Shadowed Summer (23 page)

Setting the bookcase down, Daddy shoved it around and nodded toward an envelope taped to the back of it. The paper had gone yellow.

“Think we ought to get pictures?” one of the detectives asked, but the other one shook his head and pulled the envelope free. He snapped on latex gloves; then, with careful fingers, he spread the flap and let his partner pull a sheet of paper from it.

They seemed to barely glance at it before folding and tucking it in the envelope again. Skeptical looks ran through their eyes, and as one detective drew a plastic bag from his pocket, the other offered my daddy a business card. “We’re not finished.”

“I didn’t figure,” Daddy said, and slid the card into his back pocket. Speaking a silent language of nods and gestures, he and Mr. Lanoux turned to put my shelf back the way it belonged.

Confused, I just bit my tongue and waited for somebody to explain something, but nobody did.

Collette stood at my window, holding the curtain aside. “There’s only one reporter there now.”

Lying on my bed, I nodded. “Yeah, the other night, Rennie slit their tires and set off a whole strip of Black Cats right behind ’em.”

“So he’s good for something,” Collette said. She smiled and let go of the curtain. My room darkened with hazy shadows. Shuffling to my desk, she sat down, wrapping her arm around the back of the chair. She looked at me for a long time; then she said something I never expected. “I’m sorry, Iris.”

I sat up. I shrugged. “What’s to be sorry about?”

“I don’t know. Everything.” She traced her brow with her nail, lost in thought. “I feel like I shoulda been in the graveyard with you.”

Teasing, I said, “You’re just jealous I got arrested and you didn’t.”

“Well, yeah,” she joked back. “I look awful fine in orange. Way better than you.”

I crossed my legs, sitting in the middle of the bed and just looking at her. Collette’s face was still, but there were all these hints of sleek sharpness. Her cheekbones were almost high; her chin had a faint edge to it. She really was beautiful, and we really were about done with childish things.

Suddenly nervous, I asked, “We’re always gonna be friends, right?”

Collette gave that all the seriousness it deserved. She reared her head back, looking at me like I was a fool. “Duh. We’re getting out of here when I get my license, remember?”

I nodded and smiled, because I
did
remember. I was just glad she did, too.

The silence in my house got heavier as the sun went down. Daddy made sandwiches and soup for dinner and let me eat in front of the TV. He never did that, and I watched him instead of the programs, waiting for him to say something about the envelope or the police or anything at all.

He didn’t, though; he was stone, holding an untouched plate of food in his lap.

Chasing bread crusts around my plate, I glanced at the TV, then at Daddy, wondering if I should let out any of the questions that had piled up in my head.

When I saw Daddy swallow like he was choking something back, I reached out to touch his hand. “It’s all over now.”

He kept nodding, tipping his head back a little farther each time until he stared at the ceiling. He looked even older than he had at the police station, and exhausted.

“You can tell me,” I said.

“He killed himself, Iris.” Daddy looked over, wearing a bitter, broken smile. Southern men didn’t tell secrets; it was a matter of honor. Daddy probably would have kept this one until he had his own grave if I hadn’t gone and dug it up.

“He killed himself, and he asked us not to let his mama find him like that, so we didn’t. That’s what that note was all about.”

I hurt when I heard that, and it made Old Mrs. Landry human again. Strict as she was, Elijah had loved her, enough to spare her the shame of a suicide in the family. Suicides couldn’t even be buried in the regular cemetery; in a sick way, it was kind of funny he’d ended up there, anyway.

Squeezing Daddy’s hand, I asked quietly, “But why’d he do it?” He didn’t answer, so I spread my question out a little more. “Was he pining over Mama?”

Daddy knitted his brows and stared at me. “Where’d that come from?”

“That’s what Mrs. Thacker said. It was either love or money, and he was too young to worry about money.” A chill ran between my shoulder blades when I repeated her words, because it brought to mind all the other ugly things she’d had to say.

“Adelaide Thacker talks too much,” he said.

“Well, was it?”

Daddy turned to look at me. “It wasn’t your mama.”

I tried to puzzle that out but it didn’t make sense. It
was
love; Daddy’d just said as much, and I felt like I deserved to know. “I don’t understand.”

Daddy’s eyelids fluttered closed, and he shook his head slowly. He took a breath, then looked up with an expression that told me this was the last he’d have to say about it, ever.

