Dark and Shallow Lies

by Ginny Myers Sain

  I feel around inside our hiding hole, and there’s nothing but a folded piece of notebook paper. When I pull it out and open it up, a simple gold bracelet spills into my hands. I carry it to the window and hold it to the moonlight so I can get a better look at the charm dangling from one end. A single tiny heart inlaid with a red stone.

  Red for passion. Red for sensuality.

  Red to get a fire going, if you know what I mean.

  When I turn it over in my fingers, Elora’s name is engraved in fancy cursive on the back. It’s exquisite and delicate and breathtakingly lovely. And not at all something Case would ever pick out. Not in a million years.

  Zale said Elora was waiting for someone that night. She sneaked away while everyone was playing flashlight tag. Left them out in the storm, searching and calling her name.

  I take another look at the notebook paper the bracelet was wrapped in, but there’s only one word handwritten there in dark blue ink.

  Soon.

  That’s all it says. Definitely not Elora’s loopy script. Plain printed letters. They’re distinctive, though. The S leans forward at a sharp angle, and the double o’s are odd-looking. Tall and elongated. More egg-shaped than round.

  Soon.

  “Who bought you this?” I whisper the words out loud to the ruffled bedspread and the yellow rug, then I wrap the little bracelet back up in the notebook paper and tuck it into my pocket.

  I replace the loose paneling and inhale once more. A deep lungful of Elora. Then I climb back out the window like the worst thief ever. I haven’t taken much. Just a little love token and the faint whiff of orange-vanilla body spray still clinging to my skin. I slide the window closed, and I freeze.

  Cigarette smoke hangs thick in the wet air.

  So I know he’s there before I hear his voice.

  “You shouldn’t be out here, Shortcake. Don’t ya know there’s a hurricane comin’?”

  When I’m dead, then what? Will he leave me here for the gators? Toss me in the river like trash? Will they find me floating facedown in the drowning pool? Like Ember and Orli? Or maybe

  he has something even worse in mind.

  23

  Hart lights up another cigarette, then he sucks in smoke and holds it for a long time before he blows it out. He’s got me in the hot seat, and he knows it. He ashes the cigarette and cocks his head to one side. “You wanna tell me what the hell you’re doin’, Greycie?”

  “I just needed to be in her room. So I could say goodbye.”

  “Damn.” Hart shakes his head. “We don’t even know how to tell the truth to each other anymore, you and me.” He turns and walks toward the end of the boardwalk. And I follow him. Like always.

  He’s carrying a big pair of bolt cutters in his other hand. He gives them to me, then he hops down into the pontoon boat with the cigarette between his lips. The water hyacinth has grown so thick, it must be choking the old boat half to death. The purple flowers are pretty. But it’s invasive. It can suffocate a pond when it takes over. Block out the light. Steal all the oxygen.

  I sit down on the edge of the boardwalk, and Hart motions for me to hand him down the bolt cutters, so I do. He cuts the chain on the boat, then he climbs back up the ladder to sit beside me.

  “Things get as bad as they’re sayin’, I don’t want it smashin’ against the boardwalk. Might take the pilings out.”

  He finishes the cigarette and tosses the butt down into the bow of the boat. I focus my eyes on it for a few seconds, to see if I can get the cypress needles to light.

  To see if I have any of my mother in me, I guess.

  But nothing happens.

  “You leavin’ tomorrow?” he asks, and I nod.

  We listen to the night music for a while. Even the frogs sound worried. Like they know what’s coming.

  “I’m not evacuating,” Hart finally tells me. “I decided I’m gonna stay and ride it out.”

  So that’s his plan. Suicide by hurricane.

  “Becky’s never gonna let you do that,” I tell him. “That’s stupid. She’ll get Leo to drag your ass on the boat.”

  He laughs. “I’d like to see him try.”

  “Hart—”

  “I can’t leave her here.” His voice is so twisted up that it’s almost unrecognizable. “I was supposed to look out for ’er. I can’t leave her here all by herself.”

