Nothing to Devour Page 11

  Unlike Jess, Eddie somehow sensed her presence, probably because he’d come here looking for her. But he didn’t turn around. Not until she was right underneath him did she note the crinkles at the corners of his mouth as he fought for control of his smile.

  And why was he smiling? She knew that, too. The smile was because he’d come looking for exactly this. He’d wished for Sophie to appear, conjured her up, and she had.

  Maybe she was a Ferry Godmother, after all.

  “Are you a cat?” she said.

  Eddie remembered, knew what she was echoing, and lost control of his smile. It broke over his face, and he laughed, but not loudly or for long. He was—as he’d have to be, growing up amid all those grief-ravaged people—cautious with joy. As mistrustful of and curious about it as though it were a beehive. Which, as far as Sophie had ever seen, was exactly what joy was.

  “I called you,” Eddie said. “I waited.”

  Far across the cliffs, Sophie could just make out the shadow of Jess’s retreating back. There wasn’t any mist, were already billions of stars, and yet Sophie felt as though she and the boy were cloaked in darkness, invisible and protected. Even if Jess turned around, she’d never find them.

  “Want to see my cave?” she said. She offered her hand and helped him down, gesturing in Jess’s direction and holding a finger to her lips.

  “You’re freezing,” Eddie said.

  “Shh. Always.”

  Eddie grinned.

  Hooking her elbow through his, careful not to touch any exposed skin and make him colder, Sophie hustled him into something approaching a trot. Off they rushed along the cliff and down the secret path only she knew, hunching and racing together as though outrunning an incoming storm.

  12

  Even from the darkness of his tiny room, where he’d waited for over an hour behind his half-closed door for the living room to clear, Joel sensed that something was wrong the second the girls came home. Something other than Eddie staying out even later than usual on a mistless, moonlit night. Almost certainly, Eddie was fine and nearby, crouching behind rocks in one of his okra coves or maybe under cover of a fir right at the edge of the yard, loving that he’d scattered adults all over the top of the island hunting for him again.

  Slipping his headphones off—he hadn’t been playing anything, anyway, just using them to seal himself into his own silence, keep him resolute and committed to the decision he’d made—Joel zipped them into the packed duffel on his bed and crept to the doorway to listen.

  “Where is everybody?” he heard Kaylene murmur, in nothing like her usual singsong. If Rebecca answered, Joel didn’t hear. The sink turned on, then off. No one else spoke, and he heard no other movement.

  Which could mean nothing. It probably meant nothing other than that they were tired, except that being tired rarely stopped Kaylene from singsonging or Rebecca from answering. Benny and Jess and possibly even Trudi were still out in the woods, apparently, which meant Eddie was still out there, also.

  Which meant that this time, something really could have happened to him. Probably, it hadn’t. But it could have.

  And if it had? What did that change?

  That was something Joel had learned from his life: something could always have happened. His being or not being here wouldn’t change that. He’d meant to disappear before the girls came home, because saying good-bye to Rebecca, in particular, seemed not just hard but unthinkable. But then Eddie had slipped off, and Benny and Jess had swept up Joel in the search, and so for a while, he’d done what he’d been doing since he came to this island. He trailed along. Helped where he could. Closed himself down to just the moment right in front of him, because there was no hurry to get anywhere, and nowhere, really, to go. And nothing he wanted to remember ever again.

  Until lately. Suddenly, with increasing regularity, he did. Suddenly, he was thinking all the time about Halfmoon House, which he’d partially built and completely rebuilt himself. About his wife, forever retreating from him even when she’d been alive. About the children they’d never managed to have, and the lost children of other people they had had, for brief whiles. And the fierce, fighting child they’d lost for good, that last night in the woods.

  His woods. His and Amanda’s.

  And Rebecca’s. At least she was well on her way to becoming someone else, now. Or, becoming herself. The self her life was going to allow her to be. That’s how Amanda would have put it. As usual, she’d have been right.

