Stay (32 page)

ground.

“You didn’t mean any harm.”

“Remember when he checked the mileage of your car?”

* 251 *

Deb Caletti

“I forgot about that.” 46*

“If anything happens to you . . .”

“Nothing’s going to happen. Dad’s here. I’ll be careful.”

Shakti stopped crying. I heard her sigh. She sounded exhausted.

She’d had her own bad day. “Let’s just get some sleep.”

“My stupid mother.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“I didn’t tell her in the first place because she couldn’t have

handled it. So much for protecting anyone.”

The conversation with Shakti unsettled me. That dark house did.

But I knew if I turned on the lights, it would be worse. Someone

could see in when I wouldn’t be able to see out. I realized that fear

and guilt were both cheap and easy emotions, ready and always

available, the salt and pepper to the more exotic herbs that took

more effort to gather, like courage or determination or regret.

I was listening too hard, and when you listen too hard you’re

bound to hear something. An airplane flew overhead; the floor

creaked. Silence, and then the distant but insistent hum of a car

motor. In the movies, some stupid person always walks outside

when they hear a noise and are afraid, but I opened the front

door and went outside because I did not want to be afraid any

longer. Going outside was an act of confrontation, the anger my

father said I needed. I walked down the path through the thick

46 You can forget that other people carry pieces of your own story around in their

heads. I’ve always thought—put together all those random pieces from everyone who’s

ever know you from your parents to the guy who once sat next to you on a bus, and

you’d probably see a fuller version of your life than you even did while living it.

* 252 *

Stay

swath of fog. I could hear the low moan of the foghorn at Pigeon

Point, could see the slow arc of the lighthouse beam, there and

then not there.

Yes, a motor. And now the swing of headlights. Shit, it was

too foggy to see the car.

“Are you out here?” I said. “
Are you watching me right now?
”

My own voice sliced into that wideness of night. It came to me: I

was standing outside in my T-shirt and shorts, in a town far from

home, the dewy beach grass wetting my ankles. My father was

sleeping inside in our mystery host’s bed.

Fury seemed to roll out from the very center of my chest. I

hated Christian then.
Hated
him. For what he had done to my

father and me, for what he had done, even, to us. I had loved him

and worried about him, and he had mattered so much to me, but

now he would not go and the hatred filled me.

“I wish I’d never met you.”

No one stepped from the haze to answer.

“You,” I hissed. “
You
were the one that betrayed
me.
”

* 253 *

“I told you, Clara. When you take people into the light-

house, you must lock the door behind you. You were the last one,

you and that couple.”

“I’m sorry, Sylvie.” Roger lay there with his chin on his paws

while I stood there and got reprimanded. I guess I wouldn’t be

told her personal secrets today. I guess I wouldn’t be given cups

of tea.

“This is my
responsibility
. I am not sure you understand.” Her

dark eyes bore into mine.

“Sylvie.” She’d been going on for five minutes. I’d left the

door unlocked, okay. I’d made a mistake.

“It is not safe. People could get hurt.”

“I
understand
.” An edge crept into my voice. It was wrong, but

it was there anyway.

Stay

“You do not understand . Someone was there this morning.

Maybe he was sleeping inside. I saw him coming out, retreating

down the rocks. Roger started to bark . . .”

Something slammed in my chest.

“Clara? Are you all right? You need to be able to accept a rep-

rimand when one is due. Clara?”

“Yes. Who was he?”

“A boy, Clara. One of those high school boys who drink at

the beach. That is what I am trying to tell you. They have parties

on the beach, they drink, they mess around up here. What would

happen if he had gone up to the top of the lighthouse? If he went

outside, on the upper deck, drunk? There have been beer bottles

on the grounds. A condom! Idiots.”

“Did you see him?”

“It doesn’t matter. He is gone. The police cannot catch some-

one who is not here. Like smoke, he is gone. We were lucky, do

you see? It was a near miss.”

“Kids hang out there all the time,” Finn said. “It could have been

anyone, Clara.”

“You’re right,” I said.

“Maybe it’s enough for him to know where you are. It doesn’t

mean he’s here.”

I didn’t believe it, though. I knew what I knew. I can only

explain it as,
I felt him
. The way you feel someone staring at you.

The way you know when a person you love is about to drive up, or

that it’s them on the other end of the ringing phone. Close family,

someone you love,
loved—
you operate on another plane besides

* 255 *

Deb Caletti

this one. It is the plane that animals understand, the dogs who

smell cancer, the cats who flee before a storm, the coyotes, made

crazy by a full moon. Maybe it’s the plane where spirits exist, too.

Where sand dollars cover the beach and where you hear the bang

of shutters even though there is no wind.

I didn’t47* have actual words for it. I can only say that there

was no way I was going to go home that day after work. I called

my father, who said he was still waiting to hear back from

Captain Branson. I told him I would be back after the sunset

cruise with Finn that night. I stayed in the library. I ate my

lunch there, same as that bad year in the seventh grade when

the girls all turned on each other48* , when I always felt alone

and the library was the safest place. I sat in the back corner of

the Bishop Rock Library, hiding in the protection of the shelves

of biographies, stories of people who had gone through much

more than I ever would, people who got through. I could see the

door from where I sat. This is what those guys in the Mafia did,

I remembered. It was in some movie. They would sit where they

could see what was coming.

The afternoon turned to dusk. I took my sweater from the

arm of the library chair and put it around me. I left the library

and went to the marina.

