It Wasn't Always Like This (6 page)

Not everyone
, thought Emma, but kept quiet. Another lesson from Pete:
Be patient. People hate silence. They’ll f ill it for you fast enough. All you have to do is be ready to listen.

Melanie wanted to talk. And Emma wanted to listen. That’s what she was here for, after all. She had all the time in the world to catch Elodie Callahan’s killers.

A BEAUTIFUL SINGING
voice—that was the f irst thing people always mentioned when they talked about Elodie. Even her friends. Also, she’d been inducted into the National Honor Society. But according to Melanie Creighton, she had “enough of a wild side to make her interesting.” It
was
interesting; Allie Golden back in Albuquerque had been shy to the point of being antisocial, from what Emma had uncovered.

Hiding in plain sight
.

Emma studied Melanie’s face as she rambled on about silly pranks, like toilet-papering Barrett Jones’s house the night after a big football game.

“The next day Elodie brought him a dozen chocolate cupcakes. Smart girl.”

Melanie’s expression shifted. “Her . . . poor aunt and uncle. Here they take her in after her folks were killed in a car accident in Orlando last year, and she’d been doing so well. She was like their own daughter. And now this. I don’t think you ever get over losing a child. Or a parent either, when you’re so young.”

“No,” said Emma. “You don’t.”

Her mind raced with this new set of facts: Elodie had been a transplant (like Allie), and her parents were dead (like Allie’s). “So she was from Florida?”

Melanie nodded. “Oh, that’s right. You said you were, too. What part?”

“St. Augustine originally. But we, um, moved around a lot.”

In Emma’s head, pieces of a puzzle edged together. Tentatively. Maybe. Because lots of people could have poisoned Elodie Callahan. Maybe even Tyler Gentry, although Emma doubted it. Maybe he’d gone overboard with a date-rape drug and panicked. People thought horrible thoughts, and occasionally those thoughts turned to deeds, and girls turned up dead. That’s how the world worked. Certain parts of it, anyway. The sick parts, the parts Emma had seen again and again over the years.

Was the Church of Light involved? Maybe. Were they connected to this
place of worship in some perverse way? Looking down at Melanie’s sad face now, Emma couldn’t bring herself to believe it. Melanie certainly didn’t know if they were hiding in plain sight. But regardless of the perpetrator, the murder of Elodie Callahan was an undeniable fact, one that would be true and unchangeable forever, even if their resemblance and their Florida roots added up to nothing more than coincidence.

Emma’s gut told her otherwise. She tried to listen to her gut, because unlike her brain, it was seldom mistaken. On the other hand, there
were
those tacos last night. But if she’d listened to her gut years ago, then maybe she and Charlie—

The thought was interrupted as Melanie Creighton stood and swept Emma into a teary hug. “Welcome to the Fellowship family!”

Chapter Five

St. Augustine, Florida

1913

The f irst time Emma kissed Charlie Ryan—really kissed him the way a girl kisses a boy she loves, and who loves her back—was on the night of her
real
seventeenth birthday, her f irst seventeenth birthday, the one that counted.

Both families had just sat down to a specialty of her mother’s, vanilla cake with lemon f illing. Emma was wearing the new skirt that showed off her shapely ankles and a blouse with a v-neckline her mother thought was scandalous. So did Emma. Not that she’d ever say such a thing out loud, but it made her want to wear the blouse every day. By that time, she had given up taking her mother’s advice on most things.

Seven years had passed since the day of the hawk.

It was Saturday, a relatively cool February night, and the Alligator Farm had done good business. The tourist population swelled in the winters. Even the gators had seemed to enjoy themselves while on display. The O’Neills and the Ryans weren’t rich, not yet, but tonight their coffers were full of admission fees. Emma had sold out of the alligator f igurines and commemorative postcards in the gift shop by the entrance.

