Beware the Wild (18 page)

My feet are on the ground. The pinching at my middle is a hand holding me upright.

“No, look at that, her eyes are open. Poor thing's been working too hard lately.”

Little by little, my vision clears. Candy's got me through the front door and the heat of the sun revives me a little. I see my legs moving down the stairs before I feel them. Once the fuzz starts to clear, it leaves quickly, and I realize I must've started to faint.

“Don't slow down now, Sterling. We've got you.” Heath's voice clears more of the fog.

I started to faint and Heath caught me.

“Say good-bye to Old Lady Bat-brain unless you want her calling your mama.” Candy hooks one arm through mine, lending her strength and momentum.

I dredge up enough energy to call my farewell and toss a smile over my shoulder. Then we're in Candy's car. I rest my head against the seat and close my eyes, but Candy's having none of it. She punches the side of the headrest, making my brain collide with my eyes.

“Candy!”

I've never heard Heath's voice at that volume. Candy's face is rigid. I know why, but I don't have any apologies for her.

“What. The. Hell,” she says. “Have you eaten anything today? Anything at all? Because I don't think you have.”

“Just leave it alone,” I say. I'm not about to explain that I had a dose of Shine that's kept me going as well as any meal. The ironic truth is that ever since that night in the Lillard House, I've been eating better than I have in months.

“That's a no. And no, I won't just leave it alone, Saucier. You
fainted
because you, I dunno, exist. This has gone too far and it's time you faced it. You need a damn hamburger. I'm buying. That means it's a gift, and etiquette says you can't refuse a gift.”

“I'm not doing this on purpose, Candy!” My throat is so tight I can hardly speak. “This was totally out of my control!”

“I don't believe you,” she returns, unrelenting. When Candy gets her nose in something, she can be as ruthless as a turkey buzzard. Pick, pick, picking until the bones are clean. “I don't believe that you get to this point—
fainting
—unintentionally. I don't believe that you don't have control. And I'm not going to let you believe that, either.”

I can't explain anything to her until I get that charm on her wrist and reintroduce her to reality. And I
need
to talk to her about it. I'm tired of this wall between us. I'm going to knock it right the hell down.

“Okay,” I say even as she noses the car into one of the stalls at Sonic. “Get me a damn hamburger. And in return, I get to give you a gift you can't refuse.”

I display the bracelet. The charm in this one is a ceramic tile pressed with some saint's face. Basic, but not anywhere near Candy's style.

“Seriously? You are cruel, Saucier.” She snatches the bracelet, fixing it around her wrist as she places an order for three hamburger meals.

From the backseat, Heath squeezes my shoulder. I don't know what I expected. There was no flash of light, no immediate sense of knowing that came over me when I put my own bracelet on. I just watched Phin go in, never forgot him, and started seeing the Shine all at once.

It was different for Heath and Old Lady Clary. They didn't watch Phin cross the fence. I had to say his name before they remembered. But they were capable of remembering. That's what these charms do: make us capable of seeing how Shine has changed reality.

As we eat, I watch Candy carefully, waiting for some sign that the charm's done its work. I demolish the burger and pass the fries to Heath. Candy doesn't protest. She only eats a handful of her own fries before also donating to the same cause.

“Thank you,” she says, collecting all the bits of trash from my lap.

Unlike Heath's car, Candy's comes with rules. One of those being that the person who leaves garbage behind shall lick her tires clean. It's a sign of how concerned she's become that she let us sit inside while we ate something with more grease than a banana.

“So what do you want to do on this our day of exoneration from the sophomoredom?” She waves at a yellow truckload of screaming former seniors pulling into a slot three spaces down. “That is, before we round up the girls to crash whatever party my cousins are hosting at the trailer. We can make an allowance for you, of course, Heath. Just this once. Because you're pretty.”

“That's very thoughtful,” he says, clearly amused at the way Candy directs the world.

“One more time.” My gut cramps. I wish I hadn't eaten quite so much. “His name is Phineas Harlan Saucier.”

“You've got to be kidding me. You're both in on this madness?”

“It's not madness,” Heath replies quickly, winning a scoff from Candy.

“Just say it, Candy. Just once. Phineas Harlan Saucier.”

She repeats his name and I wait for the memories to unlock or return or do whatever it is they do. I wait for that surprised shake of her head, the vaguely confused look in her eye as she reconciles what she knows with what she knew, but it doesn't come. She looks at me with that same expectant expression.

“There. I said it. Can we move on?”

It didn't work.
Why didn't it work? Did Old Lady Clary give me a bad charm? Did she do it on purpose? Why would she do such a thing?
She wouldn't. That's the answer. She wouldn't bother with sabotage; it just didn't work.

