Heartbroken (30 page)

There was something about this place. The quiet was oppressive. When she couldn’t get cell service, it felt malicious, like the island wanted them to be disconnected. She almost said it out loud. But she could just hear Chelsea.
You’ve seen too many horror movies
, she’d say.

“Why do you like this place so much?” said Lulu. “I don’t get it.”

She was staring at the high wood-beamed ceilings, listening to the pounding of the rain. Out the window, there was only black. All Lulu could see was the reflection from the inside. Chelsea didn’t answer right away, and Lulu glanced back at her friend, who was staring at nothing.

“I don’t have to be anything here,” said Chelsea finally. “I don’t have to be anything other than who I am.”

This answer surprised Lulu. When was Chelsea ever anything other than who she was? She said as much.

“You know,” said Chelsea. “I don’t have to shave my legs or put on makeup. I can wear whatever, and no one cares. I don’t have to
maintain
.”

The idea that Chelsea had to maintain was news to Lulu.

“You’re perfect,” said Lulu. “Without even trying.”

“Yeah, right.” Then, after a loud exhale, she said, “He never wrote again. After I wouldn’t go out to meet him.”

Lulu knew she was talking about Adam McKee, and she felt a powerful rush of guilt. She was
such
a horrible friend.

“Forget him,” Lulu said. “He’s probably a loser. He’s not good enough for you.”

“Yeah,” said Chelsea. She sounded thoroughly unconvinced. “I guess.”

Lulu almost told her then. But she couldn’t. “I’m going to bed.” She stood and walked toward her room. She wanted Chelsea to come with her, to curl up beside her and go to sleep like they used to when they were young. But Chelsea didn’t follow.

“Okay. I’m going to read awhile and wait to see if Mom got in touch with my dad.” Chelsea had seemed distant and unsettled since the dock, as though she had things on her mind that she didn’t want to discuss.

The floor beneath Lulu’s feet was cold, and she knew the bed in her room was hard and unwelcoming. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” said Chelsea. She said it in the way that Lulu knew meant she wasn’t. Lulu lingered a minute, but Chelsea went back to reading. Lulu went to her room, got under the covers, and wrapped herself up tight. She was so tired that even with all the things bothering her—the stupid island, her faithless boyfriend, ghosts, the
terrible thing she’d done to Chelsea—she fell right away into a deep, heavy sleep.

I
n the night, something woke Kate. What was it? She could feel the imprint of sound on the silence all around her. The rain had stopped. Chelsea was pressed up against her, her arm draped across Kate’s middle. She’d crept into the room shortly after Kate turned off the light. Now she was snoring lightly.

In the moonlight, she looked just like she had as a toddler—her creamy skin, her unfurrowed brow. She was in that innocent, impenetrable slumber. Nothing followed Chelsea into her dreams; she’d always slept a deep, untroubled sleep. Brendan, the worrier, still woke up in the night during times of stress. He got that from Kate.

She listened to the quiet, hearing nothing. She slipped from the bed and padded over to the window. She could see the main house and the bunkhouse, dark and undisturbed.

She’d decided that in the morning, they’d get in the boat and go to the mainland and talk to the police. There was something off about the island, something unsettled. She couldn’t explain it, but she could feel it. Caroline had believed that Heart Island had moods and feelings. Kate wouldn’t go that far, but something wasn’t right.

She moved back to the window, folded her arms, and watched the sway of the trees, the drift of the clouds, the solid triangle of the main house roof, the glittering water. She thought again about walking around the island with her flashlight. But what would she do if there were an intruder hiding in the trees? She’d still have to leave the girls alone. When she and Theo were children, they’d sneak from their beds and walk around the island in the dark. With flashlights, they’d revisit all their daytime spots and find them new under the cover of night. Never once were they afraid. They felt sheltered and protected here, as though nothing could ever go wrong. Caroline
talked about the island ghosts, but neither Kate nor Theo had ever seen anything, in spite of every effort to find them.

