The Shadow Girl (4 page)

And just like that, I feel lighter, a little more like myself. “You’re such a dweeb,” I say, squeezing the words through my swollen throat. “I don’t believe for a second that you were going to say that.”

Scowling, he tugs his hat back on. “You wound me. Name one time I’ve ever misled you.”

“This week, or last?” I smirk at him.

Wyatt tilts his head to the side. “So where do you want me to slug you?”

I point at my chin and smile. “Here.”

He makes a fist, draws it back, then brings it forward, brushing it against my chin gently. “
Pow
,” he says.

My smile falls away. “I can’t believe Dad’s dead,” I say quietly.

“Me either. It doesn’t seem real.”

I sigh. “I’m sorry for yelling at you. It’s just . . . everything keeps building up inside me. You were just in the way when it exploded.”

“Hey, that’s what I’m here for.”

We climb out of the truck, and I go inside the clinic, while Wyatt spreads his sleeping bag out in the car to make a bed for Cookie. Dr. Trujillo gives me some painkillers, then carries Cookie outside, placing him in the middle of the old bench seat where Wyatt has laid the sleeping bag.

When Wyatt and I take off again, I lean down and look into Cookie’s eyes. He licks my cheek, happy to see me. I bury my face in his warm, furry neck and stroke his back while Wyatt drives.

Wyatt is grinning like an idiot when I finally lift my head. “Remember when we dressed Cookie up in a cowboy hat and a bandanna and took him with us to that Halloween carnival when we were kids?” he asks. “He’s probably still psychologically warped over it.”

As if to prove Wyatt’s point, Cookie groans and we both laugh.

Wyatt reaches over and scratches Cookie between the ears. “I wonder if your mom still has those pictures she took of him in his costume.”

“I don’t know. I’d ask, but she’s not speaking to me,” I say. “She’s the one acting psychologically warped lately.”

“Maybe she just couldn’t handle the funeral stuff. Too hard.”

“Maybe,” I say.

He looks back at the road. We ride in silence the rest of the way home.

When we arrive, Wyatt puts Cookie in his pen by the fire while I slip out of my coat and join Addie in the kitchen. She’s busy labeling the food people brought while we were gone and putting it in the freezer. Casseroles and soups go hand in hand with grief, I guess.

“Nobody brought desserts,” Addie informs me. “I’ll make a blackberry cobbler later.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I say.

“Nonsense.” Placing another casserole into the freezer, she adds, “I know there’s plenty here for lunch, but I was thinking I’d try to talk your mama into going to town with me for a bite to eat. Give you two a break from each other and get her mind off her troubles for a while.”

“Good luck getting Mom out of Dad’s shop. Ever since the accident, she’s practically living out there. She said she’s been doing some sketching and going through Dad’s things, deciding what to get rid of.”

“Bless her heart. That does it, then; she has to get away. A change of scenery’s bound to lift her spirits.”

I hand Addie the last labeled bag, and she puts it in the freezer and closes the door. “I know it’s hard, Lily, especially since you’re also grieving, but try to be patient with your mother right now. I’ll head on out to your dad’s shop now and talk to her,” Addie says. “Wish me luck.”

After she leaves, Wyatt and I go to Cookie’s pen. Stooping, I murmur, “How’re you doing, boy?” Dr. Trujillo warned me that Cookie is still on shaky ground, mostly because he’s fourteen, which is something like ninety-eight human years. I reach in and scratch his head. “Nobody understands how tough you are, do they?”

Wyatt crouches beside me, and when Cookie licks my hand, he says, “Rats also show affection by licking.”

“
Sick.
” I scowl at him and snort a laugh.

“I’m talking about rats that have been bred to be pets.”

“Who’d want a pet rat?”

“Lots of people. Domesticated rats make great companions. They’re small, they’re smart, they’re playful, and they clean themselves like cats.” He ticks the points off on his fingers. “I’ve been thinking about getting one.”

I scrunch up my nose. “Well, it’s been nice knowing you.”

“You’d cash in our friendship over a rat?”

Tilting my head to one side, I squint at him. “Hmmm.”