  It hits me that maybe Elora was lucky. She disappeared all at once. But Hart’s been disappearing a little bit at a time. Every time I see him, there’s more of him missing.

  I reach for him, and he lets me wrap my fingers around his. He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. And then I realize it’s because he’s staring at my finger.

  At the little blue pearl.

  I try to snatch my hand back, but it’s too late. He’s got a death grip on me. Hart’s mouth is open and his eyes are dark. He can’t look away from the ring.

  “Where the hell did you get that?”

  “I found it. Just now. In her room.” I hate myself for the lie, but I can’t think what else to tell him.

  “Bullshit,” Hart whispers. “You’re lying to me.” He pulls his gaze away from my hand and looks up into my face. And I see the exact moment my own fear settles behind his hazel eyes. “You’re afraid.” He breathes. And my chest rises and falls. “I can feel it.” We both shiver. Mirror images of each other. But I can’t make myself say anything. Hart tightens his grip on my hand, and I wince.

  “Somebody gave it to me,” I admit.

  “Who?” My brain stalls out, and Hart loses patience. He clamps down on my hand even harder. I yelp and try to pull away again. But it’s no use. He’s so much stronger than I am. “Who gave it to you?” he demands.

  “You’re hurting me,” I whimper. But he doesn’t seem to care.

  “Elora loved that ring. She never took it off her damn finger. If somebody had it, they stole it off ’er after they killed ’er.”

  “No.” He’s getting things all wrong. But I don’t know how to fix this. “It’s not like that.”

  “For fuck’s sake! Stop playin’ games and tell me the truth, Greycie!” Hart’s voice is rising. There’s a frantic undercurrent to his words. And it throws me off balance. “Tell me where you got it!” His eyes are wild, and I wonder if the panic I see in them is his. Or mine. Or if it comes from both of us. “Please!”

  “Zale gave it to me.” I spit out the truth. And then I wish immediately that I could swallow it up again.

  Hart is staring at me. Confused. “Who the hell is Zale?”

  “He’s Dempsey Fontenot’s son.”

  Hart’s reaction is instant. He lets go of my hand and recoils like I sucker punched him. “That’s not possible,” he stammers. But I tell him he’s wrong, and his face turns to ash in the moonlight. “You need to tell me the rest of it, Grey. Right now. No more secrets.”

  “Okay,” I agree, and I rub at my sore fingers. “No more secrets.”

  So I finally tell Hart all about Zale. Starting with how I saw him outside my window. That very first night I was home. And once I get started, it all comes out so fast. In such a breathless rush. Like water over a spillway.

  Secrets over the dam.

  I tell him everything Zale’s told me. All about how he met Elora. How they saved each other. How she gave him her ring as a friendship token. That night on the dock. Right before she disappeared.

  The night she sneaked away during a game of flashlight tag to meet her secret love.

  Hart looks like he’s going to be sick, but he doesn’t interrupt me.

  I tell him about what Zale remembers of the night their cabin burned, too. Thirteen years ago. How his mother carried him through the dark.

  And how I know now that my mother was the one who started the fire.

  I end with how Zale came back here
to find Aeron. His twin. So he could lay him to rest.

  And to find out what really happened to his father.

  “Holy shit.” Hart tries to light another cigarette, but he fumbles with it and drops the lighter in the muck.

  I explain that Zale was a hurricane baby. A boy born with all the power of the sea and the sky.

  Just like Dempsey Fontenot.

  Hart laughs an ugly laugh. It’s nothing like the sexy chuckle that used to make me swoon. “Like father, like son,” he mutters. “Isn’t that what everybody says?”

  I tell pretty much the whole story, right up through tonight.

  But I never mention how Zale’s touch makes me tingle. Or how his skin feels against mine. How I wonder what it would be like to kiss him.

  I do tell him how Zale says Dempsey Fontenot didn’t kill Ember and Orli, though. And I guess that’s about all Hart can take.

  “Jesus Christ, Greycie. Stop it! Just stop it! Listen to yourself for a minute!” Hart runs both hands through his tangled hair like he wants to pull the curls out. “They found them on his property. Not ten feet from his goddamn back door. And everybody knew he was a freak.”