  Maybe someday he could call Rebecca from wherever he’d gone and reintroduce himself. Somehow, that conversation seemed easier to imagine than the one where he stepped out this door, stared into her silent face, and said, Gotta go. See you sometime.

  Nope. He couldn’t imagine doing that. He would wait until the girls went upstairs. The fact that they’d come home from Vancouver a day late and weirdly silent changed nothing.

  Nevertheless, here he was creeping closer to the door to listen. He knew what he wanted to hear. Every single time Rebecca and Kaylene went off to play a show—no matter where it took place, or what time they got back, or how it had gone, or how exhausted they were—they came back singing, in spite of themselves. They did it through clenched lips, softly, as though afraid of waking something. On the rare occasions when they didn’t sing, they gossiped about some guy in the crowd, or some teen- or tween-girl wolfpack who’d bumrushed the stage, or another garlic clove and kalamata olive pizza some local had told them about. Apparently, kalamata olive pizza was Sock Puppet’s after-performance meal of choice.

  Once or twice, especially lately, they’d even come in giggling, and also fighting their giggles with their hands over their mouths, like teenagers creeping home past curfew. Like the teenagers Rebecca had never been or been among, or the college kids they’d both been all too briefly.

  But tonight, they were silent. Neither of them had even started up the stairs. As far as Joel could tell, they were just standing in the kitchen in the dark.

  Did they realize Eddie was gone again? Probably not. And why would that have silenced them, anyway? It was hardly the first time, and seemed barely worth worrying about, given the things those girls had had to worry about in their lives.

  For one moment—a sweet one, something to treasure later, because even thinking he might be of use again had to mean he really had been, once—Joel hovered with his hand above the doorknob. He was strongly considering abandoning his plan and moonwalking right out into their line of vision. He’d throw his arms wide, sing something, and make Rebecca laugh just once more.

  How he had loved—how challenging and how rewarding it had been—learning how to make that silent, lost, loving person laugh.

  How much Amanda had loved him for being able to do that. Possibly, it was the last thing his wife had loved him for. And he had loved her for the permission and encouragement. And resistance.

  His eyes filled with tears.

  Out in the living room, Rebecca spoke, and the tears froze in his lashes along with the ridiculous hope in his heart. Because in all the years Rebecca had lived at Halfmoon House while he and Amanda had nursed her through the loss of her parents and into adulthood, through all the late-night check-in phone calls after she’d moved out, Joel had only heard her sound like this once before. On the day she’d told him he should leave Amanda, because Amanda was strangling him. That she sounded this way now meant something really was wrong. Something worse than Eddie playing hide-and-seek.

  “Kaylene,” she said, dead flat.

  “Oh, come on,” Kaylene said, or slurred, the words blurring together as though she were drunk.

  Or speaking through split lips?

  “I’m not fighting. I’m not mad at all. I just don’t … why would you even keep that thing?”

  “We’ve been through this. Stop giving that fucker power, Rebecca. It’s a hat. That’s all it ever was. Now it’s my hat. Our hat. Sock Puppet’s hat. Because that’s all he is, now. He’s our sock puppet, to make do whatev
er we want. And the only thing I did onstage last night was—”

  Even from behind his door, with a thousand mixed-up memories whirling in his head, Joel heard the change in Rebecca’s tone. He could feel her magic, practically see the gesture he knew she was making right that second: the little shake of the shoulders, the settling in behind those quiet, brown eyes as they flared gently, grabbing and warming anyone close enough to notice. Because whatever she was furious or upset about, her friend needed her.

  “I’m not talking about last night anymore, K. It’s done. I get it. I think. I’m just asking, okay? I’m not criticizing. I’m literally … I don’t understand how you could even pick it up. When did you pick it up? Did you lift it off his head after I smashed his skull in? How could you have—”

  “I love you,” Kaylene said.

  “I love you,” Rebecca snapped back, so savagely that Joel clutched the door, leaning into it while holding his breath. He wanted them to stop talking, now. This was the sound he wanted echoing behind him as he vanished. Those were the words.

