When the Bones Sing

Chapter Thirty

Thirty

I turn and drop to my knees at the edge of the cliff. “Lo!” His name is a wail. The cry of the wind under the leading edge of a thunderstorm. “Lo!”

Daddy’s hand is at my back. He has me by the shirt and he’s pulling me back from the edge of Moonlight Crag. “He’s gone, baby.”

“No.” I’m sobbing, clawing at Daddy’s arms. Lo can’t be gone. If he were dead, I would be too. My heart would stop if Lo’s did.

“Dovie?” At first, I think the voice is Lo’s and my heart leaps. I try to break away from Daddy, but he holds me tight. “What happened?”

I realize then that the voice is Xan’s. He’s sitting up at the edge of the crag. His head is bleeding and he looks so confused. Daddy lets me go, and I crawl to him on my hands and knees.

I run my hands over his head and he winces, but he seems okay.

“Is Lowan—” I nod but I can’t say it out loud. I feel like I’m falling over the edge of Moonlight Crag myself. Only, I never hit the ground. I keep falling and falling and falling and falling. “Oh God, Dovie.” Xan’s hands are on my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

“Dovie?” Another voice cuts through the fog. This one is farther away. But I’d know it anywhere.

I scramble back to the edge of the crag before Daddy can pull me away again. The rising sun is hitting the rock face below me now, and I see him. Lo is clinging to a narrow ledge about fifteen feet below me. His arms are wrapped around a skinny tree growing out of the side of the cliff, and he’s hanging on for dear life.

Daddy appears beside me at the edge of the drop-off. “Jesus Christ,” he says, and then he yells at Lo to hang on, that he’s running to the maintenance shop for some rope.

I’m sobbing from joy now, and Lo yells up at me not to cry. That he’s okay. That we’re okay.

Daddy is back in under two minutes. He throws down the rope and Lo ties it around his chest, under his arms. Daddy tells him to knot it twice. Make sure it’ll hold. People are coming out of the cabins now. Men and women. They gather around the crag and murmur to each other in confused tones. Daddy yells for some of them to help him haul Lo up, and four or five men step up to grab the rope. Together they pull Lo back from the edge of death, but I don’t let myself breathe again until I have him in my arms.

We drop to our knees together on top of the crag, with all of Arkansas spread out below. I lean forward, gasping, as hot tears slide down my face. I kiss Lo’s forehead. Then the corner of his mouth. My hands are on his burning cheeks. I can’t quit touching him. I’m falling over the edge again, but this time it feels good. “I love you,” I whisper, and he whispers it back. Then my mouth is on his.

His hands are warm against the skin of my neck. Then tangled in my hair. He’s kissing me back now, with muffled little sounds that let me know he’s crying, too. Lo kisses me so hard that he shudders. He grips the tops of my shoulders, pulling me closer to him, but I can’t get as close as I want to. I taste his salty lips, his tongue, the warm inside of his mouth. The sharpness of his teeth. We’re soft and tender, then fierce again. He moans like he’s in pain, and I know why. This is so good it hurts. I don’t know any more what’s him and what’s me. Maybe there’s not any difference.

This is the day we stop pretending we’re just one thing to each other. I love him in every kind of way there is to love someone. There’s no one word for it. No definition that fits. It’s just me and Lo.

It’s always been us.

That’s all there is.

He pulls back to draw in a ragged breath, and we press our foreheads together. “Do you believe now?” he asks me. “Do you believe in magic?” I’m breathless, and he presses each word to my lips like a kiss. Then he’s nuzzling my neck and I’m wrapping my arms so tight around him.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I believe in all of it.” I kiss him one more time. Long and slow and sweet, but less frenzied now. “I believe in us.” Lo grins at me. “I believe in magic.”

Xan is watching Lo and me. I want to tell him I’m sorry. I want him to know that he’s beautiful, and he made me curious. A little excited. That he showed me something different. Something special that I hadn’t seen before. But it was always going to be Lo.

It’s always been Lo.

We’re Clover and Wilder blood. Meant to break the curse.

Xan smiles, like maybe he understands that. I hope he does.

More people are gathering on the crag now. Guests from the cabins. Employees from the restaurant and the maintenance shop. The housekeeping staff and the gardeners.

I hear a siren and the sheriff’s car tears into the parking lot, sending gravel flying in all directions. I wonder who called him.

Daddy says he was out walkin’ the hills when the sky started to get bright. He hadn’t intended to stay out all night, but time got away from him. He knew he was close to the lodge, so he figured he’d stop in and get Ira to drive him back down to town.

Then he saw our truck in the parking lot.

And he heard my voice out on the crag.

So he grabbed the rifle from under the seat of the truck. I didn’t even know it was there.

Daddy got to the rock just in time to see Ira shove Lo over the edge.

He got there just in time to kill his best friend to save his daughter.

Xan and Lo and I tell Sheriff everything we know, except the part about Lo burying the bodies. We all three leave that out, even though we never discussed it. The only one besides us who knew about that was Ira, and he can take it to his grave as far as I’m concerned. Let the horrible truth of that die with him. Lo’s been hurt enough. The scars are deep and permanent.

The reluctant hunter is standing toward the back of the crowd with a disinterested look on his face. I lean in close to Deputy Jonah to point him out. I tell Jonah not to look at him. Not to give away that he knows. This is Jonah’s chance to be a hero. And maybe he deserves it.

When all the questions have been answered, Sheriff orders everyone to go on back to their cabins and their jobs. He tells them to stay put. That he’ll be around to speak to all of them directly. There’s a team from the state police on the way, he explains them. Nobody leaves Moonlight Crag until they’re cleared to go.