She walked from window to window, taking in the different vantage points. She could see the western shore, the main house to the south. To the east, there were only trees and the path to Lookout Rock. It was the point where, according to Lana, her affair with Richard came to its ugly end. Kate wondered if reading about him, writing about him, however indirectly, had resurrected him. Was it Richard Cameron wandering the island, wanting to make himself known after all these years? Both Chelsea’s and Birdie’s descriptions matched the photos Kate had seen. But it wasn’t. That was the silly imagining of an overtired mind. Still, Kate wondered what Caroline would say. No doubt she’d think it was true. She’d want a séance or a Ouija board.
Richard
, she’d say,
is that you? We’re so sorry for how you suffered
.

Kate wondered how much, if anything, Birdie knew about her mother’s affair. Birdie had seemed genuinely clueless when John mentioned Richard’s name, as though she’d never heard of him. But why had she experienced such a powerful reaction to the story John had to tell? Was it because the picture reminded Birdie of the man she thought she saw on the island the other day? Or was it more, some instinct, some neglected memory? To open the conversation with Birdie would be to admit that Kate knew almost everything about the affair, even Grandma Lana’s version of how it ended. Kate wasn’t sure she was ready to get into all of that. The story, though heavily fictionalized, was at the heart of her novel. It was a conversation she needed to have with Birdie before the book hit the shelves.

Now that they were away from him, Kate allowed herself to wonder if John Cross knew about her novel. The publishing world was so small. She wouldn’t think he’d have access to her manuscript at this early point, but she couldn’t be sure. Of course, everything was heavily fictionalized, names changed, scenarios invented. And yet there were shades of truth. She’d been very honest with her editor, and
maybe rumors were circulating. The best fiction, her editor assured her, read like nonfiction. The best lies contained a kernel of truth.

She was so deep in thought that she almost didn’t see it at first, the movement in the trees—a shadow that was static and then not, slipping between the trunks. She felt her throat go dry and her chest lurch. And then there was nothing, no movement, just the same endless stillness that began before she was ever born and would live on long after they were all gone. What had she seen?

Quickly, quietly, she moved to the mudroom and pulled on her jeans, shoes, and coat. From the shelf above the utility sink, she grabbed a flashlight and a flare. As far as weapons went, a flare gun wasn’t much of an option. But it felt like something, the heft of it in her hand.

Then she exited the house, locking the girls inside behind her. In addition to fear, she felt anger, a sense of violation. As she marched out into the dark, she acknowledged that there was more of Birdie in her than she liked to admit.

B
irdie hadn’t slept much. She would fall into a fitful doze, then startle awake. She couldn’t bring herself to move from the bed. She’d listened to the girls talking quietly, then eating dinner. She’d listened to them cleaning up, using too much water—didn’t they know that the pump was solar-powered? They’d figure it out when they turned on the spigot and nothing came out.

Then they’d all left for the guesthouse, and she was alone again, finally. Anything but quiet made her edgy. She had always been that way, never able to bear Gene and Caroline’s roughhousing, or Kate and Theo’s exuberant running and laughter. It hurt her; it caused her to cringe. She supposed that made her some kind of monster, someone who couldn’t stand the sound of people having fun. She didn’t know how to be any other way.

She’d wanted so badly to tell Kate about her childhood memories
and how that photograph John Cross had shown them was of the same man she’d seen in her mother’s photo album. The same man she’d seen her mother kiss, and the same man she’d seen—maybe,
maybe
—on her island. But how could she tell anyone those things? They sounded crazy, even to Birdie.

Who was he to her mother? Her lover, obviously. That much was clear. What did it mean? She remembered the kiss, that passionate movie-star kiss. In some ways, all her life, she’d been waiting for a kiss like that. With Joe, she’d never had anything like it. And now she never would.

You had to be a certain kind of person to give and receive so much heat. She knew that she wasn’t that kind of woman, lusty and wanton. She was narrow, hard to the touch, not soft and yielding. Her lips were thin, as though designed only to deliver hard words, reprimands, and complaints. She was nothing like her mother, who was full-bodied and passionate.

Caroline was. Caroline was just like their mother, every bit as radiant, every bit as full of emotion and laughter. Caroline had gotten it all because Birdie had gotten nothing. She had the slender, cold features of her father’s family, the rigid posture, the pinched features, the ice-blue eyes.
Why couldn’t I have been thin like you, Birdie?
Caroline always lamented the battle she fought against her body’s desire to expand. But Birdie, once upon a time, would have given anything for Caroline’s full bust, her pouty lips, her flushed full cheeks. It was only recently that strangled thinness had come into fashion.

