“And then another, and another, until the sky was alight with a meteor shower. Papa knew then you had arrived. He started crying so hard he couldn’t see—from happiness that you were here and sadness because he’d missed your grand arrival. He couldn’t return home with nothing to give his new son, so he pulled over and climbed to the top of Backbone, and at its peak, with his bare hands, he caught a falling star.”
I’ve heard this story, though in my father’s version, Jack the First had chased the star on horseback and caught it on a dare from Jacob Angert. I wonder, then, if I’m witnessing the story’s first telling. If it was less an exaggeration and more an outright fabrication that Issa created to soothe Jack II in this moment. Something that affected him profoundly enough that he’d pass it along to his own son, who would pass it to me, all its details chopped up and rearranged.
“And though the star badly burned,” Issa continues, “he ran to his car and drove all the way home through the night with it, ignoring the heat on his palm. When he reached Five Fingers, he threw the star into the lake, and just like that, every fish turned bright, shimmering gold. Papa caught one with his hand and carried it to the hospital, where he found me and you and Mama waiting for him. Hi, Jack, he said to you, I’m your father, and this is how much I love you. Enough to climb a mountain. Enough to catch a star. Enough to carry it home as it burns. Someday you’ll know what it’s like. Someday you’ll love something so much it turns every brown fish gold.”
Jack’s lungs have fallen into a steady rhythm, his eyes pressing shut.
“I love you, Jack,” Issa whispers. “Even if he’s forgotten how to, I won’t. I love you, and I’ll never let you go.”
When he finally drifts into sleep, the memory freezes.
You promised, I remember Jack II crying on the bed to the pink ghost. You promised we’d get out.
He knew Feathers was his sister. She was supposed to take him away, somewhere safe. She was his somewhere safe. I know what that’s like to watch that disintegrate. To lose the one thing you never thought you could.
But how? How did he lose her?
Did Abe really kill her?
Dread creeps through me, mingling with the ache of grief.
I slip back into the bedroom—mine, in the present. The sound of Shadow’s and Grayson’s laughter, of Hannah’s playful teasing drift up to me. I’m home.
• • •
I set my alarm for two A.M. and get in bed. I must drift off, because I jerk awake sometime later, choking, convinced my lungs are filled with the water from the falls.
The cold burn in my chest fizzles, but there’s no way I’m getting back to sleep, so I creep downstairs. Mom’s sitting up at the table, tearfully scribbling in a notebook. Fresh worry needles me. I want to go to her—comfort her—but I can’t jeopardize my impending escape.
I sneak back upstairs to wait. My nerves spark when a text from Saul comes in. I’m suddenly afraid he’ll call off our plans, feel too guilty or worried to meet me in the woods. I tap it open.
Hey. An ambiguous bait-message. An implied We need to talk.
I figure if I don’t respond, he won’t be able to cancel. There’s no way Saul Angert will leave me to wander the woods alone.
Another message comes in. That was my impression of a loser who doesn’t know how to say what he’s thinking.
Convincing, I can’t resist replying.
It’s all about commitment. If I’d texted you any sooner, with more than one word, it might not have been so convincing.
Great, I say, then add, Are you trying to cancel?
No.
Then why are you texting me an hour before we’re supposed to meet?
Why do you think?
So it’s my job to answer the question for you.
I don’t want to wait an hour, he says.
That eager to dive into memories, huh?
Sure. That’s it.
Flirting with me on the very brink of discovering what caused a century-old family curse.
I’m shameless. Shameful? Both?
I think you mean “hot.”
Get over here, Jack.
I’m trying, I tell him.
Not hard enough, apparently.
Is that a euphemism?
Hitting on me on the very brink of breaking a century-old family curse, huh, June?
I go into my closet for a coat and a pair of boots, then sit on my bed and pull them on. A faint illumination comes from the window. The Whites are back, silently grazing one another as they shift within the pane.
This time when I sneak downstairs, Mom’s on the couch snoring peacefully, a pilled carmine throw tossed over her. Guilt coils around my stomach.
You’re doing this for her too, I tell myself. For everyone you love.
The windows are frosted and dark, but I can make out a doe picking its way through the snowy lawn, two fawns ambling after, stopping to sniff and munch. At one point they freeze and stare at me, their ocher eyes blinking at me through the glass.
I remember a morning like this one. Dad nudged me awake and led me downstairs to show me how, through one window, you could see coywolves hiding in the trees and, through the other, a deer lying in the snow as though it were a bed of hay.
“Is it true that in another forest, the coyotes or the wolves would kill her?” I whispered.
Dad nodded solemnly and twisted the knob on the back door, nodding permission for me to step outside. Our toes purpled in the below-zero temperature, and our breath was visible as we watched the creatures. “Anywhere else the deer would run too,” Dad whispered. “But this is sacred ground.”
“Marta Griggs didn’t believe me,” I told him. “Even though her family believes there used to be a magic garden and a snake slithered into it and spread evil. She says that’s why people kill one another and why they get sick too.”