“Delbert,” Sheriff says to Daddy, “Jonah’s gonna drive you and Dovie and the Wilder boy on down to town. I got statements from all of you, and I know where to find you when I need you. I expect you need some rest.” He looks at me and sighs, like he could use some rest, too. “We found Hannah Nelby, Dovie. Right where you said. You done good.” He looks at Lo. “Both of you done real good last night.”

An ambulance shows up to take Xan down to Rogers to get checked out at the hospital. His head is still bleeding a little. He says he’s fine—that he doesn’t need to go to the hospital—but Sheriff insists. “You gotta get looked over. Your mom and dad are on their way from Tulsa. They’re gonna meet you there.”

I take his hands to tell him goodbye. “It’s gonna be a rough trip down the mountain in the back of that thing,” I warn him.

Xan shrugs and his hair falls across his blue eyes. I reach up to push it back so I can see them one more time. “I don’t think there’s any way to get off this mountain that doesn’t hurt,” he tells me, and I figure he’s right. “Goodbye, Dovie, who is not a witch.”

“Goodbye, Xander, who is not a ghost.” I stretch up on my tiptoes and press my lips to his. It’s a quick kiss, but I want Xan to have that to take with him. “I’m glad you’re real,” I whisper as he climbs into the back of the ambulance, and Lo wraps me up in his arms again as they pull away.

When Jonah the Deputy drops Daddy and Lo and me off at the house, he smiles at me. “See you around, Dovie,” he says, and I nod.

“See you around, Jonah.”

Daddy heads inside to take a shower. I hear him in the kitchen filling Nana in on everything. She’s stirring sugar in her tea. I hear the clinking of her spoon, as familiar as her voice.

Lo and I pause on the porch, and when I look to Mama’s crepe myrtles, that single white rose is still lying there where she knelt to lay it on the ground last night.

“She didn’t leave you after all, Dovie,” Lo tells me. “She never left you.”

“Your mama didn’t leave you either,” I say. “Both of them wanted to stay with us.” I take Lo’s hand and lead him across the yard to Mama’s crepe myrtles. “I should have believed you all along,” I tell him. “About the hikers. About the Howler. About the magic. About all of it.”

“You believed as soon as you could, Dovie.”

We kneel in the dirt together and pick up the white rose.

Nana’s voice is drifting out the kitchen window.

I will tell you a story of a pretty white rose,

It is true but oh how sad,

Of a poor young woman whose heart was pure as gold,

But cruel she was treated by her lad.

A memory comes rushing back to me as I’m sitting there with my knees in the dirt. My mama singing that song to me. We’re kneeling right here together. Planting crepe myrtles in the soft earth. And she’s singing that song. For just a moment, I hear Mama’s voice instead of Nana’s.

She was found one morning in a cold, cold stream,

Where he threw his love there to drown,

With that rose between her teeth, as if she seemed to say,

I want to wear this rose in my crown.

It was about Claire. It was always a song about Lo’s mama.

An idea blooms in my head all of a sudden, just like someone planted it there. “What if she’s here?” I ask Lo. “My mama. What if that’s why we’ve all seen her right here? What if that’s why she left the roses here. To mark the spot?”

I start to dig. I’m pulling the dirt away with my bare hands, and Lo is helping me. We’ve never had our hands in the earth together like this. It’s the first time. And something about it feels important.

We dig pretty deep, but there’s nothing. No bones. I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved. How would I feel knowing I’d been sitting on that front porch all these years, yearning for my mama, and she’d been right here the whole time?

I’m about to give up when my fingers hit something hard. It isn’t a skull or a collarbone, though. It’s a little metal box. I free it from the dirt and try to open it, but it’s locked.

“Come on,” Lo says. “Let’s take it inside. Maybe we can get it open.”

Upstairs, Lo settles on my bed and I sit on the floor with the box. I’m halfway scared to open it, but I try anyway. First with the sharp end of a pair of scissors. Then with a wire coat hanger. Like I know how to pick a lock.

Then the air conditioner kicks on and I hear those wild keys tinkling overhead. Lo and I both look up at them at the exact same moment.

“You said you found one of the keys in our yard?” Lo nods. He’s stretched out on my bed and his eyes look soft and sleepy. “You know which one?” He shakes his head, and I get up off the floor and pull a chair over the window so I can climb on top of it and take down the homemade chime.

I try each key knotted to the piece of yarn. All eight of them. None of them work.

“Try the one in your pocket.” Lo’s voice is scratchy with exhaustion.

I dig out the key I found in Hannah’s grave. The one I cut off to give back to Lo. Key number nine. His clue to me.

“By knot of nine, what is done is mine.” I whisper the words to the old Witch’s Ladder chant out loud, and I see the curve of a smile on Lo’s lips.

I slip it into the keyhole and the lock releases. “Lo,” I whisper, but he’s asleep. His face is relaxed, and for the first time in years, I see the Lo I used to know. I wish I could believe he’d never be haunted again. I don’t think he’ll see the ghosts of those murdered hikers anymore, but he’ll always carry darkness within him. That’s just a hard truth.

He’ll always carry light with him, too, though. I remind myself of that. Lo’s flame burns so bright. That darkness will never be able to gobble him up, no matter how big and dark it gets.

I look back at the little box and open the lid. Inside is a crumbling white rose—dry as paper—and underneath that is a little diary.

I lean back against the bed and listen to Lo’s soft breathing as I start to read.