Darkest Hour

  It was around then that the phone rang. It was my friend CeeCee, wanting to know if I cared to join her and Adam McTavish at the Coffee Clutch to drink iced tea and talk bad about everyone we know. I said yes right away because I hadn’t heard from either of them in so long. CeeCee was doing a summer internship at the Carmel Pine Cone (the name of the local newspaper; can you imagine?) and Adam had been at his grandparents’ house in Martha’s Vineyard for most of the summer. The minute I heard her voice I realized how much I’d missed CeeCee, and how great it would be to tell her about vile Paul Slater and his tricks.

  But then, of course, I realized I’d have to tell her the part about Paul’s little brother, and how he really can speak to the dead, or the story wouldn’t have half as much pathos, and the fact is, CeeCee is not the type who believes in ghosts, or anything, for that matter, that she can’t see with her own two eyes, which makes the fact that she goes to Catholic school problematic, what with Sister Ernestine urging us all the time about faith and the Holy Spirit.

  But whatever. It was better than standing around at home, looking at a giant hole.

  I hurried upstairs and slipped out of my uniform and into one of the cute J. Crew slip dresses I’d ordered and never gotten a chance to wear since I’ve spent the whole summer in my heinous khaki shorts. No sign of Jesse, but that was just as well, as I wouldn’t have known what to say to him anyway. I felt totally guilty for having read his letters, even though at the same time I was glad I had done it, because knowing about his sisters and his problems on the ranch and all made me feel closer to him in a way.

  Only it was a fake kind of close because he didn’t know I knew. And if he had wanted me to know, don’t you think he would have told me? But he never wants to talk about himself. Instead, he always wants to talk about things like the rise of the Third Reich and how could we as a country have possibly sat around and let six million Jews get gassed before doing anything about it?

  You know. Things like that.

  Actually, some of the things Jesse wants to discuss are very hard to explain. I’d much rather talk about his sisters. For instance, had he found living with five girls as trying as I find living with three boys? I would imagine probably not, given the reverse toilet seat situation. Did they even have toilets back then? Or did they just go in those nasty outhouses, like on Little House on the Prairie?

  God, no wonder Maria was in such a bad mood.

  Well, that and the whole being dead thing.

  Anyway, Mom and Andy let me go out to eat with my friends because there was nothing for dinner anyway. Family meals really weren’t the same, anyway, without Doc. I was surprised to find that I actually missed him and couldn’t wait for him to come home. He was the only one of my stepbrothers who did not enrage me on any sort of regular basis.

  Even though I couldn’t really tell CeeCee about Paul, I did have a good time. It was good to see her, and Adam, who, of all the boys I know, acts the least like one, though he isn’t gay or anything, and actually takes great umbrage if you suggest it. So does CeeCee, who has been in love with Adam since, like, forever. I had great hopes that Adam might return her feelings, but I could tell things had kind of cooled off—at least on his part—since he’d been away.

  As soon as he got up to go to the bathroom, I asked CeeCee what was up with that, and she launched into this whole thing about how she thinks Adam met someone in Martha’s Vineyard. I have to say, it was kind of nice listening to someone else complain for a while. I mean, my life pretty much sucks and all, but at least I know Jesse’s not screwing around on me with some girl in Martha’s Vineyard.

  At least, I don’t think so. Who knows where he goes when he isn’t hanging around my room? It could be Martha’s Vineyard, after all.

  See? See how this relationship is never going to work?

  Anyway, CeeCee and Adam and I hadn’t seen each other in a long time, so there were quite a few people we needed to say bad things about, primarily Kelly Prescott, so when I got home, it was almost eleven…late for me, what with my having to be at work by eight.

  Still, I was glad I’d gone out, as it had taken my mind off what I suspected awaited me in a few hours: another visit from the ravishing Mrs. Diego.

  But as I was washing my hair before bed, it occurred to me that there was no reason why I had to make things easy on Miss Maria. I mean, why should I be victimized in my own bed?