Dad’s face tensed. “You know, June-bug, evil’s something you can decide to do every day, and it gets easier every time. But the more good you bring into the world, maybe the more the rest of the world would look like this. Like paradise.”
I ease the back door open, and the wind cuts through me. I close it before the bite can wake Mom, and I step onto the porch, heart trilling in my chest because we’re so close to figuring everything out and because I’m going to see Saul again. Finally.
As I set off across the yard, a snowshoe hare darts past me, followed by two more, their feet pricking holes in the crunchy snow. I watch the point where they vanish into the dark folds of the trees, amazed by how much ground something so small can cover in so little time. I pick up my pace, jumping in surprise as a deer gallops jerkily past, dashing into the forest exactly where they did, its white tail fading into the night.
An outburst of flapping wings erupts behind me, and the feeling of free fall hits me all at once, the sensation of my stomach flying into my mouth, the ground dropping out from under me.
I know before the stampede of living things hits—the porcupines and opossums, starlings and house sparrows, weasels and woodchucks all scuttling furiously past me, all shrilling and wild-eyed. Before I’ve turned to face the chicken coop, I know what I’ll find.
The blackness thrashes in front of it, stretched out in every direction, twice its usual size, and everything caught within its grasp screams and seizes. Instead of huddling around the heater in the coop, the chickens flap through the grass, pecking and flailing; field mice move drunkenly among them, falling onto their backs and twisting in agony.
A hen—neck twisted, blood and feathers spread—lies strewn across the shining white.
“Saul.” My teeth chatter, lips shiver. I turn and run, whipping my phone from my coat. I dial as fast as I can, counting the seconds as the line rings. Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Six.
/> Seven.
“Hi, you’ve reached Saul. Sorry I can’t take your call. Leave—”
“No,” I say aloud. I call again.
One ring. Two. Three. Five. Seven. “Hi, you’ve reached—”
I turn back to the writhing darkness, to the nameless thing following me, hating me. “You can’t have him.”
It vanishes.
I take off running.
Thirty-Eight
IT’S not too late, I tell myself.
I’ll get to Eli’s cabin soon, and Saul will be fine, I tell myself. I’ll be fine.
I keep running, my heart raging against my rib cage.
A twig snaps within the forest—the footfall of a coywolf, or gravity taking its toll on a dead branch, probably. But I feel something watching me.
Another snap. A rustle. I spin.
A dark shape dives into the shadows.
I lunge after it, throw myself through the brush, feet pounding the snow, calves burning, lungs heaving, heart aching because where is Saul and why isn’t he answering his phone?
A half dozen coywolves scatter from the brush as I pick up my pace. I run until everything is a blue-green blur. The trees thin ahead, moonlight breaking through.
I stumble into the clearing around the cabin. A rabbit lies dead in front of the steps, and the front door hangs open, the wind pounding it against the side of the house. Dead leaves skitter across the floor, the crispy noise like a lifeless version of Saul’s laugh.
I bound up onto the porch and move into the dark hallway. “Saul?”
The house is a mess: an antique console table flipped on its side, a ceramic vase shattered, its dried-out contents spilling across the wood grain. A green lamp knocked over on a fifties walnut table, its age-yellowed shade askew and the lightbulb flickering from the loosened connection.
“Saul?” My voice crackles as if interrupted by static.
Soft whimpers rise from behind the couch. I pick up a broken slab of ceramic from the ground as I advance. “Hello?”
I sidle around the edge of the coffee table until I can see the gap between the couch and the loveseat. On the floor, a man in rumpled pajamas rocks against the wall, tears still rolling down his wrinkled cheeks.
“Eli.” I hurry to his side.
His vacant eyes drift to me, blinking against the stuttering lamplight. The wintry bite I’m used to finding in his face is nowhere to be seen, but neither is the man who cradled his daughter on a bathroom floor.
“Who are you?” He sounds young, lost.
“I’m Ja—Junior,” I decide on. “Saul’s friend.”
“Saul.” Eli looks at his hands. They’re clutching a triangular slice of ceramic, like mine, but his are smeared with blood. His arms are sliced in purposeless sweeps of dark red. I bite down on the words—Oh God—rising in my chest.
I pry the makeshift weapon from his fingers. “Eli. Where’s Saul? What happened?”
“Saul.” Something passes over his eyes, as if his mind just slid into place behind his pupils. A gurgle gets trapped in his throat. “Saul’s my son.” He covers his trembling mouth with one hand. “Bekah’s gone.”
“Eli.”
His eyes snap toward mine, teeth chattering. “She came.”
Shivers spring up over my legs as the wind’s howl whips through the open front door. “Bekah?”
“No. Maolissa.” The open door claps against the side of the house. Eli’s eyes pinch shut, and he releases a half-formed grunt, the tears starting to fall anew as he slumps toward the wall.
“Eli, what happened?”
“Maolissa came. She tried to take him from me. I told him not to go,” Eli gasps between tears. “He wasn’t going to. But then he came.”
I touch his shoulders. “Who, Eli?”
His eyes rove around the room, his face contorting. “Abe.”
That familiar chill passes through me. “Abe is . . . the other ghost. Abe is Nameless?”
