There were twelve of us. I’m trying to work out the equation of our lives. Four of us gone.
Dead.
Murdered.
One whole third of our original dozen.
The two of us sit with the silent weight of that for a few minutes. Zale is trailing his fingers up and down my arm, leaving little sparks of pure white energy everywhere he touches my bare skin.
“You ever think maybe they’re connected?” he finally asks. “All our mysteries?”
“Are you saying whoever killed Ember and Orli killed Elora, too?”
It was such a long time ago.
“Maybe,” Zale says. “Maybe not. But what if it’s all tied together somehow? Ember and Orli. My father. Elora.” He focuses those eyes on me, and they pull at my soul like magnetic north. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot.”
It reminds me of a line from The Tempest. Before I stopped reading.
What’s past is prologue.
I think the words inside my head, and Zale’s ocean-deep voice comes right back to me, like an echo. Or a seashell held to my ear.
“We have to go back to the beginning, Grey.”
Later, Zale walks me back to the boardwalk. But he stops me in the shadows. Before I reach the wooden steps.
“I almost forgot,” he says. Then he smiles at me and pulls something out of his pocket. “I’ve got somethin’ for you. Found it in the dirt, back at the island. I saw it winking at me in the moonlight.” He reaches out to touch my cheek, and I lean into that magic tingle. “I just thought it was so pretty.” His eyes glow with that fire that comes from somewhere deep inside him. He grins, and I think maybe I even see him blush a little. “I guess it reminded me of you.”
I feel myself falling. Like I’m riding one of those drop rides at an amusement park. That exhilarating, breathtaking rush toward the ground.
Zale opens up his palm, and my heart forgets to beat. I’m caught. Staring transfixed at the little thing in his hand.
I tell myself it can’t be what I think it is.
A delicate silver hair clip. One single hummingbird.
“It was a little tarnished,” he says. “But I shined it up.” I can’t form any thoughts as he brushes back my bangs and slides the clip into my hair. “It suits you,” he says. “Something beautiful. For a beautiful girl.” He leans in and brushes his lips against my cheek. The barest whisper of a kiss.
And then he’s gone.
I stand there, stunned, until I finally convince my feet to move toward home. When I slip in the kitchen door, I stop to stare at that picture of my mother and me.
There I am with my watermelon-pink sundress.
And there she is with those haunted eyes.
And that one hummingbird hair clip.
In my bedroom, I dig around until I find the one she’s wearing in the photo. The one I’ve always kept. Then I slip the other one out of my hair. The one Zale found in the dirt back at Keller’s Island.
I hold them in my palms. And they’re perfect twins. Exactly the same, down to their hand-painted eyes.
I bury them both in my underwear drawer, so they can keep each other company.
And I try not to think about what it might mean.
I drag Sweet-N-Low out to do his business, then I take a long shower and try to sleep.
But I can’t.
Because I keep thinking about what Zale said. Back to the beginning.
And no matter what happens with the weather, I figure Evie’s right. There’s definitely a storm coming. Because if we start digging around in thirteen years’ worth of tangled secrets, who knows what we might find?
When I wake up the next morning, Honey is listening to the radio while she does her crossword puzzle. She points me toward some muffins that Bernadette brought over. The storm that’s now 230 miles east of Miami has strengthened. And they’ve given it a name, the weather guy says.
Tropical Storm Elizabeth.
I see Honey glance up from her puzzle to listen. But she doesn’t seem too worried. Yet. That’s still a long ways off. Besides, people here are no stranger to hurricanes. Even big ones. Every so often, a monster one blows in and the storm surge floods everyone out. Sometimes the boardwalk gets ripped apart and the houses wash downriver. Then they rebuild. And the tourists come back. Like it never happened.
I was two years old when Katrina turned this whole area into part of the Gulf of Mexico. That was the last really bad one. I don’t remember anything about it, but I know we spent almost a year living up in Shreveport with Honey’s sister, waiting for things to dry out, while folks down here pulled fishing boats out of snapped-off trees and La Cachette got put back together from scratch.