  That was his girl. His and Amanda’s last and best, and she sounded so fierce and fine. So loving and loved.

  Although—of course—Rebecca wasn’t their last. There’d been two more after her: Trudi, still teetering on the edge of her own abyss with only Jess and Rebecca holding her back, now; and Danni, whom they’d all just started to reach, and who’d died broken-backed and gasping on the pinecone-littered ground of Halfmoon Lake woods.

  “Sorry about your face,” Rebecca murmured. Whatever that meant.

  “Sorry about your soul,” said Kaylene, and Joel couldn’t help it, he barked out a laugh and then froze. He held the door, kept still while his memories settled to the extent that they ever did. Loneliness rocked and slapped inside him like rainwater in a reservoir, filling him so completely that it had practically become him.

  Finally, at least one of the girls stirred and started up the stairs. Yes, Joel thought, nodding. That’s right. It’s time. This is good. Go.

  It really was good. He was all but sure. Rebecca no longer needed a middle-of-the-night online word-game partner, because she either performed or slept through nights, now, or at the very least stayed offline during them. She didn’t need a surrogate father anymore, either, not with Jess as a very-nearly-mom. Kaylene and Rebecca had each other. Jess and Benny had each other, plus three almost-daughters and a for-all-intents-and-purposes son. Collectively, they had Trudi for a project. Trudi had Jess to resist, and Rebecca to fight and ultimately give in to. And Eddie had all of them.

  They were all okay, now, or at least as close to okay as Joel suspected anyone could get after what they’d experienced. Eddie would turn up because he always did. And if he didn’t, Joel still wouldn’t have any role to play, just more grief to bear. And he didn’t think he could do that. He couldn’t imagine where he would put it.

  Or maybe he just didn’t want to grieve anymore. That was okay, too. It really was. It would have to be.

  For a few breaths more, he waited, listening to the house, the owls in the woods, the late October wind rattling the patio screen. Rebecca could still be in the living room, he knew, just sitting, the way she once had at the long, wooden worktable in the kitchen at Halfmoon House, or at her desk in the Crisis Center room at UNH-D. Waiting for someone to need her.

  But he didn’t think she was. If she’d realized where Jess and Benny had gone, she’d already be outside joining the search. And if she hadn’t, she’d have headed up to her room to take care of herself. That was something she’d finally learned to do in the last five years, though not from him.

  Easing open the door, Joel stepped into the hall with his bag over his shoulder. Sure enough, the living room and kitchen were empty, the patio outside white with starlight, crosshatched with pine shadows. At the front door, he turned once more, put his fingers to his lips, and blew a kiss no one would ever catch to the house and everyone who lived in it. A voice popped into his head, the one from that insane Web-radio show he’d loved in the last days of his marriage. The voice of Jess’s actual daughter, as it had turned out.

  “L-l-l-love me,” he murmured along, then hummed the opening riff of the crazed, sixty-year-old song that voice had been mimicking.

  He opened the front door and the cool air sucked him out.

  Right away, he detoured off the road into the woods, partly to keep anyone who happened to be looking from spotting him, and partly to scan the brush one more time for Eddie, just in case the kid had decided to hole up somewhere in this direction this time instead of in the backyard or with his okras.

  Okras, Joel thought, smiling faintly. His lungs clutched, clinging to the breath he’d just taken. He’s all right. Be all right, kid.

  All the way down the hill, sliding through ground cover and pushing back curtains of pine branch, Joel kept his eyes on the woods, and so was surprised to realize he’d walked right past town to the water’s edge. Cutting back to the road but keeping to the gravel and the shadows—not that anyone down here would notice his leaving, or care if they did—he made his way to the little one-room, workerless ferry terminal where would-be riders could wait out the rains. His goal had been to catch the last boat of the night, but one glance at the clock told him he’d dawdled too long. So be it. He wasn’t going back to Jess’s Stockade. This was as good and private a place to wait as any.

