Oblivion (27 page)

“What was that?” John turns the beam of his flashlight to the land beneath my feet. A tiny patch of red reflects in the beam.

I tap the blade of the shovel against the dirt.
Thunk
. “This is it!”

“That’s it,” John agrees. “Find the edges.”

I’m exhausted, covered in dirt and muck, freezing … but I keep digging alongside John, who heaves two shovels of dirt to my one out of the hole in which we’re standing.

When we’ve cleared the surface, he climbs out of the muddy hole, pulls me out after him, and we shine our flashlights into it. We stare down at a door. Crimson in color, it’s beautiful from an architectural standpoint—arched to a Gothic point, as if it belongs at the Church of the Holy Promise. Wide-grained wood—hickory, maybe—with red paint peeling from its edges. There’s a minute window, about eight inches square, in the peak of the arch. Most of the diamond-shaped panes have broken free from it, but it’s gorgeous.

They say life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die, and mine now becomes a slide show in my mind so vivid that I wonder if I’m about to meet my maker, too. The last time I saw this door, I was certainly close enough.

When I close my eyes, I see linens drying in the breeze
off the lake. Hands clutching a rosary. Then the pictures come more quickly. The Vagabond. My mother, the mystic. The labyrinth at the Church of the Holy Promise. The fountain. The garden house and the panties. The rowboat. The shovel. The dirt … the door.

I remember everything. From the moment Palmer pulled me out of that fountain, until the police shoved me into the interrogation room two days later. From the day I arrived at County Juvenile Hall to the day the Hutches came for me.

No! I attempt to scream the word, but it comes out only as a shrill, and I can’t stop screaming. I gravitate away from the hole we dug.

No.

No, it isn’t true. It can’t be true!

I break into a run, heading back toward John’s SUV.

“Callie!”

I hear him behind me, but I keep running.

“Callie, wait!”

I skid to a halt at the vehicle and tear off my muddy clothes. Have to get the filth of it off me. Have to leave the earth where I found it. Have to respect the dead.

The rain is a downpour now, cleansing my flesh.

But nothing will cleanse my mind.

I left her there with a madman.

I didn’t save her.

I saved only myself.

I lift my face to the heavens and breathe in the rain.

Drown me now, Lord. Drown me now.

“Get in the car,” John says.

No. But I can’t speak over my stifling tears.

“Get in the car!” He’s shedding his muddy clothes, too.

I hear doors opening and closing. I guess he’s putting on his spare clothes.

Flashes of blue and red lights cross over my closed eyes, but I know they’re only memories of the night the police found me writing on the walls.

“Damn it, Calliope! Get in the goddamn car!”

Rain washes over me, masking my tears.

Something fluffy and warm surrounds me.

John pulls me into the car.

I shudder out another sob and wipe my tears on the sweater he wrapped me in.

“What the hell happened back there? We finally find it, and you run?”

At last I turn my head toward him. “Johnny?” The rosary is cold against my skin. My fingers close around it.

“What happened?”

I’m bawling violently, trembling, hyperventilating.

“Calliope, talk to me!”

“I remember,” I whisper.

“What?”

“I remember!”

He’s silent for a few seconds. “Well,” he finally says.
“That’s good. That’s what you wanted, right?”

I didn’t want to remember this. I wanted to remember that she’d gotten away, or even that he was keeping her someplace safe, or … or … anything but this! I shove my arms into the sweater and curl into a ball on the seat, resting my head on the consul. A red felt-tip and my notebook taunt me from the floor. I grab them both.

“We’ll get through this.” He massages my head a moment before he reaches for his cell phone. “I’m going to call Guidry, okay? Have them look at what we found.”

I uncap the pen, open my notebook, and write:

Unearth her. Fitting tomb. Unearth her. Fitting tomb for a beautiful girl. Unearth her unearth her unearth her.

“John?”

“Hmm?”

“Hannah Rynes is buried under that door.”

He inhales sharply, as if sucking back in the wind my words just knocked out of him. “Anything else I should know?”

Plenty.

For starters, she was alive when Palmer put her there.

T
he jury is out on whether we are heading to the Vagabond to drop me off, or to grab some things so I can stay with John and his family. I can’t imagine the latter, and he can’t imagine the former—leaving me there, above the Vagabond, alone.

By the time we arrive, a third option presents itself; although calling it an option is like calling one’s own birth a choice, as I’m certain neither of us will have a voice in the matter.

Three squad cars and one plain black sedan with civilian plates—all with flashing lights—are parked in the lot at the harbor near the walk leading to the iron staircase.

“I’ll be going back to the Hutches’.” And if they let me go tonight, I’ll consider myself lucky.

“I’ll talk to them,” John says. “See if they’ll let me bring you home, and you’ll just come with me.”

Before I can tell John it won’t make a difference, Elijah appears, hands cuffed behind his back, squinting into the blazing headlights of the patrol cars, as an officer leads him toward the backseat of one of them.

I bolt out of the SUV, wearing only John’s Carmel-issue, Land’s End V-neck sweater. “No!”

I’m in a room at the Lake County Police Department, wearing sweats with
LCPD
scrawled down the left leg. They’re too large, but at least they’re warmer than wet underwear and a damp sweater, all of which I’m pretty certain has made its way into evidence bags, along with the digging clothes, which John had balled in the back of the car.

