Secrets so deep, p.26
Secrets So Deep, page 26
I think about the look on George’s face when he talked about how beautiful my mother was. How Glory said he made a fool of himself that summer, pining away after her. I remember the way his eyes slipped over my shoulders. My thighs. How he touched my hair and told me I looked like her. My mother. And I shiver.
Act like her, too. That’s what he said when I told him no. Shoulda let the sea fuckin’ have you.
“Maybe,” I say even though something about it doesn’t feel quite right. “But I know my mother was having an affair with your father,” I remind him, and I dig my mother’s notebook out of my backpack. I show him the page with the initials on it.
B. C.—Figure out how to end it!!!
“Fuck,” Cole says when I shine my phone light onto the page. It’s the first time he’s actually seen it. “In a million years, I’d never have believed he’d cheat on my mom. It’s too risky.”
“My dad confirmed it,” I say. “He said she wasn’t coming home. That she’d met someone. And that had to be your dad.”
The scent of lavender drifts into my nose again. I look down toward the trailer, and a shadow moves across the window. “But I think maybe George was in love with her, too,” I say. “And he gives me the creeps. The way he—”
“Avril.” Cole’s eyes flash. Bright and angry. “Did George say something to you? Or do something?” I hesitate. “Because if he has, you need to tell my mom. There was some trouble with one of the girls a few years ago. If he—” Cole stops. Gives his head a shake. “My mom made it clear she wouldn’t put up with that. He’ll be out of here.”
The irony of that is hard to miss. Willa probably has no idea what people say about her own husband. Nobody would have the nerve to tell her.
“It’s nothing,” I tell him. But I keep thinking of the way George touched my hair. The way he looks at me. I don’t want him gone, though. If there’s a chance he really had something to do with what happened all those years ago, the last thing I want is for him to disappear right now.
“I don’t believe my dad’s a murderer, Avril. I can’t believe that.” Cole’s eyes are on fire. They burn with a promise. “But I’ll help you figure this out. No matter what the answer ends up being.”
He walks me back to the cabin and kisses me good night. But he doesn’t head toward the cabin next door. He just settles onto the front steps and leans against the railing. And I know he’ll be there until morning. Staring out into the fog.
Keeping watch.
Cole’s vigil doesn’t end when daylight comes, though. For the next couple of days, he’s my shadow. He eats every meal with us in the cafeteria. He waits for me outside my morning classes. Checks in on me when I’m working with Glory in the afternoons. I find him leaning against the outside wall of the bathroom when I come out after my shower. Waiting for me at the door when rehearsal is finished. He tells me he wants me to stay away from George. Not to ever let myself be alone with him. That it’s not safe.
And every night he ends the day by sitting guard on the steps. I sit up with him, as long as I can. He presses pieces of sea glass into my palm, and we pour over my mother’s notebook by cell phone light. Looking for clues. I tell him about the missing notebook. The one that will have “#1” written in the upper right-hand corner. On the back.
We talk through every memory I have. Every piece of the puzzle. Until my head gets too heavy, and it falls against his shoulder. Or until he sees me shivering. Then he sends me in to bed. But he promises he’ll stay. That he won’t leave. That he doesn’t mind. Because he doesn’t sleep anyway.
He doesn’t say it out loud, but over and over again he’s promising that he’ll save me.
And I’d give anything to be able to save him, too. But his cheeks are more sunken and hollow every day. His eyes are dimmer. There’s this darkness swelling in him. A kind of hopelessness. I can see it when I look at him. And I feel it when he kisses me.
By Thursday, we’re not really any closer to figuring out what happened the night my mother died, and I’m becoming more worried about Cole than I am about me.
“I didn’t find it,” he tells me that evening when we meet up before rehearsal.
“Find what?” I ask him.
“That first notebook,” he says. “I tore the house apart. Top to bottom. Every drawer. Every closest. But it isn’t there.”
And I know how bad he must have been hoping he’d find it, and that there would be something in there that proved me wrong.
Some clue that would point toward someone other than his father.
It’s written so plainly on his face.
We’re in the final few days before we move out to the amphitheater to start working with sound and lights, and everyone is feeling the pressure. The lack of sleep. The ticking clock. The stress of wanting to do justice to this beautiful piece of theatre we’re creating together.
“The curtain goes up one week from tomorrow,” Willa tells us after warm-ups. We’re working the scene where Orion calls Eden back to him. It’s the first time they meet after she dies. And it’s always been my favorite scene in the play. “So we’re going to keep forging ahead. Courage, my lovelies. Putting on a play is a kind of birth. And there is always pain in creation.”
As tired as everyone is, there’s still this tingle of excitement that buzzes through the room whenever Willa speaks. She looks at me and smiles, and I instantly feel better. Because it’s like the whole world has turned to liquid and I can’t find a foothold anywhere. But Willa still feels solid. She’s my touchstone. The shoreline. And I have this rush of gratitude at having found her again. If I can’t have my mother back in the flesh, at least maybe I can have a mother figure in Willa.
And maybe that’s enough.
Maybe it has to be.
