Deep Betrayal

chapter 8

BAYFIELD



Shortly after we left the pool, Dad developed a sudden and alarming stomachache, so my parents ended up staying in Minneapolis an extra night, which gave me time to pack and say goodbye to Jules and her family.

The next morning, Calder asked if I’d ride with him on the trip north. But when Dad learned how Calder had come by the Buick, he made him put it back where he found it. Immediately.

There was a lot of protesting, bargaining, and attempts to justify the situation. It was actually hilarious. No matter how skilled Calder might think he was in the art of persuasion, he’d be the first guy in the history of the world to convince a dad that felony theft was a good idea.

“If you’re going to be part of this family,” Dad finally said, “there’ll be no more thievery.”

I’m not sure if he picked his words on purpose, but I could see what they meant to Calder, having no family of his own. Ultimately, Calder promised to try.

Unlike Dad, Mom was pleasantly surprised to hear about our meet-up with Calder. I thought she’d have more questions. I mean, it was all a little too serendipitous, wasn’t it? But Calder worked his charms on her better than he’d managed with Dad. No surprise that she was only too happy to have him ride with us up to Bayfield.

The only bad part about the trip was that the backseat was cramped with Sophie, Calder, and me squeezed together, and Dad had his rearview mirror focused on Calder, rather than the road.

Calder’s decision to come back with us had triggered a lovely father-daughter chat the night before. “We’ve got to set some ground rules,” Dad had said.

I hadn’t really cared too much what they were. For me, I was glad to obey as long as I wasn’t in exile anymore, and rules had never mattered much to Calder. I’d leave any rule breaking up to him.

A couple of hours out of the Twin Cities, towns made way for pine trees and the air temperature dropped. Calder rolled his window down all the way, and my hair whipped around my face until I was able to find an elastic band tucked under the floor mat. I looped my hair into a messy bun, exposing my neck. Calder’s fingers were quick to find it, and his fingers worked out the tension knots in my neck and shoulders. I caught my dad watching in the mirror.

To my left, Sophie scribbled on a crossword puzzle balanced on her knees; she sang aloud to whatever she was listening to on her MP3 player, off-key and perfect all at the same time. Some eighties hair band belted out a ballad from the front-seat speakers. Dad held the steering wheel in a white-knuckled death grip. Mom buried her nose in a book.

I reached down to the floor to pull MY SCRIBBLINGS from my backpack. As I did, my new beach-glass pendant fell to the outside of my shirt.

Calder lifted the pendant gently in his fingers. “Where’d you get this?” he asked. “I haven’t seen you wear it before.”

“It was a graduation present from my parents.”

His brow furrowed, and he turned the pendant over a few times before letting it fall against my chest. I could feel the heat of his fingers, absorbed in the glass, warming my skin.

Calder turned back to the window, throwing his left arm around my shoulders. Dad’s eyes were in the mirror again, but I didn’t care. I snuggled against Calder’s chest. The whole car was perfumed with patchouli.

Trees and convenience stores flew by the window in an amazing blur of shape and color, and in a few hours, the lake appeared like blue chips of paint through the dense tree line. Five minutes later, the trees fell apart, the road cut to the edge of the bank, and the wide expanse of blue welcomed us home. My voice rose above the car radio, “We’re here!”

Sophie yanked the earbuds from her ears and looked out Calder’s window. Dad and Calder kept their eyes straight ahead, but I guess they could smell the lake long before I saw it. We all inhaled, holding our collective breath before simultaneously exhaling. Something about the smell tugged at my heart, which beat madly beneath my pendant.

Pulling through town, past the bookstore, Big Mo’s Pizzeria, the IGA, and the Blue Moon Café, I felt a twinge of guilt at having left Mrs. Boyd in the lurch. I supposed by now she’d hired our replacement baristas. I slunk low in my seat in case she saw me as we passed.

