Dark and Shallow Lies(52)

I think about that latest vision. Strong hands around my throat.

Around Elora’s throat.

The certainty that I’m going to die in the mud.

I feel Elora’s panic rise inside me until I drop the meditation CDs and they scatter across the floor. And I have to start all over.

None of the flashes I’ve seen make sense.

Did Elora drown? Like I did that night on the bathroom floor?

Or was it the cold metal of a gun cocked behind her head that sealed her fate?

Click.

Or did someone steal her life with their bare hands? Fingers tightening around her windpipe?

How many ways are there to die?

Evie scampers across the boardwalk to sit with me on the porch for a little bit that evening after dinner. She’s nervous and fidgety. Paler than usual. Her hair is wet and matted, so I go inside to get a brush, and she crouches on the steps between my feet while I work out the tangles.

It isn’t long before Sera and Sander join us. And then Mackey. Almost like something had pulled us together in the fading light. That used to happen all the time when we were kids. One of us would be outside somewhere. And then another of us would just show up. And another. And another. Until we were all there. Carrying on and horsing around.

But nobody has much to say now. We’re all lost in our own thoughts.

“There’s a storm comin’,” Evie finally announces.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” Sera says, and I know her words are meant to reassure us all. Not just Evie. “It probably won’t hit here.”

“I’m not afraid,” Evie answers. “I hope it does come.”

“You okay?” Mackey asks her.

“Everything’s different.” Evie frowns. “I thought things would stay the same.” A breeze stirs, and her wind chimes come to life. There must be close to fifty of them now, made out of everything from seashells and Mardi Gras doubloons to old soup ladles and metal pie plates. The noise is enough to wake the dead, and her house has become kind of a tourist attraction. She chews on a broken fingernail. “I just wanted things to stay the same.”

“I know,” I say. “I did, too.”

“Me too.” Mackey sighs.

“Yeah,” Sera says, and she reaches for her brother’s hand. “We all did.”

When they all leave, I trade my flip-flops for boots and grab a flashlight, then I head down the back steps into mud. Zale is already waiting for me back at Li’l Pass. Shirtless and smiling. Worn-out jeans rolled up to his knees. He’s been fishing, he tells me. His hair is windblown, and his skin is warm from the sun. He smells like sweet grass and pine trees, and when I crawl up to sit beside him on the trailer, I slip my hand into his, almost without realizing it.

Zale looks just as surprised as I am, and I blush. Flustered and embarrassed. But then then he grins. Doesn’t let me pull away.

And that little zing makes me giddy.

“I was hopin’ you’d come out tonight,” he says, and he nods toward the river. “Look at that.”

In the distance, the lights are coming on along the boardwalk, and La Cachette looks like an ocean liner sailing the vast, flat sea of the bayou.

“I remember comin’ out here with my mama sometimes,” Zale tells me. “When I was real little. Just this time of evening. To see the lights.”

His voice is washing me clean. That flash of Elora that came to me earlier is fading. I can’t feel those squeezing fingers on my neck any more. I need him to keep talking, so I ask a question.

“What was your mama like?”

This incredible light comes over Zale’s face, and I feel all my worries blow away in the evening breeze.

“My mama was the softest soul. Folks called her Elsie. But her name was Elsinore. Her people were from Tennessee. Snake handlers. She used to tell me that my granddaddy could charm an angry rattler just by looking him in the eye. Soothe him so peaceful you’d think that snake was drunk. He’d stand up to preach a sermon wearing two or three of ’em draped around his shoulders like neckties. And none of ’em ever bit him.”

It’s the most I’ve ever heard Zale say at once, and I let his words roll over me in waves.

I realize now that I can hear a little bit of Tennessee drawl mixed in with that slight Acadian echo.

Sweet tea and gumbo.

The music of it is intoxicating, and it melts into the night air like the calling of the birds and the wind through the tops of the cypress trees.

“My mama’s dead, too,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve mentioned my mother to him, and I feel the ache of her loss in a way that I haven’t for a really long time.

Zale squeezes my hand, and the hurt eases some. He waits. Leaves me an opening. But I’m not ready to tell that story just yet.

“My mama had the same talent as my granddaddy,” he goes on. “A gift to quiet the nerves and calm the soul. Only with her, it wasn’t just snakes. She had that same way with people.”

Zale is still talking. Telling me more about Florida. And about his mama. But I’m still thinking of my own mother. And her gift. Whatever deep magic she might have possessed.

I wish so much that I could remember her more clearly. I’ve tried so many times to conjure up the sound of her voice. Or the way she smelled. And sometimes I can, just for a few seconds. My memories of her are all so sketchy, though, because my mother might have died when I was eight years old . . . but she was gone a long time before that.