  No reason. No reason at all. I did not have to put up with that kind of nonsense. Because that’s what it was. Nonsense.

  Well, sort of scary nonsense, but still nonsense, all the same.

  So when I turned out the light that night, it was with a definite sense of satisfaction. I was, I felt, well protected from anything Maria might pull. I had with me beneath the covers a veritable arsenal of weapons, including an ax, a hammer, and something I could not identify that I had taken from Andy’s workshop, but which had evil-looking spikes on it. Furthermore, I had Max the dog with me. He would, I knew, awaken me as soon as anything otherworldly showed up, being extremely sensitive to such things.

  And, oh, yes, I slept in Doc’s room.

  I know. I know. Cowardly in the extreme. But why should I have stayed in my own bed and waited for her, like a lame duck, when I could sleep in Doc’s bed and maybe throw her off the scent? I mean, it wasn’t like I was looking for a fight or anything. Well, except for the whole not-doing-a-thing-she-said thing. I guess that was sort of indicative of looking for a fight. But not, you know, actively.

  Because, I have to tell you, while ordinarily I might have gone out looking for Maria de Silva’s grave, so I could just, you know, have it out with her then and there, this was a little different. Because of Jesse. Don’t ask me why, but I just didn’t think I had it in me to go and rough up his ex, the way I would have if she didn’t have this connection to him. I can’t say I’m really used to waiting for ghosts to come to me….

  But this. This was different.

  Anyway, I had just snuggled down between Doc’s sheets (freshly laundered—I wasn’t taking any chances. I don’t know what goes on in the beds of twelve-year-old boys, and frankly, I don’t want to know) and was blinking in the darkness at the odd things Doc has hanging from his ceiling, a model of the solar system and all of that, when Max started to growl.

  He did it so low that at first I didn’t hear it. But since I had pulled him into bed with me (not that there was a lot of room, what with the ax and the hammer and the spiky thing) I could feel the growl reverberating through his big canine chest.

  Then it got louder, and the hair on Max’s back started standing up. That’s when I knew we were in for either an earthquake or a nocturnal visitation from the former belle of Salinas County.

  I sat up, grabbing the spiky thing and holding it like a baseball bat, looking around wildly while saying to Max in a low voice, “Good boy. It’s okay, boy. Everything’s going to be all right, boy,” and telling myself that I believed it.

  That’s when someone materialized in front of me. And I swung the spiky thing as I hard as I could.

  chapter

  six

  “Susannah!” Jesse cried from where he’d leaped to avoid being struck. “What are you doing?”

  I nearly dropped the spiky thing, I was so relieved it was him.

  Max went wild with whining and growling. The poor thing was clearly having some sort of doggie nervous breakdown. In order not to risk his waking everyone in the house, and then having to explain why I was sleeping in my stepbrother’s bed with a bunch of Andy’s tools, I let him out of the room. As I did so, Jesse took the spiky thing from me and looked down at it curiously.

  “Susannah,” he said when I’d closed the door again, “why are you sleeping in David’s room, armed with a pick?”

  I raised my eyebrows, looking way more surprised than the occasion warranted. “Is that what that is? I was wondering.”

  Jesse just shook his head at me. “Susannah,” he said, “tell me what is going on.
Now.”

  “Nothing,” I said, my voice sounding too squeaky and high-pitched even to my own ears. I hurried forward and got back into Doc’s bed, stubbing my toe on the hammer but not saying anything, since I didn’t want Jesse to know it was there. Finding me in my stepbrother’s bed with a pick was one thing. Finding me in my stepbrother’s bed with a pick, an ax, and a hammer was something else entirely.

  “Susannah.” Jesse sounded really mad, and he doesn’t get mad all that often. Except, of course, when he finds me sucking face with strange boys in the driveway, that is. “Is that an ax?”

  Damn! I shoved it back down beneath the covers. “I can explain,” I said.

  He leaned the pick against the side of the bed and folded his arms across his chest. “I’d like to hear it,” he said.

  “Well.” I took a deep breath. “It’s like this.”