But that thought is followed by this cold dread when I think about Brody. And what I still believe he did. I’ve been going back and forth for the last few days, trying to decide if I’m going to tell Willa what I remember. Like I told Cole. And I’m running out of time to make a decision. I still don’t have any real proof.
And I’m terrified to lose her.
Cole is convinced that it must have been George who grabbed me by the wrist and threw me from that cliff. That he was pining away over my mother. Like Glory said. That he killed her because he couldn’t have her. And he tried to kill me, too. But then, when I didn’t die on cue, he decided to play the hero to make himself look innocent. So he brought me up from the beach that morning. Half-drowned.
We’ve whispered over all the possible scenarios as we sat huddled on the steps together these last few nights. But I’m still not sure. Wandering eyes and those creepy gifts of lavender don’t make George a murderer. Brody’s the only one with real motive.
Those are his initials in the notebook.
It’s his backyard where the land drops away to the sea.
He’s the one who had everything to lose. Cole said that himself.
Val nudges me, and I look around.
“Avril,” Willa says. She’s waiting for me, and I realize I’ve been staring off into space. “Let’s take it from the top of the scene.”
I nod, and Cole and I move to our places. He’s sitting on the bench, and he pulls out that guitar. His fingers slide across the strings, and Eden’s melody fills the barn. I feel every single note so deep inside my chest, and before I even realize it, there are tears sliding down my cheeks. No piece of music has ever affected me like this.
Just for a second, I have the very beginnings of a memory. Something about my mother. But then it slips away before I can wrap my fingers around it. And it feels like having her ripped out of my arms. My chest is being squeezed so hard my heart and lungs have surely turned to powder. I’m a girl with chalk dust where her insides should be.
I walk toward the bench where Cole is sitting. “That’s a beautiful song,” I say. My cheeks are still wet, but I don’t bother to wipe away the tears. I don’t have anything to hide from Cole. “Is it okay if I sit here?”
He turns to look at me, and there are tears in his eyes, too.
“Eden?” When Cole breathes that name, it sounds like a kiss. “I knew you’d come back.”
“I think I used to know a girl called that,” I say. “It sounds familiar.”
“Don’t you know who I am?” he asks. “I wrote that song for you.”
I walk around the bench and sit beside him. I shake my head.
“You must have me confused with someone else.”
Cole puts out his hand to touch me, and I shrink back from him.
“Please don’t,” I say. “I don’t know you.”
I look out toward the river. And something about the way it looks in the moonlight scares me. It’s still and perfect tonight. But somehow, I remember it swirling. Bubbling and rising. I remember it pulling me down. Below the surface.
I remember being swept away.
My breathing is fast and shallow. My pulse flutters. I need more air.
“I know you,” Cole tells me, and those three words are my anchor. Cole knows me. He remembers who I am. “I’ll always know you.”
“This is such a lovely spot,” I tell him. “But I don’t know why I’m here. “
“I know why I’m here,” he says. “I’m waiting for someone. A girl I knew once.”
“I hope you find her.”
He smiles. “Maybe she’ll find me.”
“Is she someone you love?”
Cole reaches out to touch my hair. And this time I don’t pull away. “Someone I more than love.”
I sigh. “I think I more than loved someone once. I can almost remember him.”
“Here.” Cole picks up the guitar again. “Maybe this will help.”
He starts to play, and his song fills up all the holes in my heart. It flows into me the way water flows out of the cracked muse in the little painting that hangs over Willa’s breakfast table.
I close my eyes.
“The water,” I whisper. “I was flying. I remember . . .”
The sound of wind chimes makes me shiver.
“Do you remember me?” Cole asks.
“I remember a dark-haired boy who kissed me and gave me the stars.”
He pulled them out of his pockets and flung them into the ocean. For me.
Cole leans in and kisses me, and when I feel his lips on mine, I’m as fragile as sea glass. This isn’t a stage kiss. This kiss is everything. I have to fight back the urge to whisper Cole’s name. I want him so bad. I need him. He pulls away, and I open my eyes to look at him.
“It was you,” I say. And Cole nods. “It’s always been you. Hasn’t it?” Something breaks deep in my heart. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” he asks, and I reach up to run my fingers over his face. The angles and edges of him.
“Because I think it’s too late for you to save me.”
“Blackout,” Jude announces. “End of scene.”
Cole and I are staring at each other. My hand is still on his cheek. I’m holding my breath. My heart has forgotten to beat. Everything in my body is still. Waiting.
What comes next? For us. Avril and Cole. Where do we go?
“Wow,” Willa tells us. Her voice is hushed, like she’s afraid to break the spell that Cole and I have been weaving together. “That’s incredible. There’s a lot of honesty there.” She looks from me to Cole. Then she turns back toward all of the others, who are leaning forward in their folding chairs, hanging on her every word. “This is what brilliant theatre is, my lovelies. This is what we are capable of when we don’t pretend. When we become.” She crosses back to me and crouches down in front of the bench. “Do you feel it, Avril?” Her hand is on my knee. I nod, and Willa smiles. “You’re becoming Eden. She’s so alive now.” She gives my knee a little squeeze. “Your mother would be so proud of you.” She looks at me for a second. “I’m proud of you.”