Eli sniffs. “I told Saul he wouldn’t hurt us. Abe only hurts them.”
Them.
“I tried to tell him, but he ran, and Abe left too. It was just me and her then.” Eli sinks into himself, wrapping his arms around his own shoulders. “She showed me,” he sobs. “I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to see it. Please don’t make me see my baby like that. I didn’t do anything. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t . . .”
He curls up on the floor. I touch his shoulder, but he hardly seems to notice. “Eli, who are they?” I say, needing confirmation. “Who does Abe hurt?”
All at once, his crying stops. His dark eyes relax. He blinks up at me. “You must be one of Bekah’s friends. She’s out back.”
I swallow the lump pressing into the top of my throat, brace myself against the hollow weight crushing my chest. He’s lost. He can’t answer, but I don’t need him to.
“They’re good kids,” Eli whispers. “Good.”
I hold back tears and take his hand. “They love you.”
Eli’s eyebrows sink. His face is open, childlike. “Who, now?”
I straighten, lifting the lamp upright as I do. I leave him huddled on the floor, like the chickens clustered in the coop, like the coywolves gathered in the woods. Like everything on this land we share that seems to know:
Death is coming.
Thirty-Nine
“SAUL.” The wind swallows my voice as I emerge from the ramshackle cabin.
Saul would’ve gone to my house when he saw Nameless—Abe—like I went to his. And what would he find?
A dead chicken and me missing. He’d think the worst, like I had about him.
I check my phone—no missed calls—and dial again. No luck.
Issa quivers in front of a furry pine, the moonlight stripping her bubbly reflection of color.
“Help me,” I beg her.
The pain in my chest is deep and violent, lodged in the endless vacuum of grief inside me. As badly as I want to see Dad, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to lose Mom or Toddy or the boys or Hannah or Saul. I need him to live. I need both of us to live.
Shadows splotch Issa’s non-body: Whites from the woods drift through her.
“No more memories. Take me to Saul!” I shout through the wailing wind. “Before it’s too late.”
Issa sways. I remove my boots and cross the stiff snow barefoot. When I step through Whites, I appear on top of the waterfall, current gushing around my ankles like angry salmon.
Two bare, moonlit bodies stand ahead of me at the edge of the waterfall. Even though Saul and I jumped from the cliffs to the right, I can’t help but think for a second that it’s us I see.
“Ready?” Abe Angert asks the red-haired girl beside him. A smile parts her full lips, dimpling her cheeks. She looks as if her happiness is on the verge of spilling into laughter. As happy as she was that day on the beach with her family.
Abe studies her, momentarily forgetting the breeze, the water, their nakedness. He reaches out, and she does too. They look at their entwined fingers with breathless wonder, as if watching the earth’s foundations being laid.
As if they can see the bones shaping their hands, the tendons stretched there, the joints attached and ligaments tied, the veins threaded through and muscle wrapped. As if they can see the pulse of her heart racing from her chest down to her palm, thrumming against his lifeline until his heartbeat and hers are in sync.
Until the two of them are in sync.
Abe and Issa: one thing, one intangible thing that cycles between two bodies.
“I love you,” he tells her quietly.
Her eyes flutter shut as she smiles. “You aren’t allowed to love me.”
“No,” he says. “It’s you who isn’t allowed to love me. I have no such rule. What did your father call me—a snake in the grass?”
Her smile fades. “It’s not you, Abe.” She opens her teary eyes. “He hasn’t always been so angry. The world doesn’t have money for cherries anymore. He gives them away by the dozens just to keep them from rotting on the ground, and I think . . . I think he needs someone to blame, because otherwise it’s just him. Him who failed us, who lets us be hungry. He can’t look at us. He’s angry all the time. He tries to find other work, but there’s none here. And your father, he’s been so generous, but . . . my father resents feeling indebted. I see it in his face, Abe: He believes he’s losing the world, and that makes him angry with anyone who’s managing to hold on. But once he knows you . . .”
“Issa.” Abe touches her cheek, running his thumb up to the corner of her lashes. “Your father sees his land as the Garden of Eden and me as the snake trying to tempt you away.”
“Then he’s as foolish as the devil was,” Issa says. “This may be as close to Eden as any place, but no man, not even Jack O’Donnell, can be God.”
Abe’s smile is so similar to Saul’s that my heart speeds. “Yes,” Abe replies, fighting to appear solemn, “God is much too lovely to be a man. She’s far more likely to look like you.”
Issa erupts with laughter. “You are shameless.”
“Is that what you love most about me?”
“It is,” she says. “Though it may also be one reason I’m forbidden from loving you. Or do you so easily forget the other girls you’ve carried on with all through town?”
A flush starts at his ears. He tucks his nose against the side of Issa’s face. “Yes,” he whispers. “Easily, immediately, wholly.”
“That doesn’t flatter me, Abe.”
“Then what does?” He steps back. “How I dream of you, Is? The sketchbooks devoted to your neck and shoulders and hands? How when I bite into a cherry, it’s not the sun I taste but you? How, for me, the whole world isn’t made up of lakes and trees but of your millions of shades?”