My phone buzzes three times in quick succession with a message from Lenora May. All it says is,
It's time we talked. Meet me at home
.

“Yeah,” I say, uncertain how I should be feeling in this moment. “We can move on.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

P
HIN SAYS THERE ARE TWO
ways you can tell a person's lying. First, they start talking, and second, they stop. It's the sort of perspective you develop when the town you live in is built on secrets.

All it takes to divert Candy is the suggestion that Heath and I have intimate plans for
the afternoon. She drops us at Heath's truck and we heed Lenora May's beckoning message, returning home to find her waiting at the kitchen table.

Her face is desperately honest and she clutches a folded piece of paper close to her chest. Its edges are tattered, the creases so worn they might fall apart in her hands. Her eyes move to Heath briefly.

“He knows,” I say.

“I saw your boots,” she says finally. “You went into the swamp again. And I know you've met Fisher and he's the one who gave you that cherry. I know you won't stop trying and also that you don't believe I'm not the enemy. But maybe you'll believe someone else.”

With some reluctance, she offers the paper. It whispers between her fingers as I take it. I don't understand the pain I see in her eyes, but I do know it's real. Whatever is written on this page is as dear to her as my brother is to me.

The date in the upper-right corner is July 10, 1997. The paper looks much older than that, as if it's been opened and refolded a thousand times. The small handwriting is as neat as it is jagged.

Harlan. Grandpa.

Pieces of the past suddenly begin to fall into place. If you ask Mama, the swamp is the reason Grandma left Grandpa. Even surrounded by family, he could never extricate himself from it. If he wasn't sitting on the porch, watching the swamp with eyes as narrow as pumpkin seeds, then he was walking the perimeter. He called this “fence walking.” Mama called it “obsession and a sad one at that.” A man who'd built so many of the beautiful old houses of Sticks shouldn't be obsessed with something as simple and mundane as a fence. But now I know. He wasn't obsessed, he was in love. It's so tragic I almost can't bear it.

“Okay, I'm listening,” I say, sliding into a chair.

With a cautious glance to the window, she clears her throat delicately and begins, “My name is Lenora May Lillard and I was born here in Concordia Parish in 1845.”

She gives that a moment to sink in, which is good because Heath is on his feet and I'm not far behind.

“Lillard?” I ask. I know that name. “As in
the
Lillard family? No. That's not possible.”

“I'm afraid it is. I grew up in Oak Point Manor—that's what we called it then, now you know it as the Lillard House—and for most of my life I was happy. People didn't fear the swamp so much then. There were stories, of course, and Mrs. Clary had all the best ones, but they weren't all these tales of madness and despair. There were good ones, too. The Clarys were even known to go into the swamp to collect remedies that could cure nearly anything.”

“How is this even possible?” Heath's fingers rest on my shoulder.

“It shouldn't be,” I say, looking again at the letter in my hands.

I guess she could have faked it, but the paper's old as time and there's no mistaking my Grandpa's handwriting. I recognize it from old plans for this house, the ones Mama had framed after he died. They've been hanging in our dining room for years and years. That, combined with recent events make it possible, even probable, she's telling the truth.

I think of what the Lillard House must have looked like with a fresh coat of paint and big, lazy rocking chairs lining the porches. Before the years weighed down the floorboards and a thousand storms battered the walls, it must have been impossibly beautiful set against the dark oaks. Lenora May makes all sorts of sense when I picture her there, orbited by crinoline and layered skirts.

So does Fisher.

Heath slumps into his seat, boneless as a sack of potatoes, and Lenora May takes that as a sign to continue.

“Before I explain what happened, I have to tell you that we loved the swamp very much as children. It was our secret hideaway and it was a
good
place.” A frown flashes across her lips almost too quickly to see. “Fisher was good, too. He only ever wanted to keep me safe.”

I know what she's not saying. “You're afraid of him?”

Her response is in her hesitation. I think of the easy way Fisher moves through the swamp, the way Shine seems to lean into him like he's the sun, and how I felt at the end of our conversation today. Lenora May's fear is quiet, but it's serious as summer and it resonates with something I already knew.

Taking a shallow breath, she continues, “Fisher was friends with Elijah Clary, Mrs. Clary's son. From him, Fisher learned how to construct a charm and manipulate Shine. When the war came on, my father decided it was prudent for me to marry immediately. He chose a man with a brutal reputation. I couldn't bear it and, on top of this, Papa was sending Fisher away to fight for the Confederacy. We had no time to waste. We decided to escape into the swamp and not return until enough time had passed that we could choose our own destinies.”