NOCTE (Nocte Trilogy #1)(5)

Instead, I hug him.

“Love you, dad.”

“Love you, too, Cal.”

Over his shoulder, my gaze freezes on the small ivy covered brick building down the path from the main house, and I stare at it for a minute before I pull away.

“Have you decided about the Carriage House yet?”

He and my mother had converted it into an apartment last year as an investment property, but they’d been in the process of trying to find a renter when mom died. Finn and I have been trying to get dad to let one of us live in it.

He shakes his head now. “You know, it’s not really fair to give it to one or the other of you. I’m going to rent it out, after all.”

I stare at him like he just grew a second head. “Really? But…”

But what a waste of a beautifully renovated space.

My father is unfazed. “You and Finn are going to college in the Fall anyway. It’d be extra income. That was our original plan, anyway.”

I’m still stunned. “Well, good luck finding someone who wants to live here.”

Right next door to a funeral home and crematorium.

“If you know of anyone, please let them know,” my dad continues, ignoring my pessimism. I scoff at that.

“You know I don’t know anyone.” I don’t go into the depressing state of my social life, which is nonexistent and always has been. It’s always been something that worried my mom and dad, although Finn and I never much cared. We’ve always had each other.

Finn bounds down the stairs, his hair wet, interrupting our conversation.

“Since I smelled like sweaty feet, I took the world’s fastest shower,” he announces as he breezes past us. “You’re welcome.”

“Drive safe!” my father calls out needlessly as he heads inside. Because of the way my mom died, among twisted metal and smoking rubber, my father doesn’t even like to see us in a car, but he knows it’s a necessity of life.

Even still, he doesn’t want to watch it.

It’s ok. We all have little tricks we play on our minds to make life bearable.

I drop into the passenger seat of our car, the one my brother and I share, and stare at Finn.

“How’d you sleep?”

Because he doesn’t usually.

He’s an insufferable insomniac. His mind is naturally more active at night than the average person’s. He can’t figure out how to shut it down. And when he does sleep, he has vivid nightmares so he gets up and crawls into my bed.

Because I’m the one he comes to when he’s afraid.

It’s a twin thing. Although, the kids that used to tease us for being weird would love to know that little tid-bit, I’m sure. Calla and Finn sleep in the same bed sometimes, isn’t that sick?? They’d never understand how we draw comfort just from being near each other. Not that it matters what they think, not anymore. We’ll probably never see any of those *s again.

“I slept like shit. You?”

“Same,” I murmur. Because it’s true. I’m not an insomniac, but I do have nightmares. Vivid ones, of my mother screaming, and broken glass, and of her cellphone in her hand. In every dream, I can hear my own voice, calling out her name, and in every dream, she never answers.

You could say I’m a bit tortured by that.

Finn and I fall into silence, so I press my forehead to the glass and stare out the window as he drives, staring at the scenery that I’ve been surrounded with since I was born.

Despite my internal torment, I have to admit that our mountain is beautiful.

We’re surrounded by all things green and alive, by pine trees and bracken and lush forest greenery. The vibrant green stretches across the vast lawns, through the flowered gardens, and lasts right up until you get to the cliffs, where it finally and abruptly turns reddish and clay.

I guess that’s pretty good symbolism, actually. Green means alive and red means dangerous. Red is jagged cliffs, warning lights, splattered blood. But green… green is trees and apples and clover.

“How do you say green in Latin?” I ask absentmindedly.

“Viridem,” he answers. “Why?”

“No reason.” I glance into the side-mirror at the house, which fades into the distance behind us.

Huge and Victorian, it stands proudly on the top of this mountain, perched on the edge of the cliffs with its spires poking through the clouds. It’s beautiful and graceful, at the same time as it is gothic and dark. It’s a funeral home, after all, at the end of a road on a mountain. It’s a horror movie waiting to happen.

Last Funeral Home on the Left.

Dad will need a miracle to rent the tiny Carriage House out, and I feel a slight pang of guilt. Maybe he really does need the money, and I’ve been pressuring him to give it to Finn or me.

I turn my gaze away from the house, away from my guilt, and out to the ocean. Vast and gray, the water punishes the rocks on the shore, pounding into them over and over. Mist rises from the water, forming fog along the beach. It’s beautiful and eerie, haunting and peaceful.

But it’s also a prison, holding me here beneath the low-hanging cloud cover.

“Do you ever wish we could move away? Like far away?” I muse aloud.

Finn glances at me. “Berkeley isn’t far enough for you?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m talking someplace far away. Like Italy. Or Scotland. It’d be nice, I think. To get away from here. From everything we know.”