The old dock where Doyle told me to meet him jutted out into the water at a crooked angle, like a broken bone. It must have been there for decades, the boards slowly rotting until I could see the black water lapping through the gaps. It felt like walking into an enormous mouth that only had a few ragged teeth left.
I stood on the very edge, my toes over the water, and after a minute a motorboat nosed around the point by the lighthouse and drifted in, Doyle at the helm. He helped me in and revved the motor. “Doughnut?” He pointed at a half-crushed box plastered with powdered sugar. I wrinkled my nose.
“It is way too early for supermarket pastry.”
“Yeah, if I were really smooth, I’d probably have some croissants and a thermos of hot chocolate, and be like, wearing a scarf,” Doyle said. “And I’d find a way to work a Jane Austen quote or two into our conversation.”
“And brush the droplets of spray from my lips,” I said as the boat skipped a wave and a welter of salt mist hit me in the face.
“Good one,” Doyle said. “Remind me to pick your brain for tips some time.”
“That doesn’t actually work,” I said. “If some creep lured me onto his boat, I’d throw him overboard and it’d be spring before somebody found the body,” I said.
Doyle shoved half a doughnut in his mouth. “Fortunately I’m a jerk who scares off women before I have any chance of luring them anywhere.” He pointed the boat toward the mainland. The cabin was all wood and shiny metal, and the hull was so varnished I could see the ocean reflected in it.
“So how many James Bond boats does your dad have anyway?” I said. Doyle snorted.
“It’s his thing. He has boats and cars and motorcycles, because what you need on a tiny island is twenty different ways to drive in a circle.”
“How are we supposed to find this Mary Anne woman, anyway?” I said after another bone-crunching jolt over a wave. Doyle huffed.
“You always ask this many questions?”
“Only when I’m trying to fill an awkward silence,” I said.
Doyle pushed the throttle up, and the boat started to bounce across the surface of the ocean in earnest. I took the hint and sat down. I’d read more of the diary the night before, and I hadn’t slept much. Most of what Mom wrote was just babbling or inane “dear diary” type stuff, and scouring through her handwriting for any mention of Mary Anne had left me with a headache that felt like an icepick to the eye.
Simon doesn’t go to visit Mom like I do. He only goes to spy. He tells Father everything, when we’re forced to visit him and his new wife on the mainland. I tell him nothing. I guess that fits. Mary Anne thinks Father is just worried about Mom’s condition, but I know better. He’s not worried. He’s waiting. Waiting to see if Mom will snap out of it or end up like everyone else in that damp, smelly hospital he calls an “institute,” like that somehow makes it smell less like pee and bleach and takes away the hopeless look in Mom’s eyes after they give her a shot of tranquilizer. He’s waiting to see if she’ll finally give in to the dark thing that’s lurking inside all of us that are Bloodgoods by birth. He never forgave Mom taking Simon and me in the divorce, and taking back her own family name, giving it to us so the Bloodgoods live on and his family tree dies with him. He started calling her crazy way before she actually started acting that way. Joke’s on him. I’ve seen Mom’s will. He gets nothing. Figure I’ll save that news for when he makes us visit him at Christmas. Bloodgoods know how to stick together, if nothing else.
I didn’t know for sure why my grandmother had been institutionalized, but I could guess. Mom was devoted to her, though. There were more entries about her trips to visit than everything else combined.
All I’d found that could possibly help me track down Mary Anne were a few lines toward the end of the writing, just before the barren expanse of blank pages that concealed anything else I might have learned about her.
Mary Anne won’t meet me. She’s always busy, like because she has a job she’s now better than me. As if she’ll ever do anything with herself. She’ll be stuck at the Crow’s Nest until she finds some guy to shack up with. I just have to go. I feel the tide pulling me. Go go go. Run until I can’t stop. Run until I drop. Until I die. I’d rather die than be here one second longer.
We tied up at the Ramseys’ slip in Darkhaven, and Doyle led me to a beat-up Jeep wagon in the parking lot of the marina. “Camden’s about forty minutes from here,” he said. “You want to drive? It’s my car, so if you dent it, you’ll just have to deal with me, not my dad.”
I shook my head. “I don’t have a license.”
Doyle grimaced. “You and I can practice if you want. I helped Valerie pass her road test.”
“I can drive,” I said. “Just not legally.”
“Like so many good things in life,” Doyle said. The Jeep took a few tries to turn over, but soon we were on the twisting coast highway, passing tiny antiques shops, lopsided barns, and restaurants with giant lobster statues waving us in from their parking lots.
“You know, whatever we find,” Doyle said after a few miles, “I won’t tell anyone. Not Valerie, not anyone in my family. Certainly not your uncle.”
