Chapter Four

Fetch the Death Talker

Whoever said "Time heals all wounds" is a liar. It's been five weeks since we lost Adaire, and that hole in my chest has only grown.

Angry dust clouds huff around the car as I pull into the church parking lot. Greenwillow Baptist is a simple lap-joint-sided white building. Picturesque and quaint, it sits off the side of a country road nestled in a cluster of oak trees. A moat of wild tiger lilies surrounds it, clawing their way out of the ditch.

Adaire's presence feels so strong. The end of a joint still sits in the car's ashtray, something she rolled one Sunday two months ago while the preacher reminded us hell was just a breath away.

Though not for Stone Rutledge, apparently.

The car door rips a shriek through the quiet country air as I get out. I cut across the grass toward the garden shed where they house the mower and other tools that keep the church's property looking respectable.

Every day these past few weeks, I've been meeting my stress-release right here.

Waiting inside the shed, smelling like a pack of smokes, is Ricky Scarborough. He's a scrubby fellow with a too-tight muscle tee for those dumpy muscles. Baggy jeans hug his barreled waist. His camouflage baseball cap is permanently glued to his head. He isn't ugly, by any means, but he ain't nothing to look at, either. He and his group of redneck friends sit around drinking beers, talking cars, and smoking cigarettes all day. They're each just a slightly altered version of one another. Like a pack of coyotes, you can't really tell them apart.

Ricky doesn't even go to church here. Heck, I'm not even sure he goes to church at all. But he works at the gas station off the main highway down the road. He's close and convenient.

I kick the door shut behind me. Words aren't even spoken. Just hands and tongues and raw aggression. He cocks up my dress and grabs the back of my legs, lifting me on top of the plywood worktable. One of my flip-flops drops onto the floor. A splinter stabs the back of my thigh and digs in. I ignore it.

I ignore the gasoline-stained fingers that run through my hair. I ignore the sandpaper-rough hands as they paw at my breasts. I ignore the fact that Ricky forgot the rubbers, again.

Six minutes. That's all it takes to go from tension-twisted to sagging.

"So, hey," Ricky starts in, buttoning his jeans.

"I've gotta go," I say, not wanting to hear whatever nonsense he's suddenly so serious about.

"Wait, what? Right now? But you just got here."

"I'm meeting my friends at the quarry pond," I say. Weeks I've kept to myself in my room, my own prison; that is, when I'm not working the roadside market—or my hookups with Ricky. If I don't meet my friends today, Wyatt says he's going to stage an intervention. "So...later." I slide off the workbench; I can't get out of here fast enough. I shimmy my dress back down and retrieve my lost flip-flop.

"Okay. Later, as in tonight?" His shaky confidence weakens his voice. "Because some guys are taking their girlfriends down to the bottoms to drink some beers and—"

"I'm busy," I say before he can ask me to do something more involved like date.

"Well, I was thinking maybe this time—"

"What did I tell you about thinking?" I stop smoothing my hair and give him that look. The one that says we made a deal to do this discreetly and keep it uncomplicated. No dating. No labels. No couples stuff. Just me and him and...this, whatever this was.

"Look, I've been doing some thinking myself," I start, and Ricky's shoulders collapse, knowing what's coming. "I think this has run its course. Maybe we should just cool it for now." And by for now, I meant forever.

He yanks off his baseball cap and runs a frustrated hand over those spiky hairs of his, then snugs it back on. No point in him arguing because I've made up my mind, but that won't stop him from trying. God, this shed is muggy and hot. I'm about to suffocate.

"Weatherly, you know I like—"

"I gotta go." I cut him off in the middle of his attempt to rationalize. I grab the door latch to the shed to leave. "It was good talking to you."

"Weatherly," he pleads one last time. I pause, giving him a half second of false hope. Not intentionally, though, I'm peeping through the door crack to make sure the coast is clear.

"Wait five minutes before you leave," I remind him. Then I slip out of the shed.

Adaire used to wait for me at the top of the path that leads to a hideaway pond, that church-rolled joint having been put to good use, her eyes heavy slits. Her brows would be a little looser, like a pair of chilled-out caterpillars.

Now, it's Davis who's waiting for me at the edge of the path.

