My Secret to Tell (4 page)

I hold up a hand, still coughing, because I know how scared she gets. They watch me while I recover, Mom’s hands shaking and her eyes so wide. Finally, I can talk, so I laugh.

“Don’t I feel stupid?” I say.

“No, sugar, don’t,” Mom says.

I push out from the chair and try to get my plate, but Mom takes it too fast. Dad offers me water. My chest feels tight. They’re watching me like I’m a soap bubble, like if any little thing goes wrong, I will pop. I wipe at the table with my napkin until I can’t take it anymore.

“Well, on that note, would you mind if I excuse myself?” I ask.

Mom glances at my barely touched calzone, and I flinch. “Sorry. This has been a lot, you know? I feel like I’m just sitting here. I need to do something to help Chelsea.”

“Nothing to do but wait. A prayer or two might not hurt,” Dad says.

“I know, but I want to call her. I could pick up a change of clothes for her and bring it up to the hospital. Somebody else from school might want to check in, or I could borrow the car if you guys don’t mind.”

“All this running around,” Mom says, touching my arm. “I wish you’d settle down. You need to just…”

“Now, Mary, our Emmie’s a fixer. That’s her safe spot.”

“My what?” I ask.

“Fixing things. That’s your safe place when things are all in an upheaval,” Dad says. “Remember when Landon—”

“Don’t,” Mom says, voice thin. “Please.”

Tears well in her eyes, and Dad quiets. I fold her into a hug and make all the right noises to calm her down. It feels like a lie. I can’t afford to let Mom down the way Landon did. I have to be the kid who is careful and safe. The kid she can count on.

If I tell her the truth about my running around—that yes, I’m going to get some things for Chelsea but that I’m going to try to find Deacon while I’m at it—she’ll be terrified. It will make her think she could lose me too.

I take Turner up to Ann Street and turn right, grateful for the shade provided by the tall trees that flank the sides of the road. I pass Mrs. Gillespie’s place with her prize azaleas and the house with a Great Dane who spends his afternoons dozing on the porch.

This is the Beaufort that brings the tourists back year after year. It usually feels charming and safe. Not today though. The wind hisses a little too hard and it’s still oppressively hot, though the daylight is fading, leaving glowing windows to watch me pass.

I see the low wall with the iron fence and the white church at the corner. The Old Burying Ground sits behind it. I step inside the gates and take a deep breath that takes me right back to another summer day, when Deacon hid with bloody elbows and I cleaned him up with a wad of napkins from my back pocket.

He’s not by the wall today, so I walk under the sprawling live oaks that stretch gnarled arms to the sky. Long leaves spread from the withered limbs, whispering to one another. The heat loses its grip in the burying ground, a place lost to shadows and tombstones and the sweet, fecund smell of old earth.

I find him leaving a flower for the Rum Baby, and just like that, I’m back six years to that first time. We were coming home from getting ice cream, and he’d hit the curb on his bike. I saw him fly headfirst over the handlebars and heard his body scrape across the pavement before he came to a full stop. It was awful.

He got up, bleeding like a stuck pig and sprinting full out for the cemetery. Chelsea ran home, but I ran after Deacon. I knew right then this was more than a kid who doesn’t like blood. This was different. He wasn’t just scared; he wasn’t there at all. So I crouched there in the dirt, my own scabbed knees scraping on an exposed root, and used a wad of napkins from the Fudge Factory to clean him up.

Clean might be a stretch, but I did my best, talking a mile a minute to fill the silence.

“I had a scrape like this last year. All the way up my arm. Hurt so bad, I refused to take a bath. I got it jumping off the pier, so I probably smelled like a goat in a crab-shell bikini.”

On and on I talked, and he just stared into space. Ten minutes later, we were walking home, looking for Chelsea and their dad, and he laughed out of nowhere.

“A crab-shell bikini?” It was the first thing he’d said since the accident.

“I didn’t think you were listening,” I said.

“I heard every crazy word.” His smile cut me off, bright and unexpected. I’d seen him smile a million times, but it had never sent fire up my neck before that moment.

“You always hang out in the cemetery when you’re hurt?” I asked, rubbing my hot cheeks.

“I like it there.”

“You go there a lot?”

He’d looked me right in the eye. No smile then. “Don’t tell, Emmie. Please.”

The way he looked at me stole my voice and opened doors to feelings I hadn’t had much use for at ten. But they unfurled in that moment, young and greedy and rooting as deep as the trees watching over us.

A dove coos, bringing me back to the present. I press my hands to the sides of my neck, remembering the heat I’d felt six years ago. Deacon watches me quietly, looking every inch the sweet boy I’ve always known.

Whatever happened in that house with his dad can’t be what everyone’s thinking.