Mom turned around and said, “Leaving a job is not a capital offense, Lily. My goodness, how did I raise a child with such an inflated sense of guilt? Quit worrying. We gave Mrs. Boyd your notice.”

“She probably hates me,” I moped.

“Oh, for crying out loud, she’s not mad at you.”

Calder looked quizzically at me and then at the café storefront. By the look on his face, it had never occurred to him we’d been irresponsible. He was probably used to taking off without notice. Clearly, he hadn’t given Mrs. Boyd a second thought.

We pulled north out of town, finding the driveway more easily than the day we first moved in. This time when we unpacked it wasn’t such an ordeal. Dad helped Mom into the house, and Calder grabbed my parents’ and Sophie’s suitcases at once.

I had somewhat more than the others, having moved most of my things back to Minneapolis. I carried my biggest suitcase up the porch steps, thankful for their welcoming lean under my feet. Seagulls squawked overhead, saying they remembered me. Or at least, that was the way I saw it. I was home. Even if Calder insisted I be landlocked, the proximity of the lake brought me a comfort I hadn’t realized I’d been missing.

Mom went into the kitchen to check the answering machine. “Sounds like the Pettits got your message, Jason. Martin’s offering to bring dinner over if we want. They’re such a nice family. Should I call them back?”

Calder followed me upstairs and dropped Sophie’s suitcase in her room. “Oh,” he said, sighing and closing his eyes. “That’s what it is.” He inhaled deeply, savoring the air.

“That’s what what is?” I asked. All I could smell were mothballs.

“Mother. She was here.”

“I think you’re imagining that.”

“No. It’s her. I smelled it before, back when I first moved Sophie’s things into this room. It didn’t make sense to me then, but her scent is in the paneling. She must have spent a lot of time in here.”

“It could have been Dad’s nursery, but if she was that close, why wouldn’t she have just taken him?”

The floorboards creaked in the hall, and I looked up in time to see the back of Dad’s shirt pull away.

“Let’s not talk about this now,” Calder said, and I could see there was still a lot of sadness there.

He took my suitcase from me and followed me into my room. Once inside, he said, “So, this is your room.” He trailed his hand along my patchy, homemade wallpaper. Before I’d left, I covered nearly half a wall with dead poet portraits, pages from Sonnets from the Portuguese, friends’ school photos, and magazine cutouts.

I opened the window to let in some fresh air while Calder yanked Robby Hache’s picture off the wall and slipped it into his pocket. He didn’t think I noticed, and I didn’t let on that I had. He could have it if he wanted.

When I came back to Calder’s side, he pulled me onto the bed with such force I bit my tongue and the box spring slipped off the frame, crashing onto the floor. “Geez, what are you doing? Do you want my dad to come running? I doubt this falls within his ground rules.”

His hand slipped behind my neck and held my face to his. My insides liquefied at his kiss, his fingers skimming the waist of my pants, his breath on my face, as he said, “I’ll be a safe distance away before his feet hit the stairs.”

“Yeah, okay” was all I managed to say. My fingers explored his face, the straight nose and square jaw, a slightly crooked tooth; I took a risk and stared straight into his eyes. Fascination, I thought. That was at least one thing I felt for Calder White. Pure and utter fascination. I couldn’t get enough.

“Besides, he has to know I’m perfect for you,” Calder said. “What other guy is going to put up with your mess of a family?”

He had an excellent point there.

Ultimately, it wasn’t Dad’s feet that pulled Calder away from me. It was the sound of tires crunching on the gravel below my window. We both went to look down on the driveway.

“And here come the Pettits,” he said. “Their timing is always amazing.” I watched Calder closely. Mixed emotions played in his eyes: malice, gratitude, disgust, fear. Sure, Jack might have saved me, but he was also Tallulah’s murderer, and there was something else in Calder’s eyes, too. Jealousy?

“I hate that that bastard gets credit for saving you,” Calder said. “It should have been me.”