“You have to think about it?” Wyatt clutches at his chest.

“Go ahead. Get a rat. Big Betty will take care of it for me,” I say, referring to Addie’s cat.

He winces. “I forgot about Big Betty.”

Standing, I start for the stairs. Wyatt stopped by his house and changed into jeans and a flannel shirt before we went into town, but I’m still wearing my clothes from the memorial. “Watch Cookie while I change, okay?” I say.

“Sure. I’ll put some more wood on the fire, too. It’s sort of cold in here.”

I head up to my room and exchange my black wool pants and sweater for my oldest, holiest jeans, a Denver Broncos long-sleeved T-shirt, and my knockoff Ugg boots.

Below, the fire crackles as Wyatt stokes it, and I smell the scent of wood smoke. Warm air eddies up to push out the cold. I’m aware of Iris, but we don’t talk. It’s a careful silence. I guess she’s figured out that I’m not going to listen to any more vague warnings that she can’t or won’t explain.

I forgave her this morning at the lake, and I think she knows that. I still can’t imagine why she told me to “be careful” before Dad’s accident, but it couldn’t have been the deer. Now that I’m thinking straight, I know Iris was telling me the truth when she said she didn’t know what was going to happen. If she had, she would’ve found a way to get through to me. She wouldn’t have let Dad get hurt for any reason. I know this because Iris would never hurt
me
, and nothing could be more painful than losing my dad.

Before going downstairs again, I take the slip of paper with Ty’s number on it and enter the information into my phone. I don’t know if I’m brave enough to make the first move and call him, but I really want to see him again. Ever since he left the lake this morning, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him.

Twisting my hair into a braid, I return to the living room where Wyatt is sitting on the floor next to Cookie’s pen. He has the gate open and his hand is resting on Cookie’s head. I plop down beside him and cross my legs.

“Who was that guy you were talking to at the lake?” he asks.

“His name is Ty Collier. He’s the guy who helped me with Dad.”

“Oh, man,” says Wyatt. “If I’d known that, I would’ve thanked him.”

“He goes to college at Columbia. Or did. Ty told Mr. Dimitri he took this semester off.”

Shifting to look at Cookie, Wyatt says, “So are you going to go out with him?”

“I
thought
you were snooping.” I shove him. “He didn’t ask me out, he just asked me to meet him for coffee.”

“Well, I’d steer clear of him if I were you. I mean, the guy showed up out of nowhere. He could eat babies for breakfast, for all we know.”

“Whatever.” I roll my eyes.

The door opens and Addie hurries in, followed by a rush of cool air. “I finally wore her down. Your mother’s closing up the shop. She asked me to get her purse.”

“Doesn’t want to see me, huh?” I try to keep my voice light, even though it hurts to think that Mom’s avoiding me.

“Give her some time,” says Addie, sending me a look of sympathy.

Heading for Mom’s bedroom, I find her purse, then bring it to Addie.

She opens the door and steps onto the porch, saying, “Hold down the fort while we’re gone.”

“We’ll do our best,” Wyatt says, then in a teasing mock-whisper to me, adds, “Go see if she locked up the liquor cabinet.”

Addie shakes her head and mutters something sarcastic about Wyatt leaving for college as she closes the door.

Suddenly serious, Wyatt says hesitantly, “Speaking of college, are we still on for going to OU together in the fall?”

I tell him that I’m not sure I should leave Mom alone so soon after Dad’s death, and that maybe I should go to Silver Lake Community College next semester instead. I could transfer to OU in the spring.

He exhales loudly. “Man. It won’t be the same without you. Maybe I should—”

“Don’t change your plans because of me, Wyatt,” I break in. “Dad said we should do our own thing and not influence the other’s decisions.” My throat tightens. “We’re not little kids anymore. We’re not always going to be around for each other.”

Wyatt looks like I stabbed him, then he turns and stares into the fire.

“That came out wrong, Wyatt. You know what I meant.”

“It just seems weird that you might not always be close by,” he mutters.

“I know.”

He gives me a sideward glance. “I wasn’t seriously considering staying here with you, though. Did you really think I’d give up a semester of beer pong and hot college girls for your sake?”

