Dark and Shallow Lies

by Ginny Myers Sain

  I hug my knees harder to my chest, remembering how Hart used to make fun of Elora and me. How he used to tease us that Dempsey Fontenot was coming for us. But he doesn’t make fun of me now. He just shakes out another cigarette and lights it up, pulling the smoke into his lungs and breathing it out slow and steady before he goes on.

  “Then, after midnight, when everybody got back from bingo, the men all went out lookin’. Airboats and huntin’ dogs. ATVs. Searchlights. All of us callin’ her name till we were hoarse. Clear through till mornin’.” He chokes a little. “And there was absolutely nothin’. Not a goddamn sign of her.”

  He pulls the bottom of his T-shirt up to mop his sweaty forehead, but it doesn’t do any real good. The shirt is already soaked through. I’m melting in shorts and flip-flops. And here he is in jeans and boots. I’ve never seen Hart in shorts, unless we were out swimming.

  “So that’s the story,” he tells me. “Leo called Sheriff early the next mornin’. Pretty soon they had boats all up and down the river. Search teams scouring the bayou. Two hundred volunteers in hip boots wading through inch by inch back there where she disappeared. Just like on TV.” He puts the cigarette to his lips again. Inhale and hold. Breathe out smoke. “Still nothin’.”

  Hart’s focused on something off in the distance, and I let myself take a minute to look at him. Really look at him. He’s all dark tangled curls and sun-browned skin and hard angles. Faded jeans and an old gray T-shirt stretched tight across broad shoulders.

  Hart is what Honey calls “a tall drink of water,” which is her way of saying he’s hot. I think. And she’s not wrong. Even now, rough as the last few months have obviously been on him.

  For a couple years, when we were younger, I thought we might be something else to each other. Things got confusing between us. He even kissed me once, the summer we were thirteen. Elora never knew that. She would have been so pissed. It’s the only secret either of us ever kept from her. It never went anywhere, but sometimes I still find myself fighting the urge to reach out and run my fingers through those beautiful curls.

  And I’m fighting it hard as hell right now. I’m fighting it so hard my fingers itch.

  But I settle for asking a question.

  “Do you feel her?”

  Hart runs one hand over the stubble along his jawline and nods, then he takes another long, slow drag off that damn cigarette. Only this time, his hand is shaking something awful. It’s bad enough that I worry he’ll drop the cigarette in his lap and set himself on fire.

  “Yeah.” There’s a long, slow, smoke-filled exhale. “I feel ’er all the time, Greycie. That’s the thing. I feel her every fuckin’ minute of every miserable day.”

  “What do you feel?”

  “Fear,” he says. “I don’t feel anything but fear.”

  “I feel her, too,” I tell him.

  He really does drop the cigarette then. And it lands in his lap, like I predicted. But it doesn’t set him on fire.

  “Shit,” he mutters, and he knocks the cigarette into the bottom of the boat and grinds it out with the heel of his boot. “Jesus, Greycie. For real?”

  He’s staring at me.

  I hadn’t planned to tell him about the strange flashes I’ve been having. I hadn’t planned to tell anyone. I’ve never had the gift. And I’ve never wanted it.

  I don’t want it now.

  But I can’t hide this from him. Not from Hart.

  “Yeah,” I say. “For real.”

  “What do you feel?” he asks me.

  “It’s like you said,” I tell him. “Nothing but fear.”

  Run and hide. Hide and run.

  I’ll count from ten, then join the fun.

  Say a prayer and bow your head.

  If my light finds you, you’ll be dead.

  Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

  Ready or not, here I come.

  I’m Dempsey Fontenot.

  You better run.

  3

  Hart and I both jump when the shuttle boat blasts its horn. It’s the last Saturday in May. A three-day weekend. Perfect weather. Hot. But not as suffocating as it will be in another few weeks. The people of La Cachette should do good business today.

