Chapter 29
FRESH DIRT
Irun my fingers along the carving.
DG + DB
Dorian Gray.
Daisy Buchanan.
Simon Vandenberg.
Clara Green.
I press my nose into the sleeve of her denim jacket, like the faded scent might conjure her tangible presence.
Is she the reason Simon had that collection of CDs in his cubby hole?
Clara Green loved alternative rock, so she introduced the genre to the tortured boy who drank cognac and smoked Djarums. Did they smoke them together?
Was she standing here with him when he carved these initials inside this heart?
I think of her disappearing in fading pixels. My desperation as I tried to put her back together again. The spidery tendrils that gathered into a black hole and sucked her inside.
Could it have been the rift?
Simon disappeared in 1995.
My mom disappeared much later.
After she married Dad.
After they had me.
If the monster was real, how did it get to her? And why did it wait so long?
A gust of wind makes the barn doors groan. I leave the carriage uncovered and wander through the woods, hair blown this way and that, numb to the chill until I reach the graveyard.
I wander from tombstone to tombstone, pausing at Isaiah Vandenberg’s.
He lost everyone he loved in a train crash.
And afterward, he was tormented by a cousin named Lucian, who spawned Rueben and tormented Daniel, who spawned Frank and tormented John, who spawned Thomas.
Did he torment Simon? Did these bad apples have something to do with the disappearance?
Or was it the rift?
And what did my mother know? What did she see when she was here, at the Vandenberg Estate?
I stop at Ruth Vandenberg’s gravestone and run my hand over the top. Was she killed by a wild animal or a monster that slipped through a tear between worlds? I keep wandering, further back in time. To Amos. His wife. His mother. And then …
My breath catches.
Ezra’s grave is different. There’s no grass. No moss or leaves. Just raw earth—scattered soil, dark and clumpy. As though someone has dug up his grave.
When I knock on the front door, Jude answers, his hair looking as disheveled as my own, as though he’d spent the day raking his hands through it.
After seeing my teenage mother in a photograph that came from Simon’s bedroom, I clammed up. I shut down. I left him in the lurch, and now I’m back and breathless, and he looks relieved, like he thought I’d gone and jumped in the Blackwillow River.
“Someone dug up Ezra’s grave,” I blurt.
“What?”
“His grave,” I repeat. “There’s fresh dirt where the grass should be.”
Before Jude has a chance to reply, Mr. Tulane steps into the foyer dressed in his butler attire.
And something in my brain fires, a connection I’m surprised I haven’t thought of until now.
He was here when my mother was here, and not too long ago, he called me by her name.
Not Sara, as Jude assumed. But Clara. My ears weren’t playing tricks on me after all.
“You called me Clara,” I say to him.
“You look just like her,” he replies.
Jude goes very still.
I step around him and show Tulane the photograph that has rocked my world.
He takes it with a fond smile. “Miss Clara and Master Simon were good friends.”
“But then … why wasn’t she in any of the police reports?”
Twig and I pored over that investigation. At least, the parts we could get our hands on. There was not a single mention of Clara Green, not even an anonymous female friend of Simon’s. Lily’s friends made the report. John and Maureen’s friends made the reports. Why not my mother?
“I don’t think anyone knew of their friendship outside of the family. Master Simon didn’t go to the public high school, and Miss Clara was new to town.”
“But you knew.”
He nods.
“So, why didn’t you say something?”
“Because Miss Clara had nothing to do with it. I spoke with her that very evening, in the produce aisle of Kroger. She was a kind young lady, and she made Master Simon very happy. I saw no reason to drag her into the mess when the loss itself was devastating enough. And besides, she left town shortly after.”
“Who was she staying with?”
“Samuel and Marlene Abner.”
“Do they still live here?”
“Of course. They no longer foster children, but for a time, they were a revolving door for the parentless. I was upset when they sent Miss Clara away. I worried a great deal for her, and did for many years, until she came back to visit.”
I blink at him. “Came back?”
“Why, yes. Five years ago, I believe.”
“Clara Green came here five years ago?”
Tulane nods.
The air in my lungs goes still. “What did she want?”
“It seemed to me she was looking for closure.”
“How long did she stay?”
“It was a brief visit. I’d say no more than an hour.”
“Did you see her leave?”
“I walked her to her car.”
I gape at him. And then, with a gasping inhale, I turn on my heel and leave.
Like doing so might defrost my lungs. Get them going again.
I hurry away, grabbing at my neck, trying to breathe.
I rush past the fountain, down the cobbled drive, when Jude calls my name.
I don’t know when the tears began. I only know that when I face him, my cheeks are wet.
“She came to see him?”
The question seems to cause him as much pain as it causes me.
I wipe at my face. “Why wouldn’t she come to see me?”
“Maybe she didn’t know you were here,” he offers.
I shake my head. If that’s true, then the theory I’ve been building, the hope I’ve been harboring—that my mother isn’t just here, but has gone to great lengths to draw me here to her—falls to pieces.
If she visited Tulane five years ago and left that same day five years ago, then she couldn’t have drawn me here at all.
My throat closes up again. “I have to go.”
“Selah.” Jude takes my arm.
Not roughly, like Rafe.
But gently, with all the tenderness in the world. He places Simon’s journal in my hand with the picture of my mother tucked inside. “You should have this.”