Nothing.
Not even a left-behind can of beans or the remains of a campfire.
The only thing that proves Zale was ever there is a strange little grave at the base of a two-trunked cypress tree.
Someone has pulled away the thick vines and brambles to expose the dark earth underneath. And there’s a small wooden marker with a name carved into its surface.
AERON
The gouges in the wood are deep and angry. Rough.
Full of splinters.
“Why didn’t he kill me, if that’s what he wanted to do?” The question keeps running through my mind. All those times we were alone. Totally isolated. No one would have ever known what happened to me.
Just like Elora.
“I don’t know.” Hart is staring down at the grave, and some of the harshness has gone out of his voice. “Maybe he needed you.”
“Needed me for what?”
Hart looks up at me, then back down at Aeron’s resting place. “To help him find what he was looking for.”
I kneel down in the soft dirt and slip the little silver hummingbird out of my pocket. The one Zale found right here. In this spot. I grabbed it when Honey and I were loading up the boat. Now I press it into the soil at the base of the handmade marker, and when my fingers make contact with the ground, I feel a hint of that familiar tingle. It’s so faint. But it’s there.
I whisper that I’m sorry.
When I stand up, Hart is watching me. “You’re not the one who killed him, Greycie.” I nod, but my seams are starting to separate.
“Fuck,” Hart mutters. “Goddammit.” He reaches out and pulls me against his chest. He wraps me up in his arms, and I feel myself let go. Really let go. Suddenly I’m sobbing.
For Elora.
And Evie.
For Hart and me.
And for Zale.
For my mother.
And Dempsey Fontenot. Thirteen years rotting away in a black oil drum.
For Ember and Orli, lost so long ago I can barely remember them.
And Aeron. Who I never got to know at all.
Hart holds me, and he doesn’t try to stop me crying. He just keeps one hand on my back and one hand tangled in my hair while he lets the pain bubble up out of me and soak right into him, the way my tears are soaking into his shirt.
He stands there and absorbs it.
Feels it.
All of it.
Without flinching.
And when I’m finally out of tears, he looks down at me and says, “Don’t take on that weight, Shortcake. That guilt over what your mama did. All those years ago.” His voice is low in my ear, and the gruff sound of it fills up some of my cracked-open places. “If you do, you won’t survive it. Trust me.”
We head back to the four-wheeler and spend the rest of the afternoon searching the bayou for Evie. And Zale. But there’s no sign of either of them anywhere. And the longer we look, the darker Hart’s mood gets.
Just like the clouds to the south of us.
And I’m not a psychic empath like he is, but I know he feels like he’s failing Evie. Letting her down.
Same as he did Elora.
I know it for a fact, because that’s exactly what I’m feeling, too.
It’s almost nightfall when we finally head back to the Mystic Rose for some food and to gas up the four-wheeler.
The weather is changing fast now.
The pressure keeps dropping, and the air feels different.
Hart and I sit on the kitchen floor and listen to the radio while we try to eat peanut butter sandwiches washed down with a couple warm beers that Leo left behind.
The National Hurricane Center is calling Elizabeth a “potentially catastrophic” storm. They predict storm surge flooding all along the Gulf Coast. Another Katrina, they warn us. Expect large-scale destruction to property and significant loss of life.
But even with Elizabeth practically knocking on our front door, it’s the hurricane brewing inside Hart that really scares me.
He’s silent, and he barely touches his food. He just stares off toward the kitchen window, like he’s looking out into the bayou. But the window is all boarded up.
There’s nothing to see.
“Evie’s already dead,” he finally tells me. “Just like Elora. That’s what I’m thinkin’。 He killed her, and then he got the hell outta here ahead of the storm.”
I push my sandwich away. I can’t eat it. The peanut butter sticks in my throat and keeps me from swallowing.
“Zale’s not afraid of the storm,” I remind him. “He wouldn’t run from a hurricane.”
“Then he killed her and he’s holed up somewhere. Hiding.”