Circle of Secrets (26 page)

“I almost lost both of you tonight,” my daddy says and his voice is rough around the edges, like the words are having a hard time coming out. “I’m thinking there’s some things I want to change about me, about this job that takes me across the world. Changes I want to make about our family.”

He reaches out to clasp Mamma’s hand. They smile at each other and a peculiar tickling starts to rise in my stomach.

Mamma says, “I have a present for you, Shelby. Been waitin’ for the right time to give it to you, and I think that time is finally here. Pull open that nightstand drawer and find the box with the purple water hyacinths painted on the side.”

I lean over to open the drawer, pulling out the beautiful little jewelry box.

“Open it,” Mamma says in an excited whisper.

I snap back the lid and there’s a shiny new charm nestled
inside. When I lift it out there are three silver hearts dangling from a tiny loop of chain.

“See how the hearts all lock inside one another?”

I nod, looking at it closely. All three of the silver hearts fit inside one another, like a puzzle. Except it’s not a puzzle at all. It’s beautiful and perfect, the hearts separate and distinct but linked together.

“This here charm is our family,” Mamma tells me. “A heart for each of us. You, me, and Daddy.”

“Let me help you attach those hearts to the bracelet,” Daddy offers.

“Put it right in the middle,” I tell him.

He fits the tiny silver hooks together so the three hearts dangle from the bracelet and then slips it over my hand again and snaps it closed. I hold up my wrist and watch the charms swing together.

Mamma leans back into the pillows. Her face is starting to bruise and I’ll bet it hurts somethin’ fierce. Those knotted stitches show how my mamma saved my life.

My heart stops racing and my stomach quits churning as I think about everything that’s happened. “I think it was those blue bottle notes that brought Gwen back.”

Mamma gives me a wistful smile. “Charm bracelets and blue bottles are powerful things,
shar,
and anything’s possible.
Memories and grief locked up for years and finally let loose.”

I’m relieved to see that the charms are all safe, even the gator charm. Nothing got swallowed up by the bayou when I fell in, although there’s water in the tiny blue bottle and the rolled-up note looks soggy.

The most important thing is that my charm bracelet is full of stories, full of faith, and full of my family and me.

Most of all, it’s full of love.

EPILOGUE

After I jump out of the boat and tie the rope around a cypress knee, Mamma and me hold hands as we walk toward the Deserted Island house.

“Can’t believe I’m actually here,” Mamma whispers as sunlight falls through the oak leaves and stains the path. “Used to come here every single day when I was a girl, but it’s been almost twenty years now.”

“Does it look the same?”

“Mostly, but the trees are bigger, the path weedy and overgrown.”

Actually, the path seems more overgrown to me, too, and it’s only been a few days. Which makes me wonder. When I came here with Gwen was I going back to
her
time — or was she coming forward to
my
time?

When we get to the clearing Mamma stops and just stares and stares.

The house has aged years and years since I was here with Gwen just a few days ago. The walls have collapsed a little bit more, the porch is sagging in on itself, the paint on the
clapboard peeling, the roof shingles moldy and caving in around the chimney.

“Better be careful,” Mamma says as we pick our way through overgrown bushes and weeds that are taller than me. The air is filled with the thrum of crickets and clouds of gnats.

We manage to get around the broken boards on the porch and push at the front door, which creaks as it swings wide. “If the fire department was here, they wouldn’t let us near. Stay together and watch your step so we don’t crash through a board.”

Even though it’s the middle of the day with plenty of light, the interior of Gwen’s old house is a dusky twilight due to the filthy windows and dingy wallpaper.

I watch Mamma staring around the living room, her eyes following the stairs leading up to the second floor; I see the memories and emotions flitting around on her face. Shock, disbelief, sorrow, and sadness. “This house used to be like my second home,” she says.

I tug on her hand as we go up the staircase. The steps are actually in decent shape but we carefully creak up each one.

Moments later, we’re standing in Gwen’s old bedroom, empty of furniture. Mildew stains drip down the corners from rain and the dormer window that’s open a few inches.

“Probably some vagabond or hermit passin’ by,” Mamma murmurs. There were signs in the kitchen that someone had stayed here over the years. Trash and a ripped-up sleeping bag. Pieces of charred wood left in the stove. Coffee stains in the sink, crumbs, and mouse pellets.