I smirk at him. “Yeah, I should’ve known better than that.”

Wyatt stands up and stretches. “So what do you want to do this afternoon?”

“Take advantage of Mom being gone.” I motion toward the hallway. “Come on.”

He frowns. “Where are we going?”

“To look for Dad’s spare keys to the workshop. I want to see what Mom finds so interesting out there.”

5

After going through all of the dresser and nightstand drawers in my parents’ bedroom, I start in on their closet.

Wyatt stands inside the doorway, leaning against the frame. “I don’t feel right about this,” he mutters.

“You don’t have to help,” I tell him, shoving hangers across the rod. I understand why he doesn’t approve. I feel like a thief as I search inside pockets and shoes. If Mom walked in, she might never speak to me again. I’d be furious if I ever found her nosing through my personal items. How can I expect her to feel any different?

But I can’t stop myself, and it doesn’t help that Iris is urging me on. She frets through my mind, as anxious as I am to figure out what’s up with Mom.

Standing on tiptoe, I snag my finger under the lid of a shoebox on the upper closet shelf and drag it toward me. The movement causes something to slide across the bottom of the box and the rattling sound of metal against metal trips my pulse. I take the box down and pull off the lid. “Here they are!”

Lifting the ring of keys, I turn to find Wyatt watching me with an expression that makes me ashamed of my triumphant feelings.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I say. “I can’t just sit around crying and wondering what Mom’s hiding for the rest of my life. That’s all I’ve done for the past few days, and I’m sick of it.” I wait for him to speak, and when he doesn’t, I say defensively, “Well, what would you do?”

He blinks at me. “The same thing, probably. But maybe you should go to your mom one more time.”

“She won’t talk to me! She just keeps saying that she’s going through Dad’s things or that she’s sketching when she’s out in his shop.”

“Maybe she is.”

“Then why won’t she let me in?”

Wyatt pushes away from the door and sighs. “Let’s find out.”

Minutes later, memories of Dad wash over me as we enter the shop. “Would you close the door?” I say quickly to Wyatt. “I feel too exposed with it up.”

He slides the door down behind us as I wander toward an unfinished cabinet in the center of the room. The scents of pungent wood shavings and Dad’s spicy pipe tobacco surround me. Dust motes dance in the blades of light that slice down from the small windows above. Stooping, I run my fingers along the edge of the cabinet. The aspen it’s made of is as white and smooth as the petals on the daffodils that have started sprouting in the meadows around our cabin.

For the first time since Dad died, my heart beats at a normal pace. Maybe I’ve misjudged Mom. Maybe she does spend her days out here just to feel close to him.

No, she’s hiding something,
Iris insists.
Whatever he was going to tell you
.

Wyatt interrupts my focus on Iris’s words. “Maybe we should leave,” he says. “It’s sort of soon for you to be coming out here.”

“No, I’m okay. It feels good to be around Dad’s stuff. It’s just strange being here without him. This place was always off limits unless he was with me. He said it wasn’t safe, and he didn’t like anyone messing with his tools.” I scan the space around us, the peg board–covered walls with hooks and tools hanging from them, the wood stacked along one of them, Dad’s workbench and electric table saw, the paper-thin wood shavings scattered across the floor. Projects he left unfinished. “I feel him here,” I whisper.

“Me, too,” Wyatt says.

“I think Mom was going through Dad’s big toolbox.” I walk to the storage closet, the key ring dangling from my fingers. “She must’ve dragged it back in here.” I try each key on the ring until the door unlocks. When I open it, I’m surprised to find
two
metal toolboxes inside—Dad’s battered one, and another one just like it that looks almost new. “That’s strange,” I say, laying my hand on the shiny metal. “I’ve never seen this one before.”

Wyatt helps me tug it out into the room. Dropping to my knees, I insert each key in the latch, and when one of them works, I take a deep breath. “This might sound crazy, but I’m really scared to see what’s in here.”

“Let me do it,” says Wyatt, crouching beside me. The hinges squeak as he opens the lid. “It’s just a bunch of clothes.”

