What’s past is prologue.
Zale runs the boat up into the shallow water, then hops out to drag it to shore. He takes my hand and helps me out, and I gasp from the shock of his touch. I wonder if that will ever wear off.
I hope it doesn’t.
We hike through the thick woods and thicker dark, ducking low-hanging branches dripping with Spanish moss and dodging thorns that grab at us like fingers until we reach the tiny clearing at the center of the little island.
When we step out of the trees and into the moonshine, we’re standing right behind what’s left of the old Fontenot cabin. Dempsey lit it up like a bonfire, they always told us. I’ve heard that story so many times. Burned it to ashes before he cleared out.
After he drowned Ember and Orli and left them in the pond to rot.
Now, thirteen years down the road from that horrible summer, there’s not much left to mark the spot. No monuments or memorials. No little white wooden crosses. Just a pile of fire-blackened logs.
My eyes adjust, and I look around the clearing to see signs of life.
A tiny tent leans at the edge of the tree line. A few belongings are scattered around. A bedroll. A razor lying on a rock. There’s a fire ring. And a cooking pot with no handle. A discarded can of beans lies nearby, and a homemade fishing pole leans against a tree.
I take all that in. Because I can’t stand to look at the spot where Zale’s own childhood nightmares were born.
The bones of the cabin where his twin brother died.
Aeron.
Number twelve.
I don’t want to look at the drowning pool, either. I’m trying not to imagine Ember and Orli. White dresses billowing out around them. Trailing blue ribbons the color of a cloudless Louisiana sky.
Fish nibbling at their staring eyes – swimming in and out of their open mouths.
I don’t want to know what they looked like when they pulled them out of the water.
Faces gone. Limbs swollen black.
But somehow I do know.
Zale is silent. I feel him watching me. Waiting. Curious. And I don’t know if I can do what I need to do. I’m not sure I have the strength.
The deep power.
But I have to try. Because it’s the secrets that fester.
I let go of Zale’s hand and slip the little silver hummingbirds out of my hair. I hold them tight in my fists. Then I close my eyes and think about my mother. I don’t move. I stay so still so long that my legs become cypress trees, rooted deep in the soft ground. I become part of the landscape of the bayou. Like the saw grass and the water hyacinth and the duckweed.
And then I open my eyes.
Zale doesn’t move. He doesn’t talk. I don’t even hear him breathing.
I wonder if he’s still there. I hope he is. But I can’t turn my head to see, because I’m staring at my mother. Not inside my head, like a dream. But standing right there in front of me. Flesh and blood.
She isn’t looking in my direction, though. Her green eyes are fixed ahead. Focused toward the cabin. She’s beautiful. Young and slender. Radiant in the grey predawn light. But the look on her face is fierce. Determined.
There’s an explosion of light, and my mother smiles.
Satisfied.
I see the orange glow of the fire reflecting off the little silver hummingbirds clipped in her long hair.
Two of them.
And then I feel the heat.
I smell the smoke as real as anything.
But it’s all silent. No voices. No crackle and snap of flames.
Dead still.
The smoke fills up my nose and burns the back of my throat, so I turn away.
Away from the cabin.
Away from my mother.
Away from the other woman. The one who runs right by me as she slips unnoticed out the back of the inferno, clutching a little blond boy to her chest.
My eyes come to rest on the stagnant pond. The drowning pool. Two small shapes float side by side in the center of all that black water.
Firelight on white dresses.
Blue ribbons like the strings of a kite.
And just for a split second, I hear voices. Like someone turned the radio up.
All the way.
Angry shouting.
The noise of a crowd.
One person is sobbing.
Someone else is screaming.
The next thing I know, that’s all gone and I’m on the ground. Zale is holding me. Calling my name. Hugging me to his chest. Everywhere our bodies touch, there’s that tingle. He helps me to my feet, but I’m unsteady, so he keeps a hand on my elbow.
I open my fingers to stare at the little silver hummingbirds, and I know I have to tell him the truth. Even though I don’t want to. Because we’re all bound up by our secrets.