“Grey –”
“And then you killed her instead.”
“I didn’t.” His voice is low. Calm. But mine is rising fast.
“You were the last one to see her alive,” I accuse. “You told me that yourself!”
“I never hurt her,” he tells me. “Elora was my friend. Until I met you, she was my only friend.” He looks so genuinely lost. “I didn’t think I’d ever be able to trust anyone. But Elora proved me wrong. I loved her, Grey. Same as you did. Why would I kill her?”
Zale takes a step in my direction, and the light in his eyes dims when I move away from him.
“Grey? Why? Why would I kill Elora?” He takes another step toward me, offers me his hand. “Grey. Why?” I need him to stop talking. I need him not to come any closer. “We saved each other. I told you that.”
I take another step backward.
“Tell me,” he says. “Why would I do that?” He reaches for me again. “Why?” I can’t take this. He has to stop. “Why?”
That last word echoes off the river.
“Because we killed your father!”
Zale freezes as the wind moans around him. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t say anything. I wait for the flash of lightning. For the roll of thunder. But there’s nothing.
Just bewildered silence.
And sudden, terrible cold.
“What do you mean?” The question is so quiet. So deep. So utterly real. “Who killed my father?”
“Elora’s daddy.”
Zale staggers backward, like I shot him in the chest. The way Leo shot Dempsey Fontenot the night this all started.
“But really it was the whole town,” I say. “All of us.”
“Tell me what happened, Grey.” Zale sinks down to sit with his back against a wooden crate. But I can’t stop staring at the black barrels behind him. “Please,” he begs. And I hear a lifetime’s worth of unanswered questions underneath those words. “He was my father.”
Zale’s pain and confusion float between us like fog. They’re genuine.
Real.
I feel the truth of that every bit as clear as Hart would be able to, if he were here.
Zale doesn’t know about what happened on the boardwalk. On that dark summer evening. After my mother set the fire to the cabin back at Keller’s Island. And if he doesn’t know what Leo did . . . then it’s not a motive for revenge.
For murder.
And if Zale didn’t kill Elora, he didn’t take Evie, either.
Hart was wrong.
He was wrong.
About all of it.
I think about the calm, peaceful feeling that Zale gives me. And I know it’s nice. It feels good. That fuzziness. But I realize it was never why I trusted him. Not really. Because that feeling never lasted long, and I could push it away if I tried.
I trusted him because he gave me so many reasons to. At first, because Elora had trusted him enough to share our special words with him. And because he cared enough to give me back Elora’s ring, when I didn’t even know he had it. But then, because of the way he treated me. His patience and his gentleness. The way he was honest with me, over and over, when he could have fed me easy lies.
I recognized the blazing sincerity in his gaze.
Felt the burn of truth in his touch.
Why did I ever doubt him? Why did I doubt myself?
I drop the hammer and move to kneel beside Zale as he reaches for my hand.
His fingers are like ice in mine. There’s no spark. No warm tingle. The flame has gone out inside him.
“Grey,” he whispers. “Please. I need to know.”
So I repeat the story Hart told me last night. I tell Zale how Dempsey Fontenot showed up on the boardwalk after the fire, cradling the body of his dead child. How he rained down fury on the crowd that gathered to gawk at him. Hailstones the size of grapefruits. And how Leo – Elora’s daddy – blew a hole in his chest.
How they hid the body.
Right here in the heart of La Cachette.
The hiding place.
And how they all kept the secret. Every single one of them.
All this time.
When I’m finished, it’s quiet for a long while. Zale drops his head to his hands and sits with the crushing weight of the truth on his shoulders.
“Where?” he finally asks me. “Where did they put him?”
I stand up and duck under the safety rope to pick my way through the stacks of crates and the rotting fishing nets. I work my way around the broken crab traps and the rusting anchor chains until I’m standing next to the middle barrel. I lay my hand on top, and Zale gets to his feet and makes his way through the scattered junk to stand across from me.