Chapter Seventeen

Love will find a way through paths
where wolves fear to prey.
~Lord Byron

BEING AN OUTCAST IN SCHOOL, black had always been my favorite color. My dresser drawers were stuffed with black T-shirts, jeans, skirts. Nobody messed with me when I wore black, because I was that “angry, crazy bitch.”

Today, I loathed it.

I was surrounded by people dressed in my color. Damn it. Who did they think they were?

The crying and hugging had me dodging every person I came in contact with after the memorial, leaving me to hunt for solitude even in a house as big as Antonia.

I passed Ben’s office along the way. Behind the door, Mom’s voice was quietly soothing, reading some lines from her manuscript about happier times in the Ramsey household. I didn’t have to look inside to know Ben was with her.

June third. It boggled my brain that they could set a date after everything that had happened, but then again, my mom had always played rescuer. Although it had been two weeks since that night, I still heard Ben’s keening cries for his son in my nightmares.

I woke afterward with tears on my face, too.

How could I mourn when he could be out there—alive—suffering?

Ben and I had swum for hours looking for Geoff while Lewis and Dad went for help. I’d combed the beach as well, finding a trail of deep footprints in the sand leading into the forest—until high tide came and took them away, too. Perhaps the footprints had belonged to someone heavy.

Or to someone carrying a load, like another body.

If Ben had seen the hag before she disappeared underwater, he never mentioned it. Anytime I considered discussing it with Mom or him, I had only to think of Dad’s illness and how freaky my explanation would sound…

Sheriff’s deputies had swarmed the island, divers searched, and even a helicopter had been deployed. After a while, they came to the same conclusion as they had about his brother: he’d drowned, and anything else was only wishful thinking. The search yielded nothing, except for inside the pine forest beside Flint’s. One of the deputies was a Gullah descendant, too, and she identified the rocks I’d stumbled upon as the makeshift grave markers of a slave cemetery. Protected by Federal law.

No one would be able to buy Flint’s property.

Tiptoeing now, I made my way up the stairs, being careful to stay on the outer edge of each step where the wood wouldn’t creak—a trick Geoff had taught me. I walked by my room, where the haints continued to play cryptic pranks I was in no mood for, and went on.

Lewis wasn’t talking to me—could I really blame him?—so I hadn’t visited Anita since before homecoming. I’d had no hoodoo help from Eugenia, either. Fearing me, she’d refused to open her door when I’d come by one afternoon.

Geoff’s room, my usual destination, turned me inside out. If I stayed there for long, I would bawl into his pillow until nausea set in.

Not this time. Not today.

The last place anyone would look for me would probably be Ben’s room, so that’s exactly where my feet led me.

Closing the door behind me, I spied the entertainment center.

Rose had shown me the movies shortly after Geoff’s disappearance. For someone who took no interest in his son’s extracurricular activities, Ben kept a meticulous collection of Geoff’s amateur horror films and school documentaries.

“What do I want to watch today?”

I chose “My Zombie Girlfriend.” It sounded innocuous enough. I hit the power buttons, turning on the TV and the DVD player, but something was already in the player. Geoff’s face popped on the screen, followed by the title, “Stolen Lives, Stolen Land.”

The interviews. My stomach dipped. Ben must’ve been watching and left it in the machine. The film had never played on air out of respect for Ben and his tragic loss, and he and his ex-wife had abandoned the Yemassee Shores project.

Perching on the edge of the bed, I watched as one after one, the native islanders and even Flint looked into the camera and shared their personal history within the Old Place. When the documentary ended, Geoff’s credits rolled along with a final nod to Benjamin Ramsey like a snarky, cinematic middle-finger salute.

My own finger froze above the stop button when Geoff sat down in front of the camera. He was wearing the clothes he’d worn the night we’d kissed on Alessandro’s fishing boat.

“Vincent, this film is dedicated to you above everyone else.”

I dropped the remote, and my hand flew to my mouth.

“I worked so hard for so long to get my dad to take me seriously, to pay attention. I thought he’d take notice if I became more like his idol—you know, become Byronic. But the weirdest thing of all is how he contributed the most, making you, my love, my sister…my own Augusta.”

I replayed the DVD again and again as I laid my head on the bed, watching Geoff until I had every sound, every image, and every line memorized, like when I was a kid with some cartoon I adored. Only this time, I never wanted to stop. Never wanted to give up searching for him. Never wanted to close my eyes and not see Geoff’s face again. But my eyes drifted shut eventually.

The remote smacked the hardwood floor, waking me. I sat up. The TV screen fizzed with white noise. In the static nothingness, I pictured two human figures standing on a shore.