"Ricky Scarborough? Really?" he says, watching past my shoulder as Ricky sneaks out of the shed.

I groan a mind-your-own-business sort of sound.

"I don't want to talk about it." We haven't shared more than a handful of words lately. He keeps trying; that's what friends do, I guess. It's like he needs me—and our connection to Adaire—to get through it all. Drowning himself in work and EMT-training school only does so much.

People heal their hearts in different ways.

Me, I plan to ignore the pain in my life until it numbs me from the inside out. I offer him the last hit of Adaire's joint. He declines.

"Picking up her habits now?"

"Don't start," I snap back.

We walk down the rear path. Overgrown weeds poke at my bare legs. An errant grasshopper flees out of the way as we enter the woods.

Ethereal.That's the word that comes to mind when I walk into the woods. Adaire told me about that word after reading it in one of her fantasy books years ago. It sounded airy and magical and soulful. That's what these woods feel like when I enter them. Like where I'm going is a secret place that only my heart knows.

"I got a package from her." Davis says this as if it's the most normal thing in the world to receive mail from the dead.

"Recently?" I perk up at what he's telling me. There's a stupid flash in my brain that says, Maybe she's alive! A fleeting thought as I recall the burial.

"No. I found it in one of the bottom drawers of the tool cabinet. I think it's been sitting there since my birthday back in February. She's probably having a good laugh that it took me so long to find it."

I smile at that. "What was in it?"

Davis shrugs. "I don't know. I haven't opened it." He pauses, letting the emotion that's risen to the surface simmer back down. "If I open it, then that's it. It's over. The last piece of her will be gone."

This kicks me hard in the chest. I'd do anything to have one last piece of Adaire.

I touch him softly on the arm. "You open it when you're ready" is all I say.

It's a good ten-minute trek to the hidden pond. A circular valley surrounded by stretching Georgia pines. A rock quarry once, so many years ago, that eventually filled up with rainwater. Voices from the others sneak through the trees until we reach the small clearing.

This is supposed to be a celebration of life in remembrance of Adaire. Enjoying a few beers, reminiscing on the good times. I don't want to think about it, much less talk about it.

Raelean Campbell stretches out on a sunning rock, waving an arm hello. Wyatt, Adaire's older brother, clings to a rope swing like it's the only thing holding him up. He tosses off his baseball cap, ready to dive—when a gunshot cracks within the depths of the forest, causing us all to jump and hush quiet.

A murder of crows scatter over tree canopy where the shot rang out.

It sounded close.

"What the hell?" I scan the woods from the direction it came.

There's not much hunting that goes on in the summer. The acres of land beyond the pond are privately owned by the Latham family. They don't allow anyone to hunt there, but it's not unheard of for folks to shoot guns on their own property.

A quiet moment passes as we wait to see if there's anything more. After a few seconds of nothing happening and the eeriness of it already fading, everyone slowly winds back up to normal.

Wyatt, with a slippery beer-grin and the rope still in his hand, swings out over the water, releasing at the highest peak. The water erupts around him, causing a wake throughout the small pond.

He's got Aunt Violet's and Adaire's dark hair, minus the galaxy of freckles the rest of us inherited. I'm the oddball in the family with my strawberry blond.

Davis joins the others. After a quick hello, I duck behind a holly berry bush, slink out of my sundress and into my bikini. Dark movement to my right snags my attention, but by the time I turn my head, the black shadow is disappearing into the branches.

Cautiously watching the woods, I stuff my clothes into my bag, then make my way back.

If Adaire were here, she'd be sporting her silver one-piece that looked like a blanket from the Space Shuttle. I never understood where she got the ideas for her bizarre clothing. But they helped get her into an art institute for fashion design, so what do I know?

I climb over the cragged rocks to get to the larger flat boulder people lie out on. The muted gray surface burns the bottoms of my feet after I kick off my flip-flops.

"You doing alright, Weatherly?" Raelean asks, handing me a beer.

I shrug, then take the beer and gulp down a good swig of it, surveying the motley crew of twentysomethings I'm proud to call friends.

Wyatt's a country boy through and through. From his John Deere baseball cap to his plaid button-ups down to his boots. He's an oak tree, physically and at heart. Wyatt became man of the house after Uncle Doug died years ago.

