Page 76 of Long Way Down

“I have an early morning,” she said, backing away from the counter and folding her arms across her middle. As far as body language went, it was clear as a shove to the center of his chest. “Thanks for taking me to talk to April. Maybe it’ll help.”

He managed a smile he didn’t feel. “Hopefully.”

In the elevator ride back down to the lobby, he realized it was the first time he’d left her place without having had sex. Then he realized that the disappointment sitting heavy in his gut hadnothingto do with that.

Sixteen

Melissa got up while the screen door was still bump-bump-bumping in its frame and went to the window that overlooked the backyard. She watched Ivy’s hair slap against her back, a pale banner flaring fire-bright in the sun, as she power-walked across the yard, through the gate, and started down the narrow track through the scrub grass that led into the swamp. Melissa curled her hands into fists on the windowsill and took a series of sharp, angry breaths that scraped her throat raw.

Mama was right: Ivy was a bitch.

She was mean, and selfish, and rude, and…a whole host of ugly things she wasn’t supposed to say, much less think. She fumed there at the window, cold AC draft blowing up the legs of her shorts, curtains stirring at her shoulders, until Ivy’s hair winked out of sight behind a tree trunk and she was gone. Then Melissa stomped into the kitchen to get an ice cream sandwich out of the freezer and plopped down on the rug with it in front ofThe Price is Right.

Screw Ivy. That felt like a very grownup, Ivy thing to think, so she took great relish in it as she peeled the foil off her treat.

But by the time the show had ended and the soaps had come on, those endless, boring shows with all the close-ups of women crying and the dramatic music, Ivy still hadn’t returned, and worry had begun to niggle at the back of Melissa’s mind.

Though they’d broken the rule about going into the swamp before, they’d done it together. There was safety in the pair of them…and danger in being alone.

An hour passed. And then another. When Melissa realized that Daddy would be up and off to work in half an hour, and Mama home a half hour after that, she decided that her anger at Ivy was outweighed by the threat of punishment if any of the adults found out that Ivy had gone off, and that Melissa had known about it and not said anything.

Thunder rumbled ominously overhead as she stepped into her rain boots, so she grabbed her jacket on the way out the back door. She left the TV in the hope that the low murmur of sound would keep Daddy from waking and noticing anything was wrong until they were both safely back.

She set off across the yard at a jog, and the first, fat raindrop plunked her in the forehead as she was latching the gate behind her.

Her tummy cramped. This was bad. It was so bad, and they were going to be in such trouble. She clutched her jacket to her chest, and jogged down the path, into the arching limbs and tangled weeds of Haley Swamp.

Thunder growled, closer and louder. Dark clouds boiled up from the west and blotted out the sun, plunging the woods beneath the canopy of topmost branches into a twilight state of shadows and optical illusions. A few fireflies, confused by the early gloaming, lifted up into the air, their glow a sad imitation of the lightning that forked overhead with a sharpcrackof close thunder.

“Ah!” Melissa shouted, and jumped in place. A rabbit was startled and went leaping off through the underbrush. The crickets started up their chorus, an ominous droning overlaid by the hiss of the wind as it tunneled down through the branches and lifted blackberry leaves; set saw briars to swaying against the tree trunks they clung to.

Hard, cold rain drops dotted the soil of the path ahead; landed on her head and trickled down her scalp, a teasing preview of the downpour that threatened.

Another bolt turned the air all around her white, and Melissa screamed again, and crouched down low on the path, hands clapped over her ears against the roar of the thunder. As the sound died away, it was replaced by another: the hiss of rain in the branches above, a torrent finally unleashed. Fat drops landed on the path around her, faster, faster.

For a moment that seemed to stretch forever, she debated turning back. She trembled violently, teeth chattering, hot and cold all at once. In a few minutes, she’d be soaked to the bone…if she wasn’t struck by lightning, or didn’t wind up pinned beneath a tree when one inevitably crashed to the ground. It wasn’t safe out here; it wasterrifyingout here.

And Ivy was all alone in this. Ivy whohatedstorms.

She might say mean, ugly things to Melissa, might call her names and intentionally try to make her feel stupid because she was the younger of the two, but she was still Melissa’s cousin, and thunderstorms reduced her to tears. No matter how frightened Melissa was, Ivy was doubly so.

The next flash of lightning sent a cluster of doves winging through the blackberry bushes, their shadows pencil-thin in the white glare that overtook the swamp. The thunder came simultaneously, an awful, sharp series of cracks that reverberated up through the soles of her boots.

Melissa lurched to her feet and took off at a run down the path, yelling fruitlessly at the top of her lungs. “Ivy! IVY!”

She tripped on a root and leaped over a confused possum that scuttled across the path. All the usual small terrors of this dense, twisty part of the forest paled in comparison to the fury of the heavens that flashed and bellowed above. She wiped rain from her eyes, squinted against the white curtain of falling water, and kept running, running, running. Each time she shouted, rainwater filled her mouth.

In her mad scramble, lashes heavy with water and lungs burning from effort, she’d lost all sense of distance. When the shack reared up ahead of her, a shadowed rectangle in the gloom, it was a shock. Had she really come so far? Had Ivy? She’d seen so sign of her cousin – but, then, she couldn’t see much of anything in this weather. If Ivy had wandered off the path, if she’d fallen, twisted her ankle, hit her head, been dragged off by a hungry gator, there was no way to know until the rain let up and Melissa could search properly. In the meantime, she could wait out the rest of the storm in the shack.

The door swung open the moment her fingers brushed the knob, and she thought nothing of it, intent on getting out of the rain. She passed beneath the lintel, and bent double at the waist, hands finding her knees, gasping. There was a fierce cramp in her left side that twisted with each panted breath, and she realized she was making a low, choked sound in the back of her throat. A fearful, whiny sound that she swallowed down with effort.

Her hair had come loose from her ponytail, and it hung in two sodden sheets, one over each shoulder, dripping to the dry dirt floor below. Bent over like she was, she had a view of fresh rake lines…and of footprints. The distinctive soles of jelly shoes, and a set of larger tracks made by something flat-soled and smooth.

Ivy, she thought.

And then, as to the other prints,who?

She lifted her head, and in the dimness saw the shape of a person lying along the length of the table at the center of the room. One of the windows was cracked, and the incoming breeze stirred a curtain of dangling long hair.

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