Spells for Forgetting(47)

I tossed the spade to the ground and stood, wiping my forehead with the back of my arm. “Hey.” My voice was cold. Colder than I meant it to be, and it looked as if it hurt him. “You still drinking that tea that Leoda made you?”

“Three times a day, as ordered.” He tried to lighten the tension.

I nodded. I didn’t know what to say. There had never been something unmended between us. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d been angry with my dad.

He nudged the tipping pile of nettles at his feet with the side of his boot, pushing it back into place. “I think we should talk,” he finally said.

“All right. Then talk.”

His eyes traced the tops of the trees beyond the fence. I didn’t like seeing him like that—unsure. “I know it wasn’t right to keep all this from you. I’ve known it a long time.”

I stared at him.

“I didn’t mean to blame it on your mother, either. I agreed not to tell you about the letters. We thought we were doing what was best for you. And we were wrong.”

The morning August left, I was waiting for him at Halo Beach. It was a Saturday and I’d told my mother that I wasn’t feeling well so that she wouldn’t ask me to come help her at the shop. As soon as she disappeared up the road, I slipped out and ran the broken trail through the woods.

It had been two weeks since Jake announced that August wouldn’t be charged with Lily’s murder, and that night someone threw a stone through August’s bedroom window. The town was still pressed beneath darkness, unable to breathe. And August was at the center of it all.

We started meeting at Halo Beach because Eloise didn’t want him to come into town. Not until things calmed down, she said. And August didn’t want me coming over anymore. He’d been pushing me away, slowly. It began with little things. Being the first to let go of my hand. Not quite looking me in the eye when we were together. I’d felt the divide between us growing by the day, but I was convinced that he’d come back to me. That he’d come back to himself.

I waited on the rocky bluff for two hours, my feet dangling in the wind, and when I finally decided he wasn’t coming, I figured Henry had called him to the orchard.

My parents were waiting for me when I got back to the house, and I stopped at the gate when I saw them sitting on the porch. The looks on their faces were ones I had never seen before and the sight made my stomach drop. The scars on my dad’s face were still red, but they’d lost some of their brightness, and after almost a year the look of constant pain had left his eyes. But I could see it there in that moment.

They’re gone, baby.

The words twisted in the air, losing their meaning. And then I was running back across the road. Up the drive, where Eloise’s truck was parked. I pushed through the door and the house was empty.

He was gone. August and Eloise were gone.

Looking at my dad now, the memory didn’t feel so long ago. That look on his face was too familiar.

“I went to see Jake yesterday.” I took off the gloves, brushing the dirt from the suede. “He still thinks August killed Lily.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“But you and Mom never believed that. Why?”

One side of his mouth lifted. “I don’t know. We cared a lot about August. You know that. We cared about Lily, too, and it seemed just too hard to think he’d ever have done something like that.”

But he didn’t sound as convinced as he used to. In fact, my dad looked a little afraid, and that made me even more uneasy. Maybe the reason we hadn’t been able to believe it wasn’t because it wasn’t true. Maybe it had just hurt too much.

“I wish you had been honest with me.”

“I do, too.”

That was the worst part of all of this. I loved my father and I didn’t know if there was anything he could do that would change that. What they’d done was undeniably wrong, but there was no undoing it now. And even if they had told me, that wouldn’t have changed the fact that August left.

I stared at the ground between us. “There’s something else we need to talk about, Dad.”

“Okay.” He waited.

We’d never spoken of the folder in the bottom drawer of my dresser. He didn’t even know it was there. “Is the reason you never told me because you were trying to protect me, or did you have other reasons to keep August from coming back to Saoirse?”

“What are you talking about?”

“This isn’t just about August,” I said, looking him in the eye. “I know what you did. You and the town council.”

His face was twisted on one side, the scars unmoving on the other. “Em—”

“I’ve seen it. The deed to the orchard.”

He went rigid.

“I know you love me, Daddy”—I swallowed—“but I don’t trust you anymore. And I don’t know how long I can keep your secrets.”

I stepped past him before the lump rose in my throat and he didn’t stop me.

My father was a quiet man. He’d always been that way. But since my mother died, he’d been a drifting thing, living out there in the fishing cabin by himself. We’d both lost her and we’d both been changed by the years, but for the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure I knew who he was.