  Aside from running the Mystic Rose and doing her own readings, Honey also acts as a broker for all the other psychics and spiritualists in town. For a commission, of course. Day-tripping tourists get off the boat and pour into her shop first thing, looking to buy a cold bottle of water and maybe a postcard, and Honey gets them lined up with appointments all up and down the boardwalk. Advice about lovers. Energy cleansings. Conversations with dead pets. Whatever they’re in the mood for. It can get hectic, and I know she’s glad to have my help during the busy summer season.

  Across the pond, Willie Nelson has dragged himself out of the muck, and he’s sunning in the long grass like he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the tourists. Or their money. And I swear, Hart’s watching that alligator with this expression on his face that looks an awful lot like envy.

  He scuffs at a rusty spot in the hull with the toe of one boot, then he turns to look at me. “Tell me what’s going on, Greycie. With you.” There’s a wariness in his voice that matches the deep worry in his hazel eyes. And now I’m wishing I hadn’t even mentioned it.

  “I don’t know.” I shrug. “Maybe nothing.”

  “Dreams?” he asks, but I shake my head.

  “Definitely not dreams. I’m wide awake.”

  “So . . . like . . . what? Visions of some kind?”

  “Not exactly. They’re just . . . flashes. You know?” This sounds so bizarre. Or at least it would in Little Rock. In La Cachette, this is what passes for normal conversation. “It’s like I’m seeing bits and pieces of that night through her eyes. Thinking what’s she’s thinking and feeling what she’s feeling. None of it makes sense, though. It’s all jumbled and out of order.”

  Hart is digging dirt out from under the edges of his fingernails. He’s hunched over. Elbows resting on his knees. “But these flashes, you think they’re Elora?”

  “I know they are.”

  “What do you see? Exactly.” His voice is easy. But I don’t buy it. “Or feel? Or whatever.” His jaw is tight. Muscles taut.

  Hart is afraid. He’s afraid of me. Of what I know. Of what I’m going to tell him. And I don’t want that kind of power. I’ve never wanted it.

  Not over Hart.

  Not over anyone.

  “I’m not really sure,” I admit. “Dark. And water. The storm. That sudden rain.” I have to make myself say the next part. “She’s running from someone, I think. Somebody’s after her.” I hear Hart’s sharp intake of breath, and I hate myself for being the cause of it. “Mostly, I just feel that fear. Like you said. This awful fear that almost stops me breathing.”

  Hart reaches for my hand. His fingers curl around mine. They’re rough and calloused. And they feel like home. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

  “But I still think maybe she’s alive,” I say.

  “Greycie—”

  “No. Listen,” I insist. “In all those snatches or flashes or whatever, when they come to me, she’s always alive. She’s scared. Lost, maybe. Or hurt, even. I don’t know. But she’s always alive. I never see her . . .” I can’t say it. But Hart does.

  “You never see ’er die.”

  There are voices and footsteps up on the boardwalk, and Hart and I pull back from each other. He lets go of my hand, and I wipe my sweaty palm on my shorts. Could be tourists looking for Willie Nelson.

  Could be. But it isn’t.

  It’s them. They’ve found us. The rest of the Summer Children come down the ladder one right after the other, like circus acrobats under the big top.

  Serafina.

  Lysander.

  Mackey
.

  Evangeline.

  They’re laughing about something and talking together. And just for a second, I feel like an outsider. Then Mackey takes both my hands and pulls me to my feet. Sera is hugging me and saying how much she missed me, and Sander is batting those long eyelashes of his. And there’s Evie, still barefoot, looking like she isn’t quite sure what she’s supposed to do—as usual.

  That outsider feeling evaporates, and I know I’m right where I belong. The only place I’ve ever belonged.

  I just wish so hard that Elora was with them. I feel her absence in the burning pit of my stomach. She’s a deep ache in my bones.

  But then there’s this voice in the back of my mind saying, even if she were here, she wouldn’t talk to me. She’d just sit there on the railing, glaring in my direction. Or maybe she’d laugh in my face again. Tell me to go to hell.

  It hadn’t been just that last night. Things had been messed up between us all last summer. And that was mostly my fault. I know that now.

  Mackey throws one arm around my shoulders and gives me a big, warm grin. “It’s good you’re home, Grey,” he says. “We’re all together.”