“You’re being stupid,” I said, resting my head on his shoulder.

“Doesn’t matter how stupid it is. I’ll never forgive myself.”

The Pettits climbed out of their van. Gabby had chopped ten inches off her hair, leaving it edgy and blunt. Jack was barely recognizable. His shirt hung crookedly across his sunken chest, and his overgrown hair stood out in odd angles around his face, as if he hadn’t showered in weeks. A black stubble covered his face. Mr. Pettit and an older-looking woman followed them.

Calder grimaced and turned away from the window with a growl low in his throat. “What is wrong with that Jack Pettit? I’ve never seen anyone put off colors like that. He looks putrid.”

Dad leaned in my doorway. “Jack came, too,” he said. “Maybe you should make yourself scarce, son.” Then his feet clomped down the stairs.

Calder blinked a few times and said, “Your dad’s probably right. I don’t think I could stomach being within six feet of him.”

“Good, because I kind of like the idea of you being trapped in my bedroom.”

He looked at the floor and said, “I’ve been trapped in worse.”

“I’m going to have to go down and be social.”

“Not too social,” he teased.

“No, not too,” I said.

I followed Dad downstairs. Mom greeted the Pettits in the doorway.

“This is so nice of you guys,” she said. “Jason! Martin’s here.”

Dad grasped Mr. Pettit’s hand, avoiding eye contact with Jack.

“My wife, Margaret,” Mr. Pettit said, introducing her. Mrs. Pettit was a tall, thin woman, prematurely gray. She and Gabby carried two foil-wrapped pans of hotdish with globs of burned cream of mushroom soup clinging to the sides. My stomach growled.

Jack pulled around his dad. Sophie took one look at him, yelped, and ran up the stairs. I thought at the very least he’d say hi to Dad, who had been at the top of the cliff with him. Instead, he charged at me like a bull and jerked his head toward the back room. What could I do but follow?

He wheeled around and grabbed my arm in a too-tight grasp.

“Hey!” I said, prying his fingers loose.

“How come you never answered my texts?” he asked, shaking me.

“Texts? That was you? You’re my unknown caller?”

He tossed my arm, and I staggered back. “Who did you think it was?” he hissed through his teeth. “I figured once you saw the picture you’d know it was me.”

“What picture?”

He rolled his eyes and put his hands to his greasy hair. “The link to the photo I sent. The one of that beached bitch who tried to kill you.”

I felt sick and dropped down onto a chair. “Why would you take a picture?”

“Proof!” He slapped his hand flat against the wall to accentuate the word. “I wanted you to know she was really dead. I thought if you knew, you wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore. Then you’d come back.” He lowered his voice and whispered, “I thought you’d want to help me.”

“I wasn’t afraid, Jack. And I already knew she was dead. I was there. Remember?”

“Yeah. I remember,” he said. “Apparently better than you do.” He seethed. “They tried to kill you, Lily.”

“No,” I said, as calmly as I could. “They didn’t. Only one did, and you only know half the story.”

“I know all I need to know. You’re brainwashed enough to let one of them keep hanging around. I suppose it’s him?”

“Who?”

“Don’t play me, Lily. This place reeks of incense.”

There didn’t seem to be much point in lying, so I shot back, “Why do you sound so surprised?”

“Me? Don’t you be surprised. Don’t come crying to me when your precious merman takes off for good. I warned you. That’s what they do. He’ll mess with your head. Then he’ll be gone.”

When he said it like that, it resurrected the old fears I’d had during my exile. I tried to muffle those doubts by remembering what Calder had said at the pool: I need her, I need her, I need her. Of course, that didn’t negate what Jack was saying. I supposed there could come a day when Calder didn’t need me anymore. And I couldn’t deny that his need hadn’t meant anything over the thirty-two days he’d been gone, without a word to me.

“I thought you liked the mermaids,” I said. “I thought you loved Pavati. You told me once you secretly hoped you were one of them.”

