Spells for Forgetting(68)

Emery and her dad were dancing, and she was smiling in that way that made her eyes squint into tiny crescent moons. She’d trusted me. With everything. She’d been willing to leave it all behind. But that glow in her eyes would fade the moment I told her we weren’t leaving. That we weren’t special or different. That our lives would be exactly what we thought they wouldn’t be. I didn’t think I’d ever been more ashamed of anything. Ever.

Behind them, I could see my grandfather roaming the crowd with a wide smile. He looked smug, and I hated him for it. He’d spent the better part of a year before that sick, the life slowly bleeding from his body. I’d been sure that we would finally be rid of him, but just as quickly as the light began to leave his eyes, it had returned. We were stuck with him for God knew how long.

And I didn’t only hate him, I hated the orchard. I always had. It was the heavy stone that pressed me to the dirt, the looming shadow that followed two steps behind me.

I set my back against the wall of the barn, staring into those godforsaken trees. They were like poison. And with every drop of blood in my veins, I wanted to cut them from the earth.

I took a step forward, watching the lantern swing on the nearest branch and staring into the orange flame behind the glass until its brightness overtook everything else. It washed away the night, the orchard, my grandfather. It filled my head with bright, drenching light. Before I’d even decided to, before I’d even thought it, I lifted a hand, taking the lantern from the branch. And as the breath left my lips, I dropped it.





Forty


    EMERY


I wasn’t sure how many seconds had passed since the words left his mouth, but I felt like I’d come out of my own skin. Like I was hovering in the air above us, not really there.

The light darkened and I looked up to the sky, where black clouds were creeping like a wave toward the island. I could feel the storm gathering overhead. The buzz of it in the air. The cold pushing in from the sea.

It was as if Saoirse had heard him say it. I was sure that she had.

August stared at the ground, his face flushed and jaw tight. He looked eighteen again, missing the years he’d spent away from the island. Away from me. I wasn’t sure I knew the August who came in on the ferry, but I did know the one who’d stood beside me in that cemetery. It was the same one who stood before me now.

The pieces fit into the ones missing from the story. Why August hadn’t been at the orchard before the party. Eloise’s letter.

He hadn’t killed Lily, but he’d set the fire that almost killed my dad. The fire that almost killed this town.

“Will you come inside?”

I blinked, remembering where we were. August still stood at the bottom of the steps, the set of his shoulders rigid. He looked afraid. Panicked, even.

When I didn’t answer, he came up the stairs and unlocked the door behind me. It opened a second later, and I took a step back as the rush of warm air came seeping out. It wrapped around me, filling my lungs with a scent that I knew. It danced on my tongue as I stared at the threshold.

August disappeared through the doorway and the cottage suddenly felt bigger, looming over me. This place had once been like a home to me, but it had been years since those nights when I’d snuck into the empty house and climbed into August’s bed. Even the echo of the memory hurt.

As soon as I stepped inside, I regretted it.

The door closed just as thunder rumbled in the darkening sky, and I turned in a circle, my lip quivering as my eyes flitted over the living room. The quilt draped over the back of the sofa. The wooden rocking chair beside the front window. A little clay pot in the windowsill above the sink. August stood before the fireplace, where a pile of fresh-cut firewood was stacked, watching me remember it.

It was exactly the same. Everything. But the two of us were far from the people who’d once stood in this room together.

To see August out on the street or in the shop was one thing. But to see him here, in this house…my insides ached with a flood of images that I couldn’t stop. That painful expansion in my chest was there now, as if my body could still remember those days even when all I wanted was to forget them.

There wasn’t a single person on Saoirse who hadn’t lied to me. But somehow, after everything, the one who cut the deepest was August.

“How could you do it?” I whispered hoarsely.

“I don’t know.”

“How could you just…”

“I was a stupid kid, Em. I was angry, I felt trapped. I know that doesn’t make it any better, but it’s the truth. In that moment, I had no idea what I was doing.”

I felt so tired and heavy that I wanted to close my eyes and disappear. This was why he’d lied. Why he’d hidden the truth about that night from me. He had been running from something when he left the island after all. But it wasn’t murder.

The rain started to fall, hitting the tin overhang outside. In only minutes, it would be a downpour.

“No one knew except my mom,” he said.

My eyes lifted. That’s what Eloise was talking about in the letter. Not Lily—the fire. But if someone had it now, that’s not what it would look like. Anyone who read Eloise’s words would think exactly what I had.

“I wanted to tell you, but your dad…it was too hard. And then lying was harder. I thought, either way you would hate me, so leaving Saoirse seemed easier.” He paused. “My mom was worried about something happening to me.”