  The others nod and agree, and we all settle into our regular spots. Evie passes out stale gum to everyone. Just another long and lazy summer day, right? It almost could be.

  Except when I look over at Hart, he’s staring off at Willie Nelson again, like he’d crawl out of the boat and join him in the pond if he could. He looks lost.

  Hollow.

  And I feel the echo of his emptiness way down inside my own soul.

  Because I know Mackey means well, but it’s not true. We aren’t all together. We haven’t all been together since we were four years old. Not since what happened to Ember and Orli. Without them, we’re incomplete.

  And now we’re missing Elora.

  Evie asks me some random questions about school. We chat for a few minutes about my classes. Mackey asks about track, and I tell him I ran cross-country for the first time this past season. He grumbles something about how they don’t have enough runners for a cross-country team.

  Mackey, Case, and Elora all go to high school upriver in Kinter. There’s a school boat. Evie and Hart and the twins, Sera and Sander, are homeschooled.

  There’s no cell phone service way down here. No internet, either. So this is how summer always begins for me, with the catch-ups and the recaps. Occasionally, Mackey might send me an email from school up in Kinter. Or Elora might call every so often from the payphone up there. But mostly, my Little Rock life and my La Cachette life stay separate. Two totally different universes.

  When I’m down here, it’s like my friends and my world back in Arkansas don’t exist. It doesn’t work the other way around, though. Even when I’m up there running track and going to the mall and studying, La Cachette always takes up space in my head. It’s like I never really leave the bayou. Not entirely. My feet stay wet. The smell of the swamp lingers in my nose. And when I finally get back down here at the start of every summer, everything is just the way I left it. Like no time has passed at all.

  Or at least that’s the way it’s always been before.

  “This is total bullshit.” The chitchat stops, and everyone turns to look at Sera. She gazes right back at us. Defiant. “Are we gonna talk about ’er or not?” She gives Sander a look that clearly says, Can you believe this?

  Serafina and Lysander are basically carbon copies of each other. Folks around here call them the Gemini. Twins born in late May. Both of them mind-blowingly talented artists and smarter than the rest of us put together. I forget how many languages Sera speaks. Five, maybe? Sander doesn’t speak at all—never has—but he has plenty of other ways to communicate.

  The twins come from an old Creole family. Home for them is out on Bowman Pond, about ten minutes away by airboat. But their mama, Delphine—they call her Manman—makes good luck gris-gris and love potions that she sells from a little card table she sets up on the dock most weekends. People swear by them. She tells tourists the charm magic was passed down from her great-great-great-granmè, who was a famous New Orleans voodoo queen. A friend of Marie Laveau’s.

  Maybe that part’s true. And maybe it isn’t.

  Sera spits her gum into the water. Her hair is the color of rich, wet river sand streaked with copper, and she wears it in a long braid down the middle of her back. Almost to her waist. The madder she is, the more that braid swings back and forth when she talks. And it is really swinging now.

  “We gonna sit here all day dancin’ around her name?” she demands. “Not talkin’ about what happened won’t make things different.”

  “Don’t be mad, Sera,” Mackey soothes. He’s a little guy. Not much bigger than me. Dark skin and soft brown eyes. An easy smile. He can’t stand for anybody to be upset. “We can talk about her.” He turns to look at me. “We talk about her all the time, Grey.”

  “What’s the point?” Hart’s voice has an edge that I’m not used to hearing from him. “We’ve been over that night a million times.”

  Sera doesn’t back down, though. She never does. “Not with Grey, we haven’t.”

  Evie bites at her lip and glances over at Hart. “Grey doesn’t have the gift,” she pipes up. Then she looks embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Grey. You know what I mean. It’s just . . .” She shrugs. “You don’t. Right?”

  I feel Hart’s eyes on me. I feel all their eyes on me.

  “Grey deserves to hear us speak Elora’s name out loud,” Sera argues. “It’s a sign of respect. She was her twin flame, after all.”

  Her was isn’t lost on me.

  There were three sets of twins in the beginning. Serafina and Lysander. And Ember and Orli.

  But also Elora and me.