Iris seems eager but also tense, as I stand and lift out the first piece of clothing and remove the dry-cleaner plastic around it. It’s the fanciest dress I’ve ever seen, except in magazines and on television. The emerald green fabric is covered with tiny green beads.

“Wow.” Wyatt blinks at me. “Was that your mom’s?”

“I guess.”

“I can’t imagine her wearing something like that.”

I can’t see my no-frills mother in the dress, either. She’s strictly a jeans-and-sweatshirt sort of person.

I drape the dry cleaner plastic over Dad’s table saw and lay the dress on top of it, then lift the next item out of the chest. It’s a fitted white blouse. “I guess these clothes could be hers,” I say. “But they look like they belonged to someone younger.”

“Your mom was our age once,” Wyatt reminds me.

I hold the blouse up in front of me. “Yeah, but Mom’s sixty years old, and I don’t think the styles were like this when she was in high school. I mean, look at the shoulder pads. I’m pretty sure they were popular in the eighties or nineties.”

Placing the blouse on top of the dress, I reach into the chest again, take out a plaid wool miniskirt, black leggings, two long baggy pullover sweaters, and a white dress. I add each one to the pile on Dad’s table saw. The next item looks larger than the others. A man’s red flannel shirt, the fabric soft and faded. On impulse, I slip it on. The shirt feels strangely familiar. Comfortable. Comforting. As I’m rolling up the sleeves, Iris sighs inside my head, as if the flannel against my skin soothes her, too.

“Hey, look at this,” Wyatt says, bending over the toolbox. “There’s other stuff under the clothes.” He sets a small silver jewelry box on the floor between us, then holds up a hairbrush for me to see.

I take the brush from him as he removes a long black case. “What’s that?” I ask.

He carries it to Dad’s workbench, sets it down, and flips the latches. “Whoa,” he says as he lifts the lid. “It’s a violin. A Stradivarius. They cost big bucks; pretty much only professional musicians can afford them.”

A chill skates across my skin and Iris shivers violently. The hairbrush slips from my fingers and lands on the floor with a
thud
. The violin’s amber wood gleams like polished marble, and I have the strangest feeling that I know exactly how it would feel against my skin. Smooth and cool, the neck of the instrument a perfect fit for my hands. Joy surges through me, followed by a feeling of sadness. I don’t understand what’s happening to me.

“Lil? What’s wrong? You’re shaking like crazy. Is it your mom’s? Didn’t you tell me she used to play?”

“Yes, in the school orchestra when she was growing up. But why would she have had such an expensive violin?” Keeping my focus on the instrument, I cross to Wyatt. “This is going to sound weird, but it’s like I remember it.”

“Just because your mom didn’t play it for you doesn’t mean you never saw it. She might’ve shown it to you before she packed it away.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

A creeping sensation climbs up my spine, and when it reaches the space between my shoulder blades, I feel a firm pressure, as if I’m being nudged to pick up the violin. I jump, unsettled to have felt Iris’s touch in such a solid way—if that’s what it was. Apprehensive, I reach for the Stradivarius, but quickly draw back my hand after brushing my fingertips across the strings.

But I’m too late.

The brief contact triggers some switch inside of me, and out of nowhere, frantic notes fill my mind, the melody they create too faint to clearly distinguish. I close my eyes and a vision flickers on the backs of my eyelids:
Long fingers quivering across strings . . . feminine fingers tipped by short, glossy nails, holding a bow that simultaneously jerks and glides. And behind the bow, a flash of sparkling green—the dress. The music fades. Applause explodes like thunder.

Shaken by the memory, I look at Wyatt again. “I think I did hear Mom play when I was little. I’m pretty sure she was wearing that beaded dress.” I gesture toward where it hangs over the table saw. “And she was on a stage, performing for an audience.”

His brows lift. “I didn’t realize she had
that
kind of talent.”

“Neither did I. She only told me she took lessons in school.”

“Why wouldn’t she have mentioned something like that? And if she was that good, why would she have given it up?”