I’ve been in this room before, and it’s just as chilly now as it was last year. Still, it’s comfortable, as waiting rooms go. I’m sitting on a vinyl-tufted bench the color of rotten kiwi and leaning against the cinder block wall behind me, waiting for the Hutches to come take me home. This time, I knew the answers to the department’s questions, and even to those they didn’t ask. I know rounds two and three and four of questions will follow in the weeks to come, but for now, they’re satisfied. They’d call, they said, to tell me if Hannah’s remains are under the door.

The interview didn’t take as long this time around … for any of us, apparently, as John’s already been permitted to leave—which he did, with some persuasion, although he’d wanted to wait around for me—and Elijah just walked through the door to join me. Without handcuffs this time.

He takes the seat across the room on an equally putrid-looking bench, upholstered in burnt orange, and does everything in his power not to look directly at me. “Thanks,” Elijah says. “They were going to book me for breaking and entering, until you showed up. It’s the difference between staying with the fosters or heading back to County, so … thanks.”

“They won’t send you back to County.”

“If they’d arrested me, they would’ve. But … no. Looks like I’m good.”

“Glad I helped for a change.”

“Well, I had a legitimate excuse for being there. You. That’s why the cops showed up. Someone saw me go in. We had a date, remember.” He zaps me with a look to kill. “Or do you?”

The steady stare between us is cool enough to freeze water. I raise an eyebrow but don’t break the glance … or the silence.

A few seconds, which feel like hours later, he blinks away. “Don’t you think I was better suited for that jaunt out to Highland Point than that mannequin?”

“Maybe you were.”

“Callie, I’ve been there since the start.” Elijah casts his eyes downward. He nods toward the watch on my right wrist. “That his?”

I hesitate, but eventually sigh. I don’t know how to tell him I’m not wearing the watch because it’s John’s but because of its mysterious connection to my past. “Yeah.”

“That’s some hickey.”

“It’s a bruise. My mom sort of freaked out on me.” He’s the only person I’ll tell.

He shrugs, as if he expected it would be only a matter of time before she lost it on me. “You okay?”

“I guess so.”

He holds my gaze for a long time, as if determining whether or not I’m telling the truth. “Don’t tell me you’re falling for him.”

“Fine. I won’t.”

“What kind of a fucking prince is this guy? Making you dig!” He drags a few fingers through the wavy chocolate mop atop his head. “Christ, I would’ve dug that hole for you, you know—”

“I wanted to dig.”

“—so you wouldn’t have had to see it.”

“I needed to see it! I’ve been digging in my mind for a year, and not just metaphorically.”

“Was she …” He drums his fingers against his knee. “Was she there?”

“I think so. I don’t know. We found a door, and that was all I could handle.”

He’s nodding. “Why’d you dig there? I mean … how’d you decide?”

“I wrote something about daisies a few weeks ago. I remembered there used to a patch of them, and I wondered—”

“What do you remember? What exactly do you—”

“That night, the night it all happened.”

His jaw clenches, and after a time, he glances around the room and gives his wavy hair a tousle with a sharp toss of his head. “Come here.”

I cross the room; he stands to meet me in the middle of it.

His arms close around my body. He whispers in my ear, in case we’re being watched: “Did you kill him, like you thought?”

“No,” I whisper. “He almost killed me.”

Nearly instantly, he backs away. “Some things are worth forgetting, Callie. Your father trying to kill you is one of them.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, then strikes me with a stare.

An exasperated sigh escapes me. “Elijah, I had to know.” Absently, I fiddle with the watch. “I can’t move on, can’t leave it in the past until I understand it all.”

He chews at the cuticle on his thumb and resumes his seat. “So … you happy with this guy?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “I’m not really with him, not officially.”

“I’m just asking because I think maybe it’s time, you know? Time to leave
us
in the past.”

Here it comes. My eyes glaze with tears. I can’t imagine life without Elijah.

“I love you, baby.”

I nod. “I know.”

“And I know you love me.”

Still nodding: “I do.”

“I think I could hang out with you forever, but I don’t know if that’s what you need anymore.”

“Elijah, don’t.” A few tears escape my lashes. My gaze locks on his four crooked bottom teeth. Such an intimate detail. And I can feel those teeth against my tongue if I so much as glimpse a memory of his kiss. “Don’t.”

“Hey, nothing’s changed, Callie. Not really.”

Except everything. And as much as I know he’s right, that these words have to be said, part of me wants to grasp on to him, hold him tight, keep things the way they used to be.

“I’m still gonna love you. I’m still gonna be here whenever you need me, okay? I’m still gonna kick anyone’s ass out of your way, and I’d still fight to the death for you.”

I wonder how his new girlfriends are going to feel about that, but I don’t ruin the moment by asking.

“I’m just letting you go,” he says. “Letting you find your way, and I’m gonna start looking for mine.”

As if magnetized, I’m moving toward him. I’m on my knees before him, my head in his lap, my arms grasping him about the waist.

“You’re pretty fucking amazing, you know that?” he says, nudging my chin upward.

“So are you.” When I look up, I see his eyes are glossy, too.

He chucks me under the chin. “Any time. Any time you need me, I’m there.”

“Ms. Knowles?”

I peel myself up from the floor and face the officer in the doorway.

“Mr. Hutch is here to take you home.”

Elijah wraps me in a bear hug, kisses me on the cheek, and whispers, “Don’t forget me, baby.”

Impossible not to remember him. He’s part of me.