“I tried to make it up. I tried like hell. I did what that damned note asked me to, and I made sure Lee got out, so he wouldn’t end up the same way. I—”

“Daddy, you’re not making sense.”

He looked over at me, broken. Final. “It was me, Iris. I was in love with your mama, and Elijah was in love with me.”

chapter sixteen

W
hen Ben came to the door, Daddy narrowed his eyes but let him in anyway. Ben shuffled around, stammering, until Daddy said we could go to my room to talk.

“Leave the door open,” he warned.

It was strange inviting Ben into my bedroom. I felt like I was letting him look at my underwear or something, which made me feel bad, ’cause I’d actually seen him in his.

Instead of sitting in the chair at my desk, he held on to it, wobbling back and forth as he peeked at me through his lashes. “Everybody’s talking, Iris.”

I nodded, trying to find a good place to settle, finally choosing the edge of my bed. “I know.”

Ben stopped rattling and slowly turned to look at me. “Did your daddy tell you what happened?”

My stomach dropping, I shook my head. A funny sensation tingled down my arms, and I looked toward my shelf, the one Elijah had torn up twice looking for his suicide note. “Not exactly.”

Just like Daddy, I knew things now that I never wanted to share; if I was lucky, nobody’d ever make me, either.

“I heard my daddy talking to Mr. Lanoux,” Ben said.

I just nodded.

Twitchy, Ben rocked the chair again, then stopped, like he didn’t quite know what to do with himself or how to talk to me anymore. “He said Elijah told them to come over at a certain time. That he was dead when they got there, hanging from a light fixture. He even tied a bag of river rocks to his legs to make sure he did it right.”

Pursing my lips, I closed my eyes against a sudden flash of vivid imagination. I could call up every detail of Elijah’s room. It wasn’t a hard stretch to change that picture, to make his body dangle beside the bed, his shadow swaying across a pillowcase dotted with just one drop of blood.

My chest tightened and I wanted to cry again. I couldn’t let myself slip into the hurt that had dragged Elijah down until he wanted to die. I couldn’t bear to feel it; I didn’t want to.

I pushed it out of my thoughts. “Do you know what the note said?”

“Please don’t let my mama find me like this.”
Ben laughed, an empty sort of sound, and ran his fingers through his hair. “I guess she didn’t, did she?”

Forcing my voice to some kind of normal, I looked up and asked, “Ben, do you think they’re going to jail?” I just wanted somebody to say no so I could stop worrying, even if it was only for a minute. Even if it was a lie.

Ben sighed, letting go of my chair. The wooden feet rattled on the floor, then went silent. “I don’t know. I hope not.”

“Yeah, me too.”

It was a stupid thing to say, but I couldn’t think of anything else. I’d gone crazy and torn open a grave that my daddy had gone crazy and closed his best friend up in. Two generations of Rhameses had disturbed Mrs. Claiborne’s rest; instead of going to jail, I should have worried about both of us being sent to an institution.

Neither of us said anything for a minute. I picked lint off my shirt, and Ben coughed a couple times, standing in just the right place to catch an echo in my room. Winding up with a deep breath, he turned to me and said, “So, I vote next summer we don’t look for any more ghosts.”

I let my feet slip to the floor and stood. Our conversation felt close to over, and I thought I should walk him out. “We won’t.”

“Hey, Iris?” Shifting his weight, Ben turned recognizable to me again, a flash of brooding in his blue eyes, and I stepped back because I suspected he intended to kiss me.

It wouldn’t have been unwelcome, exactly. Ben had turned out to be a lot more than somebody in my way; he liked horror comics and making jokes, and that one kiss had been nice. I even thought about it sometimes. Trying to sound friendly, I stepped back again and shoved my hands in my pockets. “Hey, Ben?”

He opened his mouth, ready to say something, but no sound came out. Instead, his cheeks colored a little, and he shook his head, curling his lips in a smile as he started for the door. “Never mind.”

It seemed like a good day for telling all of the truth, and I didn’t want him to leave like that. It would have seemed like there was room to talk about it some more, and there really wasn’t.

“I would have liked you if you hadn’t kissed Collette first.”

Caught, Ben had the grace to look ashamed. “I wish I’d known that before I kissed her.” Then he shrugged, because that was as simple as it got. He sort of waved as he left. “See you around, Iris.”

I sighed and rolled back into my bed, staring at my canopy.

“See you around, Ben,” I murmured when the front door closed downstairs.

epilogue