Dark and Shallow Lies(38)

That kiss last night.

And what he said to me after. On the front porch.

What are you hiding, Greycie?

I stop and change directions, heading for the back steps instead. Li’l Pass seems like a safer destination.

I think about asking Evie if she wants to come with me, but she’s still standing up on that chair, chewing on her lip and looking for an empty spot to hang the next wind chime.

Besides, I’m kind of hoping maybe someone else will join me. I spin Elora’s ring on my finger. Three times. Like making a wish.

There are a lot of questions I need answers to.

I make my way around the house and down the wooden steps in the back. The ground is saturated from all the rain, and my feet sink deep into the mud. The only cure is to keep moving, so I put one foot in front of the other until the earth finally starts to feel more solid underneath me.

It doesn’t take long to hike back to Li’l Pass, but the throbbing in my head is already subsiding some by the time I kick off my boots and climb up to sit on the old flatbed trailer.

Only eight o’clock, but it must be close to ninety degrees already.

I don’t mind the heat, though. Not today, anyway. Seems like lately I haven’t been able to shake the chill in my bones, despite the stickiness of summer.

I close my eyes and tilt my face up to let the sun reach all my cold places. I soak it up like a lizard on a rock.

Suddenly there’s the low hum of static electricity. The air crackles with it. I feel it vibrating against my skin. When I open my eyes, Zale is standing a few feet away. And I’m not totally surprised, because some part of me was thinking he might show up. But seeing him again still knocks the wind out of me for a second.

I can’t get over the blue of his eyes.

He’s still barefoot and shirtless, and I wonder if he ever wears any damn clothes.

“You look like you could use some company,” he says. But he doesn’t move any closer to me, and I realize he’s waiting for me to say something. To give him permission.

He doesn’t want to spook me.

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess I could.”

When he smiles and closes the distance between us, my stomach feels funny.

Nervous. But not scared.

“I sure missed dat view,” he says as he climbs up to sit beside me on the trailer. “All those years I was gone.” I follow his gaze across the wide, flat grass, toward the La Cachette boardwalk. It sparkles bright white against the Mississippi River, curving behind it like a serpent.

And I know what he means, because I miss the river so much during the rest of the year up in Little Rock. I get homesick for that always-moving brown water, almost like missing a person.

“How old were you when you left here?” I ask him, and he shrugs.

“Little. But old enough to remember.”

Fog is drifting in at the edges of my brain. Softening the sharp corners. Making everything fuzzy. It feels so good, but I have to hunt for the words I need to ask my next question.

“How come nobody knew about you?”

It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot since our conversation out on the dock the night before last. Our whole lives, the Summer Children have counted our number as ten. Even after Ember and Orli died, we’ve always said there are ten of us.

And all this time we were really eleven.

Seems like we should have known.

Zale shrugs. “My folks kept to themselves, I guess.” He’s still watching that distant river. “Not much reason to go into town. Never was much for us there. I never even knew about the rest of you, till Elora told me.”

I try to imagine what that would be like. Growing up cut off from other people. Way back in the bayou somewhere.

“Plus I was so young when we left Louisiana,” he adds. “My daddy died, and I grew up in Florida with my mama. Down on the edge of the Everglades.” He turns in my direction and grins. And it makes me a little dizzy. “So dat’s my swamp.”

“Why come back here, then?”

A few seconds slip by before he answers.

“I guess I just thought it was time.”

“Why stay hidden, though?” I’m still trying to make sense of it all. And Zale doesn’t seem to mind the questions. “Why not let people know you’re here?”

He shrugs again. “It’s a hard thing, knowing who to trust.”

“Then why trust me?” I ask him, and he answers without any hesitation.

“Because of the way Elora talked about you.” He smiles at me again. “It kind of felt like I already knew you.”

I feel like I’m at disadvantage, because I don’t know anything about him. I think maybe I want to, though, because his voice is doing more to soothe my aching head than the Tylenol ever could. It has such a pretty sound to it, but there’s something lonesome about it, too.

Like the call of a mourning dove.

“Were you in love with her?” I ask.

“I definitely was,” he says. “You were, too. Weren’t you?”

I blush, because you couldn’t know Elora and not be in love with her.

“Was she in love with you?” I ask. I need to know if he’s the one who made Case jealous enough to kill her.

But he shakes his head.

“We weren’t lovers. It wasn’t like dat between us.” There’s that familiar music in his voice again. Just a few notes of an old Cajun melody that I know as well as I know my own heartbeat. “We saved each other is all.”