Raelean's a head shorter than me but she's feisty, with an I'm-gonna-kick-your-ass-if-I-don't-like-the-way-you're-looking-at-me attitude. Willowy is what she calls me. Makes me think about the willow switches Grandmama used to whoop my ass if I didn't mind her just right. She waitresses down at the Watering Hole most evenings and every weekend.

Davis is tall and dark and lean. He and Adaire made an oddly perfect pair. Now that she's gone and with his EMT training almost finished, I doubt he'll hang around here much longer.

So it's only me that doesn't have it all figured out just yet. I wasn't the college-going type, never seemed to get much out of high school. I was waiting—for what, I'm not sure, something, anything to happen, to call to me, besides a soul-song. Adaire used to ask how long I was willing to wait to start my life. I never gave her an answer.

Wyatt pulls Davis to the side, offering a few secret words. Brothers, despite their skin colors, bonded through Adaire. Davis chokes back his emotions. Something men tend to do, no matter how much they hurt.

"See any more of Stone Rutledge lately?" Raelean asks.

"No, ma'am," I reply as I shake my head. "One run-in with the law this summer was enough for me, thank you very much."

"That may be, but what are we going to do about Stone? He can't just get away with this. It's been over a month and I'm still mad as hell, can't imagine how you must be feeling."

I appreciate Raelean wants to take this on with me. We've become friends over the last year since she's moved here. But this isn't her burden. It's personal. A family problem.

"He did get away with it, though, didn't he?" I take another chug of my beer before setting it and my drawstring bag down next to her. I stand at the edge of the diving rock and tug my highlighter-yellow bikini from Walmart out of my ass crack. "Besides, we aren't going to do anything. If anyone's going to handle Stone, it'll be me" is all I say before I plunge into the water to wash off the gasoline paw prints still ghosting on my skin.

Water trickles down my face after I come up for air. Far off behind me, I hear Raelean talking to Wyatt and Davis about a barbecue she's having at her house on Sunday; they both nod in agreement, like it sounds like a nice idea. Davis moves on to ask what we think that gunshot was all about. I hum an I don't know, not sure if he hears me, but I don't engage further and stop swimming as something in the woods catches my attention.

I watch. And wait.

Their murmuring conversation is a buzzing gnat in the background. I slink deeper into the water and glide smoothly away. Eyes skimming the woods for another glimpse.

There it is again. I catch a darkness moving in the depths of the woods.

Not low and stalking like a coyote. Nor cautious and gentle like a deer. No, this is something in the tree canopy that scatters and compacts, then scatters and compacts again and again.

Curious, I swim closer to the other side, farther from the group, their voices now a distant mumble, tracking the erratic movement. The waves of the water rock the horizon line along the shore, blurring the edge of the woods. Eventually, the darkness stays tight together until a shape forms just beyond the tree line.

I squint to make out the shape—a man emerges in the shadowed space. I rear back, taken by surprise.

He isn't coming from the direction of the church. Nor in the direction of the gunshot.

Shade and small breaks of sunlight through the trees camouflage him; I can't quite make out who it is. Just a blur of dark hair and pale skin dressed in all black. Or maybe that's the shadows?

From behind, I hear the others hollering at me, their voices growing louder as I return to my surroundings.

"He's calling for you, Weatherly!" Wyatt yells out over the pond, and I turn, confused.

Wyatt jabs a finger in the air in the direction of the church; so I look that way to see what he's getting all worked up over.

On the other side of the pond, Ricky is waving for me to come over to him.

Good lord. What now? I swim back to the rock to see what the fuss is all about.

"What do you think he wants?" Wyatt asks as he pulls me out of the water. No towel, so I stand there, dripping.

"Who knows? He probably just doesn't understand what ‘it's over' means," I mumble, but then I realize there's a panic to Ricky's stride. Everyone stands, catching on to the sense of urgency.

I glance back over to the trees where the shadowy figure was, but there's nothing there now.

Ricky cups his hands around his mouth and calls my name. Contrary to my good sense, I head over, picking up on a something-ain't-right vibe.

"Hey." Ricky labors to catch his breath—courtesy of years of smoking. "We got a call at the gas station. From the Latham family. About the boys. They said—" More labored breathing. "They said...fetch the Death Talker."