“Are you going to be warm enough?” Finn said when I

arrived. “I’ve still got Cleo’s coat.”

47 Still don’t.

48 Seventh grade is always the year girls turn on each other.

* 256 *

Stay

“Great,” I said.

“This is going to be stupid,” he said. “Just so you know. It’s

a tour the Inn does every month. But you can hang out with Jack

and me.”

I took a seat on the small bench behind the wheel. Jack

tossed me a blanket from below. “Before the wackos use them

all,” he said. He had extra energy in his step that night, and I

noticed again how alike but not alike he and Finn were. Jack’s

rumpled white t-shirt half tucked into his dark jeans, his unruly

hair, his unshaven face—it all made you think of tangled sheets

and sloppy kisses and a grip that was firm but slightly careless.

Finn’s clothes were not all that different—a wrinkled denim

shirt with cowboy snaps and jeans and a leather belt; unshaven

and tousled, too, but eyes that were slightly sleepy, a mouth for

only thoughtful, careful words.

I could see the van from the inn arrive out by the dock lot.

The passengers ducked their heads and came out down the van

steps, huddling like children on a field trip. The driver parked the

van, stayed there to have a cigarette; I could see his elbow resting

out the window, the exhale of smoke that looked like some visible

form of relief. He was glad to have that over.

The woman leading the group had that red-purple hair,

the misguided magenta that’s not seen in nature.49* It was cut

bluntly, framing her round, energetic face. She was gesturing and

talking and walking, shouldering a huge, overloaded purse that

meant she liked to be prepared. Behind her was a group of about

49 Okay, beets maybe.

* 257 *

Deb Caletti

fifteen people, a grab bag of various types, mostly middle-aged.

A woman with gray curls in a violet velour jumpsuit, holding the

hand of a chunky man with a large, proud belt buckle. Another

woman with long straight, gray-black hair to her waist, the kind of

hair that looks heavy and burdensome, dead cells from the 1970s,

walking next to her friend in an
I only eat organic
tan skirt and

hippies never had shoes this expensive
sandals. A tall, thin man with

a pensive, chunky sweater carried a notebook. Two girls about

my age in
Bellevue High School Track
sweatshirts clung together,

giggling.

“Here they come,” I said to Jack. Finn was already at the

ramp, getting ready to assist them on board. “What exactly is this

again?”

“Jesus,” Jack shook his head, smiling that smile that was

always more of a grin. “Captain Bishop Inn. First they walk the

people around the parts of the hotel that are supposed to be

haunted. Some specific bedroom, the old servants’ quarters of

the kitchen. Then they head down to the William Harvard house.

You know it?”

“No,” I said.

“He was one of the first people to live here full-time, way

the hell back years ago. It’s more like a cabin, up near that bank

of trees near the north part of the island? Just off Deception

Pass? Anyway, he was slaughtered by some Indians. People see

him hovering or whatever ghosts do. Moving shit around.” Jack

laughed. “After that, they bring everyone here, and we go up and

down the coast, trying to scare the shit out of the folks.”

“You guys sure like your ghosts around here,” I said.

* 258 *

Stay

“Like? Business . . .” He made that gesture with his thumb

rubbing his fingers, indicating money. “Ever since it was on

Evening Seattle
. . . ”

“None of it’s true?”

“Oh, the things that happened, very true. And people see this

shit, so who knows? I don’t care, is all I’m saying. Believe what

you want. Beliefs don’t hurt anyone. Wait, that was brain dead.

Beliefs hurt people all the time. Uh, come on
, religion
?”

“Racism? All the isms?”

“Yeah. But, go ahead and believe in ghosts, right? You got

your harmless beliefs, you got your not so harmless. These people

never bombed no clinic.” We watched them come up the dock,

and the idea of those people as dangerous made you laugh. One

guy was trying to put film in his camera as he walked.

“You’ve never seen any ghosts before?” I tried to make my

voice sound joking, but I really wanted to know. “On the water?

The lighthouse? Your
own
house?”

“We find our washing machine in the middle of the floor

sometimes, but that’s usually after the spin cycle.”

I grinned.

“I laugh my ass off whenever I see that. It reminds me of

some kid who partied too hard and wakes up wondering, how’d

I get
here
?” The group approached. The woman in velour pulled

her jacket closer to her body. “They’re going to freeze their butts

off,” Jack said. “Okay, time to play captain.”

Everyone came aboard and found seats on the padded

benches and the bow of the boat. Finn untied the ropes and Jack

eased us out of port with the motor on. The sun was setting, and

* 259 *

Deb Caletti

the sky turned shades of sherbet. Finn gave his safety talk, and

then, as the land fell away from us, he lifted the sails. He grabbed

the rope in his two hands and pulled down hard until he was on

his knees. The tip of the white sheet touched the sky, you’d swear,

rising with clangs and clatters of metal rings against the mast.

Jack was right—the summer day fell away sure as that land, and

the air was all at once cold.

The magenta-haired guide, Beth Louise, waited until we were

underway before she began to speak. She stood near the wheel,

off to the side so Jack could safely scan the waters and steer. Jack

and Finn had their own shorthand communication, a nonverbal

language of nods and gestures and decisions that sent them mov-

ing in tandem.

“First of all, you must know that in sailing legend it is

bad luck to have a woman aboard ship. . . .” Beth Louise said.

Everyone twittered.

“Bad luck’s been good to me,” Jack sang, and the passengers

laughed.

“And a sailor’s death at sea will always be avenged, even if