  Elora and I were born to different families, but on the very same day at the very same hour. Almost the exact same time, down to the minute. There’s an old story that tells how human beings originally had two faces, four arms, and four legs. But God was afraid of being overpowered, so he split them all in half. That’s why we all have one twin soul out there in the world.

  People say the moment you meet your twin flame is the moment the earth beneath your feet begins to shift. There’s one midwife down here to deliver all the bayou babies, so our mamas labored together in Honey’s big upstairs bedroom. They laid Elora and me side by side in the same bassinet. And I guess that’s when the earth shifted for both of us, when we were only minutes old.

  “Go ahead, Mackey,” Sera prods. “Tell Grey what you told the rest of us. She’s tough. She can take it.”

  Hart gets up and moves away from me. He stands at the front of the boat, his back to all of us, one boot up on the rusted railing. Then he pulls out that pack of cigarettes and lights another one up.

  Mackey watches him for a few seconds, then he swallows hard and turns in my direction. And suddenly, I know exactly what he’s going to say.

  “I had a death warning. That night. About Elora.”

  Hearing him say it out loud is like a kick in the teeth.

  Mackey’s family history here goes way back. Further back than anyone’s, probably. Cachette is a French word. It means “hiding place.” Back in the days before the Civil War, this area was a hideout for enslaved people who had escaped their captors.

  Mackey’s family were some of the first ones who made their way here. They faced down venomous snakes and swarms of mosquitoes, plus ripping thorns and sucking mud—but they were free, so they stayed and made this inhospitable place their home. And to hear Mackey tell it, every single one of his ancestors could feel when death was about to come knocking, which it must have done pretty often in those days.

  Mackey frowns and runs one hand over the top of his head. His hair is shaved down almost to his scalp. It’s what he calls his “summer haircut,” which means it’s about one-sixteenth of an inch shorter than he
wears it the rest of the year.

  “We were playing flashlight tag,” he goes on. “And Evie was it. She was counting down that rhyme. About Dempsey Fontenot. You know the one.”

  I do know the one. I get a little dizzy when I remember how it came to me earlier. How I felt Elora’s fear of the old taunt.

  “And it was pitch black, so I couldn’t see. But then Elora ducked behind this tree with me. And I felt it. Strong as anything.”

  “Did you tell her?” I ask him.

  “I did. I had to.” He hesitates. “But she laughed it off.”

  I picture her, head thrown back, laughing into the dark. Elora could be like that. If she was in the mood to have fun, she might not take anything seriously.

  Hart takes one last drag off his cigarette and flicks it out into the murky pond. I see how tense the muscles in his neck are.

  Evie is watching him. I pat the empty seat next to me, and she comes to sit in Hart’s vacant spot. Evie’s always been younger than her years, and long legs or not, she’s still the baby. Our baby. Everyone’s little sister. I slip my arm around her, and she rests her head on my shoulder. She smells like honeysuckle, and it calms me, breathing in her summertime sweetness.

  “It’s the water that bothers me,” Mackey mumbles. “Drowning. That’s what I felt that night. Death in the water.” I look over at Hart, but he’s still got his back to me. To all of us. “Elora was so pretty, you know?” Mackey’s voice breaks. Another chalk mark next to was. “I can’t stand to think of her dying like that. In the water.”

  Sander pushes his hair out of his face—soft waves the color of river sand and copper, just like his sister’s—then puts an arm around Mackey’s shoulders.

  “She didn’t die in the water.” Hart sounds drained. Exhausted. “Search teams combed the bayou from one end to the other. River, too. They’d have found something.”

  “Yeah,” Mackey says. “Sure, Hart. You’re probably right. Sometimes I get things confused.”

  But not very often.

  “Ember and Orli were in the water.” My voice sounds funny in my ears. Far away. Everyone turns to look at me. Everyone but Hart. We don’t hear those names spoken out loud very often. People down here don’t like to talk about what happened back then. Thirteen summers ago. Two identical little girls snatched off the boardwalk early one morning, just this time of year. Right under everybody’s noses. “They found them floating facedown, back of Dempsey Fontenot’s place,” I go on. “Back at Keller’s Island.”