“Right.” I’ve heard all this a million times. “But could she do anything else?”
Honey looks at me for a few seconds. “We are all of us capable of so many more things than we know, Sugar Bee. Beautiful things. And terrible things.”
The bell over the door jingles, and a trio of stunning girls washes in on a wave of laughter. One of them has gotten engaged, and they’re looking for a reading. They want to know, should she marry DeShawn? Or hold out hope for something better?
Last summer, Honey would have made an appointment for them to see Miss Cassiopeia, Romance Counselor. But Becky has had her sign flipped to closed since I got here, so Honey leads them to the alcove in the corner and pulls the curtain. Things get busy again after that, and she never offers me any more information. And I never get another chance to ask.
But I can’t stop thinking about it. Because there’s an idea forming in my head. And I hope like hell I’m wrong.
After dinner, I go to my room and pull out those twin hummingbirds. I weigh them. One in each hand.
Beautiful things.
And terrible things.
My pixie cut is too short for hair clips to look right on me, but I sweep my bangs back on each side and slide the hummingbirds into my hair anyway. Then I don’t even bother to put on boots. I just set off into the bayou in my flip-flops, before I have time to chicken out and change my mind. I don’t get very far before I have to slip my flip-flops off and carry them. And then I’m barefoot. Mud up to my knees. Just like Wrynn.
And Zale.
He’s already waiting for me out at Li’l Pass, and the first thing I say when I see him is, “I need you to take me to Keller’s Island.”
“Okay,” he says. He’s staring at those hummingbird hair clips. Both of them. And I see the questions burning in his ice-fire eyes. But he doesn’t ask them. He just takes my hand in his, and I feel that tingling warmth course through me.
I leave my flip-flops sitting on top of the old flatbed trailer, and we trudge side by side through the long grass and the mud. And we don’t say much. At least not out loud. But every so often, I hear the sound of the ocean. Like a seashell held to my ear.
Zale has an old flatboat hidden down at Holbert’s Pond, about a half mile south of our spot at Li’l Pass. He pulls the rip cord, and the ancient motor coughs and sputters, then comes to life with a cloud of black smoke.
As we head out into the bayou, I glance back over my shoulder, and the lights along the boardwalk get smaller and smaller until they disappear behind us.
And then there’s nothing but dark stretching out as far as I can see.
Keller’s Island is a little bit of forested high ground that sits way back in the bayou. It’s surrounded by deep water on three sides. Ringed with bald cypress trees at the edges and thick with huge live oaks in the center.
When we were growing up, after what happened to Ember and Orli, the older kids would go back there to party sometimes. It was a deserted place for them to get drunk and smoke weed and hook up in the dark. A spot to scare the daylights out of each other with real-life ghost stories.
But not for us. Not for the Summer Children.
We left it to the dead.
Even when we got big enough to do our own partying, that place was off limits. We used to skirt wide around there when we were out in our airboats and ATVs. We’d point out the tree line. Whisper what happened there. Tell the story. Say the names like a ritual.
But we only went there one time.
To Killer’s Island.
Hart took us all there the summer we were fourteen. We were supposed to be fishing, but he convinced us to take a detour on the way home. Some kind of sick field trip to see the place where all our childhood nightmares were born.
It was bright daylight when the eight of us stood there together behind the ruins of Dempsey Fontenot’s burned-out cabin and stared at the pond where Ember and Orli died, but it still scared me so bad I couldn’t sleep for weeks. I felt uneasy all the rest of that summer. I couldn’t seem to wash the mud of that place off me, no matter how hard I scrubbed.
Now the idea of visiting there in the dark makes me sick to my stomach.
The journey doesn’t take long by boat, and pretty soon I see the dark outline of tall trees standing sentry against the night sky. The closer we get, the bigger they get.
And the smaller I feel.
We fly back through the bayou toward that thick stand of trees. But really, we’re flying back through time. All the way back to where this whole thing started, maybe.
Thirteen summers back.
To the beginning of it all.