When the Bones Sing

Chapter Eleven

Eleven

“Dovie?” Lo’s voice is thick with sleep, but it’s loud enough in the perfect quiet that I almost jump out of my skin. I whirl around to see him sitting up in bed watching me. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. I’m not sure how my mouth is working, because my tongue has gone dry as sandpaper. “I’m—” I glance back over my shoulder. Out the window.

But Mud Street is empty. Of course. Because there’s no such thing as magic.

No such thing as heaven. Or hell.

So there’s no such thing as ghosts.

Which means Riley Alden was a trick of my sleep-fuzzy brain. A dream that played out while I was awake, standing at my window.

“It’s nothing,” I reassure him. But suddenly I feel claustrophobic inside my tiny attic room. “You wanna go sit outside?” I ask him, and Lo nods.

We find our shoes and creep down the stairs to slip out the door onto the front porch, so we can sit on the steps and stare up at the stars. But I keep sneaking glances at the spot where Riley’s ghost was standing a few minutes ago.

“What do we do now?” Lo finally asks. “About Turley?”

“Not much we can do,” I answer. “We don’t even know that it’s him, Lo. All we’ve got is a couple of underlined Bible verses.”

“You heard what he said about already being condemned.”

“That could mean anything.”

Lo sighs, long and deep. “If this goes on much longer, I won’t be able to stand it. I see ’em all the time now, Dovie. Comin’ after me like the Roman army.”

I reach for his hand and promise him that we’ll figure something out, but it occurs to me that he hasn’t seen his dead hikers at all since we came down off the mountain. And maybe Lo would say that’s because he’s been doing his part—trying to help find their killer, like they seem to want him to—but I figure it’s probably just because he’s been busy. Distracted and focused on Turley. His mind hasn’t had time to play tricks, and maybe that alone is enough to make our run-in with the preacher earlier worth it.

It’s close to three o’clock in the morning now, and Lo says he better get on up the mountain. Granny Pearl will be worried about him if she wakes up and he’s not there. I let him borrow a flashlight, and before he heads off, we make plans to meet tomorrow so we can figure out what to do next. If Turley is the one picking off hikers, there has to be a way to prove it.

And if he isn’t, we need to know that, too. So we can figure out who is.

“Be careful,” I tell him. But I’m not too worried. Out of all those skeletons I’ve pulled from the dirt these past three years, not one of them has been a local.

“I’m not scared.” Lo gives me a little smile, then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out that key I gave him. The one I clipped from the protective charm he made for me. “I got this to keep me safe.” He hooks a finger through the loop of yellow yarn and gives it a little twirl.

We say goodbye, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep. I can’t stand the thought of lying in bed staring at the ceiling, so I sit outside on the steps for hours, until the sun comes up, running over everything in my mind again and again. Staring at the spot where I saw Riley Alden step out of the shadows. Eventually the smell of cooking bacon drifts out from the kitchen, and I know Nana must be up making breakfast, so I head inside. She raises an eyebrow when she sees me come in, but she doesn’t ask any questions. She just cracks another egg into the skillet for me.

“Guess I oughta get the coffee started for your daddy, too,” she says. “And throw another couple of eggs on to cook. He’s bound to be hungry when he gets home.”

“I thought he was home,” I say. I know he was in the front room watching a movie when Lo and I went upstairs after dinner last night, and it’s way too early for him to have already left to open up the gallery.

“Went out again real late last night to get some work done on that big piece for Ira,” Nana says as she pours me a glass of orange juice and slides a plate of bacon and eggs onto the table in front of me. “Door to his room was open this mornin’ and his bed hasn’t been slept in, so I ’spect he stayed at it all night again.” She shakes her head.

There’s a knock at the door and I stop with a forkful of eggs halfway to my mouth. “You gonna see who that is?” Nana asks. She has her back to me, elbow-deep in dishwater at the sink. But I’m afraid I already know who it is. It’s gotta be Brother Turley wanting to know what the hell I was doing hiding in his church yesterday, and why Lo and me stole the Good Book right off his pulpit. The knocking comes again. Louder and more insistent. “Dovie?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll get it.” I push back my chair and prepare myself for what I figure is about to happen, but when I open the door, it isn’t Turley. It’s the sheriff. And Deputy Jonah.

“Mornin’, Dovie,” Jonah says, but I glare at him and he drops his eyes to the porch.