Now that they were closed and the tourists had all gone back to their hotels and rented cabins, it was just the O’Neills and the Ryans. Tonight they’d crowded into the O’Neill kitchen for roast chicken and potatoes and then the cake—all Emma’s favorites. Well, everyone except Baby Simon, who toddled around the house and occasionally out the door like a miniature drunk. He was not quite two, his birthday still a month away at the end of March.

Emma had been surprised by Simon’s arrival, but then they all had; Maura O’Neill was close to thirty-eight when she’d conceived. But one thing was for sure (and thank God for that): Simon was the spitting image of his daddy. Emma was grateful for something else, too. Ever since Simon had swelled up in her mother’s belly, Frank Ryan had stopped leering at Maura O’Neill. Now Simon kept her mother so busy she barely had time to look up. Still, she always managed to hang on Frank Ryan’s every word.

“A story!” Art O’Neill demanded as they shoveled dessert into their mouths. The grown-ups had consumed most of a bottle of Irish whiskey, too, reserved for this special occasion. “Let’s have a good one, Frank. It’s Emma’s birthday, after all.”

No matter the occasion, Charlie’s father
always
told a story. And he always made a big point of starting every story with how he’d inherited his “gift of gab” from both sides of his family, as though everyone here in this kitchen might forget this fact if he didn’t repeat himself a hundred times. As he told it (and told it and told it), the Ryan men hailed from County Mayo in the “auld sod” of Ireland—hearty farmers and f ishermen and craftsmen, proud stock who had earned a living from the work of their hands. Proud of their stories, too. Or so Emma added in her head.
He
certainly was.

At night, his paternal ancestors would gather around peat f ires and talk of fairy forts and Tír na nÓg, the land of the eternally young. On his mother’s side, the Montoyas, a mix of Spanish and Indian blood, also spun fabulous yarns at night—Frank knew them all. There were tales of a Calusa woman who fell in love with a Spanish shipwreck survivor named Hernando de Escalante Fontenada. Of a Calusa city that sprang up and then disappeared. Of a Fountain of Youth and its exact location. The tales were passed down to the children who came after her, and their children and their children’s children.

Frank’s maternal grandmother, Ester, swore she was a direct descendant of Hernando de Escalante Fontenada, swore that every word of what she told him was true. She barely spoke any English, apparently. So Frank would always quote her aff irming the truth: “
Es verdad.
”

Here Charlie’s mom would always scoff, chiding her husband not to be ridiculous. Mrs. Ryan frequently scolded her husband when the others were around to hear. Emma liked that about her. But Charlie’s dad would go on talking, even as Charlie shook his head, embarrassed.

“Fountain of Youth, my ass,” was Art O’Neill’s usual response, but he would laugh with the rest of them. “Do you ever see any of these folks? No. Whatever the truth is, it’s dead and buried with them.”

None of this made Emma want to kiss Charlie any less. Charlie was not his father, any more than Emma was her mother, and thank goodness for that. But Frank Ryan always seemed stumped by one particular detail. He didn’t mention it much. Emma wondered if he’d add any details tonight in honor of her birthday. According to his grandmother, the secret of the location of this mysterious Fountain of Youth had been passed on only to Montoya girls. At some point, one of them bore only a son.

So the chain was broken. The family secret died. If there really were a Fountain of Youth, none of them would be f inding it anytime soon. Emma hoped that this impossibility would one day make Charlie’s father shut up. That hadn’t happened yet, and she doubted it would happen any time soon. Certainly not tonight.

“ONCE UPON A
time,” Frank Ryan began, keeping his voice low and ominous, “there was a man named Juan Ponce de León.”

Charlie edged his chair closer to Emma’s. Under the table, his hand slid over hers. His skin was warm, and she felt a tingle. Across from them, Mrs. O’Neill stopped bouncing Simon on her lap and arched a brow. Emma pointedly ignored her. Charlie’s f ingers laced with hers.

