Spells for Forgetting(27)

“I know. I just…” I closed my eyes. “Do you think he did it?” The words strung together in a single breath.

“What?” She sat up straight, her brow pulled.

My cheeks burned hot as I watched her. “I’ve never asked you if you believe that August killed her. I think I was afraid of what you might say.”

Nixie looked genuinely confused. “He was with Dutch that night.”

“Not everyone believes that,” I said softly.

Nearly everyone on the island was convinced that August murdered Lily. The question no one could answer was, why? The only thing that had kept him from being arrested was Dutch’s statement to the police that he and August were at the lighthouse around the same time.

“They want someone to blame. They need someone to blame. This town made up their minds about August and it didn’t matter if there was evidence or not. He was guilty.” Nixie sighed, taking another drink. “I don’t blame Eloise for taking him to Prosper.”

A sound like water on rocks rattled the windows of the barn as the wind poured in, and my eyes snapped up. But before I’d even gotten the word out, the lantern flickered out suddenly, leaving only a slice of moonlight coming through the opening in the door.

Nixie cursed under her breath, getting up to rustle through the workbench against the wall for a match as I stared into the blue flame of the burner at her feet, my mind racing.

The match struck and Nixie had the lantern relit in the next breath, filling the barn with orange light. But when Nixie’s eyes refocused on me, they had changed.

“Prosper?” I said, confused.

Her hands fidgeted with the next set of wicks, her gaze immediately finding the ground. “What, honey?”

“You just said that Eloise took him to Prosper.”

“That’s what I heard, I think.” Nixie faltered over the words.

“From whom? When?” I watched her, gaze narrowed, but she stood, hanging the rack on the wall. “Nixie.”

She stared at it for a moment as the shifting candlelight moved over her silver hair. “I guess I figured she’d tell you eventually.” She spoke so lowly that I could hardly make out the words.

My hands curled into fists in my lap. “Who?”

“Hannah.” Nixie finally turned to look at me and her cheeks reddened as she wiped her palms on the apron. “They wrote letters—your mama and Eloise.”

“Letters?” My voice no longer sounded like my own. It was muffled by the rush of thoughts spilling through my mind, trying to wash out the truth of what she might be saying.

“They were friends, Emery. They kept in touch after Eloise and August left the island.”

Slowly, I rose from the stool with my heart hammering in my chest. “How could she not tell me that? How could you?”

Nixie looked panicked now. She pressed her fingers to her lips, as if trying to summon the right thing to say. “Emery, you changed after he left. You’d lost Lily and August. Your dad was hurt…I think Hannah was afraid that if she opened that wound up, it would never close again.”

“So all that time…you knew where he was?” I said, hollowly.

The look in her eyes answered my question. She had known. So had my mother. I pressed a cold hand to my hot cheek, feeling like the barn was spinning around me.

“Emery.”

Then I was walking. I snatched the lantern from the hook and pushed through the door, into the dark. Cool moonlight kissed my sweat-sheened skin and the smell of kerosene bled away, replaced by the scent of pine.

“Emery!”

The trees groaned as a gust of cold wind bled through the woods, and I looked up to the bits of sky that were visible through the branches. The night seemed to swell, the gooseflesh rising on my arms as I made it to the road, and Nixie’s voice disappeared.

My boots hit the gravel in tandem with my heartbeat as I sifted through countless memories of my mother, searching for any hint. The tiniest clue. She had been my best friend after Lily died. She’d been the faint light that led me back from the darkness. There was a part of me that would never believe she could have lied to me. But there was a smaller, more terrified part that already did.

“Emery!” The faintest echo of a voice wove through the trees, finding me.

Not Nixie’s. Another voice. One I only ever heard in my own nightmares.

“Emery!” Lily’s voice sang my name, enveloped in laughter. “Where are you, Emery?”

A crack sounded in the dark and I whirled, lifting the lantern before me. The dim flame’s light danced on the road and I searched the black, turning in a circle with my stomach in my throat.

There was nothing there, but I could feel it. Some remnant of a presence.

I started again, my steps quickening with each glance over my shoulder, and when the house finally came into view, I let out a long breath. I tried not to look at August’s house across the road as I ran up the steps to the porch and opened the unlocked door. As soon as I slipped inside, I leaned my weight against it until it closed, the sweat leaving a chill on my skin.

I clawed at my scarf until it was falling to the floor and when I looked out the window again, the road was still empty. Quiet.

“It’s nothing,” I whispered to myself, pressing the flat of my palm to my hot forehead. “There’s nothing there.”