Once the rain stopped for a brief time, she might have dozed for a while. Then the moonlight shone through the dissipating cloud cover. She dreamed of her mother and Richard Cameron kissing on the shore. She dreamed of her father, who was so kind but always from a distance. In her dreams, he was slipping around corners, swift and straight-backed. She could never see his face or get him to stop running. She dreamed that Joe was beside her.
Ah, Birdie
, he said.
Do you have to be so cold?
It was so easy for him to say she was cold.
She wasn’t. She was anything but. He was the cold one, never with her when he was meant to be. He’d always given the best of himself to someone else. Just like her mother, Joe had loved another person more than the one he married. It was all so clear now that Birdie knew what she’d seen so many years ago wasn’t a dream.

What did it matter? They were gone, all of them—her mother, her father, Richard Cameron. Even Joe, in his way, was gone. Any love that had existed between them had drifted away long ago, leaving them with a mutually beneficial business relationship.
But it does matter
, thought Birdie,
because the island remembers. Love and lies never die. Their legacy just grows like vines through generations, twisting around and strangling us
.

C
aroline knew
, Birdie thought with a sudden clarity. She finally understood the superior, knowing tone Caroline always used on the rare occasions when they discussed Mother and Daddy. And she had dropped little hints.
There were things about Mother that you never knew
. Or
Mommy and Daddy didn’t have such a perfect marriage
. When Birdie pressed, Caroline would get vague and take her leave. Birdie had thought her sister was being a drama queen, or trying to remind Birdie that she had always been Mother’s favorite child. As if anyone could forget such a thing.

Caroline knew because Mother had told her. Among all the things that pained Birdie, this hurt more than anything else. Caroline had gone to the grave with the secrets Mother had shared with her and not with Birdie. Yes, Birdie had withheld her love, her affection, her friendship. But Caroline had withheld the most important thing of all: the truth about their mother and about that night. She had a knowledge of Lana that Birdie had been denied. Didn’t Mother know that no one loved her as much as Birdie did? How could she not have known?

Amid this mosaic of thoughts and dreams, something woke her, some sound. She sat up in bed and listened to the silence. She couldn’t hear anything. But she knew something wasn’t right. She
could feel it in her bones, just as she could feel when the rain was coming. She lay still and waited.

Chelsea woke to find her mother gone. She rolled onto her back and listened. She could hear Lulu breathing deeply in the next room but nothing else. Her mother was not in the bathroom. Where was she? She got up and went over to the window. She saw the beam of a flashlight moving through the trees. Kate was probably going to check on Birdie.

“Do you want me to stay here with you tonight, Mother?” Chelsea had heard Kate ask before they left the main house.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Birdie had snapped.

Chelsea loved her grandmother, but it made her angry to hear her talk that way to Kate. Chelsea hadn’t said good night, had just walked out with her arm looped through her mother’s. She’d never heard Kate talk that way to anyone, even when she was angry. No one in her immediate family talked that way—not Sean, not even Brendan. Sebastian could be nasty like that. She remembered that about him, even though he walked on eggshells with Chelsea now. She remembered the voice-mail messages he used to leave for her mother when he’d been drinking—the vitriol, the rage, was palpable. She didn’t like to think about that, though. That was the past. Her mother always said that the past was gone. Chelsea liked the idea that every ugly and awful thing disappeared when the tide came in. Like sand castles, it all just washed away.

She walked into the next room to check on Lulu, who was soundly asleep. Chelsea took the cell phone from her friend’s hand, and Lulu groaned, turned over, and pulled the covers tight around her.

Lulu had talked to Conner and seemed satisfied that he still liked her and wasn’t running around with Bella.
She can’t compare with me
, she’d said. But there was something sad around her eyes that told Chelsea Lulu didn’t quite believe it. She’d felt really sorry
for her friend, not for the first time.
No one can
, Chelsea had said to soothe her.
You know that
. Lulu had flashed her a grateful look, but there was something else there. It looked for all the world like guilt, but maybe Chelsea was imagining things.