I dig through my own pockets, finding Chester’s old tag and setting it on a stone ledge. I don’t know how it started or why, but tourists and townies alike always leave the Rum Baby a little something, stuffed animals or plastic beaded necklaces. Maybe it’s just too sad thinking that a baby died and the only thing we know about her is that she was buried in a rum barrel.

“Playing hide-and-seek?” I finally ask.

“Did I leave a trail of breadcrumbs?”

The jokes fall flat because neither of us can manage a smile.

“Your dad’s stable,” I tell him. “Joel’s with your sister. I couldn’t see him, but they said he’s all cleaned up. If you want to visit him, there won’t be any blood. You’ll be safe now.”

He shakes his head and laughs a strange, distant laugh.

“Deke, you need to go to Chelsea. She’s scared and she’s hurting and she wants her brother. Plus the police will need to talk to you. Joel’s already talking to them today.”

“What about? Did he hear something?”

I nod. “Two of the guys who work on the boats who are lying about when they clocked out yesterday.”

His brow furrows. “Who?”

“Thorpe and Charlie. They said they were on the boats until eight, but they clocked out at five. Joel thinks it’s legit, but Thorpe’s hand was messed up.”

He deflates, shakes his head. “It’s probably not them. I know about Thorpe’s hand. Charlie told me he mashed it good on a run this week. Plus, Charlie’s got a tracking cuff and they do a lot of flat-rate work after hours. Cleaning and charter drop-offs.”

I frown. “So you don’t think they could have done it?”

“Hell, Emmie, a lot of people
could
have done of it. Most of the guys who work for him, half the boat owners from here down to Morehead City. He’s not exactly adored.”

“So I keep hearing.” I steel myself, because it’s time to push for answers. “You seem to have plenty of problems with him.”

“I didn’t beat him to a pulp.” He steps away from me, clenching and releasing his fists over and over, his jaw working through words he won’t let out.

What isn’t he telling me?

“Okay, you’ve got to help me out,” I say. “Why are you still hiding? Because frankly, you sneaking around a cemetery avoiding everyone is suspicious as all get-out. I get why some people think you did this, Deke. Heck, if you don’t start talking,
I’m
going to start thinking it.”

He doesn’t respond, and I watch him closely. Tense might not be the right word for him. Terrified feels closer. If he did this, he’d be worried about getting caught. But then why is he still in town? If he’s guilty, he’d take off. Or fess up. He’s never been one to hide his screwups, a fact that annoyed Chelsea to no end when he was still in school with us.

“What are you afraid of?” I ask, though I’m not sure I want the answer. “I get why you
were
afraid. I get why you ran. I don’t get why you’re
still
running.”

“I’m not—” He cuts himself off and gives me a hard look. He’s still wearing the pirate shirt from yesterday, so he hasn’t been home. Has he been here since then?

I cock my head, making sure he can see my “I mean business” eyes. They usually don’t hold much weight with him, but today, he sighs.

“Joel thinks I did it,” he says.

“Joel’s talking to the police about employees, so he’s obviously not sure of anything yet.”

“I saw it in his eyes, Emmie, and he cares about me. The rest of them?” He shakes his head. “I know how it looks. If I go in and they haven’t found anyone, I’ll get arrested. Whoever did this to Dad will get away with it. Case closed.”

“Okay, then tell me what happened to your dad. Tell me what you saw.”

“I don’t know. Not all of it anyway.” He takes a breath. “I ran home after I saw you at the shelter. Dad and I had been at each other’s throats since that morning.”

“I remember. I saw it.”

“Well, it got worse when I got home. I took off, but I didn’t want to leave it like that, so I went back to talk. It couldn’t have been more than forty-five minutes.”

“Okay.”

Deacon’s face reminds me of Chelsea’s in the hospital cafeteria. Everything alive in him withers. “When I got there, the back door was open. I went inside and Dad was still in the office, but he was on the ground. He was…”

“Hurt.” My stomach loops like a shoestring. Pulls tight. “That’s when you ran? When you saw him?”

I can tell he’s fighting for the words, choking on them. “No. Not until Joel came. I tried—hell, I didn’t know what to do, but I tried to help. To wake him up. Joel and Chelsea pulled around back, and Joel’s headlights lit up the room. Before then, I couldn’t see the blood. I mean, I
knew
. It was everywhere, and Dad’s face was wet when I touched it. But I couldn’t see it well, and once I did, I lost it.”

“So you ran to me.” I let out a relieved breath. “Deke, Chelsea and I both know about the blood thing. We’ll explain the truth, and that will be that. They’re probably already closing in on a real suspect. Trust me, this will be okay. But we have to talk to the police.”

