Dark and Shallow Lies(4)

But now it’s definitely real. This hug makes it real.

Hart is the oldest of us all. The first of ten. Born in late March, almost three months before Elora and I came into the world on the same day in June. He’s technically Elora’s stepbrother, but the “step” part never mattered to us. And I’ve always thought of him as my big brother, too. Sometimes he played with us. Sometimes he tormented us. Occasionally he kicked someone’s ass on our behalf. But he was always there. Hart’s mama married Elora’s daddy when we were six years old, but in our minds, that only cemented what we already knew – that the three of us belonged to each other.

Three peas in a pod.

Three coins in the fountain.

Our very own three-ring circus.

Hart and Elora and Grey. Grey and Elora and Hart.

Hart was just a month shy of seventeen when Elora disappeared back in February, but when he called me that next day, he sounded so much younger. He sounded like he had when we were little.

He sounded scared.

“How you holding up?” I ask him. Evie was right. He looks like he hasn’t eaten or slept in weeks.

“It’s rough, Greycie.” He pulls back to look at me. “How ’bout you?”

I shrug. “It’s better, being here, I think.”

I’d wanted to come right at the beginning – I started packing as soon as I got that phone call from Hart – but my dad wouldn’t let me. We had a screaming, door-slamming fight about it that lasted most of a week. I couldn’t afford the time off school, he’d said. Not at the tail end of my junior year, with track season getting ready to start.

Scholarships, you know.

Hart moves to sit on the tall stool behind the cash register, and I see him glance at the flyers. He runs his fingers through the wild dark curls on the top of his head, but they’re untamable. I bet he hasn’t so much as touched a comb since sometime in February. His eyes are red, and his fingernails look like he’s bitten them down to the quick. Hart spends most of his life outside, but somehow he looks pale underneath his deep fisherman’s tan.

He jerks his head toward the stack of flyers. “I took that picture,” he says. “Remember that day?”

I nod. “I was trying to remember what she was laughing about.”

“Who knows.” He tries to smile. “Elora was always laughing.”

I wait for him to correct himself. Elora is always laughing. But he doesn’t. He leaves her in the past.

“There’s still no news?” I ask him. “Nobody knows anything?” It seems wild to me that someone could vanish like that. No clue. No trace.

No goodbye.

How is that possible? Here, of all places?

Hart shakes his head. “There’s no sign of her anywhere, Greycie. They’ve never found –”

He hesitates, and I feel sick. I know what he means. I know what they’ve been looking for out there in the bayou. They haven’t been looking for Elora. They’ve been looking for something awful and ugly. A floater. A bloated, decomposing body that’s risen to the surface of the foul black water. A body identifiable only by a bright blue tank top with faded yellow stars.

Or part of a body, more likely. Gators don’t leave much behind.

The room starts spinning, and I grab the edge of the counter to try to make it stop. My knees threaten to buckle.

Hart is instantly on his feet. He takes my arm, and I let him pull me against him again. “Hey, easy, Greycie.” His voice is low and gravelly, and the familiar sound of it soothes me a little. “You’re gonna be okay. Just breathe.” I nod against his chest, feeling guilty for making him comfort me. Especially when I know he’s so broken, too.

Hart is a psychic empath. Honey says it’s the greatest psychic gift but also the worst. She says it will tear him up if he’s not careful. It’s not just that he knows what other people are feeling. He actually feels it, too. Every bit as strong as they do. It gets inside him somehow. And I know what it costs him, constantly taking on everyone else’s pain. I untangle myself from his arms and move away to give him some space.

“What were you guys doing out there? That night.” I have so many questions. He didn’t really tell me much on the phone. After we hung up, I called Honey and she told me what she knew. But the details she had were pretty sketchy.

Hart looks at me and sighs. “You wanna get outta here?” He glances around the shop. “Before the first boat comes? I’m not in the mood to deal with tourists.”

Everyone in La Cachette has a love-hate relationship with the tourists. They hate them. But they love their cash. It’s the only thing that keeps most of them alive. That and maybe a bit of fishing. On a Saturday with good weather, a couple hundred people might make the trip from Kinter to La Cachette and back on board the old shuttle boat. Along the way, the captain drones into a crackling microphone, pointing out things of interest on the riverbank.

Spoiler alert: there aren’t any.

I stick my head into the back room and tell Honey that Hart and I are heading out for a bit. She nods. “It’s good for you two to be together. Healing.”

I don’t know about healing, but I know I need to be with someone who loves Elora as much as I do. It doesn’t make her any less gone, but it makes me less lonely.

Outside, Hart and I both turn left. We walk in silence, and for a few minutes, things feel almost normal. I like the familiar slap-scuff-slap of my flip-flops on the boardwalk. It’s a summer sound – a La Cachette sound – and I know the rhythm of it as well as I know the rhythm of my own name.