I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(46)

“Not to me, not really. Brain scientists actually take intuition pretty seriously these days. And even if they didn’t—”

“Even if they didn’t, what?”

“I take you seriously.”

“Well, thanks,” I said, sincerely flattered.

Dev cleared his throat. “So let’s go ahead with the idea, at least for now, that the people in the shadow ledger were real guests who stayed at Edith’s house, but who, for some reason, warranted a different ledger and a different, harder-to-understand kind of entry notation. They were like an undercurrent, this flow of shadow guests, or like Edith’s own little parallel universe.”

I started smiling at let’s go ahead with the idea, and as the excitement mounted in his voice, I pumped my fist in the air and shouted a silent, celebratory Yes! Because he was back, my adventuring partner, gung ho to grab my hand and jump with me, feetfirst, into mystery.

“Shoot, if only we could find them,” I said. “Those shadow guests. Some of them, especially the kids, are sure to be alive someplace. But there’s just not enough information to go on.”

“No, but listen, listen,” said Dev. “Some of them weren’t there alone, right? There were other guests, daylight guests, whose stays overlapped with theirs.”

“Yes. A lot had overlapping dates,” I said. “More in the summer than in the winter, when she probably didn’t get that many regular guests. The shadow ledger goes on for about three years, and I haven’t counted, but I’d say there were twenty or more times when the daylight guests and shadow guests overlapped.”

“And we do have information on those guys, the daylight guests. What if we get in touch with them, and find a way to ask them if they remember other guests being there? Then, we’ll know for sure that there were two sets of guests.”

“Oh, wow, right,” I said, catching on. “And who knows? Maybe they’ll remember something about those guests, something that might give us a clue as to why they were shadow guests. What made them shadowy instead of daylit.”

“It’s definitely worth a shot. We shouldn’t expect too much, though. Some of them won’t live at those addresses anymore. Some of them, honestly, might not live, period. And if they’re still around, they’ll be pretty old. They may not remember much from way back then. But you know what? Some of them had families, so maybe the kids will remember something, if we can track them down.”

“How, though? Should we do one of those reverse-search things online? We can put in names and addresses and try to find phone numbers or e-mail addresses. It’s kind of a stalkery thing to do, but we could.”

“We could,” said Dev, “but we could also just write letters. Blue Sky House is in Delaware, and I’ll bet a lot of the addresses are pretty close by. Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Philadelphia, or around there. We could say, I don’t know, that you inherited a house that used to be an inn and are trying to learn more about its history. Not a lie, just not the whole truth. Most of the letters would either get where they’re going overnight or in a couple of days. We could give the people our cell-phone numbers. They could call us if they have any information.”

“A fair number are Delaware addresses, and most of those are Wilmington, actually, where you live. I even recognized one or two of the street names.” I had a thought. “Hey, you might even know some of the people, Dev. Or their kids or their kids’ kids. For a city, Wilmington’s a pretty small town.”

“You’re right. So why don’t I start with them, the Wilmington people, and you can do the others,” he said. “We can start tonight even.”

Tonight. Suddenly, we were thirteen years old again, gangly and sure of ourselves and full of an almost feverish urgency to begin, begin, begin.

“But how will I get you the addresses?” I asked. “It would also be good if you had the shadow ledger entries that correspond with the dates of the people you’re contacting. I could type it all up, I guess.”

“You could, I guess,” said Dev.

There was a silence during which I was pretty sure the two of us were thinking the same thing. Yes, I could type up everything and send it, which would take a while, especially since there wasn’t Internet service at Edith’s house, or Dev could come to Blue Sky House. He was spending the summer in Wilmington, splitting his time, the way he usually did, between Cornelia and Teo’s and his mother’s houses, taking the train into Philadelphia to work every day. Wilmington was a scant two-hour drive from Antioch Beach. He could be here tomorrow morning or even tonight. I knew just how it would be: the two of us sitting at the kitchen table with the ledgers spread open in front of us, Dev’s face alternating between pensive and animated in the glow of his laptop, his eyes as full of streaming, darting life as a coral reef. We’d type and leaf through the ledgers and now and then break the quiet to voice ideas that would seem random to anyone else, anyone other than two people who’d been following the stone-skipping trails—bounce, bounce, bounce—of each other’s thoughts since they were kids.

It would’ve been so easy to ask him to come, but, at the very last second, something held me back. I don’t know what. I felt not ready, although for what I couldn’t exactly say. Not ready to not be alone in Edith’s house? Not ready to not be alone, period? Not ready to be alone with Dev? But that last possibility made no sense, so I discarded it. Still, the fact remained that I didn’t feel ready to invite Dev to Edith’s house, not yet, not quite.