I have this wild urge to jump up and hug her. There are so many empty places inside my heart that Willa fills up.
She waves a hand in Jude’s direction, and I’m half-hypnotized by the jangle of those silver bracelets. “Let’s run this scene a few more times before we go on to something else.”
Later, after rehearsal, while Jude is shutting down the lights, Cole pulls me into a dark corner of the barn. His mouth is on mine before I have a chance to take a breath, and I’m not prepared for the way he kisses me. There’s so much hunger in it. There’s no gentleness tonight. Nothing tender. Cole is all urgency. Nothing but need. He’s more teeth than anything else.
“God, you were beautiful, in that scene,” he whispers. His lips are pressed to my neck, and his words vibrate against the soft part of my throat. “I keep thinking about how scared Orion must be. How it must terrify him to think he might lose Eden, when he’d just barely found her.”
“Again,” I say, and Cole pulls back to look at me. Those gray eyes of his are deep with fog.
“Again,” he whispers back. “When he’d just barely found her again.”
Jude plugs in the ghost light then, and we follow him out into the night.
I don’t sleep much. I toss and turn. And I wake up exhausted. Then I feel guilty for being tired. Because I know that Cole hasn’t slept in so long.
I’m still thinking about that scene. The one we worked at rehearsal last night. Eden’s returning. It lingers in my head all through our morning class on British dialects. And through lunch.
It’s Friday. One week until the curtain goes up on Midnight Music.
That afternoon, Glory sends me back out to the scene shop. She wants me to find a knife so I can break down some boxes.
Brody gets a lot of packages.
But for some reason, I find myself following the little path that leads around behind the barn. I stand against the building and stare at George’s trailer. In the daylight, it’s easy to see the little purple flowers that grow among the rocks at the edge of his garden.
I want Cole to be right.
I want it to be George.
Not Brody.
I want it for me. For Cole. For Willa.
For all of us.
I take a look around, but George isn’t anywhere to be seen. I move toward the flowers until I’m close enough to touch them. I breathe in lavender. It mixes with the salty scent of the sea. And the smell of decay from down at the marsh.
My fingers find one of the purple clusters. They’re so delicate. Each one made up of a dozen tiny blooms.
“Did Glory send you down here?”
I whirl around, and George is staring at me.
“No,” I say. But neither one of us moves. “I just wanted to see the flowers.”
George narrows his eyes at me like he’s trying to figure out what kind of game I’m playing. He takes a step in my direction, and I suck in a quick breath. We’re so isolated here. Behind the barn. Nobody even knows where I am. Glory thinks I’m down at the scene shop.
George pulls out a pocketknife. He flips it open. And I’m frozen. For one split second, I know for sure that Cole was right. George is a killer who murdered my mother.
Who murdered me. Once. A long time ago.
But then he turns toward some tomato plants. He’s cutting away dead leaves. Letting them flutter to the ground. “I figured maybe she needed some more,” George says.
I stop. Confused. “What do you mean?”
“Glory. She’s been cuttin’ lavender all summer.”
George doesn’t look up from where he’s working. I watch him tie the plants up to the trellis. Fraying brown twine.
My heart starts to beat even faster.
“Glory,” he repeats. Like I must not have heard him the first time. “She’s been down here after lavender a couple of times a week.” He points to a place where the bush has been trimmed back. “And it’s not like I care. It grows wild. She can have all of it, far as I care. But I don’t have time to be bundling it up for her. She can do that part herself from now on.” He looks back over his shoulder at me. “You tell her that. Okay?”
I nod and back away from George. I’m moving toward the path. And I’m still half expecting him to stop me. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t even look up from his tomato plants.
I stumble back up toward the farmhouse. I can’t feel my legs. My whole body has gone numb. I’m trying to form a coherent thought. To figure out what I’m going to say when I get back to Glory’s desk. But even as I’m climbing the front steps, I have no idea.
She looks up when the screen door slams behind me. I’m just standing there in the doorway, staring at her.
“Avril?” she says. “Did you find a box knife?”
I need somewhere to go. Somewhere Glory isn’t. I need time to sort through what George just told me. To see if I can force it to make sense.
“Um. I—” Glory is staring at me. Her eyes are full of concern. They’re kind eyes. And I almost tell her what I know.
But then I think about how scared I’ve been. The lavender on my pillow. Pressed between the pages of my script like a memory.
And I know I need to get away.
From here.
From her.
“I feel sick,” I say. And it isn’t a lie. “I need to go back to the cabin.”
“Sure,” Glory says. “Of course. Do you want—”
But I’m already out the front door. And before I really even know it, my feet are carrying me down the great lawn. Across the marsh.
Over the dunes.
To the beach.
I hadn’t been looking for him, but it doesn’t surprise me when I see that Cole is already there. Because we have a way of finding each other.
Over and over.
And over.
He’s standing on the floating swim dock, facing away from me. Out toward the lighthouse. And he doesn’t know I’m watching him. So I stop and stare. That wild dark hair is blowing in the wind. He’s shirtless. Beautiful.
