The one I never opened.
I pull it out and unfold it. Then I stare at my name scrawled in pencil across the front. I trace the letters with my finger before I break the seal and pull the card out of the ruined envelope. Because I need to remind myself who Hart is. Who he’s always been.
The front of the card features a dancing pig in a pink tutu. She’s holding a can of beer in one hand and throwing a peace sign with the other.
IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY! GO HOG-WILD!
And there’s a handwritten note on the inside.
Happy birthday, Shortcake. Sorry this year has been so shitty. You deserve a better party. Hope you get to celebrate in style sometime soon. Love, Hart.
And that’s when the hurricane hits.
Category 10. At least.
Soon.
I stare at the word. That slanting s and those two egg-shaped o’s leap right off the paper to lodge themselves deep in my throat. They make it impossible to breathe.
Soon.
A one-word love note.
An unfulfilled promise.
A delicate gold bracelet with one tiny charm.
A single
perfect
red
heart.
It’s unbelievable – wrong – to think of Hart and Elora together. Like that. They aren’t really related. Not by blood, anyway. But still. It’s like finding out grass grows from the sky and rain falls from the ground.
I feel upside down.
Betrayed.
And I couldn’t even say if I’m jealous of Elora for what she had with Hart.
Or if I’m jealous of Hart for what he had with Elora.
Either way, I don’t want it to be true.
But there’s no denying that s and those o’s.
Soon.
That word ricochets inside my head like a bullet.
Soon Elizabeth will be here.
Soon La Cachette will be underwater.
Soon we’ll all be drowned.
I shove the card in my backpack and zip it up tight. And I tell myself I’m being ridiculous. So what if Hart and Elora were in love? It doesn’t mean he’s a murderer.
Only I can’t get over the fact that he lied to me about going out to Keller’s Island that night. And if he wasn’t out there, what was he doing while everyone else was searching for Elora out at Li’l Pass?
I think about how he tried so hard to convince me that Case was guilty. And then Zale.
And about the way Wrynn looked at him.
Like she was face-to-face with a monster.
He’s gonna get Evie, sure. ’Cause Case told him right where she’s at.
Oh, God. I lean back against the wall and hope like hell I don’t pass out.
Because I think I finally know what Elora has been whispering to Evie from beyond the grave. She’s been saying that Hart is the one who killed her.
That would explain the wind chimes.
All Evie’s jumpiness this summer.
Because there’s no way she would want to hear that. Not about Hart. Not with him being her knight in shining armor.
The dead? They lie. Just like the rest of us.
And – shit! – I’m the one who told Hart that Elora was whispering secrets in Evie’s ear. So now he knows that she knows. If Hart kills Evie, it’s all my fault.
I have to do something.
Now.
Because soon Evie will be dead.
Soon Hart will be back.
I jump up and run into the kitchen to pull on my boots and grab a flashlight. Hart’s got a good head start on me. He’s probably back at Li’l Pass already. And maybe it doesn’t matter anyway. If we’re all gonna die. Maybe nothing matters.
Except it does.
Because there’s a difference. I don’t want Hart to kill Evie back there in the swamp. If Evie and I fight this storm tooth and nail, and we end up drowning together, that’s still better than whatever happened to Elora.
That’s not what really drives me out into the hurricane, though.
Not deep down. Not in the bottom of my soul. It’s the hope that maybe I’m wrong.
Please let me be wrong.
I have to be wrong.
I jerk open the kitchen door, and the wind knocks me backward. It’s late afternoon, so it shouldn’t be dark yet. But it is. It isn’t raining at the moment, though, and that’s something.
I lean into the wind and start down the wooden steps into the bayou. And I immediately sink up to my knees. It’s like walking on the bottom of a lake. Every time I take a step, water rushes in to fill my footprints.
Erasing them.
Like I was never there at all.
It’s slow going. I keep having to stop and pull my boots out of the mud, and I have to skirt around some low-lying places that are already covered by high water.