I know what Sheriff is going to tell me before he even opens his mouth. There’s only one reason he ever comes knocking here.

“Another one,” I say.

“?’Fraid so.” I hear the exhaustion in his voice. “Got word this mornin’.”

It’s so soon. Just two months since Riley was killed.

Only two days since we found him.

“Hannah Nelby,” Jonah says, and my heart sinks. “She was hiking the trail with her sister.”

Candy.

“A one-night out and back,” Sheriff says. “Shoulda been easy.” He rubs at the stubble along his chin. “But she woke up and stepped out of the tent at some point real early this mornin’ to relieve herself. Couldn’t have gone more than a couple of yards, but she never came back. So her sister hiked back down here at first light to raise the alarm.”

I think about that gold angel pinned to my lace curtains, and I’m furious. White-hot rage bubbles in my stomach like the potions that Granny Pearl brews up on her wood stove in her big copper pots.

Hannah should have been safe in our woods.

They all should have been safe here.

None of this makes any sense. The dead hikers are all different. Men. Women. All ages. All types and appearances. The only thing they all share is that they got separated from their group for a few minutes, lots of them in broad daylight. They were alone on the trail, or at their campsite, barely long enough to take a breath, all of them within easy shouting distance of their companions.

And then they were gone.

So Hannah Nelby will be red slash number twenty-five. Nothing to do now but mark the yellow legal pad and wait for her bones to start singing.

“We got a team from the state police on their way up,” Sheriff says, and he sighs. It’s a sound that comes from down deep in his soul somewhere. “They’ll be combin’ the area where these ladies was camped last night. In case she got herself turned around and lost somehow in the dark.” He stops and shakes his head, because we both know there’s not a chance that Hannah Nelby would have wandered very far from the safety of that tent, no matter how bad she needed to pee. “But Jonah and me’ll be back tonight to set up camp here on the front porch for the time bein’. In case they don’t find her a—” He clenches his jaw tight and throws on the brakes to stop himself, and I figure the word he was about to say was alive . Instead he sighs long and deep. “I expect you know the drill by now.”

“Dovie’ll find her,” Jonah says, and there’s something that looks more like admiration than revulsion in his eyes. “She’s got that bone magic in her.” He sounds so tired that it almost keeps me from wanting to smack him.

“It’s not magic,” I correct him. “Just somethin’ I can do.”

“Well, Dove, that’s a damn sight better than anybody else can do for ’em.” Sheriff tips his hat to me and motions for Deputy Jonah to follow him back down the steps. The two of them look defeated. Shoulders slumped. Eyes on the ground.

Maybe Lo and I aren’t the only ones the missing hikers are taking a toll on.

I turn to head inside. I need a shower. And some sleep. But before I can reach for the front door handle, I catch a glimpse of something moving behind one of the trees across the street. A flash of blond hair blowing in the wind, maybe. Then, for a split second, there’s a face half-hidden by branches and leaves. It disappears as quick as it was there, but I swear, it was Riley Alden.

I stand stock-still, but there’s no more movement. My daytime phantom has vanished.

I tell myself what I know is true.

Riley is dead. And dead is final.

I pulled his bones from the earth myself.

If I’m seeing Riley, it isn’t because his restless spirit is roaming the earth looking for help. It’s because I’m sleep-deprived and I’m letting myself get carried away, obsessed with a dead boy I’ve never even met.

That’s all there is to it.

I close my eyes for a second to reset my brain, and when I open them, I catch sight of Daddy coming down the street toward home. I watch him stop to have a short conversation with Sheriff, and even from this distance, I can see the hard line his mouth settles into. The way his shoulders tighten up.

When he reaches the front porch where I’m still standing, he trudges up the steps without a word. I might as well be one of Lo’s shadow people. He doesn’t even look at me until he starts to open the door and realizes I’m standing right in his way.

“I hear you got yourself another job,” Daddy says. He’s studying my face now, like he’s looking for something he can’t quite find there. “Sheriff’s gonna need to put you on the payroll if this keeps up.”

“They need my help,” I say, and Daddy grunts like he doesn’t care for that answer.

“It ain’t your job, Dovie.”

I shrug. “Somebody’s gotta find ’em.”

Daddy reaches up with one hand to rub his temple, like he has a headache, and I notice how bloodshot his eyes are from straining over his delicate stained glass work all night. “That’s what your Mama used to say.” He reaches around me to pull the front door open, and I don’t have any choice but to step out of his way. “Before she up and vanished.”