  “Honey doesn’t believe he did it. She says—”

  “I don’t give a flying fuck what Miss Roselyn said!” he roars. He’s suddenly on his feet, and I’m still sitting on the boardwalk, with my legs dangling over the edge. I’m afraid to move. Hart’s never yelled at me like this.

  “Zale wouldn’t lie to me.” My voice is so quiet. Like Evie’s. It gets lost. Swallowed up by the night sounds.

  Hart looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.

  “He wouldn’t lie to you? Jesus! You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me, Grey! He wouldn’t lie to you? Listen to yourself! Everybody fuckin’ lies!”

  Not everybody.

  Not Zale.

  “Goddammit, Grey! This asshole blows in here and fills your head with all kinds of bullshit, and you take every word that falls out of his mouth like it’s the gospel truth?”

  I open my mouth to argue. But then I close it again.

  My mind is racing. I want to tell him that’s not what happened. But I can’t.

  Because what if he’s right?

  “Fuck!” Hart whirls around and kicks a metal bucket that’s sitting up on the boardwalk. I duck and it goes flying over my head. I hear it land in the mud, and there’s the unmistakable growl of a pissed-off Willie Nelson.

  “Don’t you get it?” Hart’s dark eyes are glowing with rage. It scares me. He’s got the same wild look he had that night he almost killed Case on the dock. “He’s the one, Greycie! Your fucking secret boyfriend in the woods!”

  “I never said he was—”

  But I know he can feel it.

  “He’s the fucking one!”

  My head hurts. Everything hurts. And I’m so tired. “What do you mean, the one?”

  Hart drops to a crouch right beside me. His breath is hot and angry in my face.

  “He’s the one who killed Elora.”

  “No,” I say. I’m shaking my head. “No way. That’s not true.”

  It can’t be true.

  I’m panicking. I shouldn’t have told him. I should’ve known that’s what he’d think. Where his mind would go. Because Hart doesn’t know Zale. He doesn’t know how gentle he is.

  How beautiful.

  He’s never seen the aching honesty in his eyes.

  But I have.

  And I’ve felt it in his touch.

  “Listen, Greycie. Just listen. This guy, he meets Elora. Like you said. And they strike up this secret friendship. Right?”

  “Stop it.” I’m pleading with him. “It’s not true.”

  “And she doesn’t tell a soul. Nobody. Not even me. Then . . . what . . . a month later . . . bam. Elora’s dead.” He runs a hand through his hair again. Those curls. “Missing. Whatever.” He looks at me, waiting for some kind of response. But I don’t know what to say. “Don’t you think that’s fuckin’ weird?”

  “I—”

  Hart doesn’t give me a chance to form a whole thought. “Don’t you get it?”

  “Get what?” I ask him.

  “You’re next.”

  I remember Honey’s old warning.

  The lightning hunts us.

  She’s been telling me that forever. Since I can remember.

  “Don’t,” I say. “Don’t say that. You’re wrong.” I feel Zale’s gentle hand on my cheek. His strong arms carrying me to his boat. “If he came back here to find out what happened to his father, why would he want to kill Elora?” It doesn’t make sense. “Why?”

  “Come on.” Hart yanks me up. I yelp and try to jerk my arm away, but he’s too strong. And he’s already dragging me down the boardwalk after him, like I’m some kind of rag doll.

  “What are you doing? Hart! Stop!” He ignores me. His grip on my arm is crushing, and I’m barely able to stay on my feet as I trail along behind him. “Slow down! You’re hurting me!”

  My feet get tangled in a thick vine that reaches up through a crack in the wood to grab at me. I lose one of my boots, but Hart doesn’t wait for me to get it back on, and I have no choice but to keep stumbling along.

  Like Elora. That night. Out in the bayou.

  He hauls me all the way down to the Mystic Rose, but he doesn’t head toward the front porch. Instead, we end up out on the river dock. Hart lets go of my arm, and I look down at his finger marks. I rub the bruises I can already feel forming under the skin.