A peculiar shimmery feeling runs from my little toes all the way to the top of my head. I’d been to Gwen’s house with her right after her parents moved away, when the house had leftover furniture and dust.

Somehow, she and I had straddled time, half in hers, half in mine. She really had been hovering between her old home and heaven, trying to leave, confused and lonely, but tethered like a deflating balloon to Bayou Bridge.

“I remember Gwen’s secret cupboard,” Mamma says, walking over to the closet in the corner near the slant of roof. “We built it with her daddy’s help.”

She opens the closet and peers inside, bumping her head against the low ceiling. “It’s smaller than I remember, but it’s there. Reach in, Shelby Jayne, and open it. I know it’s empty, but I jest have to look anyways.”

I duck under her arm and pull at the little door with the brass knob. Pull and pull. “It’s stuck.”

“Probably swelled up with all the damp.”

Then I remember the trick Gwen used the day she showed
the secret cupboard to me. I curl my hand into a fist and pound the edge of the frame. The door pops open.

My mamma lets out a cry of surprise. “That’s right. The door never fit quite right in its frame.”

She turns to gaze at me, a look of bewilderment on her face. “You really did see her, didn’t you?” She shakes her head in disbelief, and then her voice goes real soft. “Too bad Gwen’s scrapbook ain’t here to look at. I’d give anything to see it again. Probably her family took it with them when they moved.”

She glances around the dusky room. “Better get on out of here now.”

An odd feeling starts to rise deep inside my gut. On a whim, I reach clear into the chamber, hoping there aren’t snakes or spiders. I feel dust and cobwebs, my fingers tangling up in the stuff.

“Shoulda brought a flashlight, huh?” Mamma says, trying to peer over my shoulder.

My fingers touch something hard. And real! The corner of a book and the corner of something else. A box of some kind.

“Mamma! There is something! There really is!”

“You ain’t jokin’, are you, Shelby Jayne?”

I reach my arm in even farther, all the way up to my armpit, and inch it out. All at once, Gwen’s scrapbook is sitting in my hands. “Look! It really
is
here!”

Mamma’s got tears in her eyes as I put the photo album in her hands. She blows dust off the decorated cover and peeks inside. “Oh, my, oh my, Shelby Jayne. I can’t hardly believe it. Why didn’t her family take it with them?”

“Maybe they forgot about it in their hurry to move.”

She goes quiet, looking into my face.

“What are you thinking, Mamma?”

“This has gotta be one of the reasons Gwen’s spirit stayed here, tied between her angel grave and the broken bridge and this house. She knew this was still here. And she wanted me to know it. This scrapbook was actually a project she was working on to surprise her parents for Christmas, but she died more than two months before. Wonder if it’s possible to find her family all these years later and take it to them….” Her voice trails off as I go to shut the secret chamber.

But then I recall that I’d felt more than one item inside the cupboard, so I reach in again, my stomach leaping like a mullet. Inch by inch I wiggle my fingers to get around the corners and finally pull out a small box.
Gwen’s jewelry box.

“Oh, lorda mighty,” Mamma breathes, her face going white. “She always kept this in the middle drawer —”

“— of her bureau,” I finish. “You open it.”

“No, you open it. My hands are shakin’ somethin’ fierce,
shar.”

Slowly, I insert my small key charm to unlock the box and
then lift the lid, expecting it to be empty. Surely, Gwen’s sister, Maddie, would have taken the few beaded bracelets and earrings that used to be in here.

And the box is empty, except for one item.

As soon as Mamma sees it, she bursts into tears.

Gwen’s charm bracelet is lying inside. My heart pounds so hard I can’t even hear myself think as I touch the gator charm and the owl and the locket and the key and the topaz birthstone, hanging from the silver chain. “Her charms!” I cry out.

“And this here’s her Cajun fleur-de-lis and
traiteur
box — and her blue bottle.” Mamma hugs me tight against her, and a burst of emotion fills up my eyes.

The bracelet is exactly the same as I remember when Gwen wore it around her wrist. “It’s been sitting in this jewelry box all these years?”