I leaned my forehead against the cold window glass. “I trust you, Doyle. Much as I trust anyone.”
He sighed. “I get the sense that isn’t very much.”
“You’re not wrong,” I said quietly.
“I get it,” he said. “People who should protect you don’t, and the ones you should trust aren’t worthy of it. Believe me, Ivy. I get it more than you know.”
I sat up and looked over at him, but he was staring at the road. I felt really shitty—I was dealing with a lot of stuff right now, to be sure, but that didn’t mean I had to be self-absorbed when it came to my friends.
“You want to talk about it?” I said, knowing the answer.
“No,” he said, and that was it until we started seeing signs for Camden.
I told Doyle about the Crow’s Nest, and he handed me his phone to look up the place. “It’s a bookstore,” I said, showing him the search page as we slowed down at the Camden town line. A Maine State Police car sat to one side, the trooper glaring at everyone who passed. I reflexively sank down in my seat.
“You got warrants?” Doyle smiled as I shrunk away from the window.
“Cops usually meant us having to pick up and move before one of them called CPS,” I said. “I’m not their biggest fan.”
The trooper didn’t pull out after us, though, and we crept along behind tourists with out-of-state plates and locals in rattletrap pickups until we spotted the bookstore and parked.
The Crow’s Nest was tucked into a small building with a sagging roof, covered in gray shingles and those spiny climbing roses that seemed to be everywhere in Maine. A small brass bell jangled when I stepped inside.
This was not the kind of bookstore you found in a romantic comedy, where you ran into your crush in the philosophy aisle and pretended to be smart by grabbing some esoteric book in French, or the sort where you could curl up for hours, wear cute vintage glasses, and be that quirky girl everyone teased except for the new boy in town, who was of course also hot and super into you for your brain, not your stunning looks. This place was more the kind of bookstore you’d go to if you needed a handy one-stop tome for casting spells and summoning the devil.
Shelves ran all the way to the ceiling, and across the rafters ancient bundles of dusty herbs hung. I think they were meant to combat the smell of mildew and rotten paper, but they’d given up a long time ago. Every table was piled high with books—books that nobody would ever want to read, or had, by the look, even opened. A thick layer of dust sat on everything, and I felt my throat start to tickle.
The counter was made of rickety plywood, also stacked all around with books, newspapers, and magazines so old people in the ads were still wearing suits and smoking. A guy my age leaned against it, reading a dog-eared copy of Snow Crash. He looked about as musty as the rest of the shop—his hair was stiff and black, shaved around the ears to show off a collection of studs and rings. He had two more in his lip, and alternating black and white nails. He was wrapped up in a black hoodie and a striped purple-and-black scarf, like Tim Burton’s geeky kid brother.
He looked up from his book, gave me a once-over, and let out a long sigh. “I doubt I can help you.”
“Funny, I was about to say the same thing,” I muttered. Somewhere behind me, a stack of magazines collapsed, sliding to the floor with a slithering rush.
“If you need school books, try Amazon,” said the kid, seemingly oblivious to the poltergeist-like movement of his clutter piles. “We only do used and rare here.”
More like moldy and ancient, but whatever. “I’m actually looking for a woman who used to work here. Mary Anne?”
The kid sucked on his lip ring for a second, rolling his eyes. “She’s not an employee,” he explained, as if I’d asked him how pants worked. “She’s the owner.”
“Fine,” I said. “Do you know where she lives?”
He scrutinized me again. “Does she owe you money?”
“Does she owe a lot of people money?” I asked.
“No. Business is slow, but fortunately we’ve got this stash of Nazi gold in the office safe,” he said.
“She and my mom were friends a long time ago,” I said. “I just wanted to ask her something.”
“Oh em gee,” said the kid, coming to life like one of the vampires he was impersonating at the first whiff of scandal. “Are you, like, searching for your real identity? Did Mary Anne get pregnant and your mom raised the baby?” He grinned at me, showing a bumper crop of adult braces and dispelling my suspicion he was just being an asshole. Small-town Maine was really boring. If I was trapped working at the Crow’s Nest, I’d get excited if we got a pizza delivered. I shrugged. “Yeah, something like that.”
The guy scribbled an address on the back of a paper bag and slid it to me. “You have to come back and tell me what happened,” he said. “It is so boring here I literally think I will die most days before my shift ends.”
“You got it,” I said, hurrying back toward the door with the intention to never see him again.
“Don’t ask,” I said to Doyle when I got back in the car.
We drove through downtown, more gray buildings with more discreet little signs, and up a winding hill of Victorian homes into an older, shabbier neighborhood that dead-ended at a cottage that was even more ramshackle than the bookstore.