  “What the hell?” I demand. “What’s wrong with you?” But he grabs me again and clamps a hand over my mouth.

  Evie’s wind chimes are ringing in my ear. Frantic and frenzied.

  “Shut up,” Hart whispers. “Just shut up for one goddamn minute. I have to show you something. And I need you to be quiet. Okay?” There’s something in his voice that makes my blood run cold.

  I nod, and Hart takes his hand away. He glances up toward the plywood-covered windows along the boardwalk, then he ignores the danger sign and ducks under the safety rope.

  I open my mouth to tell him to be careful—to watch out for the rotten places—but he’s already moving crates. A tall stack of old wooden boxes. They’ve been there a million years. So long that they’ve become a permanent part of the dock. And behind them there are five or six big oil drums. Huge fifty-five gallon barrels. Everything is piled up with rotten fishing nets and old crab traps and rusting anchor chains.

  I want to remind Hart that stuff is dangerous. That’s what we’ve been told our whole lives.

  Stay away from all that old junk out on the dock.

  Don’t play around there.

  It’s dangerous.

  It takes him a while to move enough stuff to get back to the barrels.

  “Come ’ere,” he says. But I’m rooted to the spot. Hart looks up at me and sighs. His eyes go soft. “Shit. Greycie. I’m sorry. About before. I just need you to see this. I don’t know any other way.” He motions for me to come toward him. “I need you to understand how seriously fucked up this all is. ’Cause you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. With that boy. And I need to make sure you believe me. I need—” He looks down toward the barrels. “I need you to be safe.”

  I duck under the rope and take a few heavy steps toward Hart. He grabs my hand and pulls me toward the barrel in the center of the mess. I stand and watch as he tries to pry the lid off, but it’s stuck tight. “Goddammit,” he mutters, and he digs around for his pocketknife. He pulls it out and flips it open to start working around the edge of the barrel, like he’s opening a can of paint. It takes him forever. And the whole time he’s trying to get that barrel open, I don’t breathe.

  When Hart finally gets the top pried loose, he slips his knife back in his pocket. “Ready?” he asks, but there is no wa
y for me to answer that question.

  He wrenches the lid off the big black barrel, and the smell hits me. Like something that’s been dead a really, really long time. I cover my mouth and my nose, but I can’t see anything. It’s too dark. He jerks his head, motioning for me to come closer. So I use every bit of strength I have left to make my feet move those last few steps.

  And then I peek inside.

  Moonlight bounces off something white. Long finger bones. And a skull. A faded overall strap with a brass button. That’s all I see before I scurry backward, gagging. Hart has to grab me by the arm again to keep me from backing right off the dock into the water.

  “Hey. Easy,” he warns me. “It’s all rotten.”

  But I don’t know if he’s talking about the wood we’re standing on, or what’s in the barrel.

  “Is that—?”

  Hart nods. “Dempsey Fontenot.”

  I sink down to sit on one of the wooden crates while Hart puts the lid back on the barrel and restacks the boxes and junk all around it. I close my eyes and take deep breaths, trying to keep from throwing up.

  “He’s been here all these years.” The words taste slimy in my mouth.

  Every time I sat on the front steps of the Mystic Rose, I was looking right at him.

  Jesus.

  All those nights Zale sat here on the dock with Elora, his father was right there.

  Close enough to touch.

  My stomach rushes into my throat, and I jump up and lurch toward the edge of the dock. I fall to my knees and vomit into the river. Hart is instantly beside me. He grabs the back of my tank top tight in his fist. And he hangs on. “Hey,” he soothes. “You’re okay. I gotcha.” I feel his other hand in my hair. And the tenderness of it makes me choke. “Just breathe, Greycie.”

  When it’s finally over, he digs a wadded-up tissue out of his pocket and hands it to me, so I can wipe my mouth. Then he helps me back to the crate and sits down next to me.

  I hear him sigh, and I know he’s wishing for a cigarette. But he dropped his lighter in the mud back at the gator pond.