  And then I couldn’t think of any way to explain it, other than the truth.

  And I couldn’t tell him that.

  Jesse must have read in my face the fact that I was trying to think up a lie, since he suddenly unfolded his arms and leaned forward, placing one hand on either side of the headboard behind me, and sort of capturing me between his arms, though he wasn’t actually touching me. This was very unnerving and caused me to slump down very low against Doc’s pillows.

  But even that didn’t really do any good, since Jesse’s face was still only about six inches from mine.

  “Susannah,” he said. He was really mad now. Fed up, even, you might say. “What is happening here? Last night I could swear I felt…a presence in your room. And then tonight you are sleeping in here, with picks and axes? What is it that you aren’t telling me? And why? Why can’t you tell me?”

  I had sunk down as low as I could, but there was no escaping Jesse’s angry face, unless I threw the sheet up over my head. And that, of course, wouldn’t be at all dignified.

  “Look,” I said as reasonably as I could, considering that there was a hammer digging into my foot. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. It’s just that I’m afraid that if I do…”

  And then, don’t ask me how, the whole thing just came tumbling out. Really. It was incredible. It was like he’d pushed a button on my forehead that said Information Please, and out it all came.

  I told him everything, about the letters, the trip to the historical society, everything, finishing up with, “And the thing is, I didn’t want you to know, because if your body really is buried out there, and they find it, well, that means that there’s no reason for you to hang around here anymore, and I know it’s selfish, but I would really miss you, so I was hoping if I didn’t mention it you wouldn’t find out and everything could just go on like normal.”

  But Jesse didn’t have at all the sort of reaction to this information that I thought he would. He didn’t sweep me into his arms and kiss me passionately like in the movies, or even call me querida, whatever it means, and stroke my hair, which was wet from my shower.

  Instead, he just started laughing.

  Which I didn’t really appreciate. I mean, after everything I had gone through for him in the past twenty-four hours, you would think he would show a bit more gratitude than to sit there and laugh. Especially when my life might very well be in mortal peril.

  I mentioned this to him, but that only made him laugh harder.

  Finally, when he was through laughing—which didn’t happen until I’d pulled the hammer out from under the covers, something that sent him into fresh peals, but what was I supposed to do? it was still digging into me—he did reach out and sort of ruffle my hair, but there wasn’t anything the least bit romantic about it, since I had put Kiehl’s leave-in conditioner on it, and I’m pretty sure it got on his fingers.

  That just made me madder at him than ever, even though technically it wasn’t his fault. So I took the ax out from beneath the sheets, too, and then pulled the covers up over my head and rolled over and wouldn’t talk to him anymore. Or look at him. Very mature, I know, but I was peeved.

  “Susannah,” he said in a voice that was a little hoarse from all the laughing he’d been doing. I felt like punching him. I really did. “Don’t be like that. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I laughed. It’s just that I didn’t understand a word you just said, you were talking so fast. And then when you pulled out that hammer—”

  “Go away,” I said.

  “Come on, Susannah,” Jesse said in his silkiest, most persuasive voice—which he was using on purpose to make me go all squishy. Except that it wasn’t going to work this time. “Let go of the sheet.”

  “No,” I said, clutching the sheet tighter as he plucked at it. “I said go away.”

  “No, I won’t go away. Sit up. I want to talk to you seriously now, but how can I do that when you won’t look at me? Turn around.”

  “No,” I said. I was really mad. I mean, you would have been, too. That Maria was one scary individual. And he’d been going to marry her! Well, a hundred and fifty years ago, anyway. Had he even known her? Known that she wasn’t anything like the girl who’d written those idiotic letters to him? What had he been thinking, anyway?

  “Why don’t you just go hang out with Maria?” I suggested to him acidly. “Maybe you two could sit around and sharpen her knives together and have some more laughs at my expense. Ha ha, you could say. That mediator is so funny.”

  “Maria?” Jesse pulled on the sheet some more. “What are you talking about, knives?”

