I guess she really is growing up.
When she’s gone, Hart lets out a long, ragged breath, then he leans against the boardwalk piling.
“She has a crush on you,” I tell him. “Evie.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I know.” Of course he does. I wonder what that must be like, to actually feel someone’s heart beat faster when they look at you. “I helped her out with something. That’s all it is. Evie’s a sweetheart. But she’s just a kid.”
I let go of that jealous feeling, because I guess he hasn’t noticed the new boobs.
“You really think Case could have done something to Elora?” I ask him.
“It isn’t just me who thinks it. Sheriff must have questioned Case a dozen times. Investigators from the state police, too. They never officially named him as a suspect, but it was pretty clear they were looking hard in his direction. Probably still are.”
“But do you really think it could be him?” I can’t wrap my brain around the idea, because Case is one of us.
“I don’t know.” Hart shrugs. “He was out there that night. If she pissed him off bad enough. Or if he had some reason to be jealous . . .”
Case has a jealous streak a mile wide. That’s not exactly a secret. But he’s never hurt Elora before. Or anybody else, really. Punched holes in a few walls, maybe. Slashed some guy’s tires once at a party up in Kinter. That’s about it.
“I don’t think he’d do anything like that,” I say. “Not Case.”
Not to Elora.
“Yeah. Well, I’ve seen a lot of people do shit you wouldn’t have thought they’d ever do.” Hart goes to pull out another cigarette, but there aren’t any. He growls in frustration, then he crumples the empty pack in his fist and drops it in the bottom of the boat. “I never thought my mama would blow my daddy’s head off in our kitchen.” I grit my teeth against the pain in his voice. The shock of that sentence.
We were only five years old that summer when Hart came knocking on my bedroom window in the middle of the night, eyes wide and face pale as a ghost. I remember sliding open the window to let him crawl in. The two of us curled up in my bed together under one of Honey’s thick quilts.
His daddy was dead, he told me.
Blood and brains all over the wall.
Hart’s father was an abusive bastard. Everybody knew it. And it was self-defense. No question. Elora’s mama had died when we were babies. Cancer. So when Becky married Leo a year later, Hart and Elora became brother and sister, and everybody agreed that a little bit of good came out of an awful situation.
Hart’s never gotten over that night, though. I don’t see how anyone could. He still carries it with him. It’s not just that he witnessed it with his eyes. He felt it, too. It soaked into his soul, the way the blood soaked into the wallpaper.
The stain is still there.
“What about Dempsey Fontenot?” I ask. “Do you think –”
He shuts me down. “That’s a bunch of nonsense. I only went back to Keller’s Island that night ’cause I was half outta my mind.” He lays a hand on my shoulder. “You don’t need to be afraid of Dempsey Fontenot, Greycie. Don’t get yourself all spooked.”
But it’s too late. Suddenly I need to be with Honey.
“I should go,” I tell him. “Seriously.”
Hart takes my hand and helps me up the ladder, then he climbs up behind me.
We walk back toward the Mystic Rose together, dodging tourists on the way. I notice Miss Cassiopeia’s sign is flipped to closed, and I wonder if she’s been open at all these last three months. I guess maybe nobody wants a reading from a psychic who can’t even find her own missing stepdaughter.
When we stop to say goodbye in front of the bookstore, Hart digs something out of his jeans pocket, then he takes my hand and folds whatever it is into my palm.
I open my fingers to reveal a necklace. Part of a set I gave Elora last year in honor of our golden birthdays. Sixteen on the sixteenth. A delicate silver chain with a single blue pearl.
Pearl because it was our shared birthstone.
Blue because the regular white ones had seemed too plain for Elora.
It’s one of the few good memories I have of us last summer. The way she gasped when she opened the little box. “Oh, Grey,” was all she said.
“I wanted to find the ring that goes with it,” Hart tells me. “I looked all over. But I didn’t see it anywhere.” One corner of his mouth twitches up a little. “You know what a disaster her room is.” Then his face turns serious again. “She probably had it on that night, though. She wore it all the time.”