“I was safe there. I could feel it.” Safe from what? This was more than a little overprotective.
“You weren’t. It’s beyond the boundaries. It can’t be controlled, not by anyone. There is a lot you don’t know. And he—” Macon gestured to me at the other end of the table. “He knows nothing. He can’t protect you. You shouldn’t have brought him into this.”
I spoke up. I had to. He was talking about me like I wasn’t even there. “This is about me, too, sir. There were initials on the back of the locket. ECW. ECW was Ethan Carter Wate, my great-great-great-great-uncle. And the other initials are GKD, and we’re pretty sure the D stands for Duchannes.”
Ethan, stop.
But I couldn’t. “There’s no reason to keep anything from us because whatever it is that’s happening, it’s happening to both of us. And like it or not, it seems to be happening right now.” A vase of gardenias went flying across the room and crashed into the wall. This was the Macon Ravenwood we’d all been telling stories about since we were kids.
“You have no idea what you are talking about, young man.” He stared me right in the eye, with a dark intensity that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. He was having trouble keeping it together now. I had pushed him too far. Boo Radley rose and paced behind Macon like he was stalking prey, his eyes hauntingly round and familiar.
Don’t say anything else.
His eyes narrowed. The movie star glamour was gone, replaced with something much darker. I wanted to run, but I was rooted to the ground. Paralyzed.
I was wrong about Ravenwood Manor, and Macon Ravenwood. I was afraid of both of them.
When he finally spoke, it was as if he was speaking to himself. “Five months. Do you know what lengths I will go to, to keep her safe for five months? What it will cost me? How it will drain me, perhaps, destroy me?” Without a word, Lena moved next to him, and laid her hand on his shoulder. And then, the storm in his eyes passed as quickly as it had come, and he regained his composure.
“Amma sounds like a wise woman. I would consider taking her advice. I would return that item to the place where you found it. Please do not bring it into my home again.” Macon stood up and threw his napkin on the table. “I think our little library visit will have to wait, don’t you? Lena, can you see to it that your friend finds his way home? It was, of course, an extraordinary evening. Most illuminating. Please do come again, Mr. Wate.”
And then the room was dark, and he was gone.
I couldn’t get out of the house fast enough. I wanted to get away from Lena’s creepy uncle and his freak show of a house. What the hell had just happened? Lena rushed me to the door, like she was afraid of what might happen if she didn’t get me out of there. But as we passed through the main hall, I noticed something I hadn’t before.
The locket. The woman with the haunting gold eyes in the oil painting was wearing the locket. I grabbed Lena’s arm. She saw it and froze.
It wasn’t there before.
What do you mean?
That painting has been hanging there since I was a child. I’ve walked by it a thousand times. She was never wearing a locket.
9.15
A Fork in the Road
We barely spoke as we drove back to my house. I didn’t know what to say, and Lena just looked grateful I wasn’t saying it. She let me drive, which was good because I needed something to distract me until my pulse slowed back down. We passed my street, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t ready to go home. I didn’t know what was going on with Lena, or her house, or her uncle, but she was going to tell me.
“You passed your street.” It was the first thing she’d said since we left Ravenwood.
“I know.”
“You think my uncle is crazy, like everyone else. Just say it. Old Man Ravenwood.” Her voice was bitter. “I need to get home.”
I didn’t say a word as we circled the General’s Green, the round patch of faded grass that encircled just about the only thing in Gatlin that ever made it into the guidebooks—the General, a statue of Civil War General Jubal A. Early. The General stood his ground, just as he always had, which now struck me as sort of wrong. Everything had changed; everything kept changing. I was different, seeing things and feeling things and doing things that even a week ago would have seemed impossible. It felt like the General should have changed, too.
I turned down Dove Street and pulled the hearse over alongside the curb, right under the sign that said welcome to gatlin, home of the south’s most unique historic plantation homes and the world’s best buttermilk pie. I wasn’t sure about the pie, but the rest was true.
“What are you doing?”
I turned the car off. “We need to talk.”
“I don’t park with guys.” It was a joke, but I could hear it in her voice. She was petrified.
“Start talking.”
“About what?”
“You’re kidding, right?” I was trying not to shout.
She pulled at her necklace, twisting the tab from a soda can. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“How about explaining what just happened back there.”
She stared out the window, into the darkness. “He was angry. Sometimes he loses his temper.”
“Loses his temper? You mean hurls things across the room without touching them and lights candles without matches?”
“Ethan, I’m sorry.” Her voice was quiet.
But mine wasn’t. The more she avoided my questions, the angrier it made me. “I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you tell me what’s going on.”