I opened my door. Doyle started to stay put, but I tilted my head. “You mind? I didn’t expect to actually meet her, and now I’m not sure I want to do it alone.”
He got out without a word and followed me up the overgrown walk. The house was practically hidden from the road by a thicket of bushes and thorns, and the windows were covered from the inside by newspapers. The screen door was hanging by one hinge, and I gingerly pushed it aside before I knocked.
I was about to turn around when Doyle perked up. “Someone’s in there,” he said. “I can hear them moving around.”
I knocked again, harder. “Hello?” I called. “I’m Myra Bloodgood’s daughter, Ivy. Can I talk to you?”
It wasn’t my best cold open ever, but now that I was standing here, most of my con skills deserted me. What was I supposed to say?
A lot of locks clicked, and then the door opened a crack. “Go away.”
“Are you Mary Anne?” I said. I held up the diary. “I found your name in this. Mom—Myra—talked about you a lot.” A tiny lie, but hopefully that would get me in the door.
The eye at the crack was wide and bloodshot, and I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me that Mary Anne might be as looped as Mom. Like attracting like and all that. “Where is Myra?” she said. Her accent was precise and clipped, definitely not from around here.
“She’s dead,” I said. The door slammed, and Doyle sighed.
“Want me to try? I can lay on the charm, or something.”
I listened, heard half a dozen deadbolts rattling, and held up a hand. “Wait a second.”
The door flew open again, slamming against the wall like a rifle shot. Mary Anne stared at me, at Doyle. She was wearing one of those dresses that looks like a blanket, and her hair drifted around her head in loose waves. “Who the hell is he?” she said, pointing at Doyle.
“My friend,” I said. “He doesn’t bite.”
Doyle grinned in response, showing his blindingly white teeth. I elbowed him in the ribs. “Knock it off,” I hissed.
Mary Anne stared at both of us, eyes narrowed. “Myra is really dead?”
“Really,” I promised. “We aren’t here to bother you or cause trouble. I just wanted to ask you something.” This was my wheelhouse—lying to nice, average people and talking them into doing things they wouldn’t normally do. Although looking at her stained clothes, bag lady hair, and the slice of hoarder mess I could see behind her, I judged Mary Anne was probably several city blocks away from average.
Mary Anne sighed. “Poor Myra. Rest in peace.” She went back to glaring at us, then slowly let go of her death grip on the door. “I guess you can come in.”
The house was at least as crowded as the bookstore. A sour odor blended with the kind of cheap, cloying incense my mother had always loved. Doyle wrinkled his nose as Mary Anne shoved a pile of books and pillows off the sofa. “Sit,” she said. “You want some tea?”
I nodded, even though I was fairly sure anything that came out of her kitchen would probably poison me.
Doyle leaned over when she stomped away into the cramped little kitchen. “This is not what I was expecting.”
“This is exactly what I was expecting,” I muttered. Mary Anne shouted, making me jump.
“So what did you want to talk to me about, Amy?”
“It’s Ivy,” I said. I got up, looking around the room. It was cramped, covered in tapestry prints and scarves on all the furniture and lamps. My feet sank into at least three layers of Persian carpet along with a decade’s worth of newspapers.
“Whatever,” Mary Anne said, slamming a kettle onto an old wood-fired stove and poking at the embers under the burner. “What did you want to know?”
“Can you just . . .” I swallowed, my throat tight from more than the dust in the air. Just get a grip, Ivy, I commanded. “I don’t know much about Mom before I was born. You were her best friend, I thought maybe you could just tell me a little bit about her.” So I chickened out on the real question. I was working up to it, I told myself. First a little color about Mom as a teenager, then I’d start interrogating Mary Anne about my paternity.
“Not much to tell,” Mary Anne grunted, wiping her hands on a filthy towel. “My family came here from Bosnia. We were refugees. I was the new girl, no English, no friends. Your mama was kind to me. Even started calling me my English name, Mary Anne, so the others would stop picking on me.”
“That’s it?” I narrowed my eyes.
“What more you want?” Mary Anne replied, glaring at me in return.
“Look, I know my grandmother died in a mental hospital,” I said. “I know my mother was struggling with a lot. I just want to know why she left Darkhaven.” I cleared my throat and tried to smile. “Anything you can tell me would be really helpful.” Come on, Ivy, I chided myself. Suck it up and ask what you really want to ask.
Wanted to ask, sure. Wanted to know, maybe not so much. While my father was still a blank space, he could be anyone, maybe even somebody who wasn’t totally horrible. Once I’d asked, I’d opened the door to certainty, and any grifter could tell you that the certain truth was a dangerous thing to have in your grasp.