I didn’t know what the future held for me—for us all—but my hand itched to draw the past again.

Back in my bedroom, I sketched the image I’d seen in my mind. It was the island. From the beach, most islands looked the same to me, but I’d been to this one before. I remembered standing on that sand, watching Geoff grieve for his brother, and now I’d drawn the two guys there together. Alive.

It could’ve been a vision of them at any point in the past, but I didn’t think so. I hoped—I needed it to be recent.

I rolled up the picture and stuck it in my bag. Skipping out on the rest of the somber memorial, I snuck out the back door and borrowed Mom’s car. I had one ally left—the only person who wouldn’t dare call me crazy for my ideas.

Dad.

My father’s hotel room overlooked a small lagoon in the touristy heart of the resort island, where I imagined him spending hours staring out at the small water feature, enjoying the Anhinga bird drying its wings in the sun or maybe the alligator creeping along the edge of the dark water. When he was on his meds, Dad could entertain himself for days doing nothing more than watching time go by.

“Would you like me to call room service? They make great macaroni here.” He reached for the phone.

“No, thanks.”

We sat across from each other on the room’s double beds, taking turns with small talk to fill the awkward silence. His open suitcase sat behind me, and I avoided looking at the contents. Amid his disorderly socks and T-shirts, I had no doubt I’d see something that reminded me of when he still lived at home with me and Mom.

She wouldn’t have allowed this mess. She always used to pack for him, matching his outfits and carefully rolling them up so he’d be able to look presentable for his clients when he traveled. Living with his moods must’ve been harder for her than me. She’d been responsible for us all, and he repaid her with infidelity and irresponsibility.

“How’s Mom?” He stared at his hands as he rubbed them over and over in his lap. Definitely on the meds.

“Fine. Her mind’s on Ben.” I rolled my eyes. “She’s been pretending like everything that happened was because she was sick or something.”

I knew defense mechanisms when I saw them. Almost immediately after we’d returned home from flushing the Boo Hag out of her, Mom complained about the food she’d been eating. She’d gone online and looked up all her favorite foods, convincing herself she had a gluten allergy and needed a new diet to fight celiac disease.

Really? Like I should blame wheat bread instead of her for trying to kill my boyfriend?

Dad rubbed his forehead, but I saw the moisture in his eyes.

I winced, not meaning to worry him. “I’m sorry.”

He waved a hand and smiled faintly. Maybe he still cared about Mom even after everything that had happened between them. And here I’d come, like a drama queen, to dump my problems on him.

If Dad was on meds, he was lucid. Probably too lucid for what I wanted to talk about—that sketch I’d done of Geoff and George. If I told him all about the hoodoo stuff, he might blow me off like the rest of the family and tell me I was being crazy. I couldn’t bear the irony of that.

Instead, I got up and went to his easel, where he was painting a pastel of the lagoon. “Impressionist? Wow, that’s um…different.” I smirked to myself. The picture was lovely, really—a wash of green hues with a blooming flower amid lily pads—but for my dad, it was deathly tame. Like nursing home therapeutic art. Not the work of a gifted artist like Dad.

His idea of a landscape usually consisted of expressionistic aliens rising from the Bermuda Triangle, wearing armor and shooting lasers.

“You don’t like it?” He came over to squint at his work. “You might like some of my earlier ones better. Wanna see?” He sounded hopeful.

Mom was right. I was a bitch sometimes. “Sure, Dad.” I shrugged.

In a flash, he had his portfolio open and spread out on the empty bed. There were graphic design samples for clients: street scenes, music festivals, and concert logos. Then there were more personal pieces. Those were my faves. Greek gods slaying wicked mermaids. Cannibals nibbling giants’ toes. Vampire cats chasing fairies.

Dad’s imagination knew no boundaries.

My breath left my body in a whoosh when I reached a series of sketches beginning with a lighthouse. The lighthouse. The one from the Gullah island.

“Dad?” I murmured.

He leaned over my shoulder. “What, baby girl?”

I flipped through charcoal drafts of houses and street signs I recognized. “Have you ever been to the Lowcountry before now?”

He chuckled, admiring one of his stranger works of a farmhouse in flames. “No. But I’ve heard your grandparents talk about it.”

Could he have my gift? The exact same gift of drawing the past?

There were at least fifty rough drawings of Bandunchuch Island. Trembling, I whipped through the lot of them until I saw one that called out to me. It was the vacant house that I’d seen the day when I’d visited with Geoff and he’d refused to let me snap a pic. In Dad’s drawing, however, the place looked new, with a front porch swing and two beautiful young ladies in long dresses, sitting side by side.

Holding hands.