Beautiful Darkness

  How could people that small have any problems at all?

  “Hey, I brought you something.” I watched as she sat up, looking at me like a little kid.

  “What is it?”

  I looked over the edge of the water tower. “Maybe we should wait until we can’t fall to our deaths.”

  “We’re not going to die. Don’t be such a chicken.”

  I reached into my back pocket. It wasn’t anything special, but I’d had it for a while now, and I was hoping it might help her find her way back to herself.

  I pulled out a mini Sharpie, with a key ring on it.

  “See? It fits on your necklace, like this.” Trying not to fall, I reached for Lena’s necklace, the one she never took off. A tangle of charms, each one meant something to her—the flattened penny from the machine at the Cineplex, where we had our first date. A silver moon Macon had given her the night of the winter formal. The button from the vest she was wearing the night in the rain. They were Lena’s memories, and she carried them with her as if she might lose them without proof of those few perfect moments of happiness.

  I snapped the Sharpie onto the chain. “Now you can write wherever you are.”

  “Even on ceilings?” She looked at me and smiled, a little crooked, a little sad.

  “Even on water towers.”

  “I love it.” She spoke quietly, pulling the cap off the Sharpie.

  Before I knew it, she was drawing a heart. Black ink on white paint, a heart hidden at the top of the Summerville water tower.

  I was happy for a second. Then I felt like I was falling all the way down. Because she wasn’t thinking about us. She was thinking about her next birthday, the Seventeenth Moon. She was already counting down.

  In the center of the heart, she didn’t write our names.

  She wrote a number.

  5.16

  The Call

  I didn’t ask her about what she’d written on the water tower, but I didn’t forget it. How could I, when all we had done for the past year was count down to the inevitable? When I finally asked why she’d written it or what she was counting down to, she wouldn’t say. And I had the feeling she really didn’t know.

  Which was even worse than knowing.

  It had been two weeks since then, and as far as I could tell Lena still hadn’t written anything in her notebook. She was wearing the little Sharpie on her necklace, but it looked as new as the day I bought it at the Stop & Steal. It was weird not to see her writing, scribbling on her hands or her worn-out Converse, which she didn’t wear much these days. She had started wearing her thrashed black boots instead. Her hair was different, too. Almost always tied back, as if she thought she could yank the magic right out of it.

  We were sitting on the top step of my porch, the same place we had been sitting when Lena first told me she was a Caster, a secret she had never shared with a Mortal before. I was pretending to read Jekyll and Hyde. Lena was staring down at the blank pages of her spiral notebook, as if the thin blue lines held the answer to all her problems.

  When I wasn’t watching Lena, I was staring down my street. My dad was coming home today. Amma and I had visited him on Family Day every week since my aunt checked him into Blue Horizons. Even though he wasn’t back to his old self, I had to admit he was acting almost like a regular person again. But I was still nervous.

  “They’re here.” The screen door slammed behind me. Amma was standing on the porch in her tool apron, the kind she preferred over a traditional one, especially on days like this. She was holding the gold charm around her neck, rubbing it between her fingers.

  I looked down the street, but the only thing I saw was Billy Watson riding his bike. Lena leaned forward to get a better look.

  I don’t see a car.

  I didn’t either, but I knew I would in about five seconds. Amma was proud, particularly when it came to her abilities as a Seer. She wouldn’t say they were here unless she knew they were coming.

  It’ll be here.

  Sure enough, my aunt’s white Cadillac made the right onto Cotton Bend. Aunt Caroline had the window rolled down, what she liked to call 360 air conditioning, and I could see her waving from down the block. I stood up as Amma elbowed her way past me. “Come on, now. Your daddy deserves a proper homecomin’.” That was code for Get your butt down to the curb, Ethan Wate.

  I took a deep breath.

  Are you okay? Lena’s hazel eyes caught the sun.

  Yeah. I lied. She must have known, but she didn’t say a word. I took her hand. It was cold, the way she always was now, and the current of electricity felt more like the sting of frostbite.

