Dark and Shallow Lies(9)

Sera doesn’t back down, though. She never does. “Not with Grey, we haven’t.”

Evie bites at her lip and glances over at Hart. “Grey doesn’t have the gift,” she pipes up. Then she looks embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Grey. You know what I mean. It’s just . . .” She shrugs. “You don’t. Right?”

I feel Hart’s eyes on me. I feel all their eyes on me.

“Grey deserves to hear us speak Elora’s name out loud,” Sera argues. “It’s a sign of respect. She was her twin flame, after all.”

Her was isn’t lost on me.

There were three sets of twins in the beginning. Serafina and Lysander. And Ember and Orli.

But also Elora and me.

Elora and I were born to different families, but on the very same day at the very same hour. Almost the exact same time, down to the minute. There’s an old story that tells how human beings originally had two faces, four arms, and four legs. But God was afraid of being overpowered, so he split them all in half. That’s why we all have one twin soul out there in the world.

People say the moment you meet your twin flame is the moment the earth beneath your feet begins to shift. There’s one midwife down here to deliver all the bayou babies, so our mamas labored together in Honey’s big upstairs bedroom. They laid Elora and me side by side in the same bassinet. And I guess that’s when the earth shifted for both of us, when we were only minutes old.

“Go ahead, Mackey,” Sera prods. “Tell Grey what you told the rest of us. She’s tough. She can take it.”

Hart gets up and moves away from me. He stands at the front of the boat, his back to all of us, one boot up on the rusted railing. Then he pulls out that pack of cigarettes and lights another one up.

Mackey watches him for a few seconds, then he swallows hard and turns in my direction. And suddenly, I know exactly what he’s going to say.

“I had a death warning. That night. About Elora.”

Hearing him say it out loud is like a kick in the teeth.

Mackey’s family history here goes way back. Further back than anyone’s, probably. Cachette is a French word. It means “hiding place.” Back in the days before the Civil War, this area was a hideout for enslaved people who had escaped their captors.

Mackey’s family were some of the first ones who made their way here. They faced down venomous snakes and swarms of mosquitoes, plus ripping thorns and sucking mud – but they were free, so they stayed and made this inhospitable place their home. And to hear Mackey tell it, every single one of his ancestors could feel when death was about to come knocking, which it must have done pretty often in those days.

Mackey frowns and runs one hand over the top of his head. His hair is shaved down almost to his scalp. It’s what he calls his “summer haircut,” which means it’s about one-sixteenth of an inch shorter than he wears it the rest of the year.

“We were playing flashlight tag,” he goes on. “And Evie was it. She was counting down that rhyme. About Dempsey Fontenot. You know the one.”

I do know the one. I get a little dizzy when I remember how it came to me earlier. How I felt Elora’s fear of the old taunt.

“And it was pitch black, so I couldn’t see. But then Elora ducked behind this tree with me. And I felt it. Strong as anything.”

“Did you tell her?” I ask him.

“I did. I had to.” He hesitates. “But she laughed it off.”

I picture her, head thrown back, laughing into the dark. Elora could be like that. If she was in the mood to have fun, she might not take anything seriously.

Hart takes one last drag off his cigarette and flicks it out into the murky pond. I see how tense the muscles in his neck are.

Evie is watching him. I pat the empty seat next to me, and she comes to sit in Hart’s vacant spot. Evie’s always been younger than her years, and long legs or not, she’s still the baby. Our baby. Everyone’s little sister. I slip my arm around her, and she rests her head on my shoulder. She smells like honeysuckle, and it calms me, breathing in her summertime sweetness.

“It’s the water that bothers me,” Mackey mumbles. “Drowning. That’s what I felt that night. Death in the water.” I look over at Hart, but he’s still got his back to me. To all of us. “Elora was so pretty, you know?” Mackey’s voice breaks. Another chalk mark next to was. “I can’t stand to think of her dying like that. In the water.”

Sander pushes his hair out of his face – soft waves the color of river sand and copper, just like his sister’s – then puts an arm around Mackey’s shoulders.

“She didn’t die in the water.” Hart sounds drained. Exhausted. “Search teams combed the bayou from one end to the other. River, too. They’d have found something.”

“Yeah,” Mackey says. “Sure, Hart. You’re probably right. Sometimes I get things confused.”

But not very often.

“Ember and Orli were in the water.” My voice sounds funny in my ears. Far away. Everyone turns to look at me. Everyone but Hart. We don’t hear those names spoken out loud very often. People down here don’t like to talk about what happened back then. Thirteen summers ago. Two identical little girls snatched off the boardwalk early one morning, just this time of year. Right under everybody’s noses. “They found them floating facedown, back of Dempsey Fontenot’s place,” I go on. “Back at Keller’s Island.”