“I reached out to her,” Ben says. “Okay? She didn’t initiate anything. She didn’t do anything wrong.”
We’re both quiet, and I can feel my heart thumping hard against his ring, still dangling against my chest. I have the sudden urge to rip it off and throw it at him, but admitting that I’ve been holding on to it like this is something I still can’t bring myself to do.
“Would you have moved out if Mason wasn’t taken?” I ask instead. I need to get it out before I have the chance to reel the words back in; before I can change my mind and crawl back into the shadows, choosing ignorance over a truth that will surely kill me. “Or did you move out because he was taken?”
“Isabelle, don’t do this to yourself.”
“Did you leave because I did something to him? Something I don’t remember?”
He looks at me, his mouth half open like he wants to respond, but at the same time, he can’t.
“Answer me.”
Ben sighs, looking down at his shoes. Finally, he shakes his head.
“I think you should go home,” he says at last, turning around and opening the door. I can see Valerie inside, perched on the edge of a barstool, sympathy in her eyes. “Whatever it is you’re looking for … you’re not going to find it here.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
As much as I hate to admit it, Ben is right.
I’m not going to find what I’m looking for here. I have to start from the beginning—and the beginning isn’t the night Mason went missing. It isn’t the night Ben and I met.
The beginning is back in Beaufort. The beginning is the night Margaret died. That is the beginning—the tip of the first domino. The cataclysmic butterfly flap that sent my entire life into motion. I can’t ignore it anymore. I can’t pretend to believe my father’s lies, pushing down all the evidence I had seen for myself: the nightgown, the carpet, the mud. Because I’ve known, for a while now, how it looks. Where it points.
Not only with Margaret, but with Mason, too.
I’ve known, I’ve just refused to see it. I’ve refused to turn on the light. But the fact of the matter is, I can’t live my life in the dark anymore. I can’t. It’s been too long.
I’m in the car now, driving north along the coast. Home is less than an hour away, and still, I rarely go back. Only when it’s absolutely necessary. I haven’t called, haven’t given my parents warning of my arrival, because to be honest, I don’t want to commit myself to it. I want to give myself the option of pulling up, seeing that house—my house—looming large behind that wrought-iron gate and simply turning around and driving back to Savannah, because I know the mere sight of it, the memories, might be strong enough to change my mind.
I drive across Port Royal Sound, my eyes skipping over the vast ocean, and into downtown, passing so many landmarks—all of them, in some way, a backdrop to my youth: Bay Street, teeming with tourists, where Margaret and I used to go for ice cream on warm Saturday nights. Pigeon Point and that old wooden playground where we would walk each weekend, the two of us holding hands as we crossed the busy street. I remember the slide, particularly. That shiny metal and the way the sun would make it as hot as a stovetop, but we didn’t seem to care. We would still rush up that ladder, over and over and over again, and glide down on our backs, our stomachs, our sides. I remember the skipping of our bare skin as our shirts rode up, our bodies squealing all the way down as they stuck to the metal like eggs on a frying pan. That tinny burn and the red welts on our fingertips that would eventually crust and peel.
I drive past the cemetery next, an unavoidable landmark, and look the other way.
Finally, I get to my street. I slow the car considerably, practically crawling toward the cul-de-sac, like a prisoner making his way to the gallows, stalling for time. My house sits at the very back of it, the endpoint of the road. Go any farther and you’d drop into the sea.
I pull off to the side, park on the grass, and climb out of the car, the whiff of salt and mud hitting me as soon as I open the door. The gate is still there; the plaque, still there, although by now, the ivy has grown so thick that you can no longer read the inscription. The jasmine is supposed to be in bloom this time of year, its nutmeggy smell infiltrating the air, but the tiny white blossoms, usually thin and spindly like starfish bleached from the sun, are brown and crusty instead, their pedals flaking off like dried skin.
Even the plants can’t escape the death of this place.