Deacon closes the space between us so fast that I don’t have time to prepare. But then there he is, rough hands on my bare shoulders and eyes so sharp they cut into me.

“Emmie, I know you want to help. But words aren’t going to get me out of this. I need to figure out who would do this. Dad has a lot of enemies. I have to be careful, but I know a few people who might know something. Might have heard something.”

“Let the police do that!”

He laughs at that. “These aren’t the kind of people who talk to the police. Half the people working the docks have a record or are hiding something. But they might know things, and then I can give that information to the authorities.”

I throw up my hands. “Do you realize how crazy this is? You are
not
Sherlock Holmes! You’re eighteen years old. Tell Joel so he can help you. He knows the law, and he’s helped you guys a zillion times. Think of the whole marina mess!”

“Joel’s not an option. He told me he wouldn’t get me out of this. When he walked in and saw me, that’s what he said. He’s not going to help, because he thinks I’m guilty.”

“He
will
come around. Probably when you stop acting like a cornered dog. You need to cool off and come talk to everyone, Deke. This is ridiculous.”

“I think it’d be better if I just lay low until something else comes out or I find something. I’m the token troubled teen around here.” He sighs, shoulders slumping. “Ever since my mom died, this whole town’s been waiting for me to snap. Now it looks like I did.”

“It
does
look like that, which is why you have to go in. If you don’t, I’m going to go to the police myself, and I believe you’re innocent. We all do. Chelsea and Joel too.”

“Not Joel. You weren’t there, Emmie. I can’t even think about the way he looked at me. And it’s not like the police are going to be chomping at the bit for my side of the story. Sheriff Perry has had it in for me ever since the marina incident.”

The marina incident being Deacon slamming his dad’s boat into one of the docks. A couple thousand in damage. It might not have been so bad if he hadn’t waited two days to confess. From what Chelsea said, Sheriff Perry was ready to combust.

I press my fingers to my temples and try to focus. “Okay, let’s just start with calling Chelsea,” I say. “The rest will sort itself out. Just call Chelsea.”

His face softens, a smirk curling one side of his mouth. “Bossy.”

“Logical,” I argue. “Where’s your phone?”

“In my room at the house.”

“Then use mine.” I punch in Chelsea’s number before he can argue, but after a couple of rings, it moves to voice mail. “She’s not answering. She has to turn it off in the room. Why don’t we just go in?”

The leaves rustle overhead, and I watch long shadows pass over his face. Then his jaw sets in a way that tells me he’s relenting. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah, tomorrow I’ll do all the things you want. Talk to Chelsea, go to the hospital, maybe even to the police. Whatever. Tonight, I’m going to find some of those guys.”

“Deacon—”

“Look, I’m meeting you halfway, Emmie. I’ll come with you. I just want a few hours to try to find answers.”

I huff. “Fine. Where are you going to sleep? Are you going home?”

“Hell no,” he says. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got resources.”

I’m sure he does, but I’m also sure I can’t sit by while he blatantly uses some starstruck dit-dotter for her hotel room. “Deke, listen, I’m not trying to judge, but I really hope you aren’t planning on shacking up with some poor tourist in the middle of this mess.”

“Seriously? You think I’m going to hook up with some girl for a place to crash?”

“How should I know? I’ve seen you kiss waitresses for an extra side of fries!”

He flushes now, not embarrassed—angry. “That’s different. That’s a game.”

I cross my arms. “Yeah, well some of those girls probably aren’t playing.”

“Are you serious with this? And what about you? In there with Seth at the shelter, agreeing to another date when you know damn well he is never going to be
it
for you.”

“That isn’t your business!” Heat flashes up my neck. “And I told him that I was not interested. I was
completely
honest with Seth.”

“So you
honestly
think he’s just going to get over his years-long crush?”

“I don’t know! I don’t—” I stop, throwing up my hands. “Why are we even talking about this right now? What does this have to do with anything?”

He opens his mouth, looking fit to spit fire. He sighs instead, and it sucks all the anger out of both of us. “I don’t know. Hell, my head’s all over the place. I’m sorry.”

I step closer, my flip-flops scuffing on the dirt. “It’s okay.”

“It’s okay to piss off the one person who hasn’t written me off as a criminal?” His smirk tugs at my stomach, but I push it down into the place where I bury all things Deacon-related.

“Nobody has written you off,” I say. At the look he gives me, I relent. “Okay, some people maybe. But it’s going to come clear soon. Just keep your word about tomorrow and you’ll see.”

“Tomorrow,” he says. “You’ll be here?”

“Do I ever let you down?” I ask with a halfhearted laugh.

Deacon doesn’t laugh. His expression turns so grave, I can’t laugh either.

“No,” he says. “No, you never do.”