  The room was too bright, lit by buzzing overhead fluorescents, furnished with a row of green rusted standing lockers, two splintery wooden benches, a coffee machine, a cigarette dispenser, and some twenty-year-old posters for whale-watching tours and cruises to Victoria and the Haida Gwaii Islands. The very few times Joel had been down here at this hour, he’d found at least a couple homeless people or dangerously drugged-up runaway teens from the mainland sacked out around the room. But tonight, mercifully, the terminal was empty.

  Settling on a bench, Joel opened his duffel for his headphones, then left them where they were. Instead, he listened to the seabirds and sea wind, water rolling up to and onto the land. Everything felt so blank, as though he were between showings at a movie theater, watching the white screen, thinking next to nothing. Feeling next to nothing. Awaiting the start of the sequel no adult in his right mind would ever want to be part of.

  Did he sleep? Could he even tell the difference, anymore?

  Dawn came so softly that he didn’t notice the change, hardly realized the time had come—that time still moved at all—until he glanced up and saw the 5 A.M. ferry, the first of the morning, already shuddering up to the dock.

  Hustling to his feet, he realized he wasn’t even going to be the first passenger aboard. Abramowicz, the venture capitalist with the sleek, olive suits who’d built the turreted McCastle on the promontory at the far end of the island, was already on the gangplank, having slipped under the chain in his tailored trench coat. A redheaded mother and her teenaged son were getting ready to head up, too. Joel had seen them around the diner many times, knew them to nod to but not by name. They were leaning on the low sea wall with Styrofoam cups of coffee in their hands.

  Barely bothering to button his jacket, Joel hurried into the brightening pink of the morning. For the first time in years, he had an urge to shout something ridiculous, wake everyone up and get them laughing. Poke that brooding redheaded kid right between the shoulder blades, whisper, “Tag,” and race away past Mr. Abramowicz up the gangplank.

  He was about to do just that—it was the best start to his next life that he could think of on short notice, and he was out of practice—but he stopped to watch the ferry’s only two passengers disembark arm in arm: a gliding black woman in a shiny, silver rain shell with the hood drawn despite the absence of rain, and a long, lean praying mantis of a girl who also had her translucent rain hood drawn but her head up. Her stunning green eyes seemed to absorb all the light, literally gulping it into themselves, like stars imploding.

  Along with everyone else at the dock, Joel stood aside until the t
wo women reached the chain. Then, on impulse, he lurched forward and unhooked it for them. He meant to say good morning, tip the cap he didn’t have. Then tag the redhead kid and race him onto the boat deck.

  But something froze him as they passed. The woman brushed him with the edge of her rain shell, hustling the girl along with her other arm. Right as that happened, the feel—no, the scent of her—ghosted over and through him:

  Old, wet leaves. Leaves that had lain for decades under other leaves on the floor of a forest, liquefied, retained their shape but not their substance.

  It was an odor he’d inhaled all his life, in every woods he’d ever known. But only once before on a creature in motion.

  Just like that, he knew.

  The woman in the rain shell … Had she felt him, knowing? She turned. Her gaze danced down him. Then she was gone, hunching as she crossed the street toward town.

  Abramowicz bumped him aside without so much as a nod, as though he’d never seen Joel in his life. The mother and son swept past, too. The boat horn bellowed. And still, Joel stood where he was. He stared at the ferry, then behind him at the two hooded figures disappearing into the terminal. For another half hour, that would remain the only open door in town. Not long after that, the nautical-trinket shop would open. Then the gas station. Then Benny’s diner …

  Do it now, he heard himself think, almost say. Attack her now, before she knows you know.

  He blinked, and there it was under his eyelids: the image he would never again be rid of, no matter what other life he somehow managed to find or build: Amanda, shooting him a last cryptic glance as she flung herself at the whistling demon in the sombrero in the very last seconds of her life. Joel watched those moments replay. Watched flying bits of Amanda explode into the air around him.

  The ferry horn blew once more, drowned out the humming whimper he knew he was making but could barely hear. That horn was for him, he knew.