Zale reaches out to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, and I tremble.
“Don’t be afraid, Grey,” he tells me. “There are some things only the storm can teach us.”
Zale walks me back to the boardwalk, but we don’t say goodbye. We don’t need to, he says, because we’ll see each other again. Instead, we just stand in the shadows for a few long minutes, soaking up each other’s light.
“You told me you saved each other,” I remind him. “You and Elora. I know you fished her out of the river. But you never told me how she saved you.”
He pulls me close, and the hum of his body against mine leaves me struggling to get enough air. I feel light-headed. But it’s so good.
“She was my friend,” he tells me. “And dat’s really all there was to it. But it was enough.”
And I know exactly what he means.
Zale looks down at me, and I reach up to run my fingers through his hair. I want to kiss him. But I don’t. I’m afraid to. I’m scared that if I kiss Zale the way I kissed Hart – if I feel the tingle of his lips on mine – I won’t be able to turn and walk away.
By the time I climb the sagging wooden steps to the boardwalk, a smothering fog has rolled in off the Mississippi. Evie’s wind chimes ring out in the dark to welcome me back to the hiding place. It’s late. Almost midnight. But I can’t make myself go inside.
Those chimes are so loud in my head.
And in my heart.
Their song starts me thinking about Elora again. How I never got to say goodbye. I spin her ring on my finger. Three times. Like making a wish. Like blowing out the candles on a pink birthday cake.
And just for a second, I feel her so real. She’s right behind me. If I just looked over my left shoulder, I’d see her.
I know it.
It’s my last night in La Cachette this summer. Maybe ever. So I decide to do something I’ve been wanting to do since I first got home.
I turn away from the Mystic Rose and hurry down the boardwalk in the direction of Elora’s house, dodging the places where long grass has started to grow up between the wooden planks.
And the spots where the white paint is worn away.
The slick black rot at the edges.
Leo told Honey that they weren’t planning to put their own plywood up till tomorrow morning, so I know I’ll be able to get in.
It only takes me a few minutes to reach my destination, and I hold my breath as I creep on to the porch that wraps around the front and sides of the house. Elora’s window is toward the back, on the bayou side, and it never occurs to me that it might be locked. Sure enough, when I put my palms against the glass and push up, the window slides open without a sound.
I don’t even stop to think about what I’m doing. I just throw one leg over the windowsill and climb in, like I’ve done it a million times before.
Because I have.
Hart was right about it being a disaster, and I’m grateful to Becky for not cleaning it up. For leaving it lived-in. Like something vibrant and laughing only this minute bubbled over and spilled across the floor in an explosion of glossy magazines and discarded tank tops and shiny tampon wrappers and colorful socks.
I wonder if they haven’t packed it all up yet, or if they’re just going to abandon it. Let the storm surge take it all. Sweep it out to sea.
Wash the room clean.
I sink down to sit on the shaggy yellow rug. I’m afraid to sit on the bed. I know it squeaks.
I close my eyes and breathe in Elora. She’s been gone almost six months, but it still smells like her in here. Orange-vanilla body spray and cotton candy lip gloss. It’s too much, and I turn to bury my face in the lilac flounces of her ruffled bedspread. The one we picked out together on a shopping trip up to New Orleans with Honey.
I remember how, the night my mother died, I’d been inconsolable. How I’d wailed with misery until, out of desperation,
Honey had carried me down here to Elora’s house, and Leo and Becky had let her slip me into bed with a sleeping Elora. How, still half asleep, she’d reached for my hand and anchored me. Stopped my free fall.
Something down inside me twists and tears loose, squirming in my stomach like that dying snake on the end of Case’s frog gig. But I can’t cry. I don’t have any tears. Just this awful feeling of wanting Elora so much that the weight of it threatens to pull me right through the floor and into the bottomless mud below.
Why didn’t I try harder to make things right between us last summer? Why didn’t I ask what was really going on with her? Why couldn’t I give her what she needed from me? I should have said, “It’s okay if things are changing. It’s okay if you need some space. You know I’ll always be here.” Instead I lashed out. Made things worse. Drove the wedge in even deeper.