Chapter 41

Nate went to the bathroom to get an old towel to rub the dye off my face. I stood at the edge of my bed. I was exhausted. I’d stripped off the dress and pulled on some sweats. I held the dress out and looked it over. The sleeve was torn and the beads were falling off. There were splotches of black hair tint on the front. It would never be the same.

“I can try and get it dry-cleaned,” I mumbled when he walked back into the room.

Nate plopped onto the bed and pulled me down so I was sitting between his legs. He rubbed my face with a corner of the towel. “I don’t care about the stupid dress.”

“What do you think is going to happen?” After the police arrived, we’d all gone back inside. They had separated all of us and taken everyone’s statement. I’d led one of the officer’s back outside to the well. Her eyes grew wide when she flashed her light down and saw the bones. She’d whispered into her shoulder walkie-talkie. She sent someone down the trail to the beach to see if they could find my phone. By the time we went back inside, Dick was in handcuffs.

At first I wasn’t sure how the police had gotten there so quickly. When he couldn’t find me in the house, Nate had decided to sneak out to look for me. My mom discovered Nate sneaking out of the library and they had fought. Anita had called her an hour before and told her she was worried about me. My mom assumed Nate and I were up to something, maybe planning to run away before my appointment in Seattle. Dick had warned her that I might need to be forcibly taken into care. She’d called Dr. Mike and the police to come out to the house.

Once we had come inside with the police, my mom wouldn’t let go of my hand. She repeated over and over how sorry she was. She kept crying, and eventually Dr. Mike arranged for Dr. Wilson to come out and give her a shot of something. It seemed like we would have to keep telling our stories over and over, but finally they took Dick away and told us they would be back in the morning. I didn’t tell them everything. I didn’t tell them about Mandy. I let them think I’d found the bodies when I tripped over the well cover.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Nate sighed. “For the sisters it will be a murder charge. Not getting them help is the same as having pushed them down that well. With my mom and sister, I’m not sure what the charges will be. He just watched them die. In some ways it’s almost worse than if he had killed them. At least then it would have been—what do they call it?—a crime of passion. Watching them die just feels like he couldn’t be bothered.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He took the life jackets hoping something would happen. He couldn’t stand the idea of anyone, not even his family, coming in between him and what he wanted. It’s always been about this stupid house. Who does that? Who sits back and watches his wife and daughter die and can’t even be bothered to pick up the phone?”

“Your dad’s sick.”

“I always sorta knew he wasn’t right, you know. People say all the time that they don’t think a parent loves them, but with him I knew it was true. He never cared about me; he cared about what I could do for him.” He sighed again. “I feel bad for my mom. She would have done anything for Evie. Going out on the boat was what she always did when she was stressed. She would have known she shouldn’t jump into the water when Evie fell, that it was too cold. That time of year, you’d have only a few minutes in the water before hypothermia would set in, but she never could sit by. She had to try to save her.”

“She was brave.”

“Sounds like someone else I know.”

I turned around so I could see his face. “You mean me?”

“What you did was either brave or stupid.”

“Your dad wasn’t supposed to discover I was behind it. He was supposed to think it was the ghost of his mom and then rush out to cover things up so I could get a picture of it. Then we would have taken our proof and gone to the police. It was a good plan.”

“It was a plan,” he agreed. “I’m not sure it was a good one.”

I mock punched him in the shoulder. “If we’d gone to the police, they never would have believed us. Your dad needed something to make him confess, something supernatural.”

“You figured there weren’t enough ghosts in this house? You had to make your own?”

“So now you believe me that there was a ghost?” I asked, seizing on the point.

“Maybe.”

“I think your sister knew what happened. That he left her out there. I think that’s why she came back.”

“Maybe.”

I hated how vague boys could be. I glanced around the room. I’d wondered if Evie would show up when I was having the showdown with her dad, but there had been nothing. Not a blowing curtain or even a pile of seashells. Maybe she didn’t need to hear her dad confess; maybe it was enough that someone was listening for her and that the truth would come out.

“You still think with everything that happened, the ghost could have been my subconscious?”

“Don’t get touchy. I’m not saying it like there’s something wrong with you. I’m saying it’s a possibility. Your brain could have pieced things together and then used the idea of a ghost as a way to make sense of things.”

“Fine, it’s a possibility.” I snorted to give a sense of what I thought of his possibility.

Nate rubbed his face. “I don’t want to think about this any more tonight. There will be plenty to sort out tomorrow. I’m guessing our parents are going to get a divorce.”

“I guess that takes care of that whole stepbrother, stepsister issue.”

“Wash the rest of that stuff out of your hair,” Nate said, giving me a soft shove toward the bathroom.

I bent over the sink, letting the warm water rinse through my hair. The swirl of dark tint went down the drain, growing lighter and lighter until the water ran clear and my hair was back to its normal light brown. I pulled a fresh towel off the rack and rubbed my hair dry.

“I take it you don’t like me with black hair,” I said, leaning against the bathroom doorjamb.

“You dressed like my grandma is not a turn-on.”

“I took the dress off.”

“That’s a turn-on.” He held out his hand.

I walked over and took it. He pulled me down onto the bed. He curled up behind me so that we were perfectly spooned. I could feel the heat of his body through our clothes. He nuzzled my neck; his soft kisses made me shiver.

“Still cold?” he whispered into my hair.

“Just a bit.” I pressed my body back against his. “What do you think is going to happen with the house?”

“I don’t care.” His hands found the gap between my sweatshirt and yoga pants. His hands felt hot against my skin as he traced the line of my ribs. “With everything that’s happened, I just want to be with you. I have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow. I don’t even want to think about it. The only thing I know for sure is that this is where I belong. The house isn’t important; it’s who you share it with that matters.”

I felt my breath quicken. I pulled his arm around me. I opened my eyes. There was still a pile of seashells on the table by my bed. I could feel his breath on my neck. I reached out and pulled the chain for my light. I could hear the rain outside, the plink of raindrops as they blew against the window. In the distance there was a low rumble of thunder. There was enough light coming from outside to see the shape of the furniture in the room. On the bookshelf I could just make out Mr. Stripes.

Then he winked. My breath stopped. I waited to see if it would happen again. I told myself it could have been a trick of the light, but I decided that it was Evelyn giving me her sign of approval.

I rolled over so I was facing Nate. He ran his thumb along the side of my face. I wrapped my arms around him, closed my eyes, and forgot the rest of the world.