Mary Anne cut her gaze at Doyle, who had picked up a rotund stone figure from one of the overcrowded windowsills and was turning it in his hands. “Put that down!” she snapped. “I may tolerate zla krv in my house, but I do not have to tolerate rudeness.”
I glanced between her and Doyle. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t realize your, uh, rock was so important.”
“Why are you dragging yourself through the gutter?” Mary Anne snapped. “An innocent boy going around with a girl of tainted blood.”
So much for any more questions. “Hey, lady,” I said. “You don’t want to tell me anything, just say so. I don’t need to be lectured, and I’m full up on crazy.” I waved off the chipped mug she handed at me. “Thanks anyway.”
“Wait!” she hollered desperately as I started to walk out. “Your mama, she died . . . she was murdered? You know who the killer is, or no?”
I turned back on her. Suddenly I felt monumentally stupid for reacting so strongly. She was just a lonely hoarder, stuck in her smelly little house, and I was an idiot to think finding out anything new about Mom would make the past two weeks easier to deal with.
Mary Anne watched me, mug gripped so hard her knuckles were white.
“She killed herself,” I said, making sure to enunciate each syllable. It was still weird to say it out loud to a stranger. It was surprisingly easy. “Nobody hurt her. Nobody killed her. She was weak, and she took the easy way out. That what you wanted to know?”
Doyle put his hand on my shoulder, and I shoved it off. Mary Anne’s face twitched, like I’d reached across the distance and slapped her.
“No . . . ,” she whispered. Her eyes went wide, and it was like she was seeing me for the first time. “You did not come here for Myra,” she breathed. “You come here for your father.” She put a hand to her mouth, fingers shaking. “The darkness around you . . . Myra told me then, and I didn’t believe her. . . .”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Doyle said. “Come on, Ivy, we’re really leaving now.”
“You!” Mary Anne shrieked. The mug dropped from her hand and shattered as she pointed a finger at Doyle. “You run while you can, boy. Myra knew the sickness, knew it was in her bloodline. Knew it would come for her!” She let out a sound like a wounded animal and crumpled to the floor, shaking.
Doyle guided me firmly to the door. “She doesn’t know anything,” he muttered. “Let’s just go, okay?”
“Oh yes,” Mary Anne spat from the floor. Her eyes were alive and gleaming like twin oil slicks, and she pointed a finger with a ragged, bloody nail at me. “Go with him. Your mother knew, and I should have listened. Your coming to be, it drove her past the edge. She should have killed you the moment you drew breath.”
Rage boiled up into my words before I could stop it, and I turned around, starting for Mary Anne. “What did you say?” Doyle caught the sleeve of my jacket, hard enough to rock me back on my heels.
“Don’t, Ivy,” he murmured in my ear. “We don’t need the police coming over here.”
“You think you know anything about me?” I shouted at Mary Anne. “You don’t know shit! You have no idea what it was like to put up with her all those years. The drinking and the fights and her beating on me whenever she was fed up with her own crappy life!”
I picked up one of her stupid rocks and threw it to the ground. Something under the layers of newspaper and junk on the floor shattered, and Mary Anne screamed.
“I’m not bad!” I also screamed, outpacing her. “I’m just trying to deal with this shit as normally as possible, which is more than she ever did! I am not like her!”
It was like I couldn’t stop myself, like the few times I’d let myself get really drunk at some barn party back in the Midwest. I picked up another rock, poised it over a cluster of glass figurines on a table near the door. “Say something else about me!” I shouted. “I dare you!” I didn’t care that I was scaring Mary Anne. I was glad. She was going to taunt me and call me names? I was going to break all her dusty crap.
“No,” Mary Anne was wailing. “No, no, no . . . not me. I’m no threat to you. That’s why he let me live. I’m no threat to either of you.”
Just like that, when she spoke, the surge of adrenaline that had led me to lose my shit on this poor old crazy woman thudded to a stop. I realized that I was having a total meltdown for reasons that had nothing to do with Mary Anne. I dropped the rock, and it thudded on the carpet.
“Who?” I said, feeling my heart thudding like I’d just finished a cross-country race. “Who let you live?”
Mary Anne pulled her knees to her chest. She looked like a little girl who was scared of the dark. “No . . . I can’t . . .”
“WHO?” I thundered. Even Doyle jumped at that. I glanced over and saw that his brow was furrowed and his eyes were wide and almost all pupil. Great. Not only had I lost my temper on a pathetic woman who probably needed a heavy dose of lithium even more than Mom had, I’d done it in front of the one tolerable person I’d met since I came to Darkhaven.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I’m really sorry, okay? Please tell me who said that.”
Mary Anne let out a small sob. “The devil,” she whispered, staring up at me, her whole body quivering. “Your father.”