Jack laughed darkly and it raised the hair on my arms. “Funny thing happened on the way to a cliff last May. I finally grew up. I realized what a fool I’d been to think Pavati cared about me.

“Mermaids are only in it for themselves. They take, take, take. If they give us anything, it’s only a tease so we stick around long enough for them to take some more. They don’t care about us, Lily. And they’re all the same. Don’t. Trust. Mermaids.”

Dad and Mr. Pettit came into the back room as Jack’s last word dropped to the floor. Gabby followed, looking embarrassed and like she wished she’d found something better to do tonight.

Fortunately, both our moms were busy in the kitchen talking hotdish recipes, so they were oblivious when Mr. Pettit reproached Jack, saying, “Oh, for Pete’s sake, would you shut up? This is getting ridiculous.”

“What’s it to you?” snapped Jack.

“Dad, Jack, please don’t,” Gabby said.

“If you want to make a fool out of yourself,” Mr. Pettit said, “talking to news reporters, spouting your mouth off to the police, for God’s sake, that’s one thing, but when people start asking me about it, when you start embarrassing the family, pushing this nonsense on these good people, it’s gone too far.”

“I was only talking to Lily,” Jack said. “You’re the one making this a bigger thing than it needs to be. And I’ve probably got a much more receptive audience in ‘these good people’ than I’ll ever get from you.”

Dad silenced Jack with a look.

“Excuse me,” I said. I pushed around Jack and ran for the stairs. When I got to my room, the box spring and mattress had been made right. Calder was gone. The vacancy took my breath away.

Gabby followed me up. “Hey, um, I’m sorry about that.” She gestured behind her toward the stairs just as the front door slammed. “We should have left Jack at home. He is seriously messed up. Even more than before.” She tried to laugh, but failed.

“No more than usual,” I said. I opened my closet door to see if Calder was hiding inside, but it was empty save for a musty cardboard box full of vintage band T-shirts. I noticed that someone had pulled my Lady of Shalott dress off its hanger and thrown it in the wastebasket. Apparently, the dress raised too many painful memories for Calder. As much as I wanted to keep it, and as much as I didn’t like people telling me what to do, I left it where it lay. It was a small price to pay.

“It’s been coming on slowly all year,” Gabby said. “Dad was pissed enough when Jack didn’t go on to college last fall … spending all day on the lake … but the last couple of months have been bad. At first, I thought it was because all his friends had moved on while he stayed back. But that was his choice, right? That shouldn’t make him act so crazy. Then I thought it was because you left. I thought maybe he liked you even more than I thought.”

“Yeah, that’s not it,” I said. “He’s just being stupid.”

“No, I know it’s not you now,” Gabby said. “It’s this mermaid obsession. It used to be kind of quirky. Now it’s getting embarrassing. Did you hear my dad say that Jack went to the police?”

“What for?”

“He told them the town needed to set up a night-watch group.” She paused, waiting for me to catch up, but I was already two steps ahead.

“An armed patrol.” She lowered her voice. “He’s telling anyone who will listen that mermaids are killing people out on the lake.”

That’s rich, I thought. Apparently he’s forgotten that the last kill on the lake was at his hands. I got down on my knees and looked under the bed.

“Jack refused to leave the station until someone took him seriously. They had to call my dad to come down and get him. Chief Eaton is one of my dad’s best friends. Super embarrassing. What are you looking for?”

“Oh, um, I lost something,” I said. “An earring.”

“Let me help you. Was it special?”

“Very,” I said, noticing for the first time that the screen was off the window.


Later that night, rain splattered against my open windowsill. Calder was out there somewhere. I wondered if he was cold. I wondered if he’d found shelter for the night. Dad came into my darkened room and stood by the side of my bed. I pretended to be asleep, but he knew I was faking.

“Lily, we need to talk to you.”

We? I turned over quickly to find Calder standing in the dark, behind my dad’s shoulder, staring down at me with serious eyes. I pulled the blankets tight around me.

“I’m going to give this a go,” Dad said. “See if there’s any truth to what you’ve told me.”

“Yeah, Dad. Okay.”

“Tonight,” he said.

“Wait? What? Without me?”

“Lily,” Calder said, drawing closer. “Is that really something you want to watch?”

When he said it like that, when I thought about all that a transformation would require, I cringed. No. He was right. I didn’t need to see that.

“Our first step,” Calder said, “is to see if Jason can, in fact, transform.”

So it’s Jason now?

He glanced at my dad. “If he can—and I don’t doubt that for a second—then we’ll have to start training right away. He needs to know how to scramble his thoughts if Maris and Pavati can hear him, and he needs to know how to defend himself if they can’t. Well, he should really know how to do that either way. He’s not going to be able to stay out of the water—like you are.” He looked at me hard to remind me of my promise. “So we’re going to start training immediately.”

“Train?” My voice was a whisper. “How long will you be gone?” I asked, dreading where this was going. The feeling of abandonment trickled through my chest, and I braced myself against their answer.

Dad paced back and forth at the end of my bed. “I can’t stand it any longer, not knowing. I’ve got to stretch my … I’ve got to go. For just a little while.”

“Tell me how long you’re going to be gone,” I demanded.

“It’s just for a little while,” Calder said.

“But I haven’t seen you in over a month!” I hated how hysterical I sounded, but I couldn’t help it. This was unfair, and Calder didn’t seem to care at all.

“Lil,” he said, bowing his head.

Dad stepped closer again. “I told your mom the college was sending my whole department to a conference and that I’d be home on Sunday.”

“But that’s three days!”

“Shhhh,” Dad said, tamping down my volume with his hands. “It’ll probably take me at least that long to learn what I need to know.”

Dad looked at Calder and tipped his head toward the door. Calder took the hint and said, “Good night, Lily.” He hung in my doorway for a second before slipping away like a shadow.

I watched the hall for a few more moments, in the hope that he’d come back. When he didn’t, I set my jaw and flopped back on my pillow. I turned away from Dad to hide my face. He put his hand on my shoulder and rolled me back toward him. My cheeks were already wet.

“So it’s that way? You’ll miss him that much?”

“Every minute.”

“Remember you’ll be leaving for college soon, Lily. It’s not a good time for you to get so involved.” He brushed my long bangs off my forehead.

“You know what? I wish I’d never told you about any of this. This was my secret. I shared it with you, but now you’re taking it from me.”

“Lily, I’m not taking anything from you. Frankly, I don’t want any of it.”

I wiped my face on my pillow. Dad headed for the door, then he stopped and turned at the threshold. “You’re too young to feel so strongly about someone.”

I almost smiled. “Maybe you’re too old to remember.”

He smiled, and for a second, he was just my dad again. Normal Dad. The dad I wanted to remember. “Touché, sweet girl. I’ll be as quick a study as I can. I’ll have him back soon.”

“Promise?” I asked, wondering if he was enough of a merman that I could bind him to his word. But he wouldn’t take the bait, and my door closed softly behind him, without an answer.

I flipped on my light and pulled MY SCRIBBLINGS out from under my mattress. I bit down hard on my pencil to keep from crying. Within seconds, the loneliness I felt poured out of my heart and onto the page.

I almost missed the sound of one clean dive, followed by the sound of a second body convulsing in the water.


MY SCRIBBLINGS

The Fool Hearty

You left me where you found me,

A buzzing

early summer morning with the newborn honeybee

and the hatching bird.

The wind slaps slapped my face for my impertinence

in thinking you were mine to keep.

And mushrooms

like bald-capped actors memorizing their lines

gathered ’round the spot where last you you last stood

and promised me your love, still

wet with dew.

Not yet burned by the rising sun.

—Lily Hancock (Bayfield, Wisconsin)