  “Mitchell Wate. Don’t tell me you’ve been eatin’ anybody’s pie but mine. ’Cause you look like you fell into the cookie jar and couldn’t find your way back out.” My dad gave her a knowing look. Amma had raised him, and he knew her teasing held as much love as any hug.

  I stood there while Amma fussed over him as if he was ten years old. She and my aunt were chattering away like the three of them had just come home from the market. My dad smiled at me weakly. It was the same smile he gave me when we visited Blue Horizons. It said, I’m not crazy anymore, just ashamed. He was wearing his old Duke T-shirt and jeans, and somehow he looked younger than I remembered. Except for the crinkling lines around his eyes, which deepened as he pulled me in for an awkward hug. “How you doing?”

  My voice caught in my throat for a second, and I coughed. “Good.”

  He looked over at Lena. “Nice to see you again, Lena. I was sorry to hear about your uncle.” Those were hard-bred Southern manners for you. He had to acknowledge Macon’s passing, even in a moment as awkward as this one.

  Lena tried to smile, but she only managed to look as uncomfortable as I felt. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Ethan, come on over here and give your favorite aunt a hug.” Aunt Caroline held out her hands. I wanted to throw my arms around her and let her squeeze the knot right out of my chest.

  “Let’s go on inside.” Amma waved at my dad from the top of the porch. “I made a Coca-Cola cake and fried chicken. If we don’t get in there soon, that chicken’ll have a mind to find its way home.”

  Aunt Caroline looped her arm through my dad’s and led him up the stairs. She had the same brown hair and small frame as my mom, and for a second it felt like my parents were home again, walking through the old screen door of Wate’s Landing.

  “I have to get home.” Lena was clutching her notebook against her chest like a shield.

  “You don’t have to go. Come in.”

  Please.

  I wasn’t offering to be polite. I didn’t want to go in there alone. A few months ago, Lena would have known that. But I guess today her mind was somewhere else, because she didn’t.

  “You should spend some time with your family.” She stood up on her toes and kissed me, her lips barely touching my cheek. She was halfway to the car before I could argue.

  I watched Larkin’s Fastback disappear down my street. Lena didn’t drive the hearse anymore. As far as I knew, she hadn’t even looked at it since Macon died. Uncle Barclay had parked it behind the old barn and thrown a tarp over it. Instead, she was driving Larkin’s car, all black and chrome. Link had foamed at the mouth the first time he saw it. “Do you know how many chicks I could pull with that ride?”

  After her cousin had betrayed her whole family, I didn’t understand why Lena would want to drive his car. When I had asked her, she’d shrugged and said, “He won’t be needing it anymore.” Maybe Lena thought she was punishing Larkin by driving it. He had contributed to Macon’s death, something she would never forgive. I watched the car turn the corner, wishing I could disappear along with it.

  By the time I made it to the kitchen, there was already chicory coffee brewing—and trouble. Amma was on the phone, pacing in front of the sink, and every minute or two she would cover the receiver with her hand and report the conversation on the other end to Aunt Caroline.

  “They haven’t
seen her since yesterday.” Amma put the phone back to her ear. “You should make Aunt Mercy a toddy and put her to bed until we find her.”

  “Find who?” I looked at my dad, and he shrugged.

  Aunt Caroline pulled me over to the sink and whispered the way Southern ladies do when something is too awful to say out loud. “Lucille Ball. She’s missin’.” Lucille Ball was Aunt Mercy’s Siamese cat, who spent most of her time running around my great-aunts’ front yard on a leash attached to a clothesline, an activity the Sisters referred to as exercising.

  “What do you mean?”

  Amma covered the receiver with her hand again, narrowing her eyes and setting her jaw. The Look. “Seems somebody put the idea in your aunt’s head that cats don’t need to be tied up, because they always come back home. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” It wasn’t a question. We both knew I was the one who had been saying it for years.

  “But cats aren’t supposed to be on leashes.” I tried to defend myself, but it was too late.