We gave up everything
. Mom’s words to Dad that morning of the accident. Was a career as a professional musician part of that “everything”? Why would she have to give it up for me? “She told me she wanted to concentrate on her artwork,” I tell Wyatt, trying to tamp down my sense of unease. “But if the memory I just had is real, she was a much better musician than she is an artist.”

“Do you think she plays when she comes out here?” he asks, plucking a string gently.

The
ping
of the note vibrates the hushed air around us. I shake my head. “I would’ve heard her. And anyway, with her hands so crippled, I’m not sure she could.”

I step around Dad’s old battered toolbox and head for the storage closet. It’s dark inside, and the single bulb overhead doesn’t offer much light. Finding a flashlight in the corner, I snap it on and sweep the beam across the shelves, scanning rows of jars filled with nails and screws, measuring tapes, extension cords.

Something on the top shelf catches my eye. I stand on tiptoe and reach for it, but the shelf is too high.

“Here,” Wyatt says from behind me. “Try this.” He drags a stepladder from the corner and positions it near the wall.

I climb up and aim the flashlight above, moving the beam left to right. Four long cardboard tubes are stacked on the shelf. One by one, I hand them to Wyatt, then I step down and we move the tubes into the center of the workshop.

Using my fingernail, I pry the cap off the end of the first one. Inside, paper is curled up like a poster. “This looks like the parchment Mom uses to sketch,” I say as I slide it out.

Wyatt reaches for one end. “I’ll help you unroll it.”

I lay the tube on the floor at our feet alongside the others, then Wyatt takes hold of the edges of the parchment and walks backward. The paper uncurls in my hands. “Be careful not to tear it,” I say.

When it’s completely open between us, Wyatt says, “Hey, is that you?”

Oh!
Iris gasps as I study the girl in the sketch. She’s probably twelve or thirteen, and sits in profile, playing a violin. The girl’s hair is chin length, just long enough that it falls forward to cover her face so that I only get a hazy impression of her features. Still, our resemblance is unmistakable.

“That must be Mom,” I say. “When she was a girl.”

“She looks like you.”

“Yeah,” I say, an odd wariness drifting over me. Returning to the tubes, I open another one.

Wyatt studies the picture and says, “That must be you when you were a baby.”

“I guess.” In the drawing, my parents and I are standing on a dock that juts out across a lake. Dad is holding my hand.

“Your parents look so young. Where were you?” asks Wyatt.

“I don’t know,” I say, trying not to cry. I don’t understand why the sketches make me feel so emotional.

The next sketch we open is of a colonial-style house on a wide stretch of lawn that’s bordered by flower gardens. The last one is a city scene—cobblestone streets and sidewalk cafés in a place unfamiliar to me.

As we’re returning the artwork to the tubes, Wyatt says, “At least we know now she wasn’t lying. She really has been sketching out here.”

“She might’ve done these a long time ago. They could be old,” I point out.

“Yeah, I guess.”

We carry the tubes to the storage closet and I put them back on the top shelf. Climbing down from the stepladder, I say, “There’s more to all this than I’ve told you, Wyatt.” As I gather up the clothes we found in the toolbox, I explain about the conversation I overheard between my parents on the morning of my birthday.

Wyatt blinks at me, as if trying to make sense of it all. “That’s movie-of-the-week stuff, Lil. What do you think they were talking about?”

“I was hoping you’d have an idea.”

“I wish I did.”

Realizing how little I know about my parents’ pasts, I walk to the worktable and pick up the silver jewelry box. Wyatt comes over and stands beside me as I open the lid. A ballerina pops up and colored jewels wink at me. A ring with a pale green stone lies next to a pair of big silver earrings. I run my fingertips across a turquoise bracelet and a heart locket on a delicate chain. Moving all of the jewelry aside, I find a folded scrap of notebook paper at the very bottom of the box. I set the box down, take the paper out, and unfold it.

“Listen to this,” I say to Wyatt, then read aloud the words scribbled in blue ink. “‘Good luck, babe. I know you’ll do great. Hurry back. I’ll miss you like crazy. Love, Jake.’”

Jake.
Iris sighs wistfully, then in an urgent whisper adds,
We have to find him
.

Why?
I ask
. Do you know who is he
?