Silently, Mamma nods, then pulls the bracelet out of the box, straightening out all the little charms along her palm. “I always thought Gwen was wearing her bracelet the night she drowned. Always figured it was on the bottom of the bayou, buried in the mud and silt, or swallowed by a gator.”

“Her family must of forgotten to check Gwen’s secret chamber.”

“Probably figured the same thing I did. That the bracelet was lost in the bayou that night.”

I run my finger along the row of pretty charms. “Before she went out in the rain to play Truth or Dare, she took it off and put it in here for safekeeping. Remember her note calling you to come to the bridge that night?”

Mamma bites at her lips and shakes her head. “We’d planned to play Truth or Dare the next rainstorm that hit. Thought we’d be daring and tough. Prove we weren’t afraid.”

Taking a gulp of air, I lift my eyes and Mamma looks up at the very same time. “You think she wants us to do something with her charm bracelet?”

Mamma nods. “I do think so. Maybe this is another reason she was hanging on to this old world. She didn’t want the house to fall apart or get bulldozed down. Her most important possessions lost forever.”

“I think she wanted you to find them, Mamma. I think she wanted you to know she’s okay. And she was worried you’d leave Bayou Bridge before you found her book and bracelet.”

Mamma presses the bracelet against her lips. “Shelby Jayne, I think you’re right. And you set it all off. Like a chain reaction. Soon as you pulled out that very first blue bottle note.”

We hold hands even tighter as we walk back to the boat. A few minutes later, we’re kneeling in front of the stone angel
monument and Mamma is running her hand along the inscription of Gwen’s name.

She closes her eyes, then leans her head back, like she’s feeling the sun as it flits back and forth behind the clouds. “Oh, Shelby Jayne, I don’t know what to do. Should I bury the charm bracelet down in the dirt beside her?”

I chew on the inside of my cheek and notice that the hard lump that’s been there for a year is starting to go away. I think about everything that’s happened, about Gwen and Mamma and me and all the pieces of Gwen’s life — and that’s when a piece of the puzzle suddenly clicks right into place. And completes the picture.

“Not yet,” I tell her excitedly. “I think there’s another reason Gwen has been haunting the graveyard and the bayou — and me.”

Mamma raises her eyebrows, but doesn’t ask what I’m talking about.

“I still need to lay it all out in my mind first.”

She nods, patient, and her lips are smiling just a little bit despite the tears in her eyes.

A gusty wind rises over the water and twilight is coming on, earlier than usual as October rushes forward.

Mamma rises to her feet. She reaches out to take my hand and I have so much emotion inside me that it’s leaking out my eyes. “Let’s get on home before we get wet,
bébé.”

A light rain spatters the sidewalks as I get to school Monday morning.

I brace myself as I spot Tara and Alyson coming out of the bathroom.

When I touch my bracelet with my fingers, all those charms give me strength and I figure those girls can’t affect me no more.

Holding my head high, I breeze past them like they’re invisible. Even their gossipy whispers don’t do nothin’ at all. Like a fly just buzzing around and then gone on the next breeze. I’ve got stories they’ll never know. And ghost secrets they’d kill for.

Stopping at my locker, I dial the combination, get out my math book, and slam the door.

Beside me, another locker three doors down slams shut at the exact same moment.

I look up and laugh as I realize that our movements are exactly the same at the same time. Like a coincidence.

It’s the girl, Larissa. I think back to when we bumped into each other the day I ran away from school.

I remember the ragged jeans, the skinny legs, the scars on the side of her face.

I take a breath and get ready to ask her the question I’ve wanted to ask ever since she warned me away from the
cemetery bridge. “Did you get those scars from falling off that broken pier into the bayou?”

I have a feeling nobody has ever bothered to want to know the truth before.

She watches me with her quiet brown eyes and nods. She stands there, not moving, not running away, her eyes holding mine. “Fell. Pushed. Don’t rightly know exactly how I ended up in the water. All I know is I hit those jagged boards, them rusted nails.”

“Were there gators coming after the blood in the water?”

She nods, but doesn’t speak.

“How’d you get out?”

She lifts her shoulders. “They did drag me out over the pilings, pulled me back onto the pier. But I was stupid. Too chicken to leave. Too dumb to know they didn’t really care about me, although they pretended to at first.”