“With what?”
“With your uncle and his weird house, that he somehow managed to redecorate within a couple of days. With the food that appears and disappears. With all that talk about boundaries and protecting you. Pick one.”
She shook her head. “I can’t talk about it. And you wouldn’t understand, anyway.”
“How do you know if you don’t give me a chance?”
“My family is different from other families. Trust me, you can’t handle it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Face it, Ethan. You say you’re not like the rest of them, but you are. You want me to be different, but just a little. Not really different.”
“You know what? You’re as crazy as your uncle.”
“You came to my house without being invited, and now you’re angry because you didn’t like what you saw.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t see out the windows, and I couldn’t think clearly, either.
“And you’re angry because you’re afraid. You all are. Deep down, you’re all the same.” Lena sounded tired now, like she had already given up.
“No.” I looked at her. “You’re afraid.”
She laughed, bitterly. “Yeah, right. The things I’m afraid of, you couldn’t even imagine.”
“You’re afraid to trust me.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You’re afraid to get to know someone well enough to notice whether or not they show up for school.”
She dragged her finger through the fog on her window. It made a shaky line, like a zigzag.
“You’re afraid to stick around and see what happens.”
The zigzag turned into what looked like a bolt of lightning.
“You’re not from here. You’re right. And you’re not just a little different.”
She was still staring out the window, at nothing, because you still couldn’t see out of it. But I could see her. I could see everything. “You’re incredibly, absolutely, extremely, supremely, unbelievably different.” I touched her arm, with just my fingertips, and immediately I felt the warmth of electricity. “I know because deep down, I think I am, too. So tell me. Please. Different how?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
A tear dripped down her cheek. I caught it with my finger, and it burned. “Why not?”
“Because this could be my last chance to be a normal girl, even if it is in Gatlin. Because you’re my only friend here. Because if I tell you, you won’t believe me. Or worse, you will.” She opened her eyes, and looked into mine. “Either way, you’re never going to want to talk to me again.”
There was a rap on the window, and we both jumped. A flashlight shone through the fogged-in glass. I dropped my hand and rolled down the window, swearing under my breath.
“Kids get lost on your way home?” Fatty. He was grinning like he’d stumbled across two doughnuts on the side of the road.
“No, sir. We’re on our way home right now.”
“This isn’t your car, Mr. Wate.”
“No, sir.”
He shined his flashlight over at Lena, lingering for a long time. “Then move on, and get home. Don’t want to keep Amma waitin’.”
“Yes, sir.” I turned the key in the ignition. When I looked in the rearview mirror, I could see his girlfriend, Amanda, in the front seat of his police cruiser, giggling.
I slammed the car door. I could see Lena through the driver’s window now, as she idled in front of my house. “See you tomorrow.”
“Sure.”
But I knew we wouldn’t see each other tomorrow. I knew if she drove down my street that was it. It was a path, just like the fork in the road leading to Ravenwood or to Gatlin. You had to pick one. If she didn’t pick this one, now, the hearse would keep on going the other way at the fork, passing me by. Just as it had the morning I first saw it.
If she didn’t pick me.
You couldn’t take two roads. And once you were on one, there was no going back. I heard the motor grind into drive, but kept walking up to my door. The hearse pulled away.
She didn’t pick me.
I was lying on my bed, facing the window. The moonlight was streaming in, which was annoying, because it kept me from falling asleep when all I wanted was for this day to end.
Ethan. The voice was so soft I almost couldn’t hear it.
I looked at the window. It was locked, I had made sure of it.
Ethan. Come on.
I closed my eyes. The latch on my window rattled.
Let me in.
The wooden shutters banged open. I would say it was the wind, but of course there wasn’t even a breeze. I climbed out of bed and looked outside.
Lena was standing on my front lawn in her pajamas. The neighbors would have a field day, and Amma would have a heart attack. “You come down or I’m coming up.”
A heart attack, and then a stroke.
We sat out on the front step. I was in my jeans, because I didn’t sleep in pajamas, and if Amma had walked out and found me with a girl in my boxers, I would’ve been buried under the back lawn by morning.
Lena leaned back against the step, looking up at the white paint peeling off the porch. “I almost turned around at the end of your street, but I was too scared to do it.” In the moonlight, I could see her pajamas were green and purple and sort of Chinese.
“Then by the time I got home, I was too scared not to do it.” She was picking at the nail polish on her bare feet, which was how I knew she had something to say. “I don’t really know how to do this. I’ve never had to say it before, so I don’t know how it will all come out.”