We Fell Apart: A We Were Liars Novel(57)
It’s not up to me.
We just have to be here,
smashed as closely together as we possibly can, his breath on my neck,
in my ear.
The stubble on his face against my cheek, his saltwater hair
under my hands.
Finally, we hear June unlocking the door to Bone Tower, probably heading through to the kitchen to start her insomniac baking. At the sound of her key in the lock, Tatum pulls away.
He’s on his way up to the top of Chalk Tower and I’m heading up the stairs in Parchment before June goes into the living room.
* * *
—
I lie on my bed beneath my indigo sheets, but I can’t sleep. My mind is running.
What will it be like if Kingsley comes home to see the rug gone from the pool house and the buried bird bodies under the tree?
He will find the wreckage of the hutch we tried to build.
His partner sleeping all day and making bread at night.
Tatum isolated from his old friends and working a job he hates and soothing his anger in the sea;
Brock trying to cheer everyone with steaks and bags of potato chips; Meer searching for his dad’s inner life in the burned wreckage of Beechwood Island.
What will he say when he finds me,
lost and
embattled and
waiting?
Will he gather us all in his arms and restore order? Will he see how badly he was missed and promise not to leave again? Will he find us worthy of devotion and obligation, of healing and redemption?
Or will he think we’re disappointing and inadequate, especially in comparison with his own genius? Will he leave again, or rant, or scold?
I want answers to the questions Tatum will not answer.
I pull on sweatpants and sneakers. I grab my flashlight.
* * *
—
Passing through the living room, I can see June working in the brightly lit kitchen. She’s kneading dough on a large marble board.
I tiptoe into the mudroom by going outside and around, coming in through the screen door. She could hear me while I get the keys, but I have to go to Bone Tower when she’s not in it. She hasn’t left the property in more than two weeks, so when she’s baking is the only time I can be sure she’s not there.
There’s a thump of dough on her marble board. A clatter that sounds like ceramic bowls.
The hiss of the teapot. The pop of the fridge door opening.
I take the keys from the Spoils of War box and check on June by peeking through the windowed door that leads from the mudroom to the kitchen. She’s eating a bowl of granola and reading a book. Dough is rising in a large bowl next to her.
In the living room, I’m hardly breathing. There’s no music, no podcast, no sound to distract her from the sound of my key in the tower lock, so I wait for June to start moving again.
After what seems like hours, I hear the clank of dishes and she begins running water in the sink. I try the keys with shaking hands.
The fifth key turns in the lock.
I hustle through and close the door behind me, draw a deep breath and turn on my flashlight.
On the ground floor of Bone Tower are storage rooms full of Kingsley’s paintings. There must be at least fifty in each room. They stand in enormous wooden racks.
The second floor houses two rooms that must be June’s workshops. One has a sewing machine and bolts of fabric, rolls of indigo yarn. There are a number of looms, and the walls are hung with complicated weavings. The other room is more of a laboratory. Herbs are drying in the windows and growing in pots. Several hot plates are plugged in. A thousand brown tincture bottles.
Third floor, instead of two rooms and a bathroom like on the others, there is only a single door. This door is locked and bolted, but I try my keys. Eventually, one turns and I shoot the bolt.
It’s Kingsley’s studio, and it occupies two stories. A spiral staircase goes from the third floor to the fourth. Tall windows look out to the black of the sea. It smells of paint and turpentine, and beneath that, something earthier. Sweat.
The floor is covered by a canvas tarp. In the beam of my flashlight, I make out a large easel at the far end of the room. The walls near me are lined with canvases—some painted, some raw, some large and others small.
I take a risk and switch on a lamp that stands near the door.
I am surrounded by near-finished paintings.
One of them is of me.
52
The canvas is about four feet tall and it leans against the wall. Its title is written on masking tape attached to the thin top edge: Melinoe, Bringer of Madness.
Meh-lih-no-eh. That’s what Kingsley called me in my dream. When I dreamed he’d come home to Hidden Beach.
* * *
—
In Melinoe, Bringer of Madness
I sleep with my hair spread out across my pillow. Larger than life.
I lie on a bed of indigo-dyed linens atop an ancient-looking ironwork four-poster.
I wear my UC Irvine sweatshirt.
Underneath my bed are
goblins and gargoyles, the creatures I saw in Kingsley’s sketchbook.
They are fearsome small beasties,
a thousand of them, crushed together beneath the bed frame, crawling on each other and clambering, not threatening, but
impatient for me to rouse and command them to bring their lunacy