  Okay. So I hadn’t been totally up front with him. I hadn’t told him the whole story. Yeah, the part about the letters and the historical society and the hole and all. But the part about Maria showing up with the knife—the reason, in fact, that I was sleeping in Doc’s bed with a bunch of tools? Hadn’t mentioned that part.

  Because I’d known how he was going to react. Exactly the way he did.

  “Maria and knives?” he echoed. “No. No.”

  That did it. I rolled over and said to him, very sarcastically, “Oh, okay, Jesse. So that knife she held to my throat last night, that must have been an imaginary knife. And I must have imagined it when she threatened to kill me, too.”

  I started to roll back over in a huff, but this time he caught me before I got turned all the way and swung me back around to face him. He wasn’t, I saw with some satisfaction, laughing now. Or even smiling.

  “A knife?” He was looking down at me like he wasn’t sure he’d heard me right. “Maria was here? With a knife? Why?”

  “You tell me,” I said, even though I knew the answer perfectly well. “Someone’s been dead and gone for as long as she has, it would have to take something pretty big to bring her back.”

  Jesse just stared down at me with those dark, liquid eyes of his. If he knew anything, he wasn’t saying. Not just yet.

  “She—she tried to hurt you?”

  I nodded, and had the satisfaction of feeling his grip on my shoulders tighten.

  “Yes,” I said. “And she held it right here”—I pointed to my jugular—“and she said if I didn’t tell Andy to stop digging, she was going to k—”

  Kill me, was what I was going to say, but I didn’t get a chance to, because Jesse snatched me up—really, snatched, that’s the only way to describe it—and held on to me very tightly for someone who had thought the whole thing a big funny joke just a few seconds before.

  This was, I must say, extremely gratifying. It got even more gratifying when Jesse said some stuff—though I didn’t know what it was, because it was in Spanish—into my wet hair.

  But that death grip (excuse the pun) he had me in didn’t need any translating: He was scared. Scared for me.

  “It was a really large knife,” I said, enjoying the feel of his big strong shoulder beneath my cheek. I could totally get used to this. “And very pointy.”

  “Querida,” he said. Okay, that word I understood. Well, sort of. He kissed the top of my head.

  This was good. This was very good. I decided to go in for the kill.
br />   “And then,” I said, doing a very good imitation of sounding like I was crying, or at least, was pretty close to doing so, “she put her hand over my face to keep me from screaming, and one of her rings cut me and made my mouth all bloody.”

  Oops. This one did not have the desired effect. I should probably not have brought up my bloody mouth, since instead of kissing me there, which was what I’d been aiming for, he pulled me away from him so he could look down into my face.

  “Susannah, why didn’t you tell me any of this last night?” He looked genuinely baffled. “I asked you if something was wrong, and you never said a word.”

  Hello? Hadn’t he heard anything I just said?

  “Because.” I was speaking through gritted teeth, but you would have, too, if the man of your dreams was holding you in his arms and all he wanted to do was talk. And about his ex-girlfriend’s attempt to murder you, no less.

  “It obviously has something to do with why you’re here,” I said. “Why you’re still here, I mean, in this house, and why you’ve been here so long. Jesse, don’t you see? If they find your body, that proves you were murdered, and that means Colonel Clemmings was right.”

  Jesse’s bewilderment seemed to increase, rather than lessen, thanks to this explanation.

  “Colonel who?” he said.

  “Colonel Clemmings,” I said. “Author of My Monterey. His theory of why you disappeared is not that you got cold feet about marrying Maria and went off to San Francisco to stake a claim, but that that Diego guy killed you so he could marry Maria himself. And if they find your body, Jesse, that will prove you were murdered. And the most likely suspects are, of course, Maria and that Diego dude.”

  But instead of being dazzled by my excellent sleuthing skills, Jesse asked in a shocked voice, “How do you know about him? About Diego?”

  “I told you.” God, this was irritating. When were we going to get to the kissing? “It’s from a book Doc got out of the library. My Monterey, by Colonel Harold Clemmings.”

  “But Doc—I mean, David—is at camp, I thought.”