“And King Ferdinand of Spain sent him on a mission,”
Frank was saying. The tale of Juan Ponce de León was one of his favorites, especially the parts that took place right here in St. Augustine. “It was a long and dangerous sea voyage. Juan Ponce de León was only thirty-eight years old.”

Emma rolled her eyes.
Only
thirty-eight? That was ancient.

“No wonder he wanted the secret to youth,” Emma muttered under her breath.

Charlie squeezed her hand. His thumb wandered to the center of her palm, making gentle circles.

She whispered in his ear, “If Grandma Ester was alive, she would die from boredom right now. You know it’s true.”

“
Es verdad
,” she and Charlie both said at the same time.

Charlie bit his lip, trying not to laugh. He turned beet red.

“
Es verdad
,” she breathed again in his ear, teasing.

“Shh,” Charlie whispered furiously. But he leaned in. His soft earlobe met her lips.

Something in Emma’s tummy went f izzy. He was a bold one underneath all his quiet, that Charlie Ryan. His father was still yammering away.

“Juan never found the fountain . . .”

This part of the story always made Emma sad. That a man would risk life and limb to travel across the ocean for something that he never achieved, never
could
achieve—because of course, what he was after didn’t exist.

“Everyone thinks they know Juan Ponce de León. But they don’t.”

Emma straightened in her chair. This was new. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Charlie’s jaw tighten.

“Juan Ponce de León didn’t f ind the fountain because he never planned on doing so.”

“But wait, everyone says—” Emma began, and then shut her mouth as everyone turned to her, even Charlie. But it was true. Everyone
did
say that the whole reason Juan Ponce de León sailed to the New World—bringing the Ryans’ supposed ancestor, Hernando de Escalante Fontenada, with him, only to get shipwrecked and wind up with the Calusa tribe—was to f ind the Fountain of Youth. That’s why their families had a business! Tourists f locked in small clumps to the small, burbling stream by the river a few miles from the center of town. The huckster who ran it swore it was the real deal: the one Juan Ponce de León had discovered. People dipped cups in the water and everything.

Charlie’s father waved a hand dismissively at her.

“It’s the girl’s birthday,” her own father protested.

“The world remembers Juan Ponce de León for something he
didn’t
do,” Frank Ryan said, suddenly speaking in his normal voice. “For a place he
didn’t
visit. Yes, that’s right. He never came here to St. Augustine. Not ever. That was King Ferdinand’s dream, not his. You can’t f ind a dream that isn’t yours. You have to want it enough, and Juan didn’t. He’d found the Gulf Stream, not that those royal bastards gave a damn.”

Maura O’Neill narrowed her eyes at the salty language.

Emma frowned. “But the Fountain of Youth?” She couldn’t help herself.

“It’s here,” Charlie’s father concluded. “I know it is. I just have to f igure out where.”

“Careful, Frank.” Emma’s father laughed. “Wouldn’t want a Calusa to put a poison arrow in your leg.” This, they all knew, was how Juan Ponce de León had actually died. A poison arrow, care of the local Indians, the very ones that had supposedly spawned Frank Ryan down the ancestral line.

“Hell, they’re my own people,” Frank Ryan conf irmed, and poured a glass of whiskey. “I’m not worried.” He toasted the tribe that, according to his own legend of himself, had given him and Charlie their sharp, broad cheekbones. He held his glass high. “Here’s to eternal life!”

He winked at Emma. She pretended she didn’t see. Life—and the shortness of it, in particular—was no joke these days; there’d been a polio epidemic the previous summer. Lots of people had died. The threat still hung in the hot, humid air. It was like the smell of salt: always present, f illing the adults’ conversation when they thought the little ones weren’t listening.

Now, his face f lushed with more whiskey, Frank Ryan was smiling at Emma’s mother, the way he had in the past. Even with little Simon bouncing on her knee.

Next to her, Charlie f idgeted, tapping his foot on the f loor, looking peeved.

“Juan Ponce de León actually sailed here in a giant teacup,” Emma whispered, trying to distract him.