  Amma glared at me and turned to Aunt Caroline. “Seems Aunt Mercy’s been waitin’, sittin’ on the porch, starin’ at an empty leash hangin’ on the clothesline.” She took her hand off the receiver. “You need to get her in the house and put her feet up. If she gets lightheaded, boil some dandelion.”

  I slunk out of the kitchen before Amma’s eyes got any narrower. Great. My hundred-year-old aunt’s cat was gone, and it was my fault. I’d have to call Link and see if he’d drive around town with me and look for Lucille. Maybe Link’s demo tapes would scare her out of hiding.

  “Ethan?” My dad was standing in the hall, right outside of the kitchen door. “Can I talk to you for a second?” I had been dreading this, the part where he apologized for everything and tried to explain why he had ignored me for almost a year.

  “Yeah, sure.” But I didn’t know if I wanted to hear it. I wasn’t really angry anymore. When I almost lost Lena, there was a part of me that understood why my dad had come completely unhinged. I couldn’t imagine my life without Lena, and my dad had loved my mom for more than eighteen years.

  I felt sorry for him now, but it still hurt.

  My dad ran his hand through his hair and edged closer to me. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am.” He paused, staring down at his feet. “I don’t know what happened. One day, I was in there writing, and the next day all I could do was think about your mom—sit in her chair, smell her books, imagine her reading over my shoulder.” He studied his hands, as if he was talking to them instead of me. Maybe that was a trick they taught you at Blue Horizons. “It was the only place I felt close to her. I couldn’t let her go.”

  He looked up at the old plaster ceiling, and a tear escaped from the corner of his eye, running slowly down the side of his face. My dad had lost the love of his life, and he had come unraveled like an old sweater. I’d watched, but I hadn’t done anything about it. Maybe he wasn’t the only one to blame. I knew I was supposed to smile now, but I didn’t feel like it.

  “I get it, Dad. I wish you’d said something. I missed her, too. You know?”

  His voice was quiet when he finally spoke. “I didn’t know what to say.”

  “It’s okay.” I didn’t know if I meant it yet, but I could see relief spread across his face. He reached around and hugged me, squeezing my back with his fists for a second.

  “I’m here now. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “About what?”

  “Things you need to know when you have a girlfriend.”

  There was nothing I wanted to talk about less. “Dad, we don’t have to—”

  “I have a lot of experience, you know. Your mother taught me a thing or two about women over the years.”

  I started planning my escape route.

  “If you ever want to talk about, you know…”

  I could hurl myself through the study window and squeeze between the hedge and the house.

  “Feelings.”

  I almost laughed in his face. “What?”

  “Amma says Lena’s having a hard time with her uncle’s passing. She’s not acting like herself.”

  Lying on the ceiling. Refusing to go to school. Not opening up to me. Climbing water towers. “No, she’s all right.”

  “Well, women are a different species.”

  I nodded and tried not to look him in the eye. He had no idea how right he was.

  “As much as I loved your mother, half the time I couldn’t have told you what was going on in her head. Relationships are complicated. You know you can ask me anything.”

  What could I ask? What do you do when your heart almost stops beating every time you kiss? Are there times when you should and shouldn’t read each other’s minds? What are the early warning signs that your girlfriend is being Claimed for all time by good or evil?

  He squeezed my shoulder one last time. I was still trying to put together a sentence when he let go. He was staring down the hall, in the direction of the study.

  The framed portrait of Ethan Carter Wate was hanging in the hallway. I still wasn’t used to seeing it, even though I was the one who had hung it there the day after Macon’s funeral. It had been hidden under a sheet my whole life, which seemed wrong. Ethan Carter Wate had walked away from a war he didn’t believe in and died trying to protect the Caster girl he loved.

  So I had found a nail and hung the painting. It felt right. After that, I went into my dad’s study and picked up the sheets of paper strewn all over the room. I looked at the scribbles and circles one last time, the evidence of how deep love can run and how long loss can last. Then I cleaned up and threw the pages away. That felt right, too.

  My dad walked over to the painting, studying it as if he was seeing it for the first time. “I haven’t seen this guy in a long time.”

