Dark and Shallow Lies(10)

Killer’s Island.

“Dempsey Fontenot’s long gone,” Mackey reassures me.

“That doesn’t have anything to do with whatever happened to Elora.”

And it’s true; they never found him. He’d already cleared out. But it’s not really true that he was gone. Not in the ways that really mattered. When we were kids, Dempsey Fontenot was the reason we avoided the dark of the tree line. He was the reason Elora and I ran the distance between her house and Honey’s at night, instead of walking. He was every campfire legend we ever told and every slumber party ghost story we ever whispered. It didn’t matter that nobody ever saw hide nor hair of him again. For the eight Summer Children who were left alive, Dempsey Fontenot was a permanent resident of La Cachette. He walked the boardwalks. Same as we did.

“What if you’re wrong, Mackey?” Sera asks, and for a second I can’t breathe. “What if it does have something to do with Elora?”

I remember what Hart said, about how he went back there that night. To Keller’s Island. Looking for Elora. He must have been afraid he’d find her there, floating facedown in that stagnant drowning pool, out behind what’s left of Dempsey Fontenot’s burned-down cabin.

He must have thought maybe.

We all look at each other, and Sera puts words to what every single one of us is wondering. “What if he came back?”

Hart finally turns around to face us, and I’m waiting for him to say that it’s not possible. That we’re being silly. Like he would have when we were kids.

But he doesn’t.

Behind him, across the pond, Willie Nelson slides into the water without making a sound. Silent. Ancient. Deadly. The kind of predator you would never see coming.

“What if he didn’t come back?” I say. My voice is thin as fishing line, and I feel Evie shiver against me in the steamy midday heat. “What if he never left?”





I take advantage of the silence – everyone caught off guard – to conjure up that little flash of Elora.

That slicing rain.

And the sucking mud.

I try to focus on what she’s running from. What – who – she’s afraid of. Could it really be Dempsey Fontenot, our long-lost childhood boogeyman?

It’s no use, though. I can’t see Elora’s face, let alone the face of whoever is chasing her down through the storm.

If I’ve suddenly become a psychic, I’ve become a really shitty one.

Sera turns to Sander and whispers something to him in Creole. I wonder what she said, but I don’t speak much Creole. Just a word or two I’ve picked up from the twins over the years. Curse words, mostly. Evie speaks some French, but it’s not quite the same. Case, too. But what he speaks is Cajun French, so it’s a little different.

And that’s when I realize that Case isn’t here.

“Where’s Case?” I ask, and everybody gets really interested in the cypress needles scattered around the bottom of the boat. Evie sits up and pulls away from me. She’s watching Hart again, twisting that white-blonde hair around her finger and chewing on her lip.

“He’s around,” Mackey tells me. “We just haven’t seen much of him lately.”

“Why not?” I ask, and they all exchange looks.

“Case won’t come around if I’m here.” Hart’s arms are crossed in front of his chest, and ropy blue veins stand out against his skin. “The two of us got into it a while back.”

That’s nothing new, really. Hart and Case run up against each other from time to time, like dogs fighting over territory. Their little pissing contests never last long, though. And then they’re friends again.

Sera is the one who spells it out for me. “Hart thinks Case did something to Elora.”

“No.” I shake my head. “No way.” Case is a hothead. We all know that. But he wouldn’t hurt Elora. He’s head-over-heels for her. Has been since we were kids. I find Hart’s eyes, but I can’t read what he’s thinking. He’s turned off the lights and pulled the shades down. “Case loves Elora,” I say.

Mackey reaches over and lays his hand on mine. “We all loved Elora, Grey.”

Nobody corrects him.

We all love Elora.

Tourist sounds drift down from the boardwalk, and it’s like some kind of spell has been broken. Sera gets to her feet. “We need to go,” she says, and Sander stands up, too. “Time to make some money.”

“Me too,” Mackey says, and he seems grateful for the excuse. On busy weekends, Mackey and his brothers take paying customers out on airboat rides. “Swamp Photo Safaris,” they call them. Turns out the ability to see death coming isn’t a psychic talent that people really appreciate. Or pay for.

The three of them say their goodbyes, and Mackey gives me a hug. Then they hurry up the ladder and head off down the boardwalk, leaving Evie looking back and forth between Hart and me. She stands up, but she doesn’t follow the others.

“I could stick around,” she offers. And there’s something hopeful in her voice. “I mean, if you guys want company.”

“That’s okay,” I tell her. “I need to get back and spend some time with Honey.”

Hart nods. “I gotta get to work.”

Sometimes he hangs around the river dock up in Kinter making a little money here and there helping guys off-load cargo. It’s backbreaking work, but nobody bothers him. And they pay him in cash. I figure he makes just enough money to keep himself in cigarettes.