasn’t taking any chances on Mrs. MacLeod finding it and ratting me out to Simon.
“And did we sleep well?” Mrs. MacLeod sneered as I crossed the foyer.
I didn’t even bother responding as I walked down the steps and across the drive. Mrs. MacLeod shouted something else, but it might as well have been “Blah blah blah, I’m a mean old witch” for all I cared.
I decided to hide the book in my locker until I could get some time to translate it, but just as I was stacking my econ worksheets on top of it, someone snatched it out of my hands.
“Wow!” Betty exclaimed. “Is this what you were doing on Saturday? I love estate sales. You should have called! I’m awesome at thrifting!”
I was way too tired to decipher her babbling, so I just blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You went to a vintage store, silly!” Betty exclaimed. “This thing is awesome. Is it like an antique?”
“I . . .” I shook my head. “No, Betty. It’s just a . . . family heirloom. I was going to go plug it into Google later and see what the writing says.” I couldn’t quite meet her eyes. Betty was annoying and in serious need of some chill, but it wasn’t like me to be an asshole because I was so wrapped up in my own crap. Considering she was one of two humans who’d been nice to me since I got to Darkhaven, I definitely needed to pull my head out.
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