  I was so relieved we had moved on to a new subject, the words came tumbling out. “I hung it up. I hope it’s okay. But it seemed like it belonged out here, instead of under some old sheet.”

  For a minute, my dad stared up at the portrait of the boy in the Confederate uniform, who didn’t look much older than me. “This painting always had a sheet over it when I was a kid. My grandparents never said much about it, but they weren’t about to hang a deserter on the wall. After I inherited this place, I found it covered up in the attic and brought it down to the study.”

  “Why didn’t you hang it up?” I never imagined that my dad had stared at the same hidden outline when he was a kid.

  “I don’t know. Your mother wanted me to. She loved his story—the way he walked away from the war, even though it ended up costing him his life. I meant to hang it. I was just so used to seeing it covered up. Before I got around to it, your mom died.” He ran his hand along the bottom of the carved frame. “You know, you were named after him.”

  “I know.”

  My dad looked at me as if he was looking at me for the first time, too. “She was crazy about that painting. I’m glad you hung it up. It’s where he belongs.”

  I didn’t escape the fried chicken or Amma’s guilt trip. So after dinner, I drove around the Sisters’ neighborhood with Link looking for Lucille. Link called her name between bites of a chicken leg wrapped in an oily paper towel. Every time he ran his hand over his spiky blond hair, the shine got shinier from all the grease.

  “You shoulda brought more fried chicken along. Cats dig chicken. They eat birds in the wild.” Link was driving slower than usual so I could keep an eye out for Lucille while he beat time to “Love Biscuit,” his band’s terrible new song, on the steering wheel.

  “Then what? You’d drive around while I hung out the window with a chicken leg in my hand?” Link was so transparent. “You just want more of Amma’s chicken.”

  “You know it. And Coca-Cola cake.” He hung his drumstick bone out the window. “Here, kitty kitty…”

  I scanned the sidewalk, looking for a Siamese cat, but something else caught my eye—a crescent moon. It was on a license plate stuck between
a bumper sticker of the Stars and Bars, the Confederate flag, and one for Bubba’s Truck and Trailer. The same old South Carolina plates with the state symbol I had seen a thousand times, only I’d never thought about it before. A blue palmetto and a crescent moon, maybe a Caster moon. The Casters really had been here a long time.

  “Cat’s stupider than I thought, if he doesn’t know about Amma’s fried chicken.”

  “She. Lucille Ball’s a girl.”

  “It’s a cat.” Link swerved, and we turned the corner onto Main. Boo Radley was sitting on the curb, watching the Beater roll by. His tail thumped, one lonely thump of recognition, as we disappeared down the road. The loneliest dog in town.

  At the sight of Boo, Link cleared his throat. “Speakin’ a girls, how’re things with Lena?” He hadn’t seen much of her, though he’d seen more than most people had. Lena spent most of her time at Ravenwood under the watchful eyes of Gramma and Aunt Del, or hiding from their watchful eyes, depending on the day.

  “She’s dealing.” It wasn’t a lie, exactly.

  “Is she? I mean, she seems kinda different. Even for Lena.” Link was one of the few people in town who knew Lena’s secret.

  “Her uncle died. That kind of thing changes you.” Link should’ve known that better than anyone. He’d watched me try to make sense of my mother’s death, and then a world without her in it. He knew it was impossible.

  “Yeah, but she hardly talks, and she’s wearin’ his clothes. Don’t you think that’s sorta weird?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “If you say so, man.”

  “Just drive. We have to find Lucille.” I looked out the window at the empty street. “Stupid cat.”

  Link shrugged and cranked up the volume. His band, the Holy Rollers, shuddered through the speakers. “The Girl’s Gone Away.” Getting dumped was the theme of every song Link wrote. It was his way of dealing. I still hadn’t figured out mine.

  We never found Lucille, and I never got the conversation with Link, or my dad, out of my mind. My house was quiet, which isn’t what you want a house to be if you’re trying to run away from your thoughts. The window in my room was open, but the air was as hot and stagnant as everything else today.