It takes me a second to realize what he said. Up and vanished. Not up and left like he’s always said before. Like everyone has always said.

You know her mother up and left her.

I follow Daddy inside the house to find him sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a plate of breakfast Nana left for him. His hair is disheveled, and his fingernails are broken and dirty. There’s mud caked halfway up his pants legs, and his shirt sleeves are torn in at least two places that I can see.

“What happened?” I ask him, and he looks down at himself like he’s only now seeing what a mess he is.

“Spent the night working on that piece for Ira,” he tells me between bites of cold eggs. “Then stopped to help with some cleanup on the way home this mornin’. Tree limbs down from that storm yesterday. Big log jam under the bridge.” His coffee cup is empty, so I refill it for him with some fresh from the pot. “Gotta get showered and changed, then head back to open up.”

“I could go open the shop.” He looks so exhausted that I offer to help before I can even think about how tired I am myself. “If you wanna rest a bit.”

He frowns a little, so I figure he’s going to say no. Instead he digs the key out of his pocket and hands it to me. “That’d be good, Dovie. You run on and I’ll be in directly.”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Take your time.”

Daddy reaches over and picks up the newspaper. He stares at it, but I can tell he isn’t really reading. His eyes never move.

I’m still thinking about what he said about Mama vanishing.

“Why do you think she left?” I ask before I leave him at the table. “Mama.”

It’s quiet for a long few seconds, and I think he’s not going to answer. The screen door opens and closes gently behind me. Nana’s heading out to work on the flowers again, I bet. She leaves Daddy and me treading deep silence like water in a kitchen that’s flooded with memories and regrets.

Finally he says, “I don’t even know if she did leave, Dovie.” I can’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. “I hope she did.” He rubs at his beard. “But I can’t say that for sure.”

“What are you telling me?” He’s been handing me the same story since I was three years old. Mama left town. Packed up and skedaddled. No goodbye. No explanation. No forwarding address.

“I’m just talkin’ nonsense, probably.” He puts down his paper and takes a deep breath before he turns his red eyes on me. “But, truth is, she was haunted, Dovie, and I figure maybe she got tired of seein’ ghosts.” Daddy’s hand is shaking when he reaches for his coffee cup, and I notice that his forearms are covered in deep, angry scratches. Looks like he’s been out in the brambles. He pulls his sleeve down when he catches me staring. “That’s no way for anybody to live,” he goes on, “and it scares me.”

It’s weird hearing him talk about ghosts. Daddy’s as big a skeptic as I am. It’s one thing for Nana to be talking about spirits. And Lo. I’m used to that. They’re superstitious. Hill people, born and bred. Believers at heart. But not Daddy. Something that prickles like fear starts to climb up my spine. It spreads out to wrap its long fingers around my rib cage. “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” I remind him.

“Maybe you’re right, Dovie,” he tells me. “And maybe you’re not. I don’t know anything for sure anymore.” Daddy squares his jaw and looks back down at his paper. “Like I said, I’m just talkin’.” And that’s my cue that this conversation is over.

I push open the screen door and step out onto the front porch with shaking legs. Nana is rocking back and forth, holding our old white cat on her lap and looking out at those muddy pink petals scattered all over the yard. “No way to save ’em,” she tells me. “But they’ll bloom again. Lucy planted the roots deep.”

“I’m goin’ in to open up the gallery,” I say, but I stop at the top of the steps and look across Mud Street to where I saw Riley Alden last night in the shine of the moon, and again this morning through the trees.

Nana’s watching me, rubbing that cross around her neck between one finger and her thumb, like it’s a good-luck charm. “You seen him, too,” she whispers like we’re grade-school besties. “I figured you must’ve.” I turn to blink at her. “He wants something from us, I reckon.” She turns her face up toward mine, and her long silver braid catches in the morning sun. “He wants something from you, Dovie.”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

Nana looks disappointed in me. “You know too many haunted people to believe that,” she scolds.

“Daddy says he’s scared,” I tell her. “But he wouldn’t tell me why.”

“It ain’t ghosts that’s got your daddy scared. He’s been livin’ with them for a long time now.”

“What’s he afraid of, then?”

Nana looks back out at those storm-torn crepe myrtles. “He’s scared ’cause every day you remind